[Neurons] 2008 Meta Reflections #24

[meta]

From: L. Michael Hall

2008 Meta Reflections #24

May 27, 2008





LET THERE BE ALCHEMY






I had the privilege this past weekend to facilitate the transformative process that we call The Crucible in Neuro-Semantics. This is the second change model that we have in Neuro-Semantics; the first being The Axes of Change (Coaching Change, Meta-Coaching, Volume I, 2005). The first change model is designed for conscious change and for psychologically healthy people and while we think of it as the "dance of change" around four axes and eight coaching positions, it is still mostly a linear process. It is linear in that it moves along the four stages of change: motivation, decision, creation, and integration.

By way of contrast the Crucible Change model is entirely non-linear. It works in a holographic way as a system of energies that work on a set of meanings-exposing, dissolving, de-constructing, and altering until something new emerges, some new set of meaning frames, some new expression and form for how to be in the world.

While we use several metaphors for the Crucible, one of them is the metaphor of alchemy. And last week several people seemed to prefer that metaphor. In the middle ages of Europe, alchemy was a medieval science and speculative philosophy whose aim was to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold. Today we use the term alchemy for a power or process of transforming something common into something special. In the middle ages people hoped to use alchemy find transform lead into gold. >From that arose the pre-scientists of that age trying to figure out the secrets that would enable them to generate that kind of transformation. 

The gold of human personality, the gold of a person actualizing (making-real) his or her highest values and best competencies is the alchemy that we seek and that the Crucible is designed to create. And it creates it using both sides of creation- de-construction and construction. 

First comes the de-construction as we put the heavy lead and other raw materials of life into the crucible so that the heat within such can be released and activated.

Now life often has this effect upon us anyway. Challenging life events can work as a crucible upon us -bringing us into a self-encounter, bringing us to the endof an old way of being, and expose us to truth, to reality, to love, to fear, to anger, to joy, to a wide range of emotions and dreams and visions ... and through it all boil down one way of life to bring into being a new way of being. In the lives of such persons of history as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Joan of 

Arc, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Viktor Frankl, Christopher Reeves, and many others, an alchemy of personality occurred and history changed.

The crucibles in such cases tended to be hard, extremely challenging, and could have just as easy destroyed or wiped the person out as to have given birth to a transformative leader. The Crucible Model differs in this way. It is not hard or rough or any of these things. Like the release of nuclear energy that provides electricity for millions or within a nuclear submarine, the energy activated and released for new creation in the Crucible is under our control. We can form and reform it so that it works for our self-actualization.

Among the common lead of human experiences that we can now take into the Crucible and have transmuted into gold are old habits, old lifestyles, old thoughts, old beliefs, old emotions- creations of meaning that no longer serve you well. Are you ready for a transformation? Try the Crucible. [There's a chapter in Unleashed on the Crucible.]



THIS WEEK IN AUSTRALIA ---

Creativity and Innovation -- Unleashing Your Creativity 

May 30-31, June 1 - Australia

                Gold Coast, Australia. This is the second Self-Actualization Workshop.

                Sponsored by AINS- Australia Institute of Neuro-Semantics

Contact persons: Martin Urban; Don Powers, Steve Hodgson, Rosie Davoli

info at ains.org.au   --- Taking reservations now!

Website: www.ains.org.au 

Telephone: 617 5530 6652

























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
(877) 686-2867 toll free in the USA only
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