INTRODUCING META-EXPERIENCES

Experiences can occur at various levels of the mind. The most obvious, and even undeniable experiences, occur at the primary level of the empirical senses. Here you and I see, hear, feel, small, and taste things. And as we do, these are the components of our primary states of mind and emotion. These are our primary experiences and from these, we build up all of our higher level experiences.

Primary experiences is what you encounter in your interaction with the outside world of things, processes, people, environments, etc. And if human life is anything—it is a set of wild and wonderful and also ugly and hurtful experiences. Primary experiences answer the questions— What happened to you at school? At home? With your friends? When you study? When you talk? When you run and play? When you create?

First, there is what happens to you. But as I have noted, what happens to you does not “mean” anything in and of itself. As the meaning-maker, you have to interpret what happens to you. And the interpretation that you create then becomes the experience that you experience within your mind-body-emotion system. Now we are at the first level of a meta-experience. Your interpreting of information and of the happenings in your life, that is your own unique meta-experience.

And amazingly, you interpret it up the levels. You interpret it layer upon layer of thoughts, emotions, memories, references, imaginations, decisions, etc. As you do, you then create a matrix of meanings made up of so many aspects of the meta place that you live inside of. I say “amazingly” because most of your meta-layering of meanings and interpretations occurs outside of your conscious awareness. Outside, that is, until you bring it into your awareness and become mindful, which of course is what we focus on in Neuro-Semantics. And we do that so that you can take charge of your meaning-making and therefore of your meta-experiences.

Asking about and getting answers from you about your experiences, about “what happened to you?” is easy and natural. Asking and getting answers about your meta-experiences is not so easy and natural. Well, it is natural in that you have the inner capacity for it. You have your self- reflexive consciousness by which you reflect back onto yourself, your thoughts, your emotions, the things that happen to you. But without some training, some meta-learning and some meta- thinking, you won’t have much access to this inner real of your neuro-linguistic system.

To learn to use your self-reflexive consciousness effectively to empower your capacities and enable you to truly take charge of your life, you have to learn to use your meta-functions. These include meta-thinking—thinking about your thinking so that you can quality control your thinking and do clear and precise critical thinking. It includes meta-learning—learning about learning, how you learn, what’s the best way to learn, the blocks and deficiencies of learning so that you

can avoid them, etc. It includes meta-reading and meta-writing—learning how words work, how to read effectively and how to write so that you truly take charge of the process of transferring ideas to paper or screen. It includes meta-communicating—communicating about your words, what you are doing with them, how you are using them, their neuro-linguistic effects inside your body and on others, etc.

We have just completed the Learing Genius and the Writing Genius trainings here in Cairo Egypt. Several participants with Masters Degrees commented, “I wish I had known these when I was in University! I would have done a thousand times better.” Commenting on that with my wife Geraldine, we dreamed out loud about what if we could get every college student and every high school student to experience these Neuro-Semantics trainings so that they could learn to truly manage the meta-functions of thinking, learning, reading, writing, and communicating? We could facilitate a whole generation of people who could manage their higher meta-experiences.

Meta-experiences determine your life, your skills, your emotions, your health and fitness, your career, your relationships, etc. It is what is in the highest part of your mind—your meta place— that is the most determinative factor of your life. Not your parents, not your environment, not your genes, not your luck or lack of luck—it is your self-reflexivity by which you create your inner life. Interested? Contact a Meta-Coach or a Meta-Trainer. We are the meta people and we’re here to help.

Follow up on previous articles About Placebos: a great video that Nicola Riva sent to me of a medical doctor research from Harvard Medical School: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbu6DolnUfM

About Woke— An excellent video about Wokism: its history and its current ideology. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw4dUbbVxSc