[Neurons] 2008 Meta Reflections #32

[Dr. Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

July 21, 2008

Meta Reflection #32



NLP MIS-UNDERSTANDINGS



A friend recently sent me some of the "dialogue" that other NLP trainers and people are writing on various NLP forum sites about myself about Meta-States. He sent it to me so I can stay informed about the state of this field. Within it was a statement that J. Grinder started in his "Blown Away in the Wind" book (wasn't that the title?, well it was something like that). Anyway J. Grinder (I guess that's what he wants to be called since he calls me M. Hall!), said that he asked me "what the logical relationship was with a state to a state" and I supposedly "failed to answer the question."

Of course I did answer. All a person has to do is to see my answer to the question is to see the articles on www.neurosemantics.com of the exchange between myself and John Grinder. I answered. Whether John likes the answer, or understands the answer, or agrees with the answer-well, that's another issue. But I answered the question.

Interesting enough, someone in the current dialogue decided that by using the term "frame," he could solve the problem of logical levels in NLP and the levels of Meta-Programs. I say interesting enough because anyone who studies the Meta-States Model knows that in Neuro-Semantics, we use "states-about-states" and "frames" synonymously. That is, when you bring a state of thought-and-emotion to another state, you not only create a meta-state, you also set a frame of reference and meaning to that first state. That's what meta-states do.

That's why we describe meta-states as frames-as the frames of the inner game. Now the writer in that dialogue seems to think he invented the idea of frames. He writes as if finding a brand new never-before-discovered insight: "Frames allow us to keep track of different contexts." Of course, this is why I used frames in so many books -Winning the Inner Game, Games Business Experts Play, Games Great Lovers Play, Games for Mastering Fear, Games Slim and Fit People Play, etc. And where did I get it? Primarily from Bateson who was the person who popularized the term and brought it into NLP.

For a field like NLP which is supposed to be about "running your own brain" and modeling how humans function in order to model excellence and expertise, the lack of understanding self-reflexive consciousness creates so many limitations and dead-ends. After all, how can you run your own brain if you think the brain only works by representations? Yes, we make pictures, sounds, and sensations to re-present what we have experienced via our senses. But that's just the first thing we do cognitively to make sense of things.

After the first level, we step back to our internal movies and edit them. This is the realm of the so-called "sub-modalities" (See Sub-Modalities Going Meta). Then we label, classify, and categorize our movies by language (see Communication Magic). Then as we reflect on these thoughts, we draw conclusions that we can call a whole variety of things (beliefs, values, decisions, understandings, intentions, memories, imagination, expectations, etc.) (see Secrets of Personal Mastery and Mind-Lines and Coaching Change for meta-questions). These "logical levels" of processing occur because of our self-reflexive consciousness that is forever reflecting back onto itself and its products (see Meta-States and Winning the Inner Game).

With each move back or up, we respond to our previous response. And because this infinite regress of processing as we try to "make sense" of things never ends, we can use it as an infinite progress if you know how to step back from yourself, hold the previous layering of thoughts and feelings. Do that and you step up to Choice Point-now you are in charge. Now you can access your executive levels to choose your thoughts, your feelings, your responses. And with this expanded awareness and empowered sense of choice, you can truly run your own brain.

But the Bandler and Grinder divisions of NLP do not seem to know any of this. Grinder goes so far as to reject Meta-Programs declaring that they are not an NLP Model (I think this is mostly because Leslie and Richard discovered them!). He says that "its [meta-programs] reasoning is self-referencing" and so rejects it as "feeding itself garbage." Richard similarly thinks that self-referencing only does one thing-it puts people into spins in which they will get lost and never seen again!

Obviously, if we have a self-reflexive consciousness, a mind (a mind-body system) that reflects back onto itself and by nature is inescapably and wildly reflexive, then we have to deal with that nature of our mind. That's what the Meta-States model is about. It tracks and models how our self-reflexivity works, how we create state-about-state, state-upon-state, state-embedded-within-state and so create a Matrix of Embedded Frames all the way up and then back down. Up for frames and the psycho-logics of our mind and down to ground and stabilize our Matrix in the real world to see if it works.

Self-reflexivity is not really all that complex, yet it is systemic. It starts from the simple act of reflection as we reflect upon ourselves. This is not dissociation [that's another myth perpetrated by some NLP people who just don't know any better]. It is our self-reflexive consciousness processing. Our mind is rich enough to not only process the content of its thoughts, but to reflexively process the fact that it is processing. As it does this, we step up as it were to a higher level. And as we reflect again and again on ourselves we layer level upon level of thoughts-and-feelings. This creates our psycho-logics-our so-called "logical levels"-the dynamic fluid layering of our meta-states.

So pass the word to J. Grinder and the others-the logical relationship of one state to another state is a function of our human self-reflexive consciousness which layers one level upon another. The result is a meta-state structure of frames or beliefs as a Matrix of references which define's one's sense of reality. J. Grinder won't like the answer, but then again, I don't know of anything he likes except what he invented. Perhaps he should attend Meta-Coaching and learn how to celebrate the successes and insights of others!



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
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