Interesting NLP story.
One of the meditative processes I've found very valuable was a
technique which actually projects habitual subtle and super-subtle
thoughts into three dimensional space, to the extent that, sans
external testing cues, you could not tell it from from waking
reality. If you could jump outside of the thought-loops that caused
the "reality" to manifest, you could be free of it and the thought
patterns would "self liberate". However, if you accepted them as
real, you would be stuck there for an indeterminate amount of time.
One of the warnings of undergoing this type of retreat was that if
you could not rest the mind in it's natural state, you could
potentially become trapped in such states for days, weeks or years.
The interesting thing was, if you fell for some juicy thought-loop
and then eventually came out of it, you could always examine your
mind and it would present the source of the pattern. It was often
some subtle belief you were 'running in your mind-RAM' unconsciously.
Once recognition dawned though, you were free.
On Jun 12, 2007, at 10:19 AM, curtisdeltablues wrote:
Thanks for posting this Vaj.
One interesting area of Neuro linguistic Programming was something
they call "sub-modalities". These are all the internal distinctions
we make to tell one type of thought or memory from another. We code
thoughts with internal visual cues like image qualities,
brightness,size, color vividness and our internal dialog with
qualities like volume, tone and speed. These qualities can be
manipulated once you isolate them. We did an exercise on my
practitioner's training where we tried to uncover what internal cues
we use to tell a real memory from a made-up story. The purpose was to
build some convincing histories of success for ourselves when we were
doing something new to build confidence. It was pretty obvious what
internal qualities we used to internally code true experiences from
fiction. We attempted to make the made up story as much like the true
ones as we could. I got to the point where I could feel emotional
changes from the false memories once I had altered them like the real
ones. It never got confusing which was real, probably because there
were other cues I was missing, but it served the purpose of shifting
emotional states.
One interesting exercise we did with sub modalities was to locate
negative subconscious internal tapes that we were running without
knowing it. The usual stuff like "You aren't good at..." or "You
never (always)..." Often times, when analyzed, it would turn out to
be in the voice of a loved one who had started the self-doubt process
and then it ran by itself below conscious attention. We would then
take the phrase and use a sped-up cartoon voice and run it that way
until the phrase would lose all of its emotional charge.
I am doubtful about a lot of claims in NLP for miraculous cures
quickly, but I did find these insights very useful. Now I am pretty
conscious of the specific qualities of internal dialog I have with
myself and the kind of pictures I am using that motivate my emotions.
It has been helpful for me.
We also studied trance induction ala Milton Erickson. That was the
beginning of my shift in my POV on what I was experiencing in
meditation and what my subjective experiences meant.
Interesting article!
