Both in yours and my head, there is constantly so much going on that it might be difficult to keep up. When trying to decipher the inner workings of our heads, we naturally wonder, “What am I thinking?” Is this some sort of crazy logic or what?” When this sensation first started, I wondered, “What is this and where did it come from?” These are just a few examples of the inquiries we make to better comprehend who we are.
Yet understanding your own mind is not the easiest thing to understand. With the large number of factors involved, it’s often hard to know precisely what you are feeling or thinking or how to interpret what you are experiencing. To figure that out, you need some landmarks of the mind—landmarks that can help define the inner landscape of your mind. These are not brain anatomy landmarks. Generally knowing about brain anatomy tells you very, very little about what you are thinking, or why, or what effect it will have. Knowing the mind requires a whole different set of landmarks.
When you engage your self-reflective consciousness, you enter this area of your mind. This is the location implied by the phrase “go inside.” To know this enables us to sort out and separate the different processes of the mind-body system. And while I’m using a solid and stable metaphor (landmark) it is actually a dynamic landscape, not of solid ‘things,’ but of dynamic processes which are always moving and changing. Learning to see this landscape in action enables you to see your mind in action—how it does what it does as it creates your inner experiences. And, of course, what happens there then transfers to the outside. That’s why winning the inner game makes winning the outer game a walk in the park. After all, your outer world experiences are functions of your inner world experiences.
Being exposed to this ever-changing environment can help you develop systemic thinking skills. You can now observe the system in operation. And once you’ve done that, you’ll know exactly where to make changes and transformations in the system. What others regard as miraculous or unattainable will become routine and ordinary for you. It will only take just a few minutes, not days or weeks, to get to the bottom of things.
Begin with learning and knowing the landscape features—the ten basic processes (state, stimulus –response, thinking patterns, representations, beliefs, reflexivity funnel, background knowledge, imagination, ecology, and feedback loops). Then learn to recognize them in action, as mind processes something. Once you do that, you’ll begin to see the dynamic functions in real time and be able to intervene in real time.
While I can now do that, I’m not the only one, others in Neuro-Semantics can do it as well, and before long, there will be a great many more who can do that. Now if you know how to see and how to work in the meta place, then whenever you hear even a small slice of a conversation, you will be able to identify where a person is in his or her meta place and how to open it up for them so that they can gain a perspective of the whole. And to do that is actually quite a gift. The following is the beginning of a conversation as an example of opening up a meta place.
“Yes, I’m stressed about this project, but it just comes with the territory, because I need to do my very best.”
| Landmarks | Conversation [Read from the Bottom Up] | Feedback: Questions to Open Up the Meta Place |
| Reaction from back-ground knowledge | “Me? You are blaming me for feeling stress?” | I’m actually assuming that you are responsible for your thinking, believing, and intentions. Because if not you, who? |
| “Well, yes.” | Okay, so I know understand how you are stressing yourself out. | |
| Intention | “Yes, I want to do my very best.” | The first time out? With no build up or development of feedback? [introducing missing pieces.] |
| Belief5 | “No, I mean everyone, shouldn’t everyone do his best?” | So, is that your intention, to do your best? |
| Belief4 | “Well, shouldn’t you do your very best every day?” | Who me? Are you talking about me? |
| Feed-forward | “No, it just sounds weird.” “It sounds funny when you say it like that?” | What’s weird about it? So, you are seeing the humor in? |
| Belief3 fear | “I will be sloppy and careless and unprofessional.” | So, your thinking pattern is that it is either excellence and your best or being sloppy, careless and unprofessional. [Either/pr thinking] |
| Rules | “It means eliminating mistakes, carefully going over things again and again.” | Or what? |
| Belief2 | “That’s what is required for excellence.” | Excellence, the best man what? |
| Belief1 | “I need to do my very best.” | Why? [Thinking pattern: necessity] |
| Primary state | Stress, a project. |
Conclusion
To open up the meta place:
- Identify the landmark in the meta place that the person is indicating.
- Explore that landmark with questions.
- Look for what’s above it, beside it, and below it. Find all of its connections and associations.
- Identify the feedback loops. The person is responding to what? He is responding how? When his responses come back, they come back how?
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Neurons] 2022 Neurons #53 KNOWING THE META LANDSCAPE by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
