Modeling created NLP, modeling also created Neuro-Semantics, and modeling will keep this field growing and thriving.  Modeling will keep us creative and on the cutting-edge of facilitating self-actualization for individuals and organizations.  And modeling has been my focus for some 25-plus years and the source of the rich offerings in NLP.  But we need more people doing it.  The following is my story.  I’m presenting it to invite you to start your story.

While I became aware of NLP in 1985, I did not begin studying NLP until 1986.  I had heard of it as a communication model and then I discovered that it had lots of applications for therapy.  As a psychotherapist, that interested me.  So I studied it for eight years before my first big breakthrough in 1994, when I discovered and created the Meta-States Model.  That was a little bit short of “the ten-year rule” of Anders Ericcson.  Perhaps that was because the field was pretty new and I entered into it pretty early.  Anyway, those were the silent years in which my focus was on understanding NLP.

As I learned NLP I began incorporating it into my work.  I added the NLP Communication Model to my book, Speak Up, Speak Clear, Speak Kind (1987) and then added the NLP model of strategies to my work in Motivation, How to Get Yourself Really Motivated (1988/ 1998).

While I was doing my original studies with Bandler, I wrote what became the book, The Spirit of NLP (1997) in 1989.  Then at Bandler’s request I wrote Becoming More Ferocious as a Trainer (1990) during my Trainers’ Training.  After that I wrote several other books for Bandler, Time for a Change and Neuro-Associative Dynamics (unpublished) from video-tapes and worked on creating The NLP Directory (unpublished).

At that time to more fully understand NLP I began reading everything that the three communication experts Perls, Satir, and Erickson had written.  That led me to other sources of NLP, especially Bateson and Korzybski.  I then wrote a series of articles, Almost Inventors (1991-1992) and then later The Missing Meta-Model Distinctions (1992-1993).

In 1990 Richard uged me to engage in a modeling project.  Because my degree and practice was in psychotherapy, I decided that for my first modeling project I would model a therapeutic solution to schizophrenia.  I read Bateson’s work over and over, and because I had had experience with several high functioning schizophrenic clients as a licensed psychotherapist, I approached a mental health clinic in my city.  But after many meetings, the project was refused.

That’s when I began my first modeling project on resilience.  That and all of the other projects were turned into trainings as well as books as I took the discoveries, created models for doing things, and then put them into a training format so that the expertise could be replicated.  Today most of these are Neuro-Semantic Trainings.

Many of the projects slid into the next one.  In fact, sometimes it is difficult to say when one modeling project ended and the next one began.  Often, as with modeling Resilience, while still working on that, I began working on modeling Self-Reflexivity.  Along the way I wrote a number of books that were exclusively NLP books.  Some of these came out of various modeling projects and some simply came from remodeling NLP using the Meta-States Model.

Patterns for Renewing the Mind (1997/ 2000)

Sourcebook of Magic – Volume I (1997)

Sourcebook of Magic – Volume II (2003)

User’s Manual of the Brain, Vol. I (1999)

User’s Manual of the Brain, Vol. II (2002)

MovieMind (2002)

Propulsion Systems (2003)

Games Great Lovers Play (2004)

Innovations in NLP (2011)

The Field of NLP (unfinished and unpublished)

1) Resilience (1990- 1994).  I shifted to study resilience —a project that continued over four years.  I wanted to know how people recovered from a set-back.  DThe discovery and articulation of the structure of resilience led to discovering the presence of states-about-states (meta-states) and that combinations of meta-states resulted in “gestalt” states.  That led to the training on Resilience that now is one of the gateway trainings in Neuro-Semantics.

Books: There is a chapter on resilience in the book Meta-States: Managing the Higher Levels of the Mind (1995/ 2012).

Manuals: Resilience.

2) Self-Reflexivity: (1992–1997).  While studying resilience, I read Alfred Korzybski’s works in General Semantics (Science and Sanity, The Manhood of Humanity) as well as Gregory Bateson’s works on logical levels (Steps to an Ecology of Mind).  That led to exploring the field of Meta-Cognition (whyich is primarily about memory and the philosophy of Mind), which occurred at the same time of the discovery of the Meta-States Model.  The Meta-States model was recognized in 1995 as “the most significant contribution to NLP” by the International Association of NLP Trainers.

Books: The first book on Meta-States was published in 1995, Dragon Slaying (1996), then Secrets to Personal Mastery (2000).  The Meta-States Model models the structure of self-reflexive consciousness— the most unique phenomenon in human experience.  Meta-State Magic (1997-1999 from the Meta-States Journal).  Winning the Inner Game (2000/ 2007, formerly Frame Games).

NLP Books remodeled using Meta-States:

Adventures in Time-Lines

Mind-Lines: Lines for Changing Minds

                        Figuring Out People: Meta-Programs

                        Sub-Modalities Going Meta

NLP Going Meta: Meta-Level Modeling

Papers: The Meta-Dimension.  The Bateson Report (2002), The Four Meta-Domains of NLP.  Series of articles on Logical Levels.

3) Managing Anger and Negative Emotions (1994-1996).  Upon discovering meta-states, I took a new look at “emotions” and especially the so-called “negative” emotions to find the structure of out-of-control negative emotions and the structure of how to manage them.  This meant modeling effectiveness in state (and meta-state) management and how to defuse a person who has reached an out-of-control state that may be characterized by anger, stress, fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, etc.

Books: This led to Dragon Slaying (1996/ 2000).  The Structure of Personality (2001).  Games for Mastering Fear (2001).  The Defusing Strategy (1997).

Trainings: This led to the gateway trainings Emotional Mastery and Defusing Hotheads and other Cranky People.

Patterns: Dancing with Dragons, Meta-Stating Troubling Emotions.

 4) Accelerated Learning (1995– 1996).  From the Meta-States Model came an exploration into the structure and experience of learning and accelerated learning.  The focus was on how those who are exceptionally skilled at learning, at accelerated learning, etc. have increased their capacity to learn and how they have accelerated their learning.

Trainings: This led to the training Accelerated Learning.

5) Women in Leadership (1998).  This project was directed by Jeff Hays of Salt Lake City (NLP Master Practitioner) and Dr. Jennifer Hays, Head of research department, Rice University, Houston Texas.  Invitations were sent to 50 women who broke through the “glass ceiling” and the modeling involved traditional research methodology by Dr. Hays and NLP Modeling by Jeff and his team.  I trained the team to distinguish Meta-Programs and Meta-States and David Gordon trained them in his approach to modeling (the Experiential Array).  25 of the women agreed to the interviews which were both audio and video-taped.  I analyzed the transcripts and sent the results to the team.  Post review of the project revealed that the population of women was far too broad— being leaders in different domains, industries, etc. failed to provide enough commonality.  Sally Ride, the first woman astranaut, Nadine Strossen,  President of the ACLU, Lesley Stahl, TV anchor and interviewer, Candace Pert, author of Molecules of Emotion, Lilia Wallis, Louise Hay, etc.

Materials Proprietary: Dr. Hays required that the intellectual property of this project be exclusively hers and so made the information proprietary.

6) Wealth Creation (1997– 2000).  I began my modeling with three multi-millionaires who I knew personally.  Two had strategies that were highly unecological.  They made lots of money, but at the cost of their health, relationships, marriages, etc.  I then turned to the literature on this subject and found many longitudinal studies that had interviewed wealth creators.  What they had not done was to structure the data so that it provided a specific process for wealth creation.  That’s what I added to the process using NLP and Neuro-Semantics.  My focus was to understanding how first-generation rich individuals became wealthy (financially independent) and maintain that wealth in an ecological way.

Books: Inside-Out Wealth.

Trainings: Wealth Creation, also titled Inside-Out Wealth.

7) Selling Excellence (1998).  The Wealth Creation project revealed the importance of selling, so I engaged in an exploration into the persuasive skills of masterful sales people.  I knew that I needed that competency to succeed myself.  In the search, I discovered that there have been multiple paradigms of sales during the twentieth century and that the field had gone through several stages.  The structure of the first and second generation of Sales Models were called “the hard sales” approach and “the soft sale” approach respectfully.  Then a paradigm shift occurred in the sales field in 1985 introduced by Stephen Heilman’s Strategic Selling (1985).  This revolutionized the field of sales, I based my work on that new paradigm.

Trainings: Selling Genius.

8) Health and Fitness (2000- 2001).   In an attempt to get national and international attention to NLP and Neuro-Semantics, I engaged in this in an attempt to get on Ophrah’s Book Club.  Hiring a publicist, we decided to create a product for Harper Productions that Ophrah would be interested in. That led to the modeling project on the structure of health and fitness.  So I modeled healthy individuals who had attained and maintained a healthy weight with sufficient energy and vitality for living life with passion.  As a result, I wrote a manuscript on the subject and invited 15 individuals to read the original manuscript with the request to apply to self and report the results.  Consequently over the next six-months, eight individuals lost 30 to 50 pounds, took pre and post pictures of themselves and were prepared to go on the TV show.  Post-script: By the time the book was ready Ophrah ended her book club.

Books: Games Slim and Fit People Play (2001).

Trainings: Games Slim and Fit People Play.  The Neuro-Semantics of Health (2005).

9) Business Expertise / Entrepreneurs (1998– 2000).   While modeling Wealth Creation and Selling Excellence, one aspect that many, if not most, entrepreneurs engage in is that of creating a business.  As I had met many excellent business people and read scores of biographies of many more during the Wealth Creation modeling, I used much of the same material for modeling their business acumen and competence.  The research explored the structure, format, nature, principles of business, and those who are experts at succeeding in business.

Books: Games Business Experts Play (2001).

Trainings: Business Genius.

 10) Training Expertise (1999– 2017).  After the demand arose to train trainers for teaching and training Meta-States, and as the Bandler lawsuit was wrapping up (Feb. 2000), I began conducting “trainers’ training.”  That led me to start modeling excellent trainers that I had met and reading the literature of training.  By 2003 I began creating benchmarks for presentation skills, training skills, and business skills.  With a team of trainers and eventually Master Trainers, we have continued to improve the quality of training, benchmark addition skills.

Trainings: NSTT — Neuro-Semantic/ NLP Trainers’ Training manual.  Assist Team Manual.

Papers: Taking Trainers’ Training to a New Level.

11) Writing Best Sellers (2002-2003).  By the year 2000 I had developed a reputation of being a prolific writer, and because several of the books were best sellers in the field of NLP, numerous people had asked to interview (e.g., Pascal Gambardella, Ph.D.) my writing strategy.  So starting from those interviews and my own strategy for reading, researching, and writing, I began a modeling project of writing and best sellers.  To do that I chose ten best selling non-fictional books in the field of self-development and studied them for the distinguishing features.  This then led me to some unique literature in the field written by editors who had also studied non-fiction best sellers and the model for how to write with mastery.

Trainings: Writing Genius (2002).

12) Coaching Expertise (2000– 2017).  I first interviewed Dan Bagley, Ph.D. as an executive coach in 1999.  That alerted me to the new emergent field of Coaching.  Then in 2001, I interviewed and modeled three expert coaches in Sydney Australia—Michelle Duval, Graham Richardson, Cheryl Gilroy.  All of them were NLP Master Practitioners, had successful coaching businesses, were recognized as experts by their peers, and were making $100,000 a year as a coach.  This led to the Meta-Coaching System that began in 2002 in Sydney, to the Meta-Coach Foundation (MCF, 2003), and continues to this day.  Meta-Coaching is now in 65 countries, with 3,000 Licensed Meta-Coaches.

Books: The series of books on Meta-Coaching, now numbering 15 books.

Trainings: Modules I and II of Meta-Coaching— Coaching Essentials and Coaching Genius.  Module III, ACMC Coaching Mastery.  MCC– Manager Coach Certification for Internal Coaching.  Group and Team Coaching, GTMC.  PCMC— Professional Certified Meta-Coach with manuals for each one.  Also Transformational Coaching (Axes of Change), Executive Coaching.

Volume                  Book title                                                                                                               Modeling Project

I:                          Coaching Change                               Axes of Change Model                                       #13

II:                        Coaching Conversations                    Facilitation Model

III:                       Unleashed: Self-Actualization          Self-Actualization Quadrants                           #20

IV:                       Self-Actualization Psychology          Self-Actualization Volcano

V:                        Achieving Peak Performance           Meaning–Performance Axes

VI:                       Unleashing Leadership:                     Axes of Leadership                                             #16

Self-Actualizing Leaders & Companies

VII:                     The Crucible                                         The Crucible Model

VIII:                   Benchmarking Intangibles                 Benchmarking Model                                         #17

IX:                      Systemic Meta-Coaching                  The Matrix Model

X:                       Group & Team Meta-Coaching        Group Trust Spiral

XI:                     Executive Coaching                                                                                                            #18

XII:    Political Coaching

XIII:   The Meta-Coaching System

XIV:   Get Real: Unleashing Authenticity                                                                                                      #22

XV:                     Inside-Out Persuasion                                                                                                         #23

13) Generative Change (2001- 2003).   While modeling coaching experts, the question arose about how they think about change and what model of change were they using.  In modeling the three experts in Australia (Michelle Duval, Cheryl Gilroy, and Graham Richardson), I noted that they were not doing therapy and so not using a therapeutic model.  Yet in my research, I noted that all of the books on coaching promoted TTM and other therapy-based models.  As I modeled them, I detected that they were relying on four mechanisms— motivation, decision, creation, and integration.  By connecting that to four of the basic NLP Meta-Programs, I designed the Axes of Change Model.

Books: Coaching Change.

Trainings: Transformational Coaching.

14) Mastering Stuttering and Blocking (2002).  After writing two articles on the structure of stuttering using NLP and General Semantics, Bob Bodenhamer and I began working with people who stuttered.  We modeled stuttering using the Matrix Model (which I had recently developed, 2002).  As I was getting involved with Meta-Coaching, I asked Bob to take the lead in this and to write a book on our discoveries.  In tracking out the meta-level structures that combine to create the gestalt of stuttering, we found that stuttering is essentially a phobia located in one’s breathing and speech mechanisms.

Books:  Mastering Stuttering and Blocking with NLP and Neuro-Semantics (2004**), now titled In Their Own Voice.   The Matrix Model (2002, 2003, 2012).

Training: Mastering Stuttering.

15) Self-Actualization Psychology (2003– 2017).  This modeling project began as a search for a coaching model for how people unleash their potentials.  In 2002 Michelle Duval began assisting me in  co-creating the Meta-Coaching System.  She asked. “What model will we use for facilitating the unleashing of potentials that lead to self-actualization?”  I commented that it would take me two months of reading in Maslow to identify that model.  After not finding a specific model in the writings of Maslow, I searched the writings of Carl Rogers, and then others of the human potential movement.  It was not there.  Thereafter I took the data that they had collected and organized it into a model.  This led to several models that we now use in Meta-Coaching: The Self-Actualization Quadrants, the Matrix Hierarchy, Self-Actualization Assessment Scale, etc.

Books: Unleashed (2007), Self-Actualization Psychology (2008), The Crucible (2010), Get Real: Unleashing Authenticity (2016).

16) Self-Actualizing Leadership (2005–2016).  This modeling project naturally and inevitably followed the previous one— looking at “leadership” in terms of Maslow’s Theory Y and the structure of that experience.  In studying self-actualizing leaders and companies, I wrote case studies on 15 such companies and the men and women who led them.

Books: Unleashing Leadership and Self-Actualizing Companies (2009).

Trainings: Unleashing Leadership.

17) Benchmarking Intangibles (2004– 2010).  Another question that arose during the development of Meta-Coaching concerned how we would measure (or determine) competency in the coaching skills.  At first we used the Meta-Model and simply looked for behavioral equivalents to the nominalizations or unspecified verbs (e.g., listening, questioning, supporting, etc.).  Later I took this on as a modeling project and began looking at the field of benchmarking in manufacturing, IT, and other industries.  Eventually that led to the Benchmarking Model for “intangibles” based on linguistics and neuro-linguistics.  Because there were no experts in this skill, the modeling was theoretical at first and then practical as we practiced it over the years.  The person who came closest to benchmarking intangibles was Dee Hock, former CEO of Visa International.

Books: Benchmarking Intangibles (2012).

Trainings: In the early years, we taught the Benchmarking Model within the ACMC training.  Today we teach it only to the Assist Team.

18) Executive Coaching (2008— 2015**).  As the special niche of coaching, the field of Executive Coaching was growing, I began modeling the best executive coaches that I had met over the years.  I interviewed between 12 and 20 Expert Coaches from many countries, the US, the UK, Hong Kong, Mexico, South Africa, Australia, etc.  Once the text of the book was completed, I asked Excutive Coach Graham Richardson to assist in the writing, which he did.

Books: Executive Coaching (20**).

            Trainings: Executive Coaching.

            Videos: DVD series on Expert Coaches: first one featuring Graham Richardson.

 19) Collaboration (2013- 2016).  This project began after Shelle Rose Charvet and I edited the book, Innovations in NLP (2011).  This was the first truly collaborative book in the field of NLP in that it represented authors from every sector.  Shelle, Ian McDermott, and myself began interviewing and modeling each other as collaborative leaders.  We had the interviews recorded and transcribed.  I then read extensively into the sub-domain of collaborative leadership.  When Shelle stepped back from the project due to a health crisis, Ian and I continued and eventually we produced the book.

Books: The Collaborative Leader  (2016).

Trainings: Collaborative Leadership Skills.

20) Meaning and Meaningfulness (1999 – 2017).  With the Meta-States Model, the structure of meaning and human psycho-logics began to be revealed.  This led to the Frame Games approach and eventually the book.  Modeling the structure of meaning continues to this day.

Books: Frame Games — now, Winning the Inner Game (2000/ 2006).

                        Neuro-Semantics: Actualizing Meaning and Performance (2011).

 21) Productivity (2004– 2015).  This model project arose from the Self-Actualization studies given that self-actualizers do what is highly meaningful and they do so productively.  That makes them highly productive— both effective and efficiency.  Given also that this is one of the key themes in NLP itself— modeling excellence in top performers, this came together very quickly.  Later, I was asked to focus specifically on the structure of productivity and deliver it in Moscow, which I did in 2016.

Books: Achieving Peak Performance (2005).

Trainings: Unleashing Productivity  (2016).

 22) Authenticity (2016).  This modeling project explored the structure of being an authentic and “real” person— one of the ultimate objectives of self-actualization.   As a gestalt state, authenticity involves a many variables thereby making it systemic in nature.

Book: Get Real: Unleashing Authenticity (2016).

Trainings: Unleashing Authenticity – Get Real.

 23) Ethical Persuasion (2017).  This modeling project looked at the gestalt state of “persuasion” to understand its complex and systemic structure.  Modeling great persuasive leaders such as Nelson Mandella, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., etc. the focus was on ethical or authentic persuasion in contradiction to manipulative persuasion.

Books: Inside-Out Persuasion (2017).

Trainings: Persuasively Impactful Conversations (2017).

24) Creativity and Innovation (2012– 2017).  This modeling project began during the project on Self-Actualization and led to the training “Creativity and Innovation.”  Later, I modeled several persons well-known for their creativity and innovation.

Books: Creative Solutions (2017).

Trainings: Creativity and Innovations, Module III of the Self-Actualization series.  (2010).

25) Critical Thinking (2015– 2017).  At the heart of communicating, creating, representing, and even thinking is act of thinking and the quality of that thinking.  Noting that the Meta-Model of Language is a critical thinking tool, I began focusing on the experience of critical thinking.  I encouraged one of our trainers to make it his focus and he did, but as I began to mentor him to that end, he treated what he had put together as his exclusive “intellectual property” and refused to share it.  Having prepared to co-develop it with him, I continued on as I modeled and thjen created a transferable model for enabling people to engage in critical thinking.

Trainings: The Neuro-Semantics of Critical Thinking (2017)

Book: Executive Thinking (being developed for 2018).

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

In his two books on Six Blind Elephants, Steve Andreas announces that it is all about scope and category. He says that it is about how we create categories in our mind to understand things as well as how we bite off various sizes of information to deal with— how big or small the scope of our focus. So far, so good, but then he uses these distinctions to mostly rephrase NLP. What we call sensory awareness of the VAK, he calls “scope.” Then for the higher level frames, the logical levels, and the meta-states, he calls them “category.”

What does that mean? It means that when you read Six Blind Elephants, you are reading about logical levels or meta-states and the meta-stating process. Yet the author does not acknowledge this nor does he seem to be even very much aware of it. Yet it is the meta-stating process that is presented over and over in the books.

Now a meta-state is a higher logical level phenomenon created by how we step back from whatever we are experiencing at the primary state level of sensory-based experience (scope) and rise up, transcend the immediate, and then include the immediate inside of a higher frame, context, or category. So when Andreas deals with “categories” of the mind, he is referring to the same subjective experience that I do when I speak about meta-states even if he has yet to acknowledge such. While this is obvious over and over in the book, you would never know it from reading these books.

Meta-Stating Problems
Steve writes:

“When solving a problem it makes a huge difference whether we think of wrestling with it or dancing with it, attacking it or thinking of it as challenging. Categorizing [e.g., meta-stating] it one way can make any process difficult, unpleasant, and arduous, while another description can make it an exciting adventure.” (Volume II, p. 84)

Here “categorizing,” puts the primary state of “solving a problem” into one of these four categories. This is the very same process when we meta-state the problem-solving state with one of these four mental-emotional states. Andreas speaks as if this is some new thing in NLP when actually it has been a part of the NLP Meta-States Model since 1994 when it was recognized by the International Association of NLP Trainers. What Andreas seems to not know is that when you meta-state, you set up a new category.

Meta-Stating using Cognitive Qualifiers
Andreas speaks of John McWhirter as having provided —

“. . . a fascinating and subtle example of how our minds can be pre-set to respond in a particular way, that sadly, others have not previously noticed. A ‘cognitive qualifier’ is a ‘commentary’ adverb appearing at the beginning of a sentence or phrase that refers to an emotional or cognitive state, such as the words ‘happily’ or ‘sadly’ in the previous sentence.” (Vol. II, p. 84, italics added)

Did Andreas just say that a cognitive qualifier “refers to an emotional … state?” That’s amazing! Yet that is as close as he will admit that categorizing is the same as meta-stating. The cognitive qualifiers are at a higher level and “refer to an emotional state.” And that is how I have defined a meta-state. Though Andreas has sadly not noticed it before (years and years of Anchor Point and NLP World articles about Meta-States) this is precisely part of the description of a meta-state—a higher state about a lower state.

“Cognitive qualifiers direct your mind to think of an experience in a way that is specified by the kind of qualifier used.” (II, p. 85)

That sounds like what I wrote years ago in an article on Texturing States describing how we qualify a state via the meta-stating process. Noting that the words “sadly, luckily, and happily” refer to “emotional states, and most emotions are evaluative” he also writes.

“An attitude of interest or fascination is an excellent positive resource state for learning and change, because it redirects attention from the evaluation of the problem to interest and curiosity about how the problem works, a shift to a more specific logical level of categorization. (II, p. 86)

If Andreas had done his homework in studying the Meta-States Model, he would have known that we define a meta-state as an “attitude” and that, as such, it sets an evaluative frame at a higher level and redirects our focus. Content wise, I think we are saying the same thing although we are using different words and drawing different conclusions.

In his fourth chapter Modes of Operating (Volume II), he uses Venn diagrams to illustrate how one of the motivation or option modal operator states relate to another, sometimes embedding one inside of the other. He has Impossibility as the largest level, then Possibility and inside of Possibility there is Necessity, Choice, and Desire states. When we do this in Meta-States, we talk about one state embedded inside of another. I began doing that in 1996.

Andreas even begins playing with state upon state, having to choose, choosing to need, etc.

“When you are totally congruent, it is possible to, you want to, you choose to, and paradoxically, you also have to, because you really couldn’t do anything else!” (II, p. 108)

His fifth chapter, Self-Reference deals with Circularity.

“Self-reference inevitably occurs whenever we think about ourselves and how our minds work.” (II, p. 111)

Ah, here we again have a meta-state. When we say something about ourselves, the thoughts we generated are “both made by the self and describe the self, so they refer to themselves, in a circular process.”

“Whenever the criteria for a higher logical level are the same as the criteria for the members of the included logical levels, it will be self-referential.” (II, p. 114)
“In order for a statement to be self-referential, it has to either:
a. refer to itself directly, or
b. refer to itself indirectly, by including itself as a member of a more general category that it describes, and
c. the description must apply to all members of the category.
To discover self-reference, the key question to ask is, ‘Is this communication an example of what the communication describes?’” (II, p. 116)

Now Andreas writes as if this is a brand new discovery. Actually, it was— back in 1994—12 years earlier! In fact, in 1995 I put together a book on negative meta-states (“dragons”) like worrying about worrying (anxiety) and I described the looping and downward spiraling when one brings a negative state against oneself.

“In worrying, the process may continue to occupy your mind for some time, as you recursively think of one possible scenario after another. However, if you find yourself in an unsatisfactory loop, and the results of the future event are very important to you, you may find that the loop escalates at every step, creating what has often been called a ‘vicious circle’ of increasing anxiety.” (II, p. 125)

From the first edition of Meta-States (1995), I described paradoxes as a result of meta-stating. When you deliberately do what you typically experience as a spontaneous symptom you have a counter-intuitive way to interrupt the escalating loop which usually results in reducing the symptoms. Why is this? Because, as Andreas notes, it reverses the direction of the escalating loop (II, p. 127).

“By deliberately creating fear, you can find out exactly how you do it—what kind of images you make, what you say to yourself, etc. — and this can transform what you previously experienced as involuntary into something voluntary.” (II, p. 128)

In Meta-States, I also noted the meta-state structure in Virginia Satir’s question, “How do you feel about feeling depressed?” I quoted this in the book, showed how that this is a meta-stating process which Richard Bandler and John Grinder missed. Now Andreas quotes it and comments:

“Since they are already attending to their feelings, this is a good match for their experience, it asks them to categorize [meta-state] their feeling response at a more general logical level, instead of cycling back to their depressing thoughts, changing the loop. … Although occasionally a client might reply, ‘I feel depressed about being depressed,’ usually they will respond with a different feeling. ‘Well, I feel sad about feeling depressed.” . . . These new feelings will take them out of the old loop, and they can be utilized as a starting point for making future changes. If you get stuck, you can always ask the recursive feeling question again at any time. ‘How do you feel about feeling depressed about feeling depressed?” (II, p. 130)

Interesting enough, that is exactly what we have been doing in Meta-States for more than a decade. It offers an excellent way to gain control over a negative spiraling state. When we use this process in Meta-States, we acknowledge that it is the dynamic of multi-ordinality that Alfred Korzybski identified and described (Science and Sanity, 1933, pp. 440-1).

“Often people don’t enjoy learning to do something new, because the early stages of learning are often confusing and awkward, and they naturally would like to avoid this unpleasantness, and the unpleasant evaluative feelings about their confusion and awkwardness. It is one thing to realize that the beginning stages of learning are often inevitably difficult and uncomfortable. It is quite another to use that discomfort as a reason not to learn anything new.” (II, p. 131)

“Self-contradiction exists at the logical level of categorization, and at that level there truly is no solution. In order to escape from a contradiction, you have to shift logical levels. You can either go to a more general level, or to a more specific level.” (II, p. 150)

(“‘Feel free) to (restrict yourself) to the information that is relevant to the problem’ nests restriction inside freedom. … (‘Take as much time) as you need to (quickly review) those past events in order to come to a new conclusion about their relevance to your present life situation,’ gracefully nesting speed inside slowness.” (II, p. 157)

When George Bernard Shaw wrote, “I’m an atheist, and I thank God for it.” he put his identity (being an “atheist”) within the frame of “things to thank-God for.”

Andreas’ Basic Mistake
About self-reference Steve Andreas goes wrong from the beginning when he attempts to define self-reference. What he presents is not only simply wrong, but he forgets a back NLP principle and Meta-Model distinction, namely, The Lost Performative. His fallacious definition is this: “A category can be shown to include itself as a member.”

Now Andreas does admit that this goes against such intellectual giants as Bertrand Russell and Gregory Bateson. “I realize that this violates Bertrand Russell’s famous ‘Theory of Types.’” (II, p. 113). Yet even that doesn’t stop him. He wants to define self-reference as always involving a word or idea that “is both the categorizer and an example of the category” (II, p. 111).

“‘I respect you,’ is both a categorization of the relationship as respectful, and also an example of one of the behaviors described by the word ‘respect.’” (II, p. 111)

It is here that Andreas violated the Meta-Model distinction of Lost Performative. After all, who is doing the categorizing here? He says this “is both a categorization and … an example”—in other words, an identification. He writes as if it “is” that way and no human being is involved in making it so, which of course, is non-sense. He says “the sentence refers to itself.” Well, I’m sorry Steve, but sentences don’t do anything, a person uses a sentence to refer to things.

“When a statement refers to itself by including itself in a more general category of events, the statement must also be an absolute statement…” (II, pp. 114-115)

This is called the Lost Performative because someone is mapping out an understanding and the speaker has left out the performer of the map. Later he regains his sanity when he tells a story of a young woman and her mother. As he speaks about “how she categorizes,” he comments, “Her statement could have been a description that in her mind did not include itself.” (II, p. 171). Yes, of course! It is always a person who does the categorizing, the “sentence” is not the cause or source —the person is. Later Andreas writes something that he should equally apply to self-reference. If he had, he would not have made his error:

“Negation is either at a lower or higher logical level than existence, depending on how we think about it.” (II, p. 173, italics added)

To support this he declares that Bateson is also wrong (II, pp. 164,165). And once again he declares that “the statement categorizes.” “‘I love you’ categorizes the relationship at the same time that it is an example of the category of behaviors called ‘love.’” But that is not true. The truth is that it all depends on how we think about something. Do we include a category within the category? Or do we keep them separate? Here he creates confusion by making both category and member the same. The category of cats is not a cat, it is a category— a conceptual framework for talking about cats. And Steve knows this.

“… the name of the category is different from the group of experiences named…” (II, p. 113)

The problem is his invention of “heritability” which is the non-sense that he perpetuates.

“Whenever a category can be shown to include itself as a member, the criteria for the category apply not only to the members of the category, but also to the category itself, by the property of heritability. I realize this violates Bertrand Russell’s famous ‘Theory of Types.’” (II, p.113)

We see his lack of critical thinking when he thereafter declares this:

“If I say,’Ideas are insubstantial,’ that statement is also an idea, so it applies to itself, and is therefore insubstantial.”

But “that statement is an idea, so it applies to itself…” is his categorizing it as such. It does not have to be so categorize. I can treat the category, “Insubstantial ideas” as different from the ideas that I put into that category. “Insubstantial ideas” is a name. This is where Andreas goes wrong. Human beings are the persons who are doing the referring and categorizing. We can’t blame the sentences! That’s why we have to ask the person, “Are you making a distinction between class and member of the class? Are you applying the classification as a member of itself?”

If a person is doing that, then that statement from that person is self-referential and then many of the things Andreas writes about applies. But it is not the case that it always is that way. “I always say stupid things.” Ask, is that a stupid thing that you have said? “I never learn anything!” How did you learn that? Yes, self-reference statements do create paradox and when they do, two logical levels are confused: class and member of class. That’s the whole point from Russell and Bateson.

Conclusion
In the books Blind Elephants, Steve Andreas has renamed basic NLP realities using “scope” and “category.” From there he has offered new insights on various subjective experiences— much of it highly valuable and practical. For that I acknowledge Steve and his many contributions. Yet because Andreas has apparently not read extensively in the field of NLP, and doesn’t seem willing to know study the models I’ve introduced, specifically the Meta-States Model, he does not seem to know that his term and use of “category” corresponds with a meta-state, that is, a meta-level experience. In criticizing Robert Dilts and myself about logical levels, and mis-representing what both of us have said and written, he fights a Straw Man, does a wonderful job of devastating the Straw Man, but of course, doesn’t even address the real issue.

In Blind Elephants there are meta-states and meta-stating processes everywhere. But don’t ask Steve Andreas about that, he seems oblivious to that fact. I have attempted to point that out in these two articles. My wish and hope is that Steve will re-consider his position, read with an open mind, and not read to confirm his current beliefs.

Author:

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., psychologist, author, and modeler with over 25 modeling projects, founder of Neuro-Semantics, developer of the Meta-States Model, and other models and patterns in NLP.

References:

Andreas, Steve. (2006). Six Blind Elephants, Volume I, Fundamental principles of scope and category. Moab, UT: Real People Press.

Hall, L. Michael. (2000). Meta-States: Managing the Higher Levels of Your Mind’s Reflexivity. Clifton, CO: Neuro-Semantic Publications.

Hall, Michael. (2001). NLP: Going Meta—Advance Modeling Using Meta-Levels. Clifton, CO: Neuro-Semantic Publications.

Hall, L. Michael; Bodenhamer, Bob G. (2005). Sub-Modalities: Going Meta. Formerly, “The Structure of Excellence.” Clifton, CO: Neuro-Semantic Publications.

Hall, L. Michael. (2000). Secrets of personal mastery: Advanced techniques for accessing your higher levels of consciousness. Wales, UK: Crown House Publications.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

During the past year I engaged in an extended discussion with Steve Andreas about the term meta. You can read that discussion on either the Neuro-Semantic website or Andreas’ website. It’s all there for your pursual. You will probably noticed that in the discussion, we both seemed to talk past each other and as a result we did not come to a meeting of minds. And while I pretty much anticipated that, I really do not understand why we could not get on the same page. Steve claims that I did not answer his questions. In my view, I fully answered his questions. I feel that he did not really seek to understand the multiple meanings that are entailed in the term meta.

In reflecting on this, I suspect that a possible reason is that some people simply do not see the wonder and the “magic” of meta is that they do not recognize that the term meta is both a multi-ordinal term and a systems term that requires the acceptance of numerous system principles.

To explain this, I will first describe multi-ordinality and then the “magic” of meta within a system and as a systems dynamic. That will then allow me to specify how linearly thinking is the problem in preventing a person from seeing the richness of the term meta.

Multi-Ordinality
Alfred Korzybski describe terms that have an overgeneralized meaning and whose meaning changes according to its level. He termed these infinite-valued terms multi-ordinal. This means that at all of its levels (“multi-”) the term is reflexive—it can be used on itself. You can fear fear. You can love love. Linguists say that such terms are polysemous, that is, “marked by multiplicity of meanings.” Korzybski writes (Science and Sanity, 1933/ 1994):

“‘Mankind, science, mathematics, man, education, ethics, politics, religion, sanity, insanity, iron, wood, apple, object, etc.’ We use them not as one-valued terms for constants of some sort, but as terms with inherently infinite-valued or variable referents.” (pp. 138–9, 433)

Korzybski argued that his Theory of Multi-Ordinality and Reflexivity solved the problems created when we confuse map and territory. They fail to distinguish the levels of abstraction (logical levels). For this reason I added multi-ordinality to the extended Meta- Model (Communication Magic, 2001).

“A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness. … If we reflect upon our languages, we find that at best they must be considered only as maps. A word is not the object it represents; and languages exhibit also this peculiar self-reflexiveness, that we can analyse languages by linguistic means. This self-reflexiveness of languages introduces serious complexities, which can only be solved by the theory of multi-ordinality. The disregard of these complexities is tragically disastrous in daily life and science.” (p. 58, italics added)

The term meta has multiple meanings precisely because it is a multi-ordinal term. Can you go meta (step back to a higher perspective) to the process of meta (stepping back)? Yes, of course and you can do that level upon level. Yet if you are using linear thinking to understand this, you will not and cannot understand this. Korzybski stated that the “Theory of Multi-Ordinality” (i.e., General Semantics) addresses map/territory confusion. The linguistic distinction of multi-ordinality explains why any word used multi-ordinally means something different at every level. And that’s why we have to ask, “At what level are you using that term?”

Multi-ordinality means that the term takes on a different meaning at each ordinal level (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). That’s why we have to ask, “At what level are you using the term?” So fear at the first level refers to something “out there” in the territory that is dangerous. But can you fear your state of fear? What is fear2 of fear1? We could say that the second-level of fear (fear2) is paranoia. Could you fear3 your fear-of-fear?1

The term meta at the first level simply means “above, beyond, or about.” Context then determines what is put at a higher level to the first level. You can have an emotion about an emotion; a thought about a thought. When you talk about the way you talk, your language is meta-language. When you use a metaphor to make a comparison, you are meta-stating with that metaphor. A metaphor is literally meta and phorein (to bring, to carry over). As you create a metaphor, you bring one image, thought, idea, reference, etc. to another so that it becomes the frame which formats a structure for the first. When you do this, you think about one thing in terms of another. Andreas uses the word “scope” for the primary level and “category” for the meta-level (Six Blind Elephants, I, p. 26)

The Strangeness of Systems “Magic”
When you put one state in a meta-relationship to another, you are likely to create which seems like magic. This “magic” is not literal, it rather describes an effect— how meta-relationship can strike us as magical because the result is often surprising, unexpected, and amazing. Here is the meta-stating process whereby one element interacts with another element and out of the mixture, something new and different and unexpected arises. Since a gestalt refers to something that is more than and different from the sum of the parts, multiple meta-stating gives rise to gestalt states.

What this means is that if you add up all of the parts, elements, or components together, you cannot explain the resulting experience. What we call “learning” becomes a very different experience when you bring joy to learning. “Joyful learning”— here the quality of the learning changed, but the experience itself hardly seems like learning at all. It seems like fun. People in the meta-state of joyful learning seem to be very happy and passionate. Looking at them and evaluating what they are experiencing, you could say all sort sof things such as—they are “in the zone,” they are in a state of pleasure, they are just enjoying themselves, etc. Yes, you could also put “joyful learning” as one member of the class of “learning” as Steve does. Yet that does not deny or prevent “learning” within the category of “joy.”

This is the way it is with systems. In systems, when various components interact with other components, new emergent properties arise that cannot be explained by adding the elements together. A new quality arises. Bring respect, calmness, and kindness to your primary state of anger— “I’m angry because you snub me and didn’t give me a referral” and you have a very different experience. Calm respectfully kind anger is hardly felt or experienced as “anger” at all by the one receiving it. The person giving it is firm but the calmness and kindness gives it an unique quality as the respect tempers the person’s words and confrontation so that it is quite acceptable. It doesn’t seem like anger, it seems that the person is simply being direct and open. Andreas’ mindset seems to make the “anger” category his primary referent than “going meta” to that category.

Consider the person who has forbidden himself from feeling anger because he considers that it means being “out-of-control.” Here we have multiple levels. (Believing anger means out-of-control) (I forbid myself) from (experiencing anger). So when anger is experienced, because it is forbidden, that taboo could create one of several different gestalts— inability to recognize anger, blindness to one’s anger, anger transmuting into stress (or frustration or fear or some other emotion). If you calibrate to that person’s state, would you even recognize that he is angry? Maybe not.

Consider the person who hates selling because to him it means “taking advantage of people for monetary gain.” What is the primary state? Presenting a product. Suppose it is the state of wanting to present or offer a product, a product he believes “is good value for money,” and “useful.” But the belief frame “selling takes advantage of people,” which the person hates, now holds him back. What is the feeling? The person feels stuck. The person feels conflicted inside. “I know it is a good product, but I don’t want to be aggressive or controlling.” The gestalt state here is being stuck. This emerges from the inter-relationship between the thinking-feeling components in the person’s mind. Yes, “hating selling” can be treated as a member of the class of anger (Andreas’ position). We can also see “selling” in the higher category of “hate” (my position). It is not an either/or choice. Both are legitimate.

In Neuro-Semantics, we talk about this layering of multiple elements (the meta-stating process) as texturing the state’s quality. How do you want your learning state textured? How do you want your loving state textured? If the quality of your life depends on the quality of your state, then the quality of your state depends on the quality of your meta-state. The state that you put at a meta level to your first state — qualifies it, textures it, and sets up the “magic” of the emergence of new properties. This is the point that Andreas has not (or will not) concede.

Consider the primary state of acting sequentially in a step-by-step way (the procedure meta-program). Let’s call that—being “disciplined” because the person is following a procedure. Now ask, “What do you think and/or feel about being disciplined?” (i.e., acting sequentially). Imagine that a person says, “I think that I’m losing my spontaneity and that I have no freedom.” That now becomes the higher category. What will be the effect of that belief (a category and meta level state) about the primary state? Probably stuck and unable to act. “I can’t do that.” If we again ask for an explanation, she might say, “without freedom I have less opportunities and won’t grow, I’ll be dying inside.”

This is another example of tabooing a primary state. The person stops herself from “acting sequentially, one step after another” because at the meta level category she attributes the meaning of having no spontaneity, choice, freedom, growth, etc. The meaning at these meta-levels over-loads the primary state (the scope) and shuts the person down.

“Magic,” in the sense of something being surprising, unexpected, and amazing, arises from the emergent properties (qualities) when we bring one or more thoughts or feelings to another. It is the interplay of these elements that systemically give rise to experiences that can’t be explain by mere addition.

When a gestalt occurs from combining multiple elements what happens is that we cannot anticipate the results. Add commitment to a goal, responsibility and passion to the primary state of fear and out of the mixture will sometimes come “courage.” Courage, as the gestalt of those components, is something “more than” and “different from” adding those elements together. A reductionistic analysis of “courage” will not find those pieces or how they intermingle. This is the “magic” (the wonder and surprise) of creating a gestalt of multiple meta-level components.

Consider making a mistake. At the primary level, this is something we all do on a daily basis. But “making a mistake” does not stand alone. You think and feel something about it. But what? What category do you put it in? Do you (fear) (making a mistake)? Do you (judge yourself as a person) for (making a mistake)? Those are different states/ categories. And they are radically from (learning) from (making a mistake). What if you bring (appreciation) (learning) (wondrous curiosity) and (playfulness) to (making a mistake)? What gestalt experience would that generate?

Part of the “magic” of meta-stating various resourceful elements to a primary state consists of the surprise and wonder of the emergent properties and their qualities. What if you were (fascinated) and (joyful) about (embarrassment)? You might experience something like the outrageous physical humor that Jim Carey is known for. What if you had (gracious) and (playful) (persistence)?

All of this suggests a process that we use with the Meta-States Model. We write various “states” on pieces of paper and then pick up 4 or 5 of them and try them on in our imagination. What would (outrageous) (optimism) and (passion) along with (joyful exaggeration) do for a trainer? Could that turn out a Anthony Robbins?

Take any primary state experience — whether you focus on behavior, emotion, or thought— and then playfully layer on top of it various resourceful states and consider what could arise as an emergent property.

• (Accepting) (loving) (gentle) compassion.
• (Relaxed) (dedicated) (persistent) engagement.
• (Thoughtful) (calmness) (proactive) decision-making.

When you “go meta” to the next higher level and layer on yet another state of thinking-feeling, you then put a twist on the primary experience because you are putting it into a higher category. It textures that experience. It adds another quality to it. The mixture of multiple resources sets up a systemic complexity that operates as a catalyst for a new and unpredictable emergent property.

When you “go meta” you are doing what Ken Wilbur described as “transcending and including.” It is not either you are transcending or you are including, you are doing both simultaneously. Yes you transcend from the primary level to a meta-level and you are including that primary experience inside of a new meta-level that becomes its frame. This generates all sorts of new possibilities.

The Problem is Linear Thinking
If meta is a multi-ordinal and systems term, then what stops full appreciation of it is linear thinking. And surprisingly this is a very common problem for many in the field of NLP. This, in spite of the fact that there were many system influences in the founding of NLP (Satir Family Systems, Perls Gestalt, Korzybski’s General Semantics as a non-Aristotelian system, Bateson’s cybernetic systems, etc.).

When you have have a complex adaptive system that involves large number of parts (elements, components) and which interact with each other, then you have a kaleidoscopic array of simultaneous non-linear interactions. Given this, the sum is not a simple sum of the behavior of the parts. And why? Because as the elements interact and as the aggregate behavior of the whole occurs, all of these are fed back to the individual components. What in linear thinking is viewed as the effect then becomes the next level cause. And around and around it goes.

The key then lies in the interfaces that occur when one meta-level or phenomenon interacts with another. The following comes from Meta-States (2012) and is included in the training manual.

1) Reduce painful primary states: Calm about anger.
2) Intensify or magnify primary states: Worry about worry, anxious about anxiety.
3) Exaggerate and distort states: turn psychological energies against oneself: fear of anger: anger at one’s fear.
4) Negate or neutralize a state: In doubt about doubt, I feel more sure.
5) Interrupt states: Humorous about serious, intentionally panicking.
6) Confuse States: Ridiculous about serious.
7) Contradict levels to create paradox: hence “paradoxical intention,” the “be spontaneous now” paradox. Try really hard to relax, “never say never”
8) Dissociate from strong feelings: observing a remembered trauma.
9) Seed a new process to create response potential: courage to have courage, playful uncertainty.
10) Grab Attention: appreciative about anger, lovingly gentle about anger.
11) Entrance or hypnotize: Rebel against thinking about just how comfortable you can feel if you don’t close your eyes before you’re ready to relax deeper than you ever have before, now. I wonder if you’re going to fail to succeed at not going into trance at exactly your own speed or whether you won’t.
12) Generate gestalt states: Suppress excitement—>anxiety.
13) Jar consciousness for humor: An accomplished liar, flexible compulsiveness.
14) Qualify, temper, texture an experiences: Joyful learning, ruthless compassion.
15) Solidify a atate: Believe or value in X, take pride in X.
16) Loosen states: Doubt X, question X, be playful about X.

Summary
The meta process is a very dynamic one. Further, if used in an open system, then it never reaches an end-point, it never achieves its goals and “arrives,” it keep evolving, growing, and developing— becomes increasingly complex. This is why many do not see the dynamic nature of meta and why it takes on new properties and meanings at different levels.

• At the primary level, meta just means “above, beyond, or about.”
• Meta then establishes a relationships that is hierarchical as it establishes levels.
• As meta is used in relationship to something else, it takes on the meaning of “including and transcending
• ” which speaks of a system of inter-related components.
• As a system and systemic in nature, meta enables various emergent properties to emerge that cannot be explained by adding them together. It is non-linear, non-additive.

Do I use the term meta in several different ways as Steve Andreas suggests? Yes I do! That’s because the term is multi-ordinal and systemic. That’s also why and how the Meta-States Model can help us model complex, long-term system experiences.

Post Script
Interesting enough, Steve Andreas, quoting his wife Connirae’s work in Core Transformation, actually describes how the meta-stating process works. He uses the word “category” where I use “meta-state.” After starting with a primary level limitation, you ask—

“‘Having this outcome (X), what do you want, through having X, that’s even more important?’ This question is asked repeatedly, each time substituting the previous outcome, creating a series of outcomes in a hierarchy of importance. Each successive outcome is a more general category of experience, with increasingly larger scope and importance.” (2006, Vol. I, p. 89)

Then he says, “the description usually falls into one of several categories: ‘being,’ ‘inner peace,’ ‘love,’ ‘Okness,’ or ‘oneness.’” These vague terms are meta-states and/or meta-level understandings or beliefs.

References:
Polysemy refers to a word which has many different meanings. Mentioned in Six Blind Elephants, I, p. 59.

Review of Steve Andreas’s
Ongoing Misunderstandings of Meta-States

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Written 2006, updated 2018

At least he’s honest! I have to give him that. In his new book on Fundamental Principles of Scope and Category that he titled, Six Blind Elephants, Steve Andreas at least acknowledges that he just does not understand the Meta-States Model. Of course, he makes that admission as he is criticizing and arguing against it!

“I admit to being dizzy and confused. What on earth could it mean…?” Steve Andreas (Six Blind Elephants, 2006, p. 116)

His Straw Man Fallacy Argument
At first, I hoped he would provide a solid critique wherein he might point out some weakness or some area that needs more refinement. But no. What he argued against, and critiqued, was only a “straw man” presentation of the Meta-States Model. So I felt disappointed in his criticism. It reads more like Don Juan fighting vigorously against the windmills because he imagined that they were knights. Against the straw man that he created I could have given him even more arguments. I would have equally disputed what he argued against as unworthy and inadequate.

Andreas says that neither I nor Robert Dilts will “provide a clear operational definition of how we determine logical levels.” That’s not exactly true. I have repeatedly sent him that information and, for that matter, he could find that on the Neuro-Semantic website if he so chose. There’s plenty of articles there, free articles, about Meta-States and Logical Levels. As far as I can tell, he has not even read Meta-States, Secrets of Personal Mastery, Dragon Slaying, Frame Games, or Meta-State Magic to understand the Meta-States Model. The one and only book he even references in his bibliography is the first edition of The Matrix Model. So, given that, I’ll give him a break that what he has written is just the lack of study and information about Meta-States. Yet isn’t that funny that he wrote his review before he did his research? Not exactly professional.

In his book he quotes me, “Meta-States necessitates a different kind of thinking” than linear thinking. But then he tries to put the Meta-States Model on a procrustean bed to fit the linear thinking of his ideas of category and scope. It makes for an interesting, yet very inadequate critique. Generally, when scholars offer a critique, they will put that which they critique in context and evaluate it on its own merits and up against the contexts in which it has been designed. Andreas did not do this.

What Steve Andreas doesn’t seem to understand is that when it comes to human thinking-and-feeling as a dynamic, non-linear system, we do not follow the rules of Socrates and Aristotle’s rules of logic as we create our mental categories. Instead, as Alfred Korzybski noted, we are not logical, but psycho-logical beings. When it comes to the way we categorize things (since Andreas’ book is about categories and categorization (most of which is a pretty good description of how meta-states work), in human experiencing and meaning-making through thinking-and-feeling, we can categorize just about anything as a member of any category.

Playfully Serious
Andreas quotes me about “playful seriousness” and “playfully and compassionately kind in our seriousness,” but then he declares (as if this is absolute and divine truth) that playful as the modifier is a sub-category of seriousness (2006, p. 115). Really!

Yet is it that? That’s the question. What if we thought about the state and quality of being serious (which Steve seems to be well practiced in) and brought some playfulness to it? What if we brought some kind compassion to it? What if we brought some win/win thinking to it? Those are the qualities I typically frame (or meta-state) seriousness. I know it’s not logical, but what if we did it anyway? What if we did that just for the fun of it?

Steve does not even consider this possibility. He seems to only have one direction for sending his brain and that is in the direction of smaller and smaller categories. So for him, “playful” is a sub-category. And yes a person can perceive it that way. Yet there are other ways to perceive it. That is not the only choice for how to perceive it or frame it.

If we applied playful to serious we would embed serious inside of the larger context of play. That would make “seriousness” a member of the category of playfulness. Yes, I know, it is completely psycho-logical. Doing this would reduce the scope (extent) of seriousness making it a smaller thing to playfulness (which would be the larger category). Simultaneously it would extend the scope of playfulness, making playful the bigger thing.

Blinded by the Flawed Sub-Modality Model
Reading Blind Elephants makes me think that Steve has been completely blinded by the old sub-modality model. (Actually there’s a number of NLP people blinded by it.) The old so-called “sub-modality” model thought that because sub is in the title of sub-modalities that the features and variables that are called “sub” are “smaller”and “finer” distinctions. Description has been treated as territory. If we use that name, they must be below and sub- to the basic representation systems.

My hallucination is that he has taken the size or scope of things (smaller to bigger) to be equivalent to the construct of any and every “logical level.” And if that’s what has blinded the elephant, then no wonder he cannot understand Meta-States! This could be his chemistry background getting in his way. Steve Andreas has “atoms” and “molecules” on his mind and so sees things via the chemistry model. [“If we think of a scope as an ‘atom’ of meaning, a category is a simple ‘molecule’ composed of a group of scopes.” I, p. 237.]

On the Disliking of Words
Andreas also does not like lots of words. He states that “state” is “an ambiguous term” (I, p. 203). He does not like “reframing” and he seems to especially not like “meta” (and meta-position) because he thinks it is too vague. His solution? Get rid of these words!

“The easiest solution is to simply not use these terms at all.” (I, p. 154)

That’s right. If you don’t understand something, if you don’t like the way someone else is using a term, kill it! Murder it in its sleep! Yes I guess that would be easier to than reading the books and articles on Meta-States. So what does Steve Andreas know about the Meta-States Model and/or the process of meta-stating? What he writes about it is pure fiction. It is certainly not what I have written about a meta-states, and I should know a bit about that.

“When someone applies one vague and general ‘state’ to another ‘state’ to create a ‘meta-state,’ that compounds the ambiguity and uncertainty about what is actually happening. If this ‘meta-state’ is further ‘meta-stated,’ the confusion deepens exponentially.” (I, p. 188)

Hmmmm. So I wonder if Steve meets someone who says he is afraid of his fear (or anger, excitement, confidence, etc.), if instead of dealing with the fear of some other state, he will first make the fear of that other state more clear and precise? Of course, that generally will increase and amplify the fear and so set a more intense frame of fear about the first state and make things much worse for the person.

Interesting enough, on the next page in the book (I, p. 189), he writes, “What is important is the quality or appropriateness of the resource state to the problem” Hmmm. If he had read what I wrote, he would have recognized that as the process of meta-stating. Bringing a vague and general “resource state” of quality or appropriateness to the problem state? That is precisely what we do in Meta-States.

This is the elephant’s blindness (Steve’s), he is meta-stating and does not even know it!
“‘Meta-stating’ applies one poorly defined state to another, compounding the ambiguity and confusion in the term ‘state.’” (I, p. 203)

Yes, Steve, I would also complain and criticize if that’s what I meant by meta-stating or what I presented anywhere about meta-stating. Thank God it is not. In fact, in Meta-State trainings (Accessing Personal Genius, APG) I focus entirely on accessing very precise states (not poorly defined ones) to very precise contexts and situations in order to create richer and more robust states like resilience, self-esteem, ownership of one’s response-powers, the “flow” state of mastery and scores more.

Categorizing — also Known as Meta-Stating
The kind of categorizing we do in meta-stating creates new and more effective frames of mind, frames of reference, frames of meaning for a new psycho-logics. Obviously doing so does not fit Andrea’s definitions of category and scope, and involves our psycho-logics which given what he wrote, he does not like. Given I had hoped he would have taken some time to do some research on the Meta-States Model, and he did not, I here announce an open invitation to Steve Andreas—you can attend any Accessing Personal Genius training that I do anywhere in the world at no cost.

[By the way, I still have a standing invitation also to John Grinder given that he also has written that he does not understand “the proliferation of meta-states.”]

Paradoxically, Steve uses the meta-stating process throughout his entire book and doesn’t seem to know it. In his Introduction he writes,

“If someone says to you, ‘That’s an interesting way to do that,’ and you categorize [meta-state] that statement as a ‘criticism,’ you will tend to feel bad, and then think of other unpleasant experiences in that category, and feel even worse. But if you categorize [meta-state] that statement as a ‘compliment,’ you will feel pleased, and then tend to think of it in the context of other compliments, and feel even more pleased.” (I, p. x)

Actually, meta-stating involves setting a context about some other experience. You can meta-state a statement as meaning either criticism or compliment. You can bring the state of criticism or compliment to your first state of receiving those words. In doing so, you frame it, set a context, and create a meaning. Steve calls this a category and categorizing. I call it a meta-state and meta-stating. Strange that he has to misrepresent my model and put it down as he attempts to put forward his model —in critical thinking, we call that the Straw Man Fallacy.

In Meta-State Trainings, a Neuro-Semantic Trainer will talk about the power of a simple adjective to qualify one state with another state. That’s why “joyful learning” is a meta-state, so is playful seriousness, etc. Steve writes this:

“Soon after learning about cognitive qualifiers, I had a depressed client who began almost every sentence with ‘sadly,’ or ‘regrettably.’ [Say Steve, aren’t these vague and poorly defined terms?] As a first step, I asked him to start every sentence with ‘happily’ or ‘fortunately.’ This felt very strange and inappropriate to him, but it stabilized him to the powerful impact that his words had on him, and it began to restore some balance.” (I, p. 271)

To explain how the higher frame governs the lower, Andreas invents a word, “inheritability” (I, p. 267). Well, of course. You meta-stated him with new modifying states —happiness and fortune. This means that it is possible to be using the structure of meta-states and not even know it. Come to think of it, the “strange and inappropriate” feelings that the client experienced was probably that his mind had been invited to create some new psycho-logics and went around in a few loops and got dizzy from the strangeness of that experience.

Since Andreas doesn’t know this, when we apply one state to another and create a meta-relationship so that the second state stands at a higher position to the first, it sets a frame, it establishes the mental context, a category, and it thereby generates a construct of meaning. To use his words, it sets a new category, it re-categorizes, it expands scope, it contracts scope, and it can even nest categories so that they overlap. All of that is fully entailed in the Meta-States Model.

Andreas recommends asking, “What kind of X would you like?” (i.e., general, divorce, etc. p. 264) to match the current category and nest yet another one inside it. In Meta-States, we ask, “What is the quality of your X?” “What is the quality of your anger? Your grief? Your confidence? Your learning? Does it have the kind and quality that you want?” On second thought, maybe he has been reading Meta-States and is just using my materials with his new term “category.” Is that what you’ve been doing Steve? No? I didn’t think so.

He uses this book to present the NLP reframing models (and gives no indication that he has ever even read or researched Mind-Lines, 1997/2005). There he presents frame (context and category are his words) after frame as a higher frame— same as out-framing in Mind-Lines, the meta-stating of our frames with yet higher frames. He also uses many of the NLP presuppositions as frames that one could use.

In addition to still being under the illusion that the cinematic features by which we can edit our internal movies are “sub”-modalities and at a lower logical level, Andreas is also tricked and blinded by imposing the idea of “control” upon hierarchies. He argues for a “heterarchy” because the meta-program of preference (people, things, time, activities, location, and information) is not a hierarchy of control or importance (210ff). This is convoluted reasoning. After all, who has ever said that the meta-program of preferences is a control hierarchy so that those items that are most important govern those that are less? I have not (e.g., Figuring Out People, 1997/2007), and I don’t know anyone who has. This seems to be another straw man argument that Andreas then effectively demolishes. He did a good job except that he wasted his time on something that I also don’t agree with!

When Steve quoted me describing the non-linear nature of meta-stating, the nature of human reflexivity which sends our brains round and round, turning it over, upside down and at first generating confusion and dizziness, he wrote,

“Many years ago, someone said, ‘All writing is either biography or autobiography.” In this case, I think it is definitely autobiography.”

While I’m sure it applies to me, it surely applies to him as well. I wonder if he is really dizzy and confused or if he just does not want to understand the Meta-States Model in the first place?

Summary
If you want to understand the Meta-States Model which models the workings and processes of our self-reflexive consciousness, do not depend on Steve Andreas to accurately describe it. He does not. Actually, he doesn’t have a clue about what it is or how it works. Yet on the other hand, he actually describes the meta-stating process when he talks about establishing a new and higher category.”

Learning #8

What is learning? As I’ve been defining learning in all of these posts about learning, there are numerous ways to think about learning and about all of the facets of learning. Now before I read what Husserl, the founder of Phenomenology, said in defining learning, I would have said that it is knowledge. Learning is increasing one’s knowledge base in order to become more knowledgeable. And while learning does involve that, it is more than that. Here’s what Husserl wrote:

“Learning is not the accumulation of scraps of knowledge. It is growth, where every act of knowledge develops the learner, thus making him capable of constituting ever more and more complex objectivities—and the object growth in complexity parallels the subjective growth in capacity.”

This fits with the very heart of Self-Actualization Psychology where the Being-Values of knowledge, understanding, learning, meaning, meaningfulness, and wisdom replace, for us humans, what instincts do for animals. We do not have information-loaded instincts; we only have blind, deaf, and mute impulses that create a multitude of urges within our mind-body system. For any given impulse we have to ask, what do this mean? What is this urge? How do I fulfill it truly and accurately? This is the place where we have to learn. We have to gain knowledge so that we understand what the urges are, what satisfies them, how to effectively cope with them, how to maximize our biological urges and when we do—we experience an increase in mental, emotional, and physical vitality.

The bottom line is that because we do not come with innate knowledge regarding what they mean, we have to learn. If there’s any human “instinct,” it is the instinct to learn. And good news: When we learn, we unleash our potentials. That is, we grow. We grow as human beings; we develop our possibilities; we grow in maturity and wisdom. So again, what is learning? Learning involves knowledge yet it involves so much more.

Learning is our primary source for becoming all that we can become.

“So what?” you ask. Lots! You learn best and you accelerate your learning when you learn to grow. So if you are reading something and I approach and ask you the following, what would you say?

“Oh you’re reading! What are you reading? How will you change based on this reading? What will this reading and study do for you as a person? How will it enable you to be a better person? How much have you been growing while you’ve been reading right now? What will be some of the first things that you will do based on this study?”

Now if you frame learning as just intellectual data, and not personal, and not an aspect of actualizing your best potentials, then you might even think of learning either intellectual information which is either relevant or irrelevant, as exciting or boring, as an effort or just for entertainment, etc. Yet if you frame learning as primarily a mental exercise, you thereby diminish the richness of what learning could do for you. It won’t excite you and put you in a state of joyful anticipation and wonder about your own self-development.

Gregory Bateson created a model of the levels of learning, from Level 0 where there’s no learning, one knows and does the same thing over and over. Level 1 you expand what you know so that your learning becomes richer. Level 2 you learn how to learn by adding new learning skills and strategies to your learning (meta-learning). Level 3 you learn how your meta-learning works so that you can change the way you are learning and the assumptive frames you are working from.

He also called that model a model of the levels of change. That’s because when you learn, you change. That’s true on both the macro-level and on the microscopic level. This is easy to see at the macro-level because as you learn and know more, and know different, you talk and act differently. It is equally true at the microscopic level as neurons are activated differently in your brain, new neuro-pathways are created, assemblages of cells are stimulated in new ways, etc.

What then is learning? It is actually the heartbeat of personal change and growth and development. This means that learning can be one of the ways that you actualize your highest meanings (visions and values) and best performances. This explains why for self-actualizing people school is never out, learning is never completed. It explains why self-actualizing people are continuous learners and why the live on the edge of excitement when it comes to adult learning. They not only learn, they keep learning about their learning and that meta-learning enables them to get better, more skilled, more competent about their learning.

In Neuro-Semantics we see learning as a core competency for ongoing personal development, competency in business, relationships, wealth creation, health and well-being, leadership, and much more.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Learning #3: How Do You Know that You Have Learned?

When I went to the “University of the Public Library” (see the last Meta Reflection, #26) and got my education in therapy (not my schooling, that came later), even before my training in NLP, I knew that the proof of the learning would be in the skills of competency. I knew that the question would then be: “Could I translate what I was learning conceptually into good practice so that I could facilitate the healing, empowerment, and mindfulness of clients?” If I could not, had I really learned what I thought I was learning? If I could, then what I was discovering and learning in concept and principle was somehow becoming effective practice. Even today these are key questions about learning:

∙ How do you know if you have learned something?

∙ How can we measure “learning?”

Nearly every “school” deceives you and me in answering these questions. Most schools use grades as their way to measure learning. “If you make the grades, then presto, you must have learned!” Of course, today we know that a person can learn “how to take a test,” and how to develop testing competency, without actually being able to demonstrate what they supposedly learned. Others use degrees, certificates, diplomas, etc. as measurements of learning. They are also wrong. Degrees and certificates do not measure “learning,” they measure test-taking, jumping through hoops, meeting expectations of teachers, getting along with others, playing a political game, etc.

So what is the true measurement of learning? Doing. If you cannot do, if you cannot perform the practices of a learning, if you cannot turn the concept into a competent performance— then you have not truly learned. Doing demonstrates the practicality and reality of learning. That’s why in Neuro-Semantics we constantly talk about the Knowing—Doing gap and how to close that gap so that what you know you can do. This is the meaning of the Meaning—Performance axes that then generates the Self-Actualization Quadrants.

This was the test I began using when I started by third career of modeling human experiences of excellence. I began with Resilience. That was my first modeling project. I studied it for almost three years. But studying it, researching it, modeling it would have been insufficient. The test of that learning— “Would I be resilient in the face of life’s set-backs and knock-downs?” “Could I, or would I, bounce back after a set-back with resilience—with hope, determination, inspiration, etc.?” The test would be in the doing.

Similarly, I used the same criterion of learning for the other studies—selling, leadership, negotiation, coaching, business, self-actualizing, etc. This reveals that all true learning is experiential in nature. It begins with what you can visualize, or say, or imagine, but it always leads to a kinesthetic engagement and practice. It always involves embodying the learning in practice, in getting high quality feedback from people who can make quality distinctions, and a deliberate practice of those details that make a difference.

So, how do you know if you have learned? Your behavior will be different, that’s how! Your actions are more refined, more developed, more thorough, more expansive, more flexible, etc. If you have truly learned—you can now demonstrate your learning. If you have thoroughly learned, you can demonstrate it at anytime and any place. You are now the master of that competence. You not only can talk about it, you can show it in your actions. You are now able-to-respond appropriately and adequately. And that means you are a responsible learner.

With this criteria, competency measures true learning. If you cannot do, you have only intellectually comprehended the subject, you have not learned it in your body. Performance is the true test. For this reason we set out in Neuro-Semantics to establish benchmarks for competencies in all of the things that we “teach” and that we “learn.” The behavioral benchmarks measures both the quantity and the quality of the learning performance. The benchmark also tells a person where he is on the scale of that performance and what his next steps are.

“Learning” without the ability to do, to take effective actions, and to put into practice actually perpetuates one of the central problems with this kind of insufficient learning. It widens the Knowing—Doing gap. You are filling your head with more intellectual understanding without activating your body to be able to do the actions of that understanding. In the long run, this will undermine your competence, and then your confidence, and then your enjoyment.

If performance is the ultimate criterion of learning, then learning is inherently and inevitably experiential and why we emphasize hands-on learning via trainings and coaching. Then you can give it a go, test it out, and see how much you can do at any given point. To the unleashing of your highest and best learnings!

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

While I am sure there is the full range of political views held by NLP-people in general, having explored the basic psychological principles and premises within the NLP models and the Humanistic Psychology of Self-Actualization from which it came, there seems to me to be some preferred views politically. These are implied by the models or I could say that the models seem to privilege and promote a particular political perspective. I can’t here write everything about this. Yet I have written many chapters about this in the latest book, Political Coaching. There you can find chapters on the political psychology and philosophy of Self-Actualization.

What then is the NLP model and what is presupposed in the NLP model? In Meta Reflection #7 this year I noted that NLP is a communication model, a modeling model, and a self-development model. Originating long before Bandler and Grinder, it started from the Human Potential Movement and therefore involves several assumptions about people and about human nature.

∙ It assumes that people are responsible beings. They are people who can access their abilities to respond (mentally, emotionally, verbally, and behaviorally) and they are not inherently victims.

∙ It assumes that people have all the resources that they need to live fully. They are not broken, but they can be traumatized and hurt. They may not be accessing their inner resources, but they could. They may not have their resources sequences or developed, but they could.

∙ It assumes that people can be held accountable for their responses. They are ultimately responsible and accountable for developing their skills and making the most of their lives.

∙ It assumes that people are people and there is no status hierarchy of people. We are all equal in being human beings and that differences in skills, knowledge, and experience define what a person can and cannot do.

∙ It assumes that people can learn and that they are responsible for learning to do the best with what life has provided them.

Let’s now ask, “What political philosophy does this all suggest?” “What is implied politically in terms of the way we construct governments?” “What does this imply about how we should invent ever-better government structures and policies for managing our life together as people?”

∙ First it implies a democratic philosophy of equality of person’s before the eyes of the law. We all know that people are not literally equal. We are different from each other in many ways. Yet in spite of those differences mentally and emotionally, in terms of talents and temperments, in terms of predispositions and attitudes, we can treat each other as equal human beings. And we can set up our societies and establish laws so that people are treated as equals before the eyes of the law and treated as persons without regard to where born, economic status, education status, color of skin, ethnicity, etc. This is the ideal.

∙ Second it implies an enabling and facilitating of self-development and self-reliance. Humanistic or Self-Actualization Psychology holds a high level belief in people. People can be and are wired to develop, grow, learn and to become independent. This then enables them to connect and to become inter-dependent in healthy and productive ways. This means that people should not become dependent on society and treated as victims of history or other forces. Government should generate laws and structures that encourage, teach, and support self-reliance and should seek to avoid as much as possible treating people as if they were children or incompetent by nature and needy for government hand-outs and support. Support should be for the truly needy and for those without any chance of development. Support for most should be short-term and with an eye on getting off of support. When people are healthy and developing, they want to be independent.

∙ It implies the responsibility of balanced finances. For government it means treating the people’s money as they treat their own personal budgets— spending only what they have and not borrowing into incredible debt. Governments in Greece, Italy, and other European countries have been failing for this very reason. Politicians, all too often, seem to think that they money they spend is unlimited. They seem to forget that it is the people’s money and not their money. That’s because government gets its money by taxing the people.

∙ It implies that the human way is that of learning and developing. We are not born knowing or competent. We become. We have to learn and develop and that requires teaching, mentoring, training, coaching, consulting, etc. A healthy republic requires informed citizens. They have to also learn how to be a productive member of a society and to enter into “the democratic agreement” of adding their voices and cooperating when the vote goes against them. That does not mean a majority rule in a spiteful way against a minority, but take time to consider and fully hear the voice of the minorities. Then we can have what is called a deep democracy. If government should invest in anything other than defense and protection against crime and enemies, it is education. It is to a government’s welfare to have as much transparency of information and citizens who can do critical thinking.

Self-Actualization Psychology— the psychology of NLP and Neuro-Semantics believes in the bright side of human nature while simultaneously recognizing that human nature can go wrong, that people can be hurt and traumatized, and therefore create highly distorted forms of humanity. Therapy along with a thorough education and continuous adult education is the solution. A society can be no healthier than its citizens. So when we have toxic beliefs and habits in a society, this lowers the quality of understanding and intelligence, which lowers the democracy, which lowers the quality of life. And that’s why we have recovered the original psychology of NLP and make it dominate in all of our Neuro-Semantic trainings. We want the highest values and meanings for people’s lives which they can then implement in their best performances and relationships. That’s what we are about.

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

It’s Not Southern California!

You undoubtedly know that NLP began in Southern California in the 1970s.  Unfortunately, that says a lot about it, doesn’t it?  Things were changing culturally in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s and changing radically.  The best thing was the Civil Rights Movement as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others led for a recognition of equality under the law, a promise which he noted in his famous “I Have a Dream!” speech in Washington DC., had been made, but not fulfilled.  The Civil Rights Movement began to actualize that promise.  There was also many other movements during that time urging for equal rights for women, minorities, etc.  There was also the Human Potential Movement (HPM) which eventually gave birth to NLP.  Those were the days of the Vietnam War, a war that became increasingly unpopular and unacceptable as the years progressed.  Those were the years of the counter-culture movement of hippies, of free love, exploration with drugs, rock ‘n roll, and more.

Right in the midst of all of that, NLP arose.  It arose at the University of Southern California, Santa Cruz and many of the early developers protested against the Vietnam War and some were even strongly into the drug scene.  It was the spirit of the times.  All of this was also at Esalen, which at that times, was the headquarters of the Human Potential Movement, where in the 1960s Perls and Satir lived and where, in the 1970s, Bateson would move to, and died, as the Scholar in Residence.

Then when NLP burst onto the scene as a new psychology in the late 1970s, dozens and then hundreds of Training Centers arose all over the United States.  The first and probably most successful one was NLP Comprehensive in Boulder Colorado that Steve and Connaire Andreas created.  When I discovered NLP in 1986, there were multiple Training Centers in every major city in America.  Then 1995 occurred.  That’s when the Bandler Lawsuit threatened the field of NLP naming eight individuals and 200 “John Does” to a ninety-million dollar lawsuit.  In this lawsuit Bandler claimed to “own” NLP and own the right to control who taught it and who did not. [See the article on the Lawsuit in the series on the History of NLP, www.neurosemantics.com.]

Over the next five very long years as the lawsuit continued, one NLP Association after the other in the USA disbanded, Training Centers closed down, Trainers changed careers, and others continued doing what they had always done just under a new name.  Now while Bandler lost his lawsuit in Feb. 2000 with NLP being declared in Public Domain and himself owing the former President of the Society of NLP, Chris Hall, $650,000, the damage had been done.  By that time, there were no Associations left in the US, and within another year there was not a single Journal left, and 95% of all Training Centers closed.

This explains how, and why, NLP barely exists today in the USA.  It is coming back.  New Training Centers have started up and trainers from other countries are coming to America to do NLP Practitioner courses.  But it is slow.  Meanwhile, NLP which got a much healthier start in the UK and Europe has continued to grow and evolve.  Most of the strong negative publicity about NLP in the USA does not exist.  Also, to a great extent, NLP was established by professional, ethical, and well-trained business people, who then set up Associations, and so NLP has thrived in those countries.  In Europe one new branding of NLP is NLP^t — Neuro-Linguistic Psycho-Therapy which has been diligent in establishing research and getting it accepted by various European Countries as a legitimate psychotherapy.  Today, in contrast to America, there are hundreds of Training Centers in Central Europe, the UK, and the Scandinavian Countries.  And NLP is exploding in the former Soviet Countries, in the Asia Pacific Countries, and now beginning in the Arab countries.

NLP has long been in Australia and New Zealand, in many of the Latin American Countries, and in various countries in Africa, especially South Africa.  It is growing everywhere.  In most countries there are Associations although everywhere NLP Associations typically have challenges and difficulties thriving.  Why?  Probably because of the overly strong emphasis in NLP on individualism.  It was there from the beginning having come into NLP from the HPM.  And it was demonstrated ruthlessly by the original developers who quickly could not, or would not, get along with each other.

All of this now leads to the question: Where now is the heartland of NLP?   It is certainly not in the USA and not in Southern California. Today if you want to see where NLP is the strongest and most well-developed— it is Europe.  While it began in Southern California, it can no longer be said to be a “Southern California” thing.  The hippie element has been greatly reduced although there’s still the ever-seductive presence of New Age thinking that hopes for near-magical formulas for instant health, wealth, success, and happiness(!).

Yet NLP has been growing up.  We will celebrate its 40^th anniversary this year, and there’s a special event planned at Santa Cruz this August to recognize this.  Increasingly NLP is being represented by University Professors and Researchers and today it is much more quiet in its PR as it informs Business Consultants, Executive Coaches, and ongoing training in the Communication Arts in Organizations around the world.  Are there people still misusing it?  Yes, of course.  Anything powerfully effective will naturally lend itself to misuse, abuse, and distortion.  Yet even that seems to be less and less.  Further, there is lots of good things happening in the field one of which I’m involved in— the NLP Leadership Summit.

What is the bottom line?  NLP is now mostly a European phenomenon rather than a Southern California phenomenon.  So if you want to take a good look at NLP, what it is, what it stands for, how it is presented, what it is being presented for— Look that NLP in Europe!

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Words are powerful.  Here are some quotes that I put in the book, Mind-Lines: Lines that Change Minds  (2005) indicate the power of words and how because we live in the house of language, language itself operates as such a powerful frame-setting factor.

“You don’t need to take drugs to hallucinate; improper language can fill your world with problems and spooks of many kinds.” (Robert A. Wilson)

“Magic is hidden in the language we speak.   The webs that you can tie and untie are at your command  if only you pay attention to what you already have (language) and the structure of the incantations for growth.” (Richard Bandler and John Grinder)

            “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” (Wittgenstein)

“Language is what bewitches, but language is what we must remain within in order to cure the bewitchment.” (Henry Staten)

If words are so powerful and we can do so many things, good and bad, with words, don’t you think people ought to get a license in order to open their mouth and say words?  With words you are operating the primary vehicle of meaning.  Careening along the road of consciousness in the vehicle of language, you could easily crash into someone, create a wreck, or do all sorts of damage.  So, do you know how to manage and control the neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic dynamics within words and language?

It might seem strike you as silly even ridiculous at first, but just suppose there was a license for using language?  Suppose you had to take an exam in order to be certified that you are knowledgeable enough and competent enough to open your mouth in public?   An interesting thought experiment, isn’t it?  But it did not originate with me.  A long time ago Alfred Korzybski proposed it in the following paragraphs in Science and Sanity.

“When we become more civilized and enlightened, no public speaker or writer will be allowed to operate publicly without demonstrating first that he knows the structure and semantic functioning of the linguistic capacities.  Even at present no professor, teacher, lawyer, physician, or chemist, etc. is allowed to operate publicly without passing examination to show that he knows his subject.

The above statement does not mean control or censorship.  Far from it.  Our language involves a much more intricate, beneficial, or dangerous semantic mechanism than any automobile ever had or will have.  We do not control the drivers in their destinations.  They come and go as they please, but for public safety we demand that they should have acquired the necessary reflex-skill for driving, and so we eliminate unnecessary tragedies.

Similarly with language, of which the ignorant or pathological use becomes a public danger of a very serious semantic character.  At present public writers or speakers can hide behind ignorance of the verbal, semantic, and neurological mechanism.  They may ‘mean well’; yet, by playing upon the pathological reactions of their own and those of the mob, they may ‘put over’ some very vicious propaganda and bring about very serious sufferings to all concerned.  But once they would have to pass an examination to get their licence as public speakers or writers, they could not hide any longer behind ignorance.  If found to have misused the linguistic mechanism, such an abuse on their part would be clearly a wilful act, and ‘well meaning’ would cease to be an alibi.” (p. 486)

So how about you?  How well informed are you about the semantic mechanisms within language that can be dangerous, harmful, or beneficial?  Korzybski, and later the developers of NLP, was not focusing on grammar as such.  Instead he focused on the neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic factors that influence our thinking and our mental mapping of our understandings.  “Neuro-“ because it is not grammar per se that is the problem, but what grammar and language does to us within our nervous systems.

Precisely because in thinking we use our nervous system and brain, the thoughts that we think are not innocent.  They influence and affect our subsequent neurology.  They send signals to our body and when we elevate the thoughts to “beliefs,” now we send commands to our nervous systems.  At that point, the job of the nervous system is to actualize the command.  That’s why in most religions we have statements about the power of beliefs: “Be it unto you according to your belief.”

If our thinking is sloppy, if we are engaged in lazy thinking, imprecise thinking, uncritical thinking —then we are setting ourselves up for problems in life.  That’s why the critical thinking engendered by the Meta-Model is so valuable and important.  The following 18 minute TED presentation by Sharyl Attkisson provides a great example of the need for solid critical thinking.

Sharyl Attkisson | TEDxUniversityofNevada

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bYAQ-ZZtEU&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs

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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

“What’s new and what different in Neuro-Semantics? And you can’t say that it is higher because NLP has higher or meta-levels and positions.”

“You’re right!” I immediately acknowledged. “Dilts has introduced four meta-levels in his Neuro-Logical Levels pattern and even Bandler and Grinder had the ‘meta-position’ in their original model as well as they acknowledged that language is a ‘meta-representational system,’ and so developed a ‘Meta-Model of Language in Therapy’ as they called it to address that higher level. So in all of that, you are right on. NLP modeled higher levels.”

“But while NLP has that, there’s one thing that NLP did not have, not until I introduced the Meta-States Model. Only then did NLP obtained a model of the very special and unique kind of mind that man has, well, women also.”

“And what is that?”

I threw in the humor bit and paused, all designed to facilitate some “response potential” as Milton Erickson would have said. “Okay, so do you want to know what it is?” I said that in the tone and tempo that Morpheus uttered the same line to Neo in The Matrix movie, knowing that they would like that. One of them had read my book on The Matrix Model and had spoken about that when we began.

“What NLP does not have, apart from the Meta-States Model, even to this day, is a model of the self-reflexiveness of the human mind, and that’s the most unique feature of human consciousness. NLP began as a modeling of consciousness, of how our brains operate and of how to effectively run your own brain, and yet NLP from 1975 to 1994 completely ignored the self-reflexivity of our minds. And that’s what the Meta-States Model added to the NLP Communication Model that was so revolutionary.”

I paused for a moment … there was an awkward silence, so I added. “Where in NLP is there anything, one comment, one note, one pattern, one anything about the self-reflexivity of the human mind except in the Meta-States Model? Do you know? Have you ever seen it? Has any NLP trainer ever even mention the fact that there is structure to our meta-cognitive skills and that our meta-cognitive abilities, processes, and competencies is what enables us to not only think, but think-about-our-thinking?”

“That’s a good point that you’re making.” one of them said. And when he did, another looked at him as if he had just betrayed their alliance! That’s when he said in a challenging way, “So it’s all about thinking, conscious thinking, and that’s the biggest problem with Meta-States!”

“Well, I hate to disappoint you, but because a meta-state is first and foremost and ultimately a state, yes it is a mental state, yet it is also an emotional state and a somatic state. And that’s why when you meta-state, you not only bring one thought-to-another-thought, you also bring one feeling, one emotion, one physiological state to another. And that’s why meta-stating has nothing to do with the so-called ‘dissociation,’ and everything to do with creating the more complex and riches emotional states possible to human beings.”

“But I heard that a Meta-State is a dissociated, non-feeling state and that that is why you are so academic and non-emotional.”

“And who did you hear that one from?” Well, he couldn’t say. “Do you mean you cannot or that you don’t want to say?” He didn’t want to. “And why would you not acknowledge the source of that rumor? Why hide what someone has obviously communicated to you and probably to others? They made it public, so why protect them against the truth?”

“So tell me, if you love learning, does that make the state of learning more or less emotional? What about joy of learning, passion about the joy of learning? And what about such meta-states as gloriously fallible, uninsultability, robustly resilient? Do those sound like academic and non-emotional states?”

“And do you think that the ‘higher’ states in Dilts’ list— mission, purpose, identity, spirit are less emotional, do you think they are dissociated states?” Well he didn’t.

“So now you know the difference! And knowing this difference, and realizing that to step back in your self-reflexive awareness can enrich your knowing with appreciation or joy or wonder, how do these delightful and playful states now transforms what you use to know and give you that broader and more comprehensive competency to explain to anyone who asks you about the revolutionary difference in Neuro-Semantics, and I’m wondering, just wondering if you were able to track all of the levels in this statement?”

Ah, now he knows about the “so what” of the higher states! I hope you do too.

Schedule of Neuro-Semantic Trainings — go to www.neurosemantics.com
APG Schedule — Meta-State Trainings occurring around the world.
Dr. Hall’s Schedule — Where Michael is or will be.
Neuro-Semantic Trainers Schedule —where other Neuro-Semantic Trainers and Trainings are occurring.