DEALING WITH YOUR INNATE TRANSCENDENCE

Because “Transcendence is Included,” because it is part and parcel of being human, and because it is innate to our human nature, one aspect of your humanity and mine involves how we deal with transcendence. The first thing we need to do to deal with it is to recognize it. Now the funny or odd thing is that you can experience this strange sense of stepping outside or beyond yourself to become aware of yourself and talk about it without recognizing it. People do it all the time. If you listen, you can hear them do it.

Listen to them meta-comment. “I know this sounds silly, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot...” “I feel foolish when I said that.” “I don’t know where that just came from, it just popped into my head... but that’s a great idea.” The ability to meta-comment entails the ability to use your awareness-of-your-awareness as you step back from your experience and comment on it, and this is something that happens many times every day to all of us. Yet most people never notice it. And when we train the Meta-Coaches to begin to notice them and use them for deepening the conversation or to use meta-comments to set frames, most find it difficult to become fluent with this awareness.

But that’s not the big problem with recognizing and detecting it, the big problem occurs when you use your self-reflexive consciousness against yourself. And that also is very common—very common. And again, if you have ears to hear, you can hear this all the time as when people say, “I’m really stupid.” “What’s wrong with me that I mess up like that?” “I will never get this right.” The reflexivity within these statements turn one’s negative thinking-and-feeling against oneself and that energy has no where to go except to be registered and felt in one’s mind and emotions and body. And structurally, these statements are expressions of self-attack, self-accusation, self-rejection, self- contempt, and so on.

When I first introduced the Meta-States Model I used the metaphor of a dragon and called these dragon states—unresourceful states in which we have turned our thinking-and-feeling against ourselves so that we are in some form and some degree of self-abuse. In the book Dragon Slaying (1995/2000) I included nearly two dozen chapters on the most common dragon states. And as noted there as every Neuro-Semantic trainer notes in training Accessing Personal Genius (APG), this is a misuse of human self-reflexivity. And the simple solution is to raise your hand and make a promise to yourself to be kinder and gentler with oneself and never again bring your energy against yourself. Attacking yourself is not going to make things better. It just confuses you as a person with your behaviors, even your thoughts and feelings.

This is how transcendence is built into the core of the Meta-States Model and hence the Neuro- Semantic approach to NLP as I wrote in the last post. By “going meta” to your own experiences, to your macro and micro behaviors, to your states, emotions, mistakes, etc., you “step up” to a broader experience of yourself and when you do so . . . if you then judge yourself, that’s going to set a judgment frame against yourself. And when you do that, you not only put yourself into a box, you misuse this wonderful power and may become afraid of yourself.

Now for some personal questions for you regarding how you deal with your own reflexivity and when you have one of those experiences in which you seem to transcend yourself:

• Do you like and enjoy the way you have used and are using your self-reflexive consciousness?
• Do you like and enjoy your own experiences of transcendence?
• When you do step back and notice your own experiencing, is that a “spiritual” kind of experience for you?
• Do you ever turn your mental-emotional energy against yourself so that you engage in some kind of self-abuse?

Now from what I’ve written it should be obvious that the best way to deal with your transcendence ability is to accept and appreciate it. It is to step back (go meta) and be kind and gentle with yourself. How skilled are you at that? Where would you gauge yourself in using your self- reflexivity and sense of transcendence to step back from your self and love your self in a kind and gentle way?

Now if this offends you because you come from the biblical faith, then let me quote two verses. The first one comes from Genesis where it is said that, “God made man in his own image and likeness and said, ‘It is good.’” Say step back and say it, “I’m made in God’s image and likeness and it is good!” If that’s shocking, your feeling of shock indicates your need to re-adjust your attitude. The next verse may be even more shocking because it is not only okay to respect yourself, the spiritual pathway is to love yourself.

“No man ever hated his own self (his flesh), but nourishes and cherishes it even as the Lord does to the church.” (Ephesians 5:29)

How about that? The apostle Paul suggested that when you step aside from your self, nourish and cherish yourself! And just so that you don’t mis-understand what he is saying, he provided an example. He said it similar to how the Lord nourishes and cherishes his church. So if it is good for Jesus to “nourish and cherish” his people, it is good enough for you to “nourish and cherish” yourself. Transcendence — recognize it, acknowledge it, accept it, and appreciate it. That’s the beginning.