The
B.S. Belief Change Pattern
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How to Change
a Die-in-the-Wool Fundamentalist
An Old Belief Change Pattern
in a Biblical Text
"I'll have
none of that crap anymore! It's all dung!"
Belief #4
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
Some
people do not merely have beliefs about certain things, they
go further -- to a higher logical level. They believe
in their beliefs. Yet (as Korzybski pointed
out) when you hold a second-order abstraction of "conviction
of conviction" this typically causes a person to end
up thinking-feeling, talking, and acting like a fanatic!
Imagine trying to change the
rigid, dogmatic, and legalistically driving belief systems
of a Pharisee! A tough order. Fundamentalists (whether in
religion, politics, education, etc.) typically do not change
very easy.
So when I stumbled on to the
story of one Pharisee and how his old fanatical beliefs
completely and absolutely changed, I sat up and took note.
I came across this one linguistically. A certain phrase in
the old text caught my eye. Then, because Dr. Bobby Bodenhamer
and I had just finished a text on the basic NLP model for
Christian counselors, pastors, and thinkers (Patterns For
Renewing the Mind*1), we decided to put this
into our work -- in spite of the four-letter word that we
found in the biblical text (!).
Reason for
Confidence
The story begins with Saul
of Tarsus (now "Paul") looking back on how he shifted
his beliefs as a true-blue Pharisee, totally fundamentalistic,
"right," and proud of his rightness!
"We are the true circumcision...
who put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have
reason for confidence in the flesh also. If any other man
thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh,
I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people
of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews..."
(Philippians 3:2-6).
The phrase, "reason for
confidence," first caught my attention. It cued me to
the presence of a meta-state. Confidence obviously
refers to the primary state. Saul the Pharisee had felt totally
confident in his beliefs and lifestyle.
What do you feel confidence
about? Access that state of confidence so that you
re-experience it fully ... and as you do, allow yourself to
notice where your mind goes and what it does when you think
about your "reasons for confidence."
In other words, if someone
asked you, "Why do you believe that?' Or, 'Why
do you have confidence in that?" the thoughts and feelings
that you would then experience specifies your reasons.
Then as you think about those "reasons," they
become your thoughts-and-feelings at a higher logical level.
As you answer the question, "And how do you feel about
those reasons?" you move up a level.
In this text, Paul uses as
his "reasons" for confidence facts about his external
situation. His thoughts-emotions went to those things
outside of himself at the primary level, namely, his past
history as a Pharisee, his Jewish racial status, his parents
and heritage in that culture, his religious training, his
role as persecutor of Christians, etc. These comprised his
"reasons for confidence." And the more he
thought about all these "reasons," the stronger
his confidence grew.
Do the same. Think about your
"reasons for confidence" regarding whatever area
your state of confidence relates to .. now think about
those reasons some more... and now repeat this process ...
Does it not amplify your confidence?
Now think about something that
you know about yourself, and do this thinking with
confidence. Think about something that you like, and
toward which you can say, "Yes, that describes me!"
For instance, you may definitely know yourself as a kind person.
You have confidence about that. And you have "reasons
for that confidence," do you not?
As you do, now notice how
you represent this durable knowledge. Describe
where you put your pictures and sounds, the quality of your
visual images and sounds, the kind of words you use, your
"confident" tone of voice, etc. We'll call this
your durable self representation. [By the way, you
have just meta-stated your "self" and this
"knowledge of self" with confidence. How
did that feel?
The B.S. Belief Change
Pattern
"But whatever gain I
had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I
count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered
the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order
that I may gain Christ..." (Phil. 3:7-8).
For a thought experiment, think
about something that you confidently believe about
yourself, but which you wish you didn't. For instance,
"I know that I blow up and say ugly things when I get
stressed." "I know that I cave in and feel self-pity
when things don't go my way." Pick a confidence you have
(you feel confident that you think, feel, or do something
that limits you in some way!). Next, notice all the "reasons
for confidence" that come to you (memories, statements
of others, etc.) In other words, how do you support
that belief?
Okay, break state. For the
next step, think of something that you know about yourself
... kind of... You think of yourself as X, but then
again you have doubts, questions, you don't feel sure... Where
do you put that picture or sound? What tone of voice? How
do you know you doubt it?
Would you like to blow that
old confidence, and all your reasons, out of the water?
Would you like it to shatter so much that it no longer operates
as a self-fulfilling prophecy inside you? Then try this Pauline
B.S. Belief Change Pattern.
1) Access the primary
level confidence (PS).
What do you have confidence in that limits you? What do
you represent this limiting confidence in VAK terms?
2) Access a meta-state
of validation of that confidence. Next
move your thoughts-feelings to the next higher level up
by thinking about all of your "reasons for confidence."
What ideas, concepts, representations of experiences support
your belief? How do you confirm and validate these thoughts?
3) Access a discounting
state about the "reasons" state.
Move to the next higher level as you say to yourself, "All
of those reasons amount to nothing! Nothing at all!"
Just say it. You don't have to believe it at this point,
just say it congruently and firmly. Say, "It all amount
to mental garbage!" See it as garbage... as junk...
as "dung."
This term "dung"
in the biblical passage actually uses a pretty coarse representation
-- one with which we can use to really gross ourselves out.
After all, it pictures the meta-level "reasons"
and primary state representations, as human waste, "refuse,"
or "dung" (as the old King James Version puts it),
in other words, shit!*2
So what happens when you outframe
your old Ideas and confirmations of those ideas as "refuse?"
What happens when you "count it as dung"
(to use the biblical phrase)? Go meta and see. From that leverage
point, say and see all of the lower level states and representations
as human waste. How does that effect that old confidence?
Doesn't it blow it out of the water? Or, to continue to run
with this coarse metaphor, doesn't it just flush it all
down the toilet?! Now.
With this experience, now read
again Paul's words in the previous text about counting all
of that "confidence in the flesh" (e.g. in fulfilling
the Jewish law) and having earned righteousness) as "counting
it as loss" ... "counting it as dung."
When you so outframe the lower states in that way --
they will begin to deframe, de-construct, and shatter to pieces.
They can't cohere when you so frame them.
Figure 1:
Meta-Meta-State |
"It's
all B.S.!" -- State of Discounting, Treating
as "Dung" or shit the Lower Concepts/States |
@
Meta-Level |
Reasons
for believing in the Old Idea. Explanations, Supporting
Evidence for Validating, confirming the Idea. |
@
Primary
State |
The
Old Idea -- VAK Representations |
Note:
In the above figure, each block represents a logical
level... The higher level always modulates (controls)
the lower level.
The Next Step
4) Build up new, positive,
and more useful constructs. Now that we have taken our old
"confidences" and outframe them by going meta
and framing them with attributions of "loss,"
we have now created a space wherein we can create a new
structure. We can now fill that space in with new constructs.
In Paul's particular case, he did this:
"...and be found in
him, not having my own righteousness, based on law, but
that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness
from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and
the power of his resurrection..." (Phil. 3:9-11).
Paul replaced his old beliefs
in his own righteousness with the belief that God gives
the gift of righteousness via his trust in Christ. But
before he could shift to that idea and make it a solid part
of his thinking, he had to get rid of the old belief. He
had to de-construct the idea, "I get my religion the
old fashion way; I earn it!" Here we see him doing
that by reframing it as a pile of manure! That became the
smell of legalism for him. Doesn't that shed a new smell
on that subject? Would that wipe-out the Pharisee in you?
5) Finally, access a state
of confidence in your new frame-of-reference. Develop
a full representation of confidence along with all of your
"reasons for confidence." Having done that, next
move to a higher logic level above those "reasons"
and think of them (esteem them) as "of surpassing
worth." What does that do for you? What
meta-level state does that induce in you?
Building Neuro-Semantic
States
As we "go meta" and
move above whatever state of mind and emotion we have accessed
at the primary level -- we not only access a higher state
of consciousness, but we also thereby construct a meta-level
semantic state. What mechanism explains this process?
In the context of this biblical
example, Paul used the phrase, "reason for confidence."
Now while the sensory-based referents of his "reasons"
existed "out there" in the world -- the nominalization
"reasons" refers to a mental construct, hence a
semantic state.
Similarly when you think about
your reasons for a belief, a conviction, or an understanding
--you thereby access a semantic state, or a belief state.
This provides insight into how we use experiences (events,
interactions, relationships, conversations, etc.) to build
"beliefs." We represent such as "evidence"
and "support" for our ideas. This endows them with
"reality" -- neuro-semantic reality (it becomes
"real" inside our nervous system)!
Paul first represented his
"facts" of race, religion, heritage, etc. (primary
level of processing). Then he used them as "reasons."
In other words, he treated them as the basis of his self-definition,
purpose, spirituality, etc.
This means how we think, conceptually,
about the things in our external world -- totally determines
the furniture, geography, and content of our internal world.
"As we think in our heart--so we are." Thus as we
think and reason, and count or discount, as we attribute
significance to this or that, or attribute the lack of
significance to something else -- as we so think, so we populate
our inner world of consciousness.
"Reasons" do
not exist "out there" in the world. "Reasons"
describe our internal "reasoning" in how we use
our cognizing, valuing, believing, and processing. It speaks
about what we say "counts." As long as Paul said
that all of those "reasons" really counted -- he
lived, thought, felt, and acted like a Pharisee! He could
do none other.
When he changed the way he
counted things (attributed meanings), his whole life
changed. When he came to say, "Whatever gain I had, I
counted as loss for the sake of Christ" (Phil.
3:7), he became transformed in a new and wonderful way. When
he said, "Indeed I count everything as loss because
of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus the Lord"
(3:8), he solidified that new way of attributing meaning.
Notice the two-fold action
of his mind: on the negative side he first had to de-construct
the old --" I count as loss," "I count
them as dung." He said, "Baloney!" to
it all. He said, "Enough, I now flush it down the toilet!"
Then he constructed a bright and gloriously new image (the
"surpassing worth" of knowing Christ). What a powerful
propulsion system of values that moved him away from Pharisaism.
When you treat something as B.S. (to use our expression) and
something else as Pure Gold -- you propel yourself away from
one and toward the other.
Understanding this process,
and seeing how Paul utilize it, now enables us to shift our
consciousness to re-"count" our attribution
of meanings. We can simply stop giving positive or
significant meanings to anything and everything we want to
de-energize in our mind-and-emotions, and we can start
giving the highest and most celebrative meanings to everything
we want to energize as an attractor.
Conclusion
Treating anything as B.S. not
only deframes those experiences and ideas, it outframes
them from a discounting meta-position. This semantic process
(e.g. "treating something like dung") enables us
to alter neuro-linguistic reality. Of course, taken to extreme
it creates the "Bevis and Butthead" syndrome wherein
you can reject, mock, and deframe anything. Again, we have
another illustration that the structure of this subjective
experience doesn't represent a "bad" thing -- but
a skill that we can contextual and then use when appropriate.
References:
1. Patterns For Renewing
the Mind: Using NLP for Christian Counseling (1997), by
Bob Bodenhamer and Michael Hall, soon to be published by Anglo-American
Books, Wales.
2. Our modern sanitized twentieth
century consciousness tends to avoid such words as "refuse"
and "dung" or "shit." We label them as
four-letters words and avoid them as if they have inherent
badness. Yet words only function as symbols of referents.
Actually, such words occur in some very surprising places
in the Bible. In addition to the Philippians 3:8, we have
these: "Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread
dung upon your faces, the dung of your offerings..."
(Malachi 2:3). And Isaiah's judgment on Moab involved becoming
"trodden down in a dung-pit" "And he will spread
out his hands in the midst of it as a swimmer spreads his
hands out to swim..." (Isaiah 25:10-12)
Note: Permission
granted to copy this brochure so long as the reproduction
represents all the information contained herein including
the authors name and address.
(c)1998 by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. All
rights reserved.
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