[Neurons] 2010 Meta Reflections #43

[L. Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2010 - #43

September 6, 2010

History of NLP Series #8

 

 

NLP'S "NEW AGE" CONFUSIONS

 

 

Not only has NLP long been confused with therapy (the last Meta Reflection),
it has also for a long time been confused with the New Age movement and many
of the way-out ideas involved in that.   I don't know when "The New Age"
movement began.  In the USA it seemed to have arisen during the 1960s as
freedoms of various sorts were sought for and explored- during the Civil
rights movement, Women's Rights, etc.

 

It also seemed to have also been part and parcel of the Human Potential
Movement (1962-1985) and eventually became part of the Trans-Personal
Psychology (approximately 1965).  Esalen played a big role in it as it
served as the New Age Center where the wildest ideas could be explored and
where "East and West spirituality" could mix and mingle in new forms.

 

What specifically is this "New Age" movement?  What ideas determine and
govern it?  Well, that's where things get pretty messy.  It is almost a
catch-all-term for anything outside of the mainstream thinking.  Sometimes
it involves thinking outside-the-box and imagining what could be such
imaginative questions as the following:

What if we could send our thoughts through space without speaking, just
thinking?  What if we could move physical objects by our thoughts?  What if
we are reincarnated from a previous life?  What if this is just one
expression and we will be back?  What if thinking creates reality without
having to invent and innovate products?

 

Wild and crazy and imaginative ideas, right?  And if we keep it as just
that- some imaginative thinking for exploring-it keeps us playful and open.
But once a person starts to believe in such things-well, then the
self-validating and self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling nature of a belief
kicks in and then a person will begin to "see" and "perceive" evidence of
their belief- even when there is nothing in reality.  That's when all of
this becomes a problem.  Then imaginations take flight and they never come
in for a landing!  They continue to hoover in la-la-land.

 

The challenge here is how to maintain a realistic (and scientific mindset)
of testing things, checking things out, demanding rigorous standards for
"proof," and staying open, playful, and imaginative.  It is
believing-while-being a skeptic until there's external evidence that even an
unbeliever has to acknowledge.

 

So a New Age Believer is just that- a believer in something, someone fully
convinced about something and who also believes that he or she has "proof."
In this, a non-believer does not see or perceive what the believer does.
This differentiates true science from pseudo-science.  In legitimate
science, the evidence stands on its own- there's a process for testing, and
it can be replicated by others, even by those who do not believe that
something exists or that something works.  In fact, when the non-believer
has to agree with the facts and legitimacy of something, then you have proof
that isn't a function of a self-validating belief.

 

Now you know why double-blind and triple-blind research design projects are
so important in science.  If the persons conducting the study know what to
look for or believe that they will find it, they will mess up the results. 

 

Why is it that this comes so easily into NLP?  Well the answer is this: As a
cognitive-behavioral psychology based on a constructivist philosophy about
reality and a phenomenological philosophy of human nature, we start from the
assumption that there's a difference between our mental maps about the world
and the world.  We start from this "the map is not the territory"
distinction.  We know that the way we "bring the world" into ourselves is
through the "abstracting of our nervous system with its sense receptors."
This is what Alfred Korzybski described in great detail in Science and
Sanity (1933, 1995).  This is what NLP began with in saying that "We do not
deal with reality (the territory) directly, but through our maps."

[In Whispering in the Wind Grinder reveals that he has not read Korzybski as
he accuses him of a shallow understanding of the "map" that we use to
navigate reality and what Grinder calls 'first access' Korzybski mapped out
in 1933 in much greater detail than Grinder as his Structural Differential
and the neurological stages of abstractions.]

 

So far, so good.  In science we know that the electro-magnetic spectrum of
"energies"out there in the world are processed and interpreted by our
nervous system and sense receptors as light, sound, and sensation.  And we
know that different nervous-system structures in neurology, as the eyes of
owls, the ears of dogs, etc., see and hear and interpret the "energy
signals" out there in the world differently from ours.  They may see the
ultra-violet aspect of the spectrum where for us, we see nothing and sense
nothing.  Then there are all of the extra-neural devices that we have
invented over the years- devices that allow us to register, detect,
recognize, interpret, and understand what is "out there" that we cannot pick
up naturally with our neurological sense receptors.

 

And yes, there is a world "out there" beyond our nervous system.  There is a
reality of objects that impact us independent of whether we know what they
are or how they work.  You don't have to believe in cars or car accidents
(or disbelieve in them) in order to experience an accident.  Reality exists
outside of you and your inner "reality" (subjective experience of reality)
is co-created by the mixture of your thoughts and beliefs with the stuff
outside.  So reality is not pure or only subjectivity.  We do not merely
project the world.  We project our models and theories onto the world, our
assumptions and then see the world in terms of those assumptions.

 

So we know that there is more "out there" than we can detect without special
help.  And this is where our playful imaginations come in as we imagine the
what ifs... and play around in our thinking about what other extra-neural
devices we could invent and wonder if we could re-program our thinking and
feeling in order to expand our capacities.  And as long as that's what we're
doing, I say, go for it. 

 

But I also think we should be very, very, very careful about turning
imaginative ideas into beliefs, and then into creeds.  I would love to move
things only with my mind.  But until someone figures out how to do that,
demonstrates it to non-believers, and can demonstrate it under laboratory
conditions, tele-kinesis is just an imaginary desire and sci-fi plaything,
and not reality.

 

But this is what begins to create the New Age Believer- that person has
jumped over the evidence stage and has become a believer, and often times a
fanatic, who is absolutely convinced and therefore no longer open-minded and
no longer open to feedback that he or she could be wrong.  And that, of
course, is a big danger sign!

 

NLP was designed, as a child of the Human Potential Movement, to be
creative, playful, imaginative and to stretch forward to play with the
various possibilities for developing new human resources.  So no wonder so
many "New Agers" were (and are) attracted to NLP and many end up as
Trainers.   And with that another problem begins.  They not only teach and
train the Cognitive-Behavioral psychology of NLP (if they even know it), but
they also mix it with their religious belief system, alias their "New Age
Religion."

 

And they have the right to whatever religion they want!  I have no problem
with that.  But to confuse NLP and New Age Religion, well, with that I do
have a problem. They are fusing together a model of human nature with a set
of beliefs.  And doing that confuses things.  Nor should someone confuse NLP
wth Christianity, or NLP and Buddhism, or NLP and Isalm, etc. 

 

We have been very, very careful in Neuro-Semantics about keeping the model
of Neuro-Semantic-NLP clean and clear from any and every religion.  Within
our ranks are people who are believers in these different spiritual
disciplines who use the models that govern language, emotion, meaning,
performance, mental filters, etc. in their religious expressions.  So far,
so good.  And what we ask is that they keep them separate.  One is the model
itself, the other are the various applications.

 

So if you see or read about some NLP or Neuro-Sematnic person into what I
personally consider pure non-sense, like the stuff in "The Secret," or other
New Age Beliefs about tele-kinesis, channeling the dead, reincarnation, Huna
(Tad James), "quantum" psychology or linguistics, "new humans" emerging with
mutated DNA, etc., none of that has anything to do with NLP or
Neuro-Semantics.

 

Now our official position in Neuro-Semantics is that all of this is
pre-scientific and much of it is pseudo-scientific and is the idiosyncratic
beliefs of certain people and have nothing to do with the models.

 

 

 

 

 

In September 10-12

 

What               Unleashing Creative Solutions   Sept. 10-12 

Where             Pretoria, South Africa 

Contact            People South Africa - Cheryl Lucas

                                     

 <mailto:cheryl at psacoaching.co.za> cheryl at psacoaching.co.za                 

                                    Cell: 083 267 1412

                                    Tel: 012 362-6542

                                    Skype: Meta Coach

 <http://www.psacoaching.co.za/>             www.psacoaching.co.za


             <http://www.meta-coaching.org/>
www.meta-coaching.org

                        

 

October 7- 14

Coaching Mastery - Module III of Meta-Coaching

Where:            Stockholm, Sweden

Contact:           Sara Lee - sara.m.lee at gmail.com              Niklas
Daver,  <mailto:niklas.daver at gmail.com> niklas.daver at gmail.com  

                        and Helene Nordgen -
<mailto:helene.nordgren at kompus.se> helene.nordgren at kompus.se
<mailto:niklas.daver at gmail.com> mailto:niklas.daver at gmail.com        

 

In November 2010 - Nov. 15- 16

 

What:                          Unleashing Potentials

When:                          November 15- 16, 2010

Where:                        Bedfordshire, England

Time:                           9:00 am - 6:00 pm 

 

Organizers:                 Joe and Melody Cheal [
<mailto:joe.cheal at gwiztraining.com> joe.cheal at gwiztraining.com] 

Contact Info.: email:  <mailto:info at gwiztraining.com> info at gwiztraining.com 

                                    phone: 01767 640956

                         <http://www.gwiztraining.com/>
www.gwiztraining.com                          The GWiz Learning Partnership

 

 

In November 2010 - Nov. 19-21 

 

What                           Unleashing Vitality

When:                          November 19- 21

Where                         City Hotel - North Central Italy

                                    I-40026 Imola BO

Time:                           9 am to 6 pm.

Contact details            Nicola Riva and Lucia Giovannini

                                    mobile: +39 348 5600507 

                                     <mailto:nicola at blessyou.it>
nicola at blessyou.it                              

                                    

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, International Society of Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA

1 970-523-7877

      <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com 

       <http://www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com/>
www.neuro-semantics-trainings.com 

       <http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

       <http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

       www.meta-coachfoundation.org  

       <http://www.ns-video.com/> www.ns-video.com 

 

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Reflection articles by Dr. Hall are sent out every Monday (Colorado time).
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Wednesdays.   Contact Dr. Hall at  meta at acsol.net  

 

 

 

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