CHAPTER 2

OVERVIEW

 

Are you ready to be excited, even enthralled about where medicine and healing can go if we have the passion and will to undertake a new Odyssey?

Would you like to have access to tools which can go on serving you all your life?

How many of you, like me, have experienced times when we felt held back, or for a time did not know where to turn?

What kind of mixture of factual material, knowledge of method, and creative thinking and collaboration is waiting for us if we succeed in connecting with the best thinkers and problem solvers in the world at the same time that we realize that we are inherently like this ourselves?

How many of us have underestimated ourselves?

Have you realized the genius that lives inside you?

Would you like to?

When?

Could you be inspired by exploring your own thinking and understandings?

Howard Gardiner in his book “Extraordinary Minds”, has given us glimpses into ways in which certain amazing people awakened and developed their own special abilities.

This book is exactly about an invitation to look and reflect, to confer and converse, and to embark and continue in an exploration of all of the dimensions that we are able to plumb in the totality of our lives.

We are truly in life together, and we have unprecedented opportunities to draw upon thousands of years of human history, as well as the present, with such diversity as to awaken human creativity as we move to realise our own potentials.

I spend some of my time in my garden reflecting upon how pleasant it feels to experience the fresh air, sunshine and lovely colours and shapes of nature.

At first vaguely, and by a combination of mental pictures and a vision of a future, I begin to see the shape of paths winding between rose plants and apple trees.

Can I sense what might come to be in this small corner of the earth?

What is ordinary, and what is extraordinary?

What is a vision and who are those who become visionaries?

Supposing this small vision is a glimpse not only of a beautiful garden, but also a metaphor for the growing and fulfilment of our lives!

What strange circumstances resulted in my curiosity and my wish to make thoughts and visions come true?

What language is available to widely express the many forms of these thoughts?

What is a response? What is responsibility? Are these words connected?

What are the many responses that follow initial responses?

What is your response to the words following?

Such are reflections from a position of good health, but if these writings are for those persons who have experienced utter exhaustion of mind, spirit or body, or those who have watched this in someone close to you, do you wonder, really wonder how you can reach the patterns that connect or the differences that make a difference?

My vision, my thoughts, my hopes and even passion reach out to those people who come to see me.

Did you notice the first letters of the key words written above?

Visions awakening grace, thus, watch fruit lead me to bliss.

Each person is unique, and each encounter with self or other happens in a form that has never happened before and will never happen again.

There is no such thing as a standard consultation!

I wish very much for this to be an opportunity for a co-evolution of mutual growth interesting learnings, and the “shock of recognition”, touched with inspiration and awakened enthusiasm.

Are we really discovering how to nurture and protect our bodies as well as enhancing the growth, protection and wondrous improvement of our brains and minds?

To do this we may need to understand the uniqueness of each person, the special contexts and circumstances that surrounded that person as she or he travelled the journey that brought her or him to the present moment.

So let us look at the tools of excellence.

Intrigue, Curiosity, and Neuro-linguistic approaches to achieving excellence.

In any culture, native speakers of their own language bring forth a richness transmitted from their parents and ancestors in particular contexts.

Much of this emerges as lived experience.

Can we direct searches for the ways of understanding explicitly what people do as they think and talk about their lived experiences?

I suggest that we can make these experiences accessible if any of us is interested enough to undertake depth explorations as each person brings forth their version of “reality”

After travelling in partial darkness as to how I brought forth my own world, I became challenged in the late 1970s to deepen my own searches.

In1981, Stephen and Carol Lankton came to Adelaide to present analyses and practices of the patterns of human thinking, speaking and communicating that had been developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder as “Neuro Linguistic Programming”(NLP)

Bandler and Grinder had particular backgrounds that opened them to a daring series of adventures around how each person’s skills had arisen.

Each saw many processes which they describe as” modelling”.

Grinder had developed survival tactics applicable to urban and non-urban environments, which when added to extensive exploration of “linguistics”, gave him access to non-verbal and verbal representations of his own experiences.

Bandler is described as” bold and daring” in inventing and applying psychology to everyday life.

My sense is that Bandler was and is truly entrepreneurial in coming up with ways to facilitate change.

Both were attentive to the life and practises of Milton H Erickson, MD, as a master in evoking changes in the lives of people who came to see him.

They noted the positive attitudes and reframing methods of family therapist, Virginia Satir.

As well they drew upon curious and at times confrontative methods of psychotherapist, Frederick S Perls, noted for his descriptions of “Gestalt Therapy”

Therapist, Jay Haley, had written about Erickson’s amazing daring as a therapist, storyteller and hypnotherapist.

It emerged that Erickson and Haley were in dialogue with epistemologist, scientist and anthropologist, Gregory Bateson, who also had a marriage with anthropologist Margaret Mead.

Tales of other cultures emerge when we visit them or they come to us.

Erickson suggested that doctors need to be familiar with anthropology.

Many of these interesting human beings were inspired by the work of the others and in a climate where Joseph Campbell was elaborating his descriptions of humankind’s myths.

From Santiago in Chile, Humberto Maturana had drawn upon his own life experiences and biological training to try and grasp the nature and functions of cognition, and with Francesco Varela, coined the name “autopoiesis” (meaning “the making of self”)

Their books ”Autopoiesis and Cognition” and “The Tree of Knowledge” carried on from Bateson’s “Mind and Nature”

What richness and diversity was brewing!

Underneath these human mysteries is the matter of “consciousness”.

We know that each of us lives in awareness, but do not yet know how this is so.

It appears to be a property of the complex arrangement of our living nervous system.

How this could emerge as my ability to experience the notion of myself as a conscious being ?

The notion of other human beings being in a similar state, continues to be probed by such contemporary thinkers as David Chalmers, Paul Davies, and Ken Wilber, following in a tradition of many philosophers who have left us records of their attempts to wonder” Who are we?” ” Where did we come from?” and” What kind of universe is this?”, that in time gives rise to consciousness?”

The structure of language can be studied and we can pay particular and detailed attention to ourselves as people who attempt to turn their lived experience into language as part of ever increasing sophistication of communication.

What do people mean with the words, intonations and sentence constructions that they bring forth in every moment.

Many cities like Adelaide have a writer’s week and attendees are entertained as they hear writer’s talking about what happens in the processes of writing.

I honour the process of “reflecting” upon matters and “conversing” to diversify and enrich ideas and meanings.

The “conversing” enhances my “reflecting ‘, and the ‘reflecting ‘ gives rise to the wish for more conversations.

Thus the intelligence and eventually wisdom available to people is found within these processes.

NLP is one method of specific examination of the processes as they appear in human-to-human communications.

How is it that children have such spontaneous curiosity and playful explorations of their worlds?

How is it that a curious child could become to used to a version of thinking such that wonder and delight seem to have disappeared for her or him.

It seems that many people describe life as “boring “or “humdrum”.

This phenomenon is explored in Jostein Gaarder’s book “Sophie’s World”

Gaarder presents letters from a philosopher, who in writing to Sophie, says, ”I hope this is not happening to you Sophie!”, explaining that he does not want Sophie to take the world for granted.

What is it that we take for granted and no longer regard with wonder?

How does this happen, and is there a remedy for it?

Bradford Keeney carries on the work of cybernetic thinkers such as Gregory Bateson in his fascinating book ”Aesthetics of Change”.

Bandler and Grinder called NLP ”The Structure of Magic”, and I like the choice of this name because there is such richness available in our living as to seem magical.

It is my experience that exploring this territory awakened a revelation and revolution in my own beliefs about myself.

It is paradoxical and wonderful to experience” shaking” which lets fall the acquired flotsam and jetsam of ideas which somehow held me back, and at the same time

awakens creative and lateral thinking which takes me forward with inspiration and enthusiasm in my present and future.

Let us then proceed on a journey of creativity and intrigue, filled with thoughtfulness and humour and as we go, let us decipher our own mysteries!

In our lives, we have incorporated an amazing array of information, which we appreciate and apprehend as memory, of things we see, hear, feel, smell and taste.

For these things we have linguistic equivalents, since we live in language along with our sensory experiences.

In this sense, our living memory is that which is conserved in our minds and available to make sense of whatever we come across.

The NLP authors refer to this as “maps” or mind-maps, which we use to find our way through our lives and domains of existence.

They say,” People operate out of their internal maps”

Each person’s maps are created by that person, through sensory experience and the perturbations of the person’s concepts by these experiences.

In this, the person’s unique history brings forth their particular memories and ways of thinking.

Each person’s access to problem solving methods is shaped by that personal history.

Thus Lankton says ”People make the best choices for themselves at any given moment”

In a sense we can’t make choices that are not available to us.

As Gregory Bateson writes, ”In the world of the living, events take their course or courses, because they are restrained from taking other courses”

There are consequences from having too narrow a range of choices!

I have often said,” If you always do what you usually do, you will probably get what you usually get” or asked ”what is not in your life that you wish was, and what is in your life that you wish wasn’t?”

I claim that the picturesque living experiences are a kind of metaphor or series of metaphors.

Metaphor is a description of something represented in language capturing some interesting aspect or likeness as it arises in us as a conscious concept. It can be novel and creative and tends to evoke particular responses from each of us. Writers use metaphors to help us capture the vividness of lived experience, and certainly succeed when a person says, "I liked the book more than I liked the film!"

Stories as an early part of a child’s experience can add to the richness of that child’s life, and a lifetime of storying and story telling leads to literary diversity and enhanced linguistic abilities in individuals.

Of course stories, anecdotes, poems, jokes and songs are not only the stuff of our communication to ourselves and each other, but they give rise to the discourses of every kind of human history, and to the culture within myths, legends and scientific thinking.

We experience the themes, events, challenges, and archetypes, as applicable to our own life events.

As we identify with heroes or antiheroes, we may be inspired, terrified, fascinated or revolted by what people experience, and gain insights about the different contexts in which these happenings occurred.

Thus can our own visions and hopes for our own lives be revisited!

When we use metaphors in what we could call therapy, we need to understand that the explanation or metaphor used to awaken ideas in the person is not the person herself or himself.

Meeting a person at her or his model of the world. (Congruency)

After a certain amount of exposure to the lives of people, each of us can begin to realize how important it is “to meet a person at her or his model of the world”

I believe that without a willingness to explore the models of the world held by each other person, that we face great difficulties in resolving conflicts and operational difficulties.

To create an “open space” in which adequate dialogue can occur requires conscious thinking about what we are hoping to do.

Each participant can maintain invitations to greater understanding, in the setting of respecting each other and treating each other well.

For a company, corporation, local organization, or even a family, the idea of a mission statement can be aired in an “open space” with the notion that each participant is equally valued, welcome and involved in a journey to freedom of expression.

In order to respect messages from people, we need to listen carefully and seek clarity about their messages.

In my estimation, many people are concerned about their own viewpoints and at risk of not adequately appreciating the viewpoints of others.

This is graphically illustrated in Parliament.

Lankton writes” Teach choice, and never attempt to take choice away”

Milton H Erickson could be described as a multiply handicapped man, who became an extraordinary observer of people, a master of linguistics, and a radical entrepreneur of problem solving for people who felt “stuck”.

He deeply believed that “The resources that people need lie in their own personal histories”

When we are as conscious of the importance of people’s talents and resources as we are of “what seem to be their problems”, new openings abound!

We trigger responses in each other, and can progress to do so constructively.

Our description of our lives and worlds can inadvertently emerge as “constrained” or restricted.

Is it possible to reframe life ups and downs as opportunities, and the whole world as a place of abundance?

Is it hyperbole to live as though life is “abundance arising from abundance with abundance remaining?”

How can a tone deaf man with a rare form of colour-blindness, dyslexia, and afflicted by ongoing muscle weakness after poliomyelitis in his early teens regard himself as rich and fortunate, as Erickson experienced himself?

Surely this can only come about when he realizes that other flexibilities are still available, and crucial choices are still available to him or his clients.

This is an invitation to respond to Erickson’s comment,” We all start from a very young age to become increasingly rigid, only we don’t know it”

We may see this in others and overlook it in ourselves.

Lankton’s next principle is “A person can’t not respond”

Since our sensory system picks up what it “pays attention to”, it can’t not respond.

One thing that really matters is “What is the response?”

We may not get to find out what is the response of other, but it is there to ponder!

Whatever is the person’s inner appreciation of that subject can determine what kind of outcome occurs.

It is not unreasonable for a therapist (if there is such a person) to say to the client ”If you think I’m getting it wrong, please be willing to let me know”

At least in part, this reflects the words of Jones, ”Theories of mental health practitioners may sometimes hurt the client”

What about the kind of steps to take?

“If it is hard work, reduce it down”

In solving problems it is useful to reduce them to smaller or more manageable pieces.

Underlying the above ideas let me repeat Korzybski’s words

“The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named”

As well, he writes “Naming is not knowing”

By following the above ideas, you are declaring that you are a gnostic (an explorer of knowing) for which the modern name is epistemologist (a person who studies “how we know what we know”

“Greetings fellow epistemologist!”

In welcoming the possibilities that each human life can be more fulfilling, I will necessarily repeat important things in slightly different ways.

I am recognizing as often as is appropriate, the ways that human beings have created the discourses about lived experience, as well as the creative expressions that give rise to elegant fictions.

I am expressing a kind of love of the stories, anecdotes, poems, songs, musical forms and jokes that come to me.

The appreciation or emotional responses do not necessarily need decoding, but the modellers in describing NLP, recognize the possibility of decoding the elements of sensory experience as they appear and connecting them to the living memory that makes sense of them.

Language has its Sounds (phonics and phonetics)

This can include intonation,

rhythm, tune and melody.

Sequences (syntax)

Meanings (semantics)

Symbols (semiotics) this includes letters as well as symbolic shapes.

Quantity and number and the operations of validation in their use (mathematics)

In this latter territory we appear to encounter some properties of matter, energy and the cosmos. (Laws of chemistry and physics)

For example, glass can never cut diamond and diamond can always cut glass.

We can consider the words as they are said or written (surface structure), and the individual meanings that arise in the mind of any speaker, writer, hearer or reader (deep structure)

Until this way of describing human experience became clear to me, I was in danger of thinking that I knew what ancient writers meant.

Consider the significance of what I have just written in terms of Jewish, Christian and Islamic scriptures.

Should God decide to reveal herself or himself to human beings, those human beings produce a “surface structure” as they speak or write of what they supposed they experienced.

Here “surface structure” simply means the words themselves!

Any one of us may proclaim that meditation or prayer gave us access to God.

In my description this is a kind of “deep structure”

In the writings of Ken Wilber, we discover that he needed “Four quadrants” and “multi-levels” to attempt to cover what is possible for us in every form of our consciousness.

In our lives we continue to

DRAW DISTINCTIONS,

PLAY WITH CONCEPTS AND METAPHORS,

MAKE CONNECTIONS LINEALLY AND WITH MULTIPLE PARTICIPATING ELEMENTS,

DESCRIBE CATEGORIES AND CLASSIFICATIONS,

DANCE WITH PATTERNS, PARTICULARLY APPRECIATING CYBERNETICS WITH FEEDBACK AND FEEDFORWARD REGULATIONS,

EXPLORE THE DIMENSIONS OF LANGUAGE WHICH GOES META TO ITSELF, AND ELABORATES ITS OWN DOMAINS OF OPERATION

RECOGNIZE THE INEVITABLITY OF EVOLUTION, SO THAT WE CANNOT AVOID STAGES IN OUR LIVES

WONDER ABOUT THE CREATIVE ADVANCES INTO NOVELTY.

In my field of medicine I pay much attention to the probability that anything I have learned is probably only a small part of the subject addressed.

It is as though I have glimpsed one part of something more elegant and complex than I could initially grasp.

In our lives we can be excited and curious about “how we know what we know” and how we can draw upon “ways of knowing” that have intrigued others.

In my life as a medical thinker and physician, I have been intrigued by the accident or “happenstance” of any discovery, and the later excitement when it turns out that the discovery has other elements and applications.

Carl Sagan’s television series “Cosmos” inspired me, and his book of that series and his book “The Demon Haunted World “ is valuable and helpful.

A thinker such as Paul Davies as physicist and philosopher wonders if we keep on discovering something like “principles of the physical cosmos” and in molecular biology I am often amazed by these seeming synchronicities.

So powerful is my intrigue, that I keep looking at the medical literature using “Medline”(entrez-pubmed) using different key words to extend the success rate in finding connections.

Now all of this is self-evident, but after I read Gregory Bateson’s “Mind and Nature” I began to understand that re-reading basic statements and reflecting upon them is somehow both powerful and enlightening.

If any of us can say ”So that is how I do it”, we have probably moved from a literalist or fundamentalist position (about anything) to wonderment about our own processes and a movement to overthrow our own rigidities.

When we put down a thought it is immediately available for consideration.

If written and shown to others, they too may have openings and opportunities.

Dairies such as those of Samuel Pepys and Anais Nin reveal amazing details of their lives and times, and the contexts in which they lived.

I was captivated by Claire Tomalin talking about her preparations and intrigue when writing about Pepys.

She was struck by Pepys’ willingness to record every detail even when he might be judged for his many flaws and personal dilemmas.

Mary Wollstonecraft wrote her own novels and descriptions, making it possible for Claire Tomalin to capture much of Mary’s story in “The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft”, and later Lyndall Gordon has written about Mary in ”Vindication, A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft”

What passion and warmth are available in these women exploring Mary’ naive and honest stories!

So too can Jane Austen’s life be set alongside her novels. See ”Jane Austin, a life” Claire Tomalin, 1997

A goal is to invite ourselves to be unafraid.

We are challenged by the words of Alexander Pope’s poetic lines

“Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,

A being darkly wise and rudely great:

With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side

With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,

He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;

In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast,

In doubt his mind or body to prefer;

Born but to die, and reasoning but to err.”

Can we respond with optimism at the same time as we reflect in a thoughtful kind of scepticism?

We can decide to draw flow charts, and diagrams, daring to fill in more areas, noting any gaps and seeing them as cues to search further.

The artist portrays colour, form and diverse patterns to reach our vision and aesthetic responses, while composers bring forth harmony, melody and touch the ears of our souls (or jar them!)

Let us face life with enthusiasm and wonder as we dare to believe that we are in the process of making a world fit for the potential good that protects, saves, invents and co-creates.

Yet” what is goodness?”

As far back as the recorded beginnings of Greek Philosophy, we find Plato asking this question.

Every one of us has it in us to be glad and to wish well for others, and ourselves and we can turn the wish into reality by our actions.

As we do this each of us has the possibility of wondering, “what constitutes excellence?”

The authors of NLP writings claim to access excellence.

A challenge is to awaken the territory of ethics in everything we do in our living and in our capacity to touch ”beingness”

Is it really possible to reach higher and more loving states?

If we could do this we need to verify with others that we can agree about certain ethical matters that really work for the good of all.

Is it possible that one day we will be able to integrate all our levels and all our concepts?

What is integral consciousness and integral living?

Ken Wilber is an American philosopher who has looked in such depth and care at the history of human emergence as to make the most coherent and potentially integrative framework for utter fullness of our lives.

I, like Ken Wilber, can see more broadly how our modern conflictual dilemmas fit in the evolution that never ceases.

Ken has dared to set himself and colleagues (and through them, all of us to explore the integral possibilities.

I will invite you many times to join in this exploration.

You might like to look at Ken Wilber’s website!

http://www.IntegralNaked.org and

http://www.shambala.com