[Neurons] 2011 Meta Reflections #29

[L. Michael Hall]

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Meta Reflections 2011 - #29

June 27, 2011

 

 

THE META-COGNITION OF

THE FOUR META-MODELS OF NLP

 

 

Given the expansive effectiveness of meta-cognition (Meta Reflection #28),
does it surprise you that there are four meta-cognition models that comprise
the core of NLP?  What this means practically is that one way to describe
NLP is to describe the four meta-models that make up the heart and soul of
NLP.

 

So what are the four meta-models of NLP?  What may make this a bit confusion
is that yes, one of these meta-models is called "The Meta-Model."  That is
actually the first one and why it got the name that it did.  The full name
is "the Meta-Model of Language in therapy."  And that's because it arose
from the linguistic distinctions that John Grinder identified in the
patterning replication that Richard Bandler made from Fritz Perl's use of
language and Virginia Satir's use of language. 

 

But, as noted, that's just the first of four meta-models.  It is strange
that many NLP Trainers do not know the four meta-models.  Not too long ago I
spoke to a NLP Trainers group and mentioned "the four meta-models."  "Four?"
It was as if I had revealed some secret knowledge hidden in the mountains of
Santa Cruz and only accessible to a few special people!

 

Now as a meta-discipline itself, NLP is a field about how all things human
work, especially any aspect of the human experience that has a
cognitive-behavioral structure to it.  This structure doesn't have to be in
a person's conscious awareness, it can and in fact usually is in a person's
cognitive-behavioral unconscious awareness.   This is because
Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Neuro-Semantics are most fundamentally
about how we humans structure things.  And because we structure things with
language, representations, perceptions, and self-reflexive states, NLP has
four meta-models by which we can model things.

 

These four meta-models provide a redundant system of descriptions.  This
explains why the models seem different, they approach the mind-body-system
of experiences in different ways.  So even though they refer to the same
thing, each one gives us another avenue of approach.  Each provides another
systematic structure and description of the processes of an experience.  The
four NLP meta-models are:

1) The Meta-Model of Language: The NLP Communication Model.

2) The Sub-Modality or Cinematic Features Model.

3) The Meta-States Model of self-reflexive consciousness.

4) The Meta-Programs of perceptual lens and points of view.

 

1) The Meta-Model of Language

The first, the Meta-Model of Language, is a model that identifies the form
of how we mentally map our experiences in language.  Via this model you can
unpack the linguistics governing a person's mental mapping and as you do, it
provides a way for you to create linguistic precision.  How does language
work?  By enabling us to use sensory-based words to create an inner picture
for our mind, and then to make higher level evaluations.

 

This first meta-model of NLP is a model about the linguistics which serve as
a code for your thinking.  And where did it come from?  From
Transformational Grammar (TG) which Bandler and Grinder used it to sort out
and create a model of the communication patterns of Fritz Perls, Virginia
Satir, and Milton Erickson.

 

To use this model, listen to words and language expressions, ask questions
that invite the speaker to provide more specific answers, and thereby evoke
a more thorough and precise mapping about the original experience.  The
questions that challenge the linguistic expressions transform the evaluative
language back to sensory-based words so that we can make a mental movie in
our mind and understand what the speaker is referring to and hence meaning.
See The Structure of Magic, Volumes I and II; also, Communication Magic.

 

2) The "Sub-Modalities" or Cinematic Features Model

Classic NLP did not, and still does not, realize that this is a meta-model.
Why not?  Because someone labeled the distinctions as "sub" and that got
connected to the name.  If we were to accurately label the model, it would
be Meta-Modalities.  This meta-model refers to the cinematic features that
provide a code for the mental movies that you create in your mind.  It
refers to how you frame the cinema in your mind in terms of the qualities of
your sights, sounds, and sensations.  So whether you make a movie close or
far, bright or dim, loud or quiet, whether you step into it or just observe
it, whether you add circus music to it, or the music from Jaws, these
features or distinctions enable you to edit your movies.

 

The symbols in this model stand for semantic evaluations.  Perhaps "close,
three-dimensional, and in color" stand for something being "real" or
"compelling."  That's why the cinematic features (sub-modalities) are
governed semantically.  In and of themselves, they mean nothing.  Yet inside
of every person, they stand for some significance or meaning.

 

As you frame the cinema in your mind, you code the sights, sounds, and
sensations with various features, cinematic features.  These features or
distinctions enable you to take an editor's position or perspective to your
own mental movies.  You can then use "close" or "far" to stand for and mean
some semantic frame (real, unreal; compelling, less compelling).

 

To recognize your sub-modalities and work with these cinematic features in
how you code your representations, you have to step back or "go meta."  You
have to gain a broader perspective and ask questions that are meta to or
higher than the representations.  Is that picture close or far?  Is that
image bright or dim?  Is that sound quiet or loud?  To answer such
meta-questions, you have to stop being a subject of the movie, step out of
it, and as you transcend that experience, notice the code as it currently
is.  That's why these are not really "sub" but operate as a meta-level to
your representations.  See Insiders Guide to Sub-Modalities; also
Sub-Modalities Going Meta.

 

3) Meta-States Mode of Self-Reflexive Consciousness

The Meta-States Model looks at the same structures, not primarily in terms
of linguistics or cinematic features, but in terms of thinking-and-feeling
states.  A possibility state or a necessity state, for example, will
typically show up linguistically as a modal operator of possibility (can,
get to, want to) and/or a modal operator of necessity (have to, must).  The
Meta-Model describes it linguistically, the Meta-States model describes it
in terms of state. 

 

Because we never just think, we reflectively think about our thinking, we
feel about our feeling.  This self-reflexivity creates our meta-states as
our states-about-states and all of the layering we do.  Reflecting back onto
our own states and experiences, layers levels of experiences (what we call
"logical levels") to create each person's unique psycho-logics.  This means
that we are not logical creatures, we are psycho-logical beings.  Our
meanings make sense to us-on the inside.

 

Nor does our reflexivity ever end.  Whatever you think or feel, you can step
back and have another thought or feeling about that.  This creates the
layers of meanings as beliefs, understandings, decisions, memories,
imaginations, permissions, anticipations, identities, and so on.  It is what
makes our minds complex and not simple.  And as we continue to reflexively
apply a next thought or feeling to ourselves, we keep building more frames
within our frame structure or matrix.  This makes up the rich layeredness of
our mind or our neuro-semantic system.  See Meta-States (2008), Secrets of
Personal Mastery (1997), and Winning the Inner Game (2007).

 

4) The Meta-Programs of Perceptual Lens

The Meta-Programs model is one of thinking patterns, thinking styles, or
perceptual lens.   This model refers to how you see or perceive things.  Is
the cup half empty or half full?  Do you see it pessimistically or
optimistically?  Whichever style of thinking / perceiving characterizes you,
then your language will differ, as will your states, as will the ways you
encode your inner mental movies.

 

A global thinker will sort for the big picture and meta-state or frame most
things from the global thinking-and-feeling state.  Someone who sorts for
"necessity" will regularly apply a state of compulsion to other
thought-and-feeling states.  Habituation of your internal processing gives
rise to your meta-programs and then governs your everyday states, language,
and perceptual filters.  As your meta-programs show up in language, the
Meta-Model offers a description.    And as you access a particular state and
use it repeatedly, your meta-state becomes your meta-program.  That's why a
meta-program is a coalesced meta-state. 

 


>From your meta-states, you create the meta-programs that govern your

perceptions. You generalize from the states that you most regularly and
commonly access and as you do you habituate that way of thinking and feeling
until it becomes your basic style of perceiving.  You meta-state global
thinking or detail thinking until it coalesces into your neurology and
becomes your perceptual lens or meta-program.  You meta-state sameness
thinking or difference thinking until it becomes your meta-program style.

 

A driving perceptual style is a meta-program that you have layered with even
more meta-states-states of value, belief in, identification with, etc.  So
if a person who thinks globally and sorts for the big picture begins to
frame most things from that global state and then begins to highly value it,
identify with it, believe in it, they person may create a driving
meta-program of global thinking.  Similarly the person thinks in terms of
"necessity" and brings that state of mind and emotion to more and more of
his or her experiences and then believes in it, values it, identifies with
it, will more than likely apply that state of compulsion to every other
state.  This will eventuate in the driving meta-program of necessity. 

 

Habituation of internal processing gives rise to meta-programs-to a person's
structured ways of perceiving. They then govern that person's everyday
thinking-and-feeling as his or her perceptual filters.  To the extent they
show up in language, you can detect them using the Meta-Model.  For example,
people have favored modals that describe their basic modus operandi (modal
operators) for operating: necessity, impossibility, possibility, desire,
etc.  They originated as meta-level thoughts or feelings, they were first
meta-states.  As they coalesced, they got into one's neurology, one's eyes,
one's muscles and become the person's meta-programs.  See Figuring Out
People (2007), also Words that Change Minds.

 

All together these four models provide four different lenses for observing
your meaning-making processes.




Language: Linguistics and the VAK sensory systems.

            Cinematic Features: The qualities and distinctions with which we
code our mental movies.

            States: Mind-body states from which you operate.

            Perception: Filters for your lens for seeing and perceiving, for
sorting, paying attention, and thinking.

 

Now you know what for some is a big secret-the four meta-models of NLP which
provide an extensive meta-cognitive perspective on experience.  Now you have
four possible ways to describe experience.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

L.  Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Neuro-Semantics Executive Director  ----   <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO.  81520 USA                             ----
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org

1 970-523-7877                                               ----
<http://www.meta-coaching.org/> www.meta-coaching.org

 

     

For a free subscription to Neurons--- the International  egroup of
Neuro-Semantics, go to the front page of  <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com.   You can  subscribe and unsubscribe there.   Meta
Reflection articles by Dr. Hall are sent out every Monday (Colorado time).
Trainers' Reflections are on Tuesdays and Meta-Coach Reflections on
Wednesdays.   Contact Dr. Hall at  meta at acsol.net  

 

 

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://eight.pairlist.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20110627/fe61d6c9/attachment-0001.html>