NLP AND META-STATES

Meta-States Informs and Transforms NLP

After the last post (#50) on “Meta-States as NLP on Steroids” my original business partner in NLP, Dr. Bob Bodenhamer wrote the following two paragraphs to add yet another point to how Meta- States adds so much Ummph to the basic NLP model. Bob liked my question: How does the Meta-States Model empower NLP, amplify NLP, extend NLP, and makes NLP explicit in a systematic way?

And from that question he decided to add yet another answer. Now Bob writes with more than two decades of practical experience in using NLP in the context of therapy and after co-authoring 9 books with me and especially our book, Sub-Modalities Going Meta. Back in 1999 we first co-presented our discovery about sub-modalities at the Canadian NLP Conference.

What is this “inner secret truth about sub-modalities”? Shhhhhh! The secret is that they are not really sub-, that was a mistake Richard Bandler made. But calling it “sub” does not make it “sub.” And it those distinctions are not at a “sub” level to the representations. The truth? They are meta to the representations as Todd Epstein indicated in his original term for these cinematic features of a person’s movies —Pragmagraphics (that is, graphics that have pragmatic applications). The story then goes, Bander thought that was too big and complicated of a word, so he called them sub- modalities (as if that was not a big and complicated word!). This is what Bob said opened his eyes so much in the early days of Meta-States.

“It is simple: The Meta-States Model enables the NLPer to know up-front which NLP Pattern will work and which one won’t work. And, the Meta-States Model clarifies in our minds ‘Why?’ some Patterns do not work yet, many do. An example is found in the sub-modality mapping across processes. Early in my practice I discovered to my dismay that some of the sub-modality mapping across patterns just would not work in some situations. The explanation is found in the Meta-States Model for it will recognize whether or not the frame where the problem state is mapped across to the desired state is indeed a “higher frame” to the problem state thus bringing about a positive change in the problem state — in this case you can say that the problem state has been reframed.

An example where it will not work is when you attempt to change your negative thoughts to positive thoughts when you map across an image of Mother Teresa onto that of Adolf Hitler. Rare indeed is the person who will experience positive feeling from this. Why? They will have higher frames of reference in place that will shout from the roof top, ‘No way! There is no way to put the sub-modalities of Mother Teresa in with those of Adolf Hitler.’”

Without an understanding and study of the Meta-States Model, one would not know that it is a model

that actually governs the core models of NLP— from the Meta-Model of language, to the Meta- Programs model of perceptual filters, to the sub-modality model, to the Strategy Model, etc. That’s why several of the early reviewers of the Meta-States Model (i.e., Graham Dawes in London) commented that this model would consume NLP itself (the actual quotation, “Meta-States will be the model that ate NLP”).

Now over the years, one of the unexpected and unintentional things that have happened with the Meta-States Model is that it has indeed allowed us to explain the other models of NLP in terms of how they actually work. That’s why Bob says that with it you can identify which pattern to use and predict which pattern will work and which will not and the reasons for this. If you don’t know this, please get to an APG training and discover this incredible secret. Or read one of the books on the Meta-States Model.

If I were to identify the principle that explains that pretty outrageous and stunning conclusion, I would say that it goes to the principle of self-reflexivity within the human system. As a description of how our mind-body-emotion system works, reflexivity is dynamic, fluid, moving, and “alive.” Reflexivity is the systemic process whereby products already created by a system re-enter the system and so feeds the process of a self-organizing system. And when you have reflexivity, you have iterations and that means the same process (with different content) will be going round and round until new emergent properties arise— gestalts. And that’s why you cannot explain the gestalts of these new emergent properties by adding up all the parts. The whole that emerges is more than and different from the sum of the parts.

That’s why the Meta-States Model can model the structure of richly complex states like courage, self-esteem, resilience, and hundreds of other states that are the most precious and powerful (as well as those that are the most pathological) in human experience.

Another person, a system analyst for 13 years, Rodrigo Santiago who lives in Rio de Janiero, Brazil wrote and said that he had the suspicion of Meta-States and mapped out the core idea as best he could until he came across the Meta-States model. Just this year he has become a Neuro-Semantic Trainer in addition to being a Meta-Coach. When he read last week’s article, he wrote this about what he had written before finding the Meta-States Model indicating that he knew the secret of human function had something to do with thoughts-about-thoughts: “People are suffering without needing to because they don't have any clue that ‘their ideas are in control of them.’ They are people who identify themselves with their thoughts and culture. They tell everyone else, ‘This is who I am: I am my ideas.’ And we know that's far from true. We're more than our ideas.”

Here is meta-states in its simplest form— an idea about other ideas, an idea that sets a frame and that locks people into a prison, identifying with one’s thoughts. And that meta-state as a belief, a value, an identity, a prohibition and so on then reeks all kind of damage in the lives of people. Yet now, seeing and recognizing the structure, the meta-state structure, we now know what to do and how to proceed. Want to find out the Model that has been and continues to consume NLP? Check out Meta-States!