THE META-LANDSCAPE OF YOUR MIND Part II

In the last Meta Reflection , I began describing the landscape of Meta Land. There I focused on it being the space of beliefs, where we create our sense of reality and so invent belief-frame within belief frame to create our beliefs systems. This makes Meta Land a place where our beliefs become self-fulfilling prophesies as they seek to self-organize our mind-body system to create externally the ideas and understandings.

Because of this, the landscape is a space of layers of belief frames and when we put all the belief frames around any given idea or experience, it makes up a matrix. A matrix refers to a “womb.” That’s because within a matrix things are given birth. It may be that we give birth to a concept by creating two axes. Then, inside of the quadrants or space of those axes we can give birth to the concept of the “flow” state or “the synergy of self-actualization.”

In Neuro-Semantics, I have used the metaphor of a matrix to create the 7 +1 matrices of the Matrix Model. In doing so, I was able to combine all of the cognitive-behavioral factors that make up our reality into three process matrices and five of the developmental and lifespan factors that make up our construct of “self.” This gives us the five content matrices. When combined, it gives us a systems approach to thinking about, and working with, the mind-body-emotion system of a person or of a society.

This also is part of the landscape that makes up the meta territory. In this landscape you will discover the multiple matrices that you and others build around various experiences, ideas, and even words. Once we build these matrices and live within them, they become our reality. And that’s precisely why they feel so real. That’s why they become the very fabric of our sense of reality, why they become our assumptive reality, and why they feel so solid and unchangeable.

Sometimes I’m asked if there is or could be a third axis for the Matrix model. The first two are meaning (semantics) and performance (neurology) which also constructs the Self-Actualization Quadrants. And the answer is, “Yes, there is a third axis. It is self.” After all, when we ask “In Developmental psychology, what is it that develops over the lifespan?” The answer is the same—our mapping and sensing of our self, that, is our identity, how and with what we identify ourselves. Developmental psychology maps this in terms of our cognitive development, our psycho-social development, our sexual, cultural, moral, etc. development.

And what are all these factors, but facets of our self. For a fuller development of this idea of the third axis, see the article, The Matrix of the Matrix on the website. This means that the five content matrices are five facets of the development of self over the lifespan: my sense of self as a person (Self), my sense of self in terms of competencies, skills, and performance (Power), my sense of self in relationship to others and to various cultures (Others), my sense of self as existing in temporal space (Time), and my sense of self in the larger environment and in all the universes of meanings (World).

This is the landscape of Meta Land. And because the Matrix model presents this as a systems model which encourages systemic thinking, to work with this facet of Meta Land, we have to shift from linear to non-linear, from either-or to both-and, and think in terms of our mental- emotional energy moving through the Matrix as a system. This is where the communication loops of feed back and feed forward also come in enabling us to follow the energy through the system.

What is the space where you live, in your mind, when you use your self-reflexive consciousness? It is the Matrix of your frames of meaning that you construct about all kinds of things. And now we can follow the energy that is incorporated in it and the energy that follows through it. We can follow the cognitive energy by which you can transform your inner reality so that it begins to exist externally. And with the Matrix model, we can now follow that motivational energy as you metabolize and embody those meanings.

Meta Land is the place of your meaning matrices, all of them, the thousands of them. It includes the positive ones which enhances you and your self-actualization. It equally includes the negative ones which imprison and diminish you. In all of this, you like me, are a creator. Because you are by nature a meaning-maker, you have some incredible powers to create meaning— to call meaningful worlds into existence. You can also misuse these powers and create worlds of trivial or bland meaning, or worse, meaningless worlds. Knowing this is one thing, knowing how to effectively use your creative powers that will enable you to self-actualize, that’s another. That is the theme of Day 1 of the Ultimate Self-Actualization Workshop and the theme of the next Meta Reflection.