A BELIEF IS A META-STATE

Not only does an attitude partake of the structure of a meta-state, so does a “belief.” Now beliefs are actually pretty strange things. Well, not “things,” because they do not really exist, but phenomenon. That’s because, on the one hand, we all believe, and we all believe in thousands of things. Philosophers have even called us humans “homo credo” (believers). As human beings we have to believe in things. We don’t have another choice. And yet on the other hand, our beliefs don’t seem like beliefs. Nor does anyone actually think of them as beliefs. Instead we experience them, as just what’s true and right and real. Then again, that’s an operational definition of a belief— what you consider true, right, and real is what you “believe.”

From Thought to Belief Because NLP never really distinguished thoughts from beliefs in a really clear way, we took the opportunity in Neuro-Semantics to do precisely that. So today, in our flagship training of APG, that is one of the first things we do—we present the distinction of how a thought differs from a belief. How does a thought differ from a belief?

The two are distinguished by the multi-ordinality of “thought.” This is a meta-state structure. At level one a thought is a representation (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, words, diagrams, etc.) of an awareness. At level two, a thought is embedded inside of another thought so that it is much richer. The higher thought is a frame for the lower—a classification, category, assumption, etc. When at level two, the higher thought is a confirmation thought that validates the first, then it transforms the “mere thought” into a belief—a command to the nervous system.

Diagram ——— Confirmation Thought ———

about

A Primary level Thought (an awareness of something)

By transcending the first level thought to a confirmation thought about it, you are putting the first level thought into the class of things Validated and Confirmed as Real, True, and Right. That makes the thought more than just a thought, more than just a signal to the body. It transforms into a command to the nervous system. In systems language and thought, the higher thought as a “belief” sets up a self- organizing attractor so that it operates like a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s why we have known for thousands of years that beliefs are very powerful things. People everywhere tend to see what they believe. What they believe, they see in the world and they typically use that to confirm the belief.

Obviously, this sets up the circular thinking that generates the self-fulfilling prophecy.

In believing what you are really doing is empowering a mere thought with meaning—and that meaning is energizing the thought so you treat it as if real, right and true. Now you no longer question it, now your perceptions and behaviors keep reinforcing it, now you are inside of a belief system that validates itself. No wonder Jesus warned us to be careful what we believe, “Be it unto you according to your belief.”

Given this semantic and representational structure of a belief, the essence of changing a belief involves removing it from its classification. That is, remove it from the class of Confirmed Things, that is, change the meaning so it once again becomes “just a thought.” Do that you and you will de-energize the belief and limit its ability to be a “command to your nervous system” which, when that happens, your nervous systems will try to actualize it.

This explains the so-called “magic” in the Mind-Lines Model. Remodeled from the old NLP “sleight of mouth” patterns and extended, Mind-Lines gives you seven directions to send a person’s mind in thinking about something and twenty-six linguistic patterns for reframing the meaning of a belief that creates limitations. Knowing how we build up beliefs, and the essential structure of a belief as a meta- state, now you can pretty easily change beliefs and update them with more empowering beliefs that will support your development and self-actualization.

What’s the bottom line? Where you have a belief, you have a meta-state. When you meta-state, you are setting beliefs in place. “Beliefs” are meta-level confirmation-ideas that describe an understanding that we treat as real and true and which thereby send “commands” to our nervous system to make real. And where you have one belief, you almost always have an embedded set of beliefs—a belief system. Knowing this, you can now meta-state new beliefs into existence, beliefs that you want to believe. Knowing this also means that you can suspend a belief that no longer serves you well.

An example: If you believe that “criticism can hurt you,” then you have a cause-effect belief. You believe that when something you call “criticism” can influence your mental and emotional state and result in what you call “hurt.” Thinking about words and their effect on you is the primary state; confirming that this is true and real turns it into a belief. Then it orders your breathing, muscle tension, throat, etc. to respond in a way that makes this actual (actualize). When you meta-state questions and doubt about this as “real and true” the belief begins to loosen up, when you bring the meta-state of realizing the idea is just a mental map, the belief fragments even further. When you bring the idea that “words” are just words, you undermine the old limiting belief even further.

Beliefs can be at your command— when you know their meta-state structure and have developed the skills of confirming and suspending. This is what we mean by “running your own brain” in order to manage your own stat.