Experiences can occur at various levels of the mind. The most obvious, and even undeniable experiences, occur at the primary level of the empirical senses. Here you and I see, hear, feel, smell, and taste things. And as we do, these are the components of our primary states of mind and emotion. These are our primary experiences and from these, we build up all of our higher-level experiences.
Primary Experiences
Primary experiences are things, processes, people, places, and other things that you encounter when you interact with the outside world. And if there’s one thing that life is, it’s a mix of wild and wonderful as well as ugly and painful things. Primary experiences answer the questions— What happened to you at school? At home? With your friends? When you study? When you talk? When you run and play? When you create?
Meta-Experiences
First, there is what happens to you. But what happens to you doesn’t “mean” anything by itself. As the person who gives things meaning, it’s up to you to figure out what’s going on. And then the experience you have in your mind-body-emotion system is based on how you interpreted what happened. We are now at the first level of a meta-experience. Your own unique meta-experience is how you make sense of the information you get and the things that happen in your life.
And it’s amazing how you take it to a higher level. You figure out what it means by adding thoughts, feelings, memories, references, ideas, decisions, etc. to it. As you do this, you make a matrix of meanings that is made up of many different parts of the meta place you live in. I say “amazingly” because most of your meta-layering of meanings and interpretations happens without you being aware of it. Outside, that is, until you notice it and become mindful, which is, of course, what Neuro-Semantics is all about. We do this so that you can be in charge of how you make sense of your experiences and, by extension, your meta-experiences.
It is easy and natural to ask you “what happened to you?” and get an answer about your experiences. It’s not easy or natural to ask about your meta-experiences and get answers about them. Well, it makes sense because you have the ability to do it. You have a self-reflective consciousness that lets you look at your thoughts, feelings, and the things that happen to you. But without training, meta-learning, and meta-thinking, you won’t have much access to your neuro-linguistic system’s inner world.
Meta-Functions
To learn to use your self-reflexive consciousness effectively to empower your capacities and enable you to truly take charge of your life, you have to learn to use your meta-functions. These include meta-thinking—thinking about your thinking so that you can quality control your thinking and do clear and precise critical thinking. It includes meta-learning—learning about learning, how you learn, what’s the best way to learn, the blocks and deficiencies of learning so that you can avoid them, etc. It includes meta-reading and meta-writing—learning how words work, how to read effectively and how to write so that you truly take charge of the process of transferring ideas to paper or screen. It includes meta-communicating—communicating about your words, what you are doing with them, how you are using them, their neuro-linguistic effects inside your body and on others, etc.
Conclusion
Meta-experiences shape your life, your skills, your emotions, your health and fitness, your career, your relationships, etc. What’s in your meta place, the highest part of your mind, is the most important thing in your life. It’s not your parents, your environment, your genes, or your luck or lack of luck that shape your inner life. It’s how you think about yourself.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Neurons] FW: 2023 Neurons #11 INTRODUCING META-EXPERIENCES by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
