THE FUNCTION OF THE META-JUNCTION

In the first Meta Reflection I defined meta, addressed the myth that it refers to dissociation, and briefly mentioned the meta-function, and our unique kind of consciousness. With that in mind, the key to understanding your mind and working with self-reflexive conscious is recognizing what the role of the meta-function and how to use it for taking charge of our brains in serve of our self-actualization.

Now the meta-function is one of the key concepts that Gregory Bateson introduced as he went about modeling various anthropological, sociological, and personal expertise. In modeling the complexity of communication, Bateson used meta to designate “about” and then presented what a hierarchic series of messages would look like.

“Our hierarchic series will then consist of message, meta-message, meta-meta-message, and so on.” (Steps to an Ecology of Mind, p. 248)

He used this to model change, change-of-change, first level change, second order change, etc. He used it to make explicit the structure of schizophrenia. Regarding the complexities of communication, he wrote that

“. . . by noting that messages may be about (or ‘meta’ to) the relationship between messages of different levels. The smell of the experimental harness may tell the dog that the buzzer will mean meat powder. We will then say that the message of the harness is meta to the message of the buzzer. But in human relations another sort of complexity may be generated, e.g., messages may be emitted forbidding the subject to make the meta connection. . . . The hierarchy of message and contexts thus becomes a complex branching structure.” (248)

He wrote this in the context of working outhis Levels of Learning model. In this he was looking at the meta connection. That is, the connection between the different levels. He was looking for how one message modifies another message. He called this the meta-relationship and spoke about the “infinite regress of such relations.” (250)

All of that is pretty abstract, so let me illustrate. Let’s start with a primary experience of your bodily energy, health, and fitness. What do you think about fitness? What immediately comes to mind when you consider exercise? What do you feel? Whatever your answer, your thoughts-and-feelings about health, fitness, and exercise set your personal mental and emotional frames.

Suppose your first thought is, “I know I should, but it’s a lot of trouble to go to a gym, it takes a lot of time, plus it costs money that I could invest in other things.” And suppose that the emotional feel of it is a sigh indicating a state of feeling bothered by it all. Then with that state, you have reflexively set an emotional frame of being bothered with a dash of “should-ing.”

And just about the time you identify that this is your state about the state of exercising, you have yet another thought in the back of your mind about it, “When I have more time and money, I’ll d it.” Ah, yes, procrastination with good intentions about the bothered-should-ing state about exercising. That should reduce some of the negative energies and create a sense of relief from the first negative meta-stating as it lets you off the hook a bit.

But then your reflexivity kicks in again! “Am I just fooling myself or what? I don’t have the energy or vitality I once had; I really should exercise. I just wish it wasn’t such a bother.” Now you’ve meta-stated or framed yourself with some reality testing, some realistic questioning and some wishing. So this sets the next level of your mental-emotional attitude to this frame of mind.

In each of these moves, and the others that will arise, jumping a level and layering more thoughts-and-feelings creates the relationship of one state upon another. This is the meta-function of your reflexivity. Your meta-jump functions as setting a frame. It functions as modifying and modulating what is embedded within it. Each time you jump another level, you reflexively apply understandings and meanings to what you are experiencing. This makes your consciousness more complex, more layered. In the Meta-States Model, I have called this meta-stating. In Frame Games (Winning the Inner Game) I have called this framing, setting a frame, and creating your inner game. These are but different ways of talking about the meta-function.

Here I have described each of these in a linear way, as if we have one thought, then another, and so on, but your mind and mine is much more dynamic than that. What seems to happen in actuality is that our thoughts-and-emotions go round and round simultaneously and almost instantaneously. In the meta-function you circle an experience like health and fitness as if each iteration of your reflexivity was a planet circling a sun or electronics circling an atom.

Consciousness is that dynamic. No wonder the resultant state is an energy field, an energy field that creates a magnetic pull for whatever you have created. The primary state included and transcended by the circling thoughts now interact so that it invests various energies into it. If you have taken the APG Meta-States training, then you have been introduced (at least briefly) to the 16 interfaces of state-upon-state. These speak about the junctions of the meta-functions, how various states interface with other states.

Another metaphor that I’ve been using recently is of an onion. When you meta-state using your reflexivity power, you put layer upon layer of meaning. You create a Meaning Onion. Sometimes this is great, sometimes it is not. Sometimes it creates genius, expertise, and excellence. Sometimes it creates dragons, demons, gremlins, pathology, and disease. In either case, if you want to get to the core of your experience, you have to unpeel the layers. In The Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop you will experience an process for this kind of unpeeling.

Then you can get to the core of an experience.

As a therapist, getting to the core of a person’s meaning onion allows you to see how the client has misused his or her reflexivity to turn their energies against self. As a coach or modeler, getting to the core of meaning empowers one to see the structure and processes of meta-stating genius and enables you to replicate it or enhance it with even more resources.

In either case, you are working with the meta-function of the relationship of one state upon another. This is the vertical structure of self-reflexive consciousness that creates a whole matrix of frames about things. And when you know that, you have a process for quickly getting to the heart of things where you can unleash new possibilities.