THE SPIRIT DIMENSION OF META

PART III

If, in the dimension of spirit, there are beliefs and belief systems, and beliefs all the way up, and beliefs about all kinds of things. For example, there are beliefs about values, beliefs about ethics, beliefs about origin and source, beliefs about ending or teleology, beliefs about God or Intelligence or the Ultimate concern, beliefs about human nature, and so on. And these are the kinds of beliefs that make up the “spiritual” facet of our lives and that make up the content of our “religion.”

What is the Neuro-Semantic position on all of this? There is a two-fold position. And this two- fold focus leads to two very different responses.

First, the area where we take no position. As we consider this dimension of life where all these beliefs operate, we are dealing with beliefs, concepts, understandings and do not have access to the actual references. So, without any actual referent, there’s nothing to model or study.

Second, the area where we can take a position. Yet because these are beliefs, we can model the beliefs themselves, we can model the people who hold such beliefs, and we can model out the result of these beliefs.

First, No Actual References In Neuro-Semantics we take no position about the content of beliefs about God, or any given belief about any given religion. All of that belongs to theology or philosophy and is not the focus, direction, or purpose of Neuro-Semantics. We respect that the mapping and modeling tools of Neuro-Semantics (including NLP, General Semantics, etc.) is for mapping human experience—the subjective experience of people. We leave it to other fields to figure out as best they can the content of these domains.

Second, Modeling Belief Experiences What we can model are the beliefs and experiences of people —the beliefs that enrich their lives, expand their choices, and enable them to be loving, joyful, healthy, creative, informed, contributing, etc. And we can also model the beliefs and experiences of the beliefs that reduce the quality of life, limit possibilities, induce negative states that undermine sanity and health. Then, from those modeling experiences, we can deduce that there are beliefs about such “spiritual” things that support and enhance life, are ecological for relationships, and those that do not. Yet even when we do that, it’s important to remember that this does not establish the truth or validity of those beliefs, only their usefulness, their effectiveness in human personality, and whether they tend to support health or to be toxic.

We can model peak experiences— when men and women are at their best, when they feel that they are living at their best, being their best, having a sense of transcendence over time, space, culture, others, etc. And from modeling these peak experiences, we can identify the things that seem to support a “spiritual” way of life, that is, living with a sense of meaning, purpose, direction; living to create, contribute, and leave the world in a better way; living with passion and joy that enriches others.

We can even model people of “high ethics” to identify how they think about ethics, what they believe about how to treat others, what particular criteria and standards contribute to an ethical lifestyle. Does honesty, openness, flexibility, care, empathy, respect, etc.? Which are the highest in priority when there’s a conflict between these values? We can model how our self-reflexive consciousness that creates our ethics, levels of ethics, growth and development of ethics, cultural ethics and development, and how they are effectively languaged.

We can model the ethical beliefs that seem to create the best kind of social relationships, that lead to an entire society being supportive of human life— creating respect, honesty, responsibility, etc. We can model the relationship between psychological growth and ethics, religious beliefs and ethics, ownership of personal responsibility and ethics. We can model ethical decision-making, how it works, those who seemed skilled in it, those who do not. We could model the ethics of the “criminal mind” and those with little sense of others, empathy, and “conscience.”

We could model ethics in the light of self-actualization and the being-values. We could model those who have a healthy sense of “ought-ness” within them (as in, What ought I to do? How ought I to live?) and compare that to those who have an unhealthy sense of “oughtness.”

In all of these ways, Neuro-Semantics, as a tool and set of models for discovering the inner structure and process of experience, could offer a contribution. But in itself, Neuro-Semantics is not a “spirituality,” not a religion, not a philosophy, and not an ethical code. We have an ethical code that we have accepted about operating from a spirit of inquiry, abundance, professionalism, openness, responsibility, accountability, etc. But again, that’s not what Neuro-Semantics is.