DISTINGUISHING STATES: Primary, Meta, Gestalt

What I’m focusing on in this series on critical distinctions are the essential differences that make a difference. I’m doing that because “expertise is about distinctions.” That is, critical distinctions within a relevant domain is what separates the person who is an expert from those who are not. The well-trained person, an expert, can see, recognize, and work with distinctions that others are simply blind to. The distinctions I’m mostly focusing on here are those that are critical for personal development, psychological well-being, healthy relationships, etc.

Here’s a distinction about mind-body states that we make in Neuro-Semantics and about which most NLP practitioners are clueless. Unless they have studied Meta-States (2012) or any of the Meta-State books, they will not even be aware of this three-fold distinction. Yet all states are not the same. As there are many different kinds of emotions and many different kinds of thoughts, so there are many different kinds of states.

Levels and Complexity of Mind-Body States Primary States. A primary state is directly about an event or trigger in the outside world. As a primary state, it is a state of mind, body, and emotion made up of one of the primary emotions that you can easily identify in your body. Ask about where in the body you feel the emotional state.

Where do you feel fear? Where in your body do you feel anger? What about relaxation? Or stress? Where and how do you feel love, apathy, joy, sadness, etc.?

Also ask about the trigger that elicits or provokes the primary emotional state.

You are afraid of what specifically? You are angry about what precisely? What triggers your love, your joy, stress, relaxation, disgust, attraction?

Meta-States. When you have a state that is meta to a primary state, you have a meta-state. And most human states are meta-states. What do you think or feel about joy, or anger, or fear, or love, or any other emotional state? Whatever you think-and-feel is a state about that state, a meta-state. This means you have thoughtful anger, kind anger, gentle anger, respectful anger, patient anger ... all which would give the state of anger a better quality. Or you can have stressful anger, hateful anger, fearful anger, rageful anger ... all of which would turn anger into a monstrous experience. The mental-emotional state you apply to a state sets the frames of meaning about the first state. That’s what makes the meta-states so powerful, so dynamic, and so determining. Nor does this occur just one level up, you can have multiple meta-states about a state.

Gestalt States. As a system of thinking-and-feeling in the mind-body, states-about-states set up numerous systemic processes, one of which is the gestalting process. This refers to the fact that when more than two meta-states are applied to a primary state, there is a strong likelihood that

something “more than and different from” the sum of the parts will emerge. This emergent property, as a property of systems, then brings into existence something other than what you can define by making a summation of the component pieces. You have a gestalt; you have a gestalt state. Courage is like that. Made up of fear at the primary level and possibly responsibility, love, and risk taking at the meta-level, “courage” emerges. So also with resilience, forgiveness, magnanimity, self- esteem, wisdom, inspiration and dozens and dozens of other of the most wonderful human experiences.

“Why is it important to make this distinction between the kinds and levels of states?” you ask. For lots of reasons. First and foremost is that fact that each level of a mind-body state operates in very different ways. The functioning processes of primary, meta, and gestalt states are very different. And if you don’t know that, you will be easily seduced into treating the higher level states (meta and gestalt) as if they were primary states. I noted in the book, Meta-States, that this explains much of the so-called “research” on NLP in the 1970s and 80s. Those doing the research did not know the difference and so “proved” by their faulty research design and lack of competent skills that “NLP doesn’t work.” Actually, they proved that they did not understand what they were doing!

Primary states are directly related to the outside world. They are about something external which ground them in reality. Meta-States and Gestalt states are directly related to the inside world— to a previous state or experience. In them, you are relating to yourself. Perhaps you are reflecting back on some emotion, some concept, some memory, some understanding, etc. While it is your representational mind that governs primary states, it is your self-reflexive mind that governs your higher states. And when you are meta-stating, you are working mostly with your outside-of- conscious mind, your intentionality, and your highest values. It’s an entirely different world.

Now for a meta-question— what do you think about what you’ve just read? What do you feel? How fascinated would you be to learn more about your self-reflexive consciousness and run the higher levels of your mind?