DESIGNER STATES — II

When you meta-state one state to another— you put the second state at a higher (meta) position to the first and doing that positions it to become the frame of the first, the category, the classification, and the governing belief of the first. Amazing, right? It’s amazing because now the second-state textures or qualifies the first. Now you can create all sorts of designer states— customized just for the attitude and orientation that you want.

And when you do this, you take charge of your states of mind-and-emotion so that you can operate from the optimal state in whatever you are doing. Sound interesting? This is what you get when you learn the Meta-States Model. Here you build in the kind and quality of ecology so that your states and attitudes truly serve you well, bring out your best, improve your productivity, relationships, health, etc. And yet when you do this— more is happening.

Transcending and Including What more is happening? You are transcending your state, your primary level which is comprised of all of your thoughts and feelings about something in your world. It is your first response (or reaction) to some trigger in your environment. We call that your primary state. Here you are aware and focused on some external trigger. You fear driving fast, being closed in a small place, a harsh tone of voice and so on. You get angry at violence, insults, and threats to your way of life. You delight in and enjoy the beauty of a scene or a piece of music.

Next, you transcend that experience while at the same time including it as you move up to your next thought—a higher level of thought about the first. This creates a new level of organization —something higher that contains the lower plus something else.

In respect, considerate, and patient anger—you still have anger. You still feel the sense of threat or danger to your person or your way of life, yet you have now textured the anger with another state so that something new has emerged in you. You have the anger state plus something a transcending state (like respect, calmness, curiosity, etc.) so that you have a higher quality of anger. Perhaps you have a designer state of respectful anger.

It was Aristotle who long, long ago wrote: “All of the lower is in the higher, but not all of the higher is in the lower.” So, while molecules contain atoms, but atoms do not contain molecules. When you move up the levels of your mind, your higher level includes the lower and transcends it. As you transcend the lower, you add new features, qualities, properties, and characteristics to it. You create customized designer states.

When you use the Meta-States Model, you have the ability to engineer new emergent properties into your states. Talk about using the executive functions of your brain and engage in a higher level of self-management! Doing this can give you the key to “the structure of your subjective experiences” as you make your experiences richer and more robust, as you make them serve your highest goals, meanings, and values.

When your learning is taken up into playfulness and appreciation, when you engulf it with passion and the intention to improve the quality of your life—something new emerges. You have a passionate learning state that’s accelerated and exciting. We call that a “genius” learning state.

The Systemic Nature of Meta-States You have now been introduced to the systemic nature of your meta-states. Because you can take your thinking-feeling response and iterate it over and over recursively, you can create not only beliefs, but belief systems. And when you do so, you establish higher level frames of mind that are so stable that they can stay with you for a lifetime. Further, given the nature of beliefs as “self-fulfilling prophesies,” you set up the higher beliefs as self-organizing attractors in your mind-body system. Thereafter, they seem to have a life of their own— creating and recreating you in their image. Since this systemic nature of your meta-states is so powerful, be very careful about the belief systems that you construct.

Of course, that’s the problem, isn’t it? You constructed many if not most of your belief systems during your childhood when you were growing up. And unless you engage in specific cognitive make-overs —those childhood belief systems are still running your programs. They are your programs for how you function.

Ready for a cognitive make-over? One aspect of it is to create some customized designer states for yourself so that you can operate from the most optimal states in whatever you do. Now that’s a thought!