What Dr. Michael Hall hinted at in the book, “Meta-Therapy: Psychotherapy in the Meta Place (2023),” he has now described in a much fuller way in the newly published “The Meta Place.” This offers an extension of how the “study of the structure of subjective experience.”
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.” John Milton wrote in old English about the mind in a beautiful way.
What Milton calls the mind’s “own place,” Dr. Michael Hall has explained using the words we use to talk about the mind. So, we know what is in the mind: thoughts, ideas, beliefs, memories, imaginations, plans, choices, and so on. That’s not what’s wrong. Who can see it? We know what’s there. Who can imagine? How do you think about things like thoughts, beliefs, permissions, etc.? And even if you could picture it, what is the connection between these mental landmarks? What are the things that connect them?
These are the beginning questions Dr. Michael Hall has addressed in The Meta Place. Then, following then, there are more questions: Knowing what is there and how those landmarks are related, what can you do with the Meta Place diagrams? How can you use the diagrams in coaching, therapy, modeling, parenting, leading, managing, etc.?
Even though he didn’t know it at the time, what Dr. Michael Hall did in 2002 with the Matrix Model was the first step towards making a picture of the mind. The structure of the Matrix Model started to show us how meaning, purpose, person, powers, relationships, time, and roles work in the mind. From that model, we made a model of stuttering, which led to ways to help people stop stuttering and speak normally. But The Matrix was only the beginning. Now, it is part of The Meta Place, which goes much further.
From: The Back Cover
THE META PLACE
Exploring Your Mind’s Inner Landscape
You live in two worlds—the outside world of sights, sounds, sensations, smells and tastes and the inside world of ideas, thoughts, memories, imaginations, beliefs, etc. The outside world is given; the inside world is what you make of the outside world. What you see, hear, and feel in the outside world—you bring inside and create the world of mind.
It is your meta place, control central of your experiences that governs life from the inside–out. When you learn to master your meta place, to see it, to enter it, to design it, to transform it, you then become the master of your own fate, your experiences, and the quality of your life.
Your meta place is a rich, wondrous, and mysterious world. It is the hidden and invisible world that you live in and that you operate from. Its development is a gift to you—what you fill it with, however, is your gift to yourself. It is what makes you uniquely you. What you do with your capacities is your choice and responsibility. And while you may have had very limited choices as a child growing up, as an adult, you are now free to make it as you will. So as an adventure in being human, make it a great one.
While some people put up a sign, “Closed for business,” and try their best to avoid, deny, and reject their meta place, but in the long run, it does not work. To be human is to have and live from the inner world of your mind and memory. The meta place describes the architecture of that place and this book gives you the keys for how to manage your meta place with grace, elegance, humor, and power.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Neurons] Promotion for the New book—- THE META PLACE by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
