[Neurons] 2014 "Neurons" Meta Reflections #47

Mon Nov 24 02:28:40 EST 2014

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections 2014 #47

November 24, 2014

REFLEXIVITY AND MINDFULNESS

If the field of NLP as such involves and encourages a basic mindfulness, the
Meta-States Model takes mindfulness to the next level.  It does this by the
emphasis in APG (Accessing Personal Genius) where we introduce the
Meta-States Model by emphasizing several meta-skills: the ability to step
back, to transcend and include, to expand one's perspective, and to
reflexively move up the psycho-logical levels.

At the essence of mindfulness is an openness to experience.  NLP begins this
with a strong emphasis on coming to one's senses and being open to the
moment, to the here-and-now.  Yet experience is not a monolithic thing.
Instead it has multiple levels and this is where the Meta-States Model
really excels.  By embracing it fully, holding it, including it, you can
then step back from the current moment experience, and transcend it as you
embrace the beliefs and understanding and other meta-level perspectives that
hold it in place.  Do that and you begin to become mindful not only of the
first level of the experience, but its meta-levels.

By including and transcending the experience, you gain a larger-level
perspective of it.  Now you begin to become aware and open to the multiple
levels of meanings that create the experience, that hold it in place, that
enable it to be what it I s.  This is the reflective awareness that takes
mindfulness to the next level.  It enables you to develop a more expansive
openness to the more hidden but higher levels of your mind-body system.
What any experience is- is not fully described or explicated at the primary
level.  That's just the grounding level.

Above and beyond the primary level of any experience are the meta-levels of
the mind.  These are the levels that enable the experience to be what it is.
These are the levels that create the experience.  Here we have understanding
and beliefs and identities and permissions and decisions and dozens upon
dozens of other meta-levels.  And given that in the book, Neuro-Semantics
(2012), I identified 104 meta-levels, and four dimensions of meta-levels,
you won't run out of possibilities for expanded meta-level mindfulness any
time soon.  This means that we can develop mindfulness along both a wide
range of openness to phenomenon at the primary level as well as a height
range.

After all, mindfulness is a meta-state:

            An awareness of your thinking-and-feeling experience.

"Why be more conscious? So that consciousness may become conscious of
itself."  (Abby Eagle, Sydney Australia)

            Valuing and appreciating this present moment and so being fully
present to it. 

            Witnessing the here-and-now with compassion and without
judgment.

            Maintaining a calm perspective of witnessing of one's state
(even states of pressure).

Being able to see and hold multiple perspectives simultaneously.

Being playfully adventurous in familiar and repetitive contexts.

>From these definitions of mindfulness and the wide-range of different kinds
of mindfulness, these leads us in Neuro-Semantics to see mindfulness as
directly correlated with choice and creativity.  Choice requires
mindfulness.  It requires expanding and being conscious that in every
situation you have multiple choices and are not a victim of some fate that
you can't control.  Then like Viktor Frankl, you will can always recognize
choice as your "ultimate power."  Even in the concentration camp, he fully
maintained his power of choice.  He was mindful enough to recognize that he
had choices.  So he could then boldly assert that "they can not make me hate
them."  His emotions were his own.  How high a degree of mindfulness did
that require?  A lot!  Even so, it is possible.  When a person doesn't have
a sense of choice, the problem isn't the lack of choice, only his lack of
perceiving it- being mindful of it. 

Creativity also requires mindfulness.  It is the opposite, being mindless,
that prevents one from seeing possibilities, playing around with curious
questions, and being open to what is not yet, but could be.  In her book,
Mindfulness (1989) Ellen Langer related mindfulness to creativity.  She
posited that conditional statements would lead to being mindful and using
absolute statements would lead to operating in a mindless, automatic way.
After showing a relationship between being mindful and creativity she noted
that at the heart of creativity is the ability to stay open enough to
embrace uncertainty.  Conversely it is the need to be certain that closes
the door on creativity.

Regarding this Langer sounded a lot like Korzbyski.  "Teaching facts as
absolute truth" she says, leads to mindlessness.  "In most educational
settings, the 'facts' of the world are presented as unconditional truths,
when they might better be seen as probability statements that are true in
some contexts, but not in others."  When we shut out conditions and contexts
we shut down creativity.  When we introduce conditionality, probability, "it
depends," "it could be," etc. creativity thrives.

"If a theoretical model is presented absolutely, it will be thought absolute
and the student may thereafter treat it rigidly."  "The dampening of
creativity in students by unconditional teaching is compounded by most
textbooks.  Scientific investigations yield only probability statements and
no absolute facts.  Yet these ... are presented in textbooks as though they
were certain and context-free." (127, 128)

In embracing uncertainty by being mindful of the conditions and factors at
play in a situation, people become more creative.  Here is one powerful
meta-state that results in one form of mindfulness.  In being mindful in
this way, a person details the specifics of the here-and-now in
sensory-specific terms.  This makes one more fully aware of the present
moment.  And this is why training in NLP and Neuro-Semantic inherently
develops and enhances the state and meta-states of mindfulness.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

                Neuro-Semantics Executive Director 

                Neuro-Semantics International

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

                1 970-523-7877 

                Dr. Hall's email:
<mailto:meta at acsol.net\hich\af31506\dbch\af31505\loch\f31506> meta at acsol.net

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