5th
Position to the Lord
Bob
Bodenhamer, D.Min.
John
the Revelator had reached his twilight years. He had
served his Lord faithfully. What was his reward? He found
himself exiled on the Island of Patmos as a slave to Rome.
Patmos is a small (about sixteen square miles) rocky island
in the Aegean Sea some forty miles west-southwest of Miletus.
It served as a penal settlement to which Roman authorities
sent offenders. Apparently the Roman authorities did not appreciate
John's preaching and exiled him an an attempt to arrest the
growth of the early Church. Even though quite elderly
by now, John may have found himself working in the rock quarries
of the island. In any case, it wasn't the best of situations
for an elderly gentleman. But, while on that Island,
John received a revelation and the book of Revelation records
that vision.
As
a NLPer, I asked myself the question, how did John mentally
and spiritually survive such drastic conditions? I have
asked myself this same question of the Apostle Paul who while
in prison said, " I know what it is to be in need, and
I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret
of being content in any and every situation, whether well
fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want."
(Philippians 4:11).
How did Paul find such contentment while in prison? Of course,
the "frames" he set around himself helped immensely.
Consider the "frame" that he wrapped himself around
as he expressed it in Philippians 3:7-11:
"But
whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake
of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared
to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,
for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish,
that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a
righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that
which is through faith in Christ the righteousness
that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ
and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of
sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the
dead."
Any Christian
that wraps his or her life around such a higher-level frame
(meta-level) creates the necessary thought-feelings to survive
most hardships.
But can we find more
concerning the giants of faith in the Scriptures? I have
found that not only can we find more but NLP gives us the
"tools" to understand how to replicate the "structure"
of their spirituality within the framework of our own minds.
Maybe 2 Corinthians 12:2 gives us a suggestion: "I
know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up
to the third heaven." How did Paul in the flesh experience
the "third heaven?" Well how did Paul get to the
third heaven? Does NLP provide some secrets for us to
understand the "how to" of Scripture? Yes, most
definitely it does and nine years of teaching NLP and doing
therapy has proven beyond a shadow of doubt in my mind that
NLP offers the Christian many "how to's" in replicating
the experiences of men like the Apostle Paul and John.
In
our User's Manual for the Brain: The Complete Manual for
Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner Certification
Michael and I discuss the extremely useful NLP Perceptual
Position's Model. This model gives us some major clues in
replicating Paul and John's experiences as well as other giants
of the faith.
Perceptual
Positions
The realization
that we humans operate from three basics ways of looking at
experience offers tremendous potential in state control and
in the enhancing of our communication. In NLP we refer to
these ways as being the first, second and third perceptual
positions. When you associate into your own body, you live
in first position.
This permits you to look at the world from your own viewpoint.
In the first position, you do not take into account anyone
else's position. You simply think, "How does this conversation
or communication affect me?"
Second
position means you walk in the other person's shoes. You
take into consideration how a communication or event would
look, feel and sound from another person's point of view.
In the second position, you imagine yourself entering the
other person's body. In this position you imagine looking
at yourself through their eyes. What do you look like, sound
like and what feelings do you get from the other person's
viewpoint of you? In the second position you develop the ability
in experiencing empathy. This position gives much flexibility
when involved in conflict with someone. From the second position
you can appreciate how they feel about your conversation and
behavior. Build rapport before going second position. And,
by going second position, notice how the rapport deepens.
Second position offers an extremely valuable model in deepening
rapport.
Third
position offers a way of dissociating from the entire
event or conversation. In the third position you become an
independent observer. Third position allows us to operate
from the position of objectivity. Ask yourself, "How
would this conversation or event look to someone totally uninvolved?"
Imagine yourself being out of your body and off to the side
of the conversation between you and the other person. You
can see both yourself and the other person.
Recent NLP literature offers
two additional Perceptual Positions to the first three. We
give them here:
The
Fourth Perceptual Position
Dilts (1997)
specified the Fourth Perceptual Position in his Visionary Leadership Skills manual. He defined the Fourth Position
as We --from
the perspective of the system. In this position, we have associated
in the perspective of the whole system. To take fourth
position, step aside and adopt the perspective of the whole
system so that you can there consider what would contribute
to the best interest of the system. A linguistic format for
this position goes: If we consider our common goals
The
Fifth Perceptual Position
Atkinson (1997)
in an unpublished manuscript entitled Five Central Ideas
suggests another perceptual position--an
universal perceptual position. This results from applying
the universal quantifiers (all, always) to our perspective.
Doing so springboards us to the valuable idea of a universal
perceptual position. (p. 24). This provides the widest
and largest level perspective of all.
By
taking this meta-position to everything, we can then learn
to take on multiple perceptual positions and even change rapidly
between them. Doing so increases our flexibility of consciousness
so that we dont get stuck in any one position.
This
may involve over-viewing through time--seeing
things as they progress through and over time. None
of these positions offer a superior position to the other.
Each position has equal importance. The wise communicator
knows how to move at will from one position to the other.
I
have found as have members of my church, my students and my
clients, that this "Fifth Perceptual Position" provides
a clue as to how we can access and activate the power of God
in our life as we deal with the challenges of life. In Revelation
4:1 we read, "After this I looked, and there before me
was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first
heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, 'Come up here, and
I will show you what must take place after this.'" Note
the Lord's invitation: "Come up here, and
I will show you what must take place after this." Well,
from our knowledge of NLP, we know how to do that. We just
simply dissociate and go up and be with the Lord to the "fifth
position."
In the fifth perceptual position we take a meta-position to
the entire universe. The Christian can go there but by going
to the Creator God of the universe and position ourselves
with him this in turn "activates" all the thought-feelings
of our higher level beliefs and values. And, in my belief
system, we in fact give the Holy Spirit permission to work
in our lives as we have dissociated out of our feelings that
tend to confuse our decision making.
A
few years ago my small group at church went through the excellent
Southern Baptist Convention discipleship program called Experiencing
God by Henry Blackerby. In one of the video's, Henry
explained how he survived emotionally when his daughter
received a cancer diagnoses. On the blackboard, Henry drew
a picture of him being down here and the Lord being above
him. He said he "went up" and joined the Lord and
looked down at himself and his situation from the Lord's perspective
(the fifth perceptual position - see Figure 1:1 below). Henry
Blackerby discovered something wonderful--the ability of the
human brain to go "meta" and to dissociate and to
mentally go wherever it wants to go including being in the
presence of the Lord. So, could we not say that mentally
placing ourselves in the presence of the Lord is "practicing
the presence of Jesus?"
Figure
1:1
When
I take that position my blood pressure drops 10 points immediately.
My wife's blood pressure drops 15 points immediately. Now,
talk about a place for healing and restoration--that is the
fifth perceptual position with the Lord.
So,
here we have John exiled on the Island of Patmos and there
he received an invitation to leave this place of "persecution"
and go up and spend some time with Jesus. And, the Apostle
Paul found himself ushered into the "third heaven."
Likewise, you can as well leave the pains, hurts, grief's,
depressions, etc. of this life and go visit a while with Jesus
(or stay as long as you wish). From that position with
the Lord, you can choose to "let go" of your
negative emotions, obtain a "word from the Lord"
and change the meanings and perceptions of your present that
best reflect your spiritual values and beliefs. You
can from that position with the Lord, create a future that
glorifies the Lord and that will encourage you for :Where
there is no vision, the people perish..." (Proverbs
29:18, KJV).
By
"dissociating" out of this present world and "associating"
with the Lord on His throne, He empowers us to "reframe"
our present life by letting go of old hurts, forgiving others
and "empowering" our present with His love and power.
Try it, imagine yourself now in the presence of the Lord.
Just mentally leave your body and go "up there"
and be with Him. And, once there with Him see yourself down
here. From that position with Him, can you hold anger, bitterness,
depression, hurt, etc? I cannot for that violates my
basic beliefs about the nature of God. And, these basic beliefs
about God that I hold operate "meta" or above my
primary states of hurt, anger, depression, etc and in fact
"evaporate" such negative thinkings.
Note: You have permission
to duplicate this article as long as you duplicate it in its
entirety including our names and our web site address.
(c)1999 Bobby G. Bodenhamer,
D. Min. and L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
www.neurosemantics.com
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