[Neurons] 2015 "Neurons" Meta Reflections #52

Mon Nov 30 11:47:55 EST 2015

From: L. Michael Hall

Meta Reflections #52

November 30,  2015

The "Genius" State #5

HOW META-STATES

HAS BEEN "EATING" NLP

In 1996 Dr. Graham Dawes wrote a book review after reading Meta-States and
Dragon Slaying.  Graham was the first person to create a NLP Training Center
in London.  Later Graham collaborated with XX to write a book on modeling
with NLP using the Experiential Array.  At the time that Graham wrote his
review and some of his comments, he surprised me about one of this comments.
Namely, 

"Meta-States will be the model that eats NLP" 

                        Dr. Graham Dawes, 1996, Book Review of Dragon
Slaying

                        Anchor Point (USA) and Rapport (UK), and NLP World
(Europe).

I still remember the shock that I felt when I first read that statement in
the book review.  Truth be told, I was actually utterly shocked by the
statement.  That was a statement that I had never even entertained, I had
not thought of Meta-States in that way.  Yet given that it was presented so
bluntly, I even felt a bit confused about it at first.  Having not been my
radar, I didn't know how the Meta-States model could have consumed NLP.

That was 1996.  Then one day a decade later I suddenly realized that Graham
was more right than I ever suspected.  Since that 1996 review of
Meta-States, the Meta-States Model has indeed almost "eat up" and consumed
the NLP Model in numerous ways.  During the years in which this took place,
I was mostly unconscious of it. Yet in review, I am able to take a broader
perspective and to see the revolutionary effect of Meta-States on the
original NLP model and domains.

Date    NLP Model                 Book updated by the Meta-State Model 

1997      Meta-Programs Figuring Out People          60 meta-programs in a
meta-level structure (2005 edition)

1997      Time-Lines                         Adventures in Time-Lines 16
kinds of "time" in a multi-level model

1997      Reframing                          Mind-Lines
7 directions for sending a brain and 26 ways to reframe a statement.

2001      Strategy Model NLP Going Meta Modeling using Meta-States, book
formulated as "NLP: Volume II."

1998      Meta-Model                      Communication Magic     Expanded
Meta-Model with 22 distinctions.

1997      Strategies of Genius         Secrets of Personal
Meta-States for "Flow" or Genius

                                                            Mastery
State

1999      Sub-Modalities  Structure of Excellence                  Discovery
that "sub-modalities" are 

2005 edition:                     Sub-Modalities Going Meta
actually meta-level editorial frames

1999      Framing & Reframing    Frame Games (1999)
Frame analysis using Meta-States

                                                            Winning the
Inner Game (2007)

1999      NLP Practitioner               User's Manual of the Brain
Training Manual: Meta-NLP.  NLP informed by Meta-States

2002      NLP Master Prac.              User's Volume II
Meta-Masters Training Manual

2003      Modeling                            Cultural Modeling
Modeling cultural phenomenon using Meta-States.

               Modeling                            Advanced Neuro-Semantic

                                                            Modeling

I never set out with a futuristic Mission Statement to create these books
and training manuals for the purpose that Neuro-Semantics would "eat up the
NLP model." Yet that is what essentially happened over the years.  Further,
at the time, I did not know that it was happening.  That only became evident
in looking back.

In the mid and late 1990s I wrote a series of articles as critiques of NLP.
Some of the articles I wrote by myself and some of them I wrote with others.
One of the first was written with Dr. Bob Bodenhamer, "The Downside of NLP."
Later I wrote an especially biting critique of DHE, "Ten Years and Still No
Beef."  In all of them I attempted to address problems in both the field of
NLP and the NLP model itself.  The design was to take NLP to a new level
professionally and ethically.

Yet through it all we discovered many things and began to distinguish what
we were doing from NLP.  What we have discovered?  One of the things that we
mainly discovered is that a large portion of the magic of NLP occurs above
the representational level.  Now, true enough, the representational level is
indeed the genius of NLP.  It is a genius and contribution that we readily
recognize as the unique creation of John Grinder and Richard Bandler.  What
NLP does best and what NLP is mostly about is representation.  That is, it
is about what and how we represent information on the theater of our minds
and how that some simple shifts can generate very powerful results.

In this, NLP is truly magical.  As a cognitive psychologist, when I found
NLP I immediately knew that it filled in the gaps of Cognitive Psychology,
Rational-Emotive Therapy, and of Reality Therapy.  That's why I found it so
compelling.

Yet while NLP is all about representation, we learned something unbeknowest
to Bandler and Grinder.   We learned that there was another part of NLP that
created magic that actually operated at meta-levels, at meta-state levels,
and that the founders and developers somehow never truly realized this.  We
learned that what we had found in the Meta-States model actually explained
most of the so-called magic.

This is nowhere better illustrated than the whole mis-adventure into the
so-called sub-modalities.  NLP decided that the finer features of the
various sensory representational systems were "sub" to the modalities and so
thought and used metaphors about "going down" and probing to a sub-level to
find the elemental particles of experience.

Yet these cinematic features of our mental movies, the qualities of our
visual, auditory, and kinesthetic systems are not "sub" at all.  As the
features by which we edit our movies, they occur at a meta-level as one of
our frames.  Somehow the entire process of even detecting these features is
discovered by stepping back and going meta.  And when we discover them, we
discover meta-programs and meta-model distinctions.  All these are strong
indicators that the term "sub-modalities" was the problem and had mis-led
us.

In all of this, the reductionistic approach of Bandler and Grinder that
created NLP in the first place by identifying the "languages of the mind" in
terms of the sensory and meta representational systems ultimately proved to
be its own confusion.  The result?  There has been essentially nothing new
produced within the basic NLP model in the past 20 years.

By way of contrast, Meta-States that originated as a NLP model and so
recognized by the International Association of NLP Trainers has continued,
year after year, to generate new models, hundreds of new patterns, new
modeling of experts to create new training modules and programs, etc.  

The reason for this?  Meta-States is all about referencing rather than
representation.  Mere representation is a first level mapping whereas the
frames that we set about a representation is much more governing.  So the
direction for finding more of the "magic" of NLP was not down but up.  And
that's the direction that Meta-States took us.  That's why the idea of
Meta-States becoming a model that "eats up NLP" was obvious to several
people before it dawn on me.

The meta-level states and frames of Meta-States explains why and how the
mind-body-emotion system operates as it does and brought forth a whole
series of new presuppositions for the field of NLP and which later
established the presuppositions of Neuro-Semantics.  "The person who sets
the frame governs the game."  "Someone always sets the frame."  "Where
there's a game, there's a frame."  And that will be the subject of our next
Reflection.

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

    ISNS new logo

What is Neuro-Semantic NLP?

Neurons:  Get your free subscription to the weekly International \Post on
Neuro-Semantics by Dr. L. Michael Hall. Subscribe at:
wwww.neurosemantics.com 

    Solutions:  Sign up for the Neuro-Semantic Newsletter ---

 wwww. <http://neurosemantics.com/newsletter> neurosemantics.com/newsletter.

 This is a monthly newsletter for anyone new to Neuro-Semantics.  Femke
Stuut, Editor.

Coaching: For world-class Coach Training - The Meta-Coaching System:
www.meta-coaching.org and \
<http://www.metacoachfo/hich/a/hich/af31506/dbch/af31505/loch/f31506%20f3150
6/dbch/af31505/loch/f31506%20undation.org/hich/af31506/dbch/af31505/loch/f31
506/hich/af31506/dbch/af31505/loch/f31506> www.metacoachfoundation.org.
Meta-Coach Reflections sent every Wednesday to the group of Licensed
Meta-Coaches.

Self-Actualization: Neuro-Semantics launched the New Human Potential
Movement in 2007, for information about this, see
<http://www.self-actualizing.org/> www.self-actualizing.org  

NSP --- Neuro-Semantic Publications: Order books from Neuro-Semantic
website,  <http://www.neurosemantics.com/> www.neurosemantics.com  click on
Products and Services and then the Catalogue of books.  Order via paypal.  

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20151130/a05de351/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 9825 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20151130/a05de351/attachment-0001.jpg>