With Meta-Stating, You Have A Meta-Scape

~By Dr.L.Michael Hall and Shawn Dwyer~

The Meta-Stating Process

As you know, the actual process of meta-stating is very simple which is why everyone does it and almost everyone does it unconsciously. All you have to do is to start with a state, say learning, and then think about that state, you like it or you don’t, you find it exciting or boring, you want to do more of it or less. Whatever your second thought is, it comes with some feelings (emotions) and what you have done is to set a frame about that experience.

____ Joyful ____ _____ Boring ____
/ \ / \
Learning Learning

The Meta-Stating of Human Consciousness

When you do that, you do something very complex, something unique to human consciousness. You are thinking about something simultaneously at multiple levels. At the primary level you are seeing, hearing, and experiencing some event or action or activity (“learning”) and yet at a higher level of consciousness, you are having thoughts-and-feelings about it. In doing that you have begun to create your own unique mind-scape, a mental system composed of thoughts and feelings that frame your understandings and beliefs about the subjective experience called “learning.”

Self–Reflexive Consciousness

Nor do you stop at one level. We can invite you to go upward in the levels of your mind by simply asking, “What do you think about the joy of learning?” And to your answer we can ask it again, “What do you think about that?” Animals cannot process information like this. But you can. It is uniquely human. The technical language for this is self-reflexive consciousness. This is your power to think recursively and to create multiple layers of levels (logical levels). And when you do this, you enter into the Semantic Realm of your own unique Meaning Making.

Once you do this, it is no longer adequate to ask a person, “So what do you think of this project?” Or house, plan, proposal, strategy, etc.? For the human experience, nothing is that simple. And why not? Because whatever a person answers, that is just the first level of thought. Above and beyond that first thought is a second one, a third one, a fourth one, etc. And it is just not a “thought” in the intellectual sense. No! It is a dynamic thought full of emotion, experience, and somatic commitments—a state.

The Big Misunderstanding

A big misunderstanding of Meta-States is that it is just academic or intellectual. Wrong! It’s wrong because every state is dynamic—it is alive, moving, fluid and it is comprise of emotions and somatic commitments. To understand this, let’s start with something simple like the learning state. When you are in a learning state, what is occurring? Thoughts like “I wonder what I will discover…?” Emotions like “it’s exciting to discover, I feel curious and can’t wait…” Somatic commitments such as eyes open, mind alert, body moderately tense, body oriented to the teacher or subject, etc. A state involves a whole constellation of forces and activities. It is not just one facet of consciousness, but all facets. And a state involves an energy field comprised most essentially of your metabolism, as well as other neurological and mental and emotional forces.

And because of that, you can anchor a state with a touch, sound, sight, or word and in that way “fire” it off so that a person re-accesses the state. A song can trigger you to go into a particular state, as can a word, or an image. States are dynamic and fluid constellations of energies that come together to form a particular experience.

Meta-Scape

So imagine the power, the energy, the collisions, the explosions, etc. that occur when you apply one state to another state! Bring joy to learning and joy becomes the frame of learning, the category in which learning is classified, and the energies that start modifying the quality of learning. That’s what happens when you are meta-stating. Bring intense curiosity to your openness. Bring playful silliness to your experimenting. Whatever state you bring to another state, you are building up a meta-scape— a layered system of understandings, beliefs, references, memories, imaginations, decisions, etc. And it is inside that system that you live!

After that, if I want to understand you, I need to understand the meta-scape you live in. NLP calls this your “model of the world.” Korzybski described it as your “map” of the territory. At The Coaching Centre we call it your “matrix” of frames in the Matrix Model. It is your inside world that you live from and so you inevitably will be expressing it.

Learn the art of Meta-Stating at The Coaching Centre today!