Semantic Restructuring is the pursuit of enlightenment, enlivenment, empowerment through the creative re-arranging of the building blocks of meaning. For a better description, Start Here.
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Bateson, books, cogling, context, CPB, embodiment, framing, I Ching, paradox, perception influence, prisdem, semantic punctuation, sensation, techniques, unconscious
A pal sends me a smart-alecky link to an article disclaiming the "Don't think of blue," schtick. The irony, of course, is that the disclaiming gent is using many of the language patterns first codified in Grinder and Bandler's "The Structure of Magic, Vol. I," and "The Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton H. Erickson, Vol. 1" while inveighing against "NLP and other communication modalities that claim to know how our brains work." Sadly, few NLP adherents or detractors are the slightest bit familiar with this material.
The problem with the aforementioned disclaiming stems from a conflation of ideas. The relevant statement about negations, generally accepted in cognitive science, is that negations *only* exist in language, rather than direct or primary sensation, not that "your mind cannot proccess a negative command". The paradigmatic example is, "How would you draw 'The cat did not chase the rat'?" To draw, to depict visually, to recreate in the same channel sensory inputs similar to the ones to which the sentence might refer, requries the creation of positive information. The eyes see what they see. The skin feels what it feels. The skin does not feel what it does not feel and the eyes do not see what they do not see. Language lets us refer to "other-than-current direct sensation." One model I'm currently toying with is that the primary thing about language is the many ways it lets one move from direct, linear cause and effect, stimulus and response, and creates an ever widening gap from such a linear, single-input-single-ouput system.
Imagine a see-saw, a teeter-totter, a lever and fulcrum. Binary. One end goes up, one end goes down. Now imagine it looks the same but what makes the north end go up is no longer the immediate position of the south end but some indeterminite, indeterminable set of linkages. The reality of language is infinitely more complex. Our model still only looks at one "north end" (result, effect, etc.) but in reality effects are as multitudinous as causes. But even this adjusted model is infinitely less rich than reality, in which each cause is an effect and each effect is a cause.
True, that's not a particularly fruitful way to go about thinking about things. There's no way to get one's teeth in it. But that doesn't make it less valid, less isomorphic to the way things are. Does a quark chasing physicist try to add up the net results of sub-nuclear forces when asking that pretty blonde out on a date? Of course not. For better or worse we are creatures of model, a model constrained by our sensory aparata and our ability to maniuplate the relationships between the inputs of those sensory apparata. We are alway responding to sensory experience, we just don't always know it. The tone of the teacher's voice as much as the words they say can lead us to seek solace in the scene outside the window, or can transport us through time to great moments in history or just boredom-bomb us into daydreaming...all of which are comprised of sensory inputs related to the immediate environment, like the ends of that teeter-totter, through some indeterminite, indeterminable set of linkages.
Once upon a time there was a man who sought wisdom, knowledge, the power to do good in the world. He climbed a high mountain to find the temple-cave of a great master, begged admittance as a disciple, and was eventually accepted as the master's pupil. The master demonstrated amazing powers: levitation, healing, telepathy, covering with spirits of the departed, and always a compassionate radiatiant being at peace with all.
The years passed, and the student spent many of them sweeping the cave, caring for the offerings brought by pilgrims, and, slowly, patiently learning the masters wisdom, learning to create the miracles the master created, and most importantly, learning to be always in and always radiate compassionate peace with all.
The time came at least, after twice ten-years, as the master made ready to leave this plane of being, for the student to go back to the world and share his learnings. "You have learned well, suffered hardship with great patience, and your peace and compassion can be shaken by now earthly event. So go now into the world, with my blessing, do the work you were brought here to do, with this one warning in mind: All these things you have learned are your gifts, your possessions by divine right of study and knowledge and dedication, but they will only work, you will only be able to manifest these blessing in your world and for those around you so long as you . . .
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