[Neurons] Meta Reflections #56

[meta]

L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections #56

Dec. 24, 2007 



META-STATING

PARADOXICAL STATES


To meta-state is to create, work with, and understand paradox. It is inevitable. Why is it inevitable? For the simple reason that when you meta-state, you reflexively move to a higher level of awareness and bring that higher frame into the lower frame. This is what the founders of NLP got wrong. Bandler and Grinder wrongly assumed and popularized the current mythology in NLP that to "go meta" is to dissociate. And it is that myth which has blinded most people trained in classical NLP and new code NLP to the fabulous magic in the Meta-States model.

But to "go meta" is not dissociation. To step back from one state of consciousness full of thoughts and feelings is to at the very same moment to step into another state. When you step out of depression, what state do you step into? Neutrality, observation, witnessing, joy, curiosity, wonder, playfulness, concern, or what? The choices are infinite. The point is that you will always step into some state!

Yes you could step into a state where it feels as if you have stepped out of your body and are dis-embodied. But that's just a sense; just a feeling. You have not actually stepped out of your body! You are still in your body. Your heart is still beating. Your lungs are still breathing air in and out. The whole concept of "dissociation" is just that-a concept. So the "feeling" of dissociation typically is that of feeling numb, weird, viewing one's body from outside, etc.

Going meta to your current state simply and only refers to stepping into another state and you can step into highly emotional states about the first state as you can step into less and less emotional states like witnessing, observing, or neutrality.

And there's something else. When you meta-state, while you first move to a higher level of thoughts-and-feelings about your first state, that's not the end of the story. You don't stay meta. Meta is not a place or thing, the term refers to a process. The moving up to this higher state is just step one. It is just the feedback loop of your inner communication. The next step is your feed forward loop by which you feed forward the thoughts, feelings, energy, and frame of your meta-state into the first state.

That's why we describe meta-stating as transcending and including. We transcend our first state and we include it within the higher meta-state. That's how we create joyful learning, respectful anger, calm fear, mindful anxiety, playful intensity, etc. Over the years I've illustrated this most often by contrasting playful and serious, the different syntax of meta-states, and the difference it makes. If we meta-state playfulness with seriousness, we get serious playfulness. If we meta-state seriousness with playfulness, we get playfully serious. And the second meta-state, playfully serious, is much more resourceful than the first one.

And it may strike you as paradoxical. After all, playful and serious are opposites on the continuum of earnestness. Yet if we jump a logical level and make serious a member of the class of playful, we meta-state ourselves with playfulness so that even our seriousness operates within the frame and category of playful. To "serious" people this can seem so much of a paradox that they just can't figure out.

I remember once being called into a local hospital to work with the critical care nurses. I had a small group of about 24 nurses, mostly female, but 5 males. The supervisor who brought me in was concerned about their stress levels. In gathering information about their stressors, there was first of all their hours, they worked 12-hour shifts. But even greater was the very thing that brought them into that profession and was their best quality-their care. They cared so much. And that same care of compassion, desire to help, refusal to give up on people, etc. was also the source of their biggest stress. Most of them absolutely dreaded and hated, and felt like a failure, when someone died, especially on their shift.

My overt task was to teach them relaxation skills. And the supervisor knew I could access relaxation states, anchor them, and also to facilitate the development of a "core relaxed state" so that they could use an "instant relaxation" strategy to help reduce their stress level. And while I did that, I also recommended that they lighten up about the seriousness of their job. Most of them were so serious! I suggested that they needed a good dose of playful seriousness.

Yet when I said that, some of them responded as if I had just uttered the worse heresy within the realm of their profession! 

"Be playfully serious? You've got to be kidding. This is serious business. We can't do that; we're professionals."

"So you need to be deadly serious?" I asked playfully. "Does that help your patients live or die?"

"But we have to be professional; we can't makes jokes or not treat things lightly." 

"So making jokes and lightening up, being playfully serious in your earnest commitment to do the best you can, that would somehow be unprofessional? So tell me, in your image of being 'professional,' does this mean that you must not smile. You have to look unhappy. You are now allowed to lighten up and be human and treat human mortality as if it is unnatural? Do you think that any of us are going to get out of this alive?"

Eventually, they got it. And as they did, they began to lighten up and to use what seemed so counter-intuitive, so paradoxical-playful seriousness-as a way of reducing their own stress and of bringing a more caring and authentic presence to the people they were caring for.

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Neuro-Semantics Ltd., Executive Director
ISNS - International Society of Neuro-Semantics
P.O. Box 8
Clifton, Colorado, 81520 USA
www.neurosemantics.com 
www.meta-coaching.org
www.self-actualizing.org 

Email: meta @onlinecol.com @acsol.net @mindfocus.co.za
(970) 523-7877
(970) 523-5790 FAX
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