Why
Don't You Just >Insert> Jesus?
|
An
Approach To Renewing Your Mind
The Insert Pattern
Bob Bodenhamer,
D.Min.
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
It's funny
about the way we "think." We make pictures
in our heads full of sounds, smells, sensations, and things.
Obviously we don't do this literally. It only seems
like we really have an internal movie running in our minds.
If you took philosophy in College, you might recognize that
we call this phenomenology.
Regardless
of what we call it, we experience "thoughts"
as the internal re-presenting to ourselves of what we have
seen, heard, smelled, felt, and tasted on the outside.
NLP accordingly describes such thinking as our sensory
representational systems (or VAK-- Visual, Auditory, Kinesthetic).
This reduces "thoughts" to more specifics.
So what?
Much. Because
knowing about these component distinctions of "thoughts"
gives us many leverage points for renewing our mind, changing
our mind, running our own brain, taking charge of our mental-and-emotional
states. This amplifies and puts some real meat on the old
Proverb that asserts that "as a man thinks in his heart,
so he is." (Proverbs 23:7).
Recently, I
(MH) wrote the following ideas to Bob in an email and offered
them as suggestive of some interesting ways to take charge
of our brains and create new some patterns for transforming
everyday experience.
I find it
interesting that when I stop my internal films of
whatever ... and turn them into a mere snapshot,
this process solidifies those pictures. By freeze-framing
them, they become static. Solid. More real.
But.... when
I then realize, and visualize the space between one
image on the screen and the next image--whether 32 images
a second or 64 images, or however many... if I stop the
moving picture, then suddenly I can become aware of
the space between the images and when I send
my brain to those spaces, I end up in ... The Void
that you have spoken about so often.
Try it and
see. In that pause ... inside that pregnant pause,
when you stop, in your mind, with
the knowledge of the previous picture ... and of the upcoming
picture, then in that void it seems we have a place
in which we could stick in a whole new Image and thereby
totally transform everything!
Now in that
Void of the Pause ... we could embed all kinds of
things... then later, when we rewind the picture a bit,
and then let it go forward as it normally does, then all
of a sudden a New Image and even an entirely new
World could magically pop into existence. How about
that, Bob, for a different kind of a Swish?
Well, sure
enough, Bob began to play with this idea. He put it to various
people in his trainings and his consulting work. In the following
paragraphs, Bob shows his application and installation skills
in the context of his pastoral heart.
Meta-Stating
Your Movies With
an >Insert>
To illustrate
visually how this language pattern works in stopping a
movie (i.e., a strategy interrupt), I (BB) had some of my
students experiment. They ran an internal mental movie and
then they stopped it abruptly, just to see what would
happen. For some this minimized the negative feelings
connected to the internal memory.
When I asked
one client to stop the movie, all of the frames that occurred
before the place of the stop simply collapsed. However, the
client could still re-run the unpleasant movie. So I ran some
additional meta-stating processes with her in order to completely
blow out that movie.
After making
sure the class knew how to abruptly stop a movie, I
asked them to insert "Jesus" into the point of the
stop, and to then finish the movie. They were to get their
representations of Jesus. When they did, I then asked
them to re-run the total movie with the new insert of Jesus
in it. This >Jesus insert> pattern seemed to really
make a lot of difference for every one of them. You could
say, it provided a specific way for them to put off their
old mind, and to put on the new mind, thereby "renewing
their mind."
Alethia
Several years
ago Alethia's father shot himself and thereby ended his life.
At the time of the shooting, Alethia was in the house and
saw her father's body immediately after the shooting. This
"memory" had given her problems for years.
In the class,
she began to run the movie and then stopped it midway through
the horror. She then ran the movie again, stopped it midway,
and became aware that Jesus was in it all the time.
So now she finished the movie. Next, she ran the entire movie
with a conscious seeing of Jesus in it. Alethia reported
by becoming consciously aware of Jesus' presence allowed her
to see Jesus usher her deceased father into heaven. She later
reported that this procedure removed "much of the negative
emotions that had been associated with the memory."
David
As a teen,
David engaged himself in an incident that has bothered him
on into adulthood. The confrontation between himself and his
parents ran especially vivid in the movie in his mind. So
in class, he ran the movie of himself and his parents discussing
this bad deed. He then stopped the movie midway, inserted
Jesus into the movie, and completed running the movie.
This procedure
effected a lowering of David's negative emotions about it.
He then went back and ran the movie with Jesus in it from
beginning to the end. As he did, he saw himself, his father,
and Jesus in the context of this confrontation over his misdeed.
"Wow."
David said. "The content has stayed the same, but I see
Jesus as 'meta' to us. The anxiety I have always felt is gone.
This works great. I see Jesus right in there with us. Wow!"
Calion
Calion chose
a really bad scene to test out this procedure. Though now
divorced, Calion endured a horrific marriage with a terribly
abusive man. Her husband wanted her to go with him somewhere,
and she refused. She went into the house and he followed her.
Inside the house he physically assaulted her as he severely
beat her in the face. The bruising was so severe, he bruised
her around the eyes.
When Clarion
described the movie before placing Jesus in it, her language
indicated that she associated in the memory. In questioning
her, she described the scene as "click," "click,"
and "click" indicating that she focused in on each
frame as she slowed the movie down. She described this just
as Michael discovered. When we slow our painful movies frame
by frame, we thereby intensify the feelings as we focus on
the hurtful content encapsulated in each frame. In accessing
this movie, Calion saw each frame distinct and clear. She
expressed a lot of hurt and emotion prior to placing Jesus
in the scene.
I loved the
way she described the movie after placing Jesus in
it. Like the other students, she stopped the original movie
midway and inserted Jesus and completed it. Then, Clarion
re-ran the entire new movie.
She reported,
"I saw Jesus, or maybe an angel, come in the room with
me and He stood with outstretched arms protecting me from
my husband. He can't get to me anymore!"
In actuality,
her husband is in prison for murdering his second wife. This
happened after she had divorced him. Her present mind knows
that "He can't get to her anymore." She now has
the meta-protection of her guardian angel. This procedure
allowed her to recall that scene with laughter. What a change
from when she first recalled it as the tears flowed and her
face indicated much pain.
Linda
All the above
anonymous names come from my students. However, Linda is not
an anonymous name. Linda is my wife. So the final
test for this new procedure--the best test of all--my wife.
Recently we went out to eat. At dinner I asked my wife
if she would like to try out a new procedure that Michael
and I had developed. With her permission (I highly recommend
getting permission from your spouse before you test out your
expertise as an NLP Practitioner.), I had my wife run a movie
of some bad event at work. At that moment I did not
know the content. She came up with one and nodded yes. I asked
her stop the movie half way through. I then led her
to insert Jesus at the point she stopped the movie and to
finish the movie with Jesus in it. She couldn't even run it
anymore. "Bob," she said, "It want even run
with Jesus in it." Next I asked her to insert Jesus
at the beginning and run it all the way through with Jesus
in it. Her response, "I can't run it! It want run!"
I checked with her one day later and again two days
later and she said, "It was an old old thing when Barbara
(anonymous) was teaching me HR stuff. No!! That doesn't mean
anything to me anymore." (Linda trained in Human
Resources under Barbara many years ago. Let's just say that
my wife has worked with far more pleasant people than Barbara.)
So When
Will You STOP IT From Being A Limitation?
I worked with
Sharon for a few weeks. Our time consisted of two meetings
plus a more recent one with her and her daughter, Carla. As
a single parent, Sharon raised this daughter since she was
six years old. In briefly meeting Carla, I realized that this
young lady carried intense anger and that her mother had lost
all control with her. My worse fears came true all too soon.
When I next
saw Sharon, her daughter Carla run away from home. Eventually,
Sharon located Carla at the home of a girlfriend who also
came from a broken home. Sharon didn't want Carla to spend
even one more night with that girl as Carla's friend is in
the custody of the Department of Social Services and lives
in a group home for rebellious teens.
When Sharon
notified the police of Carla's disappearance, they could do
little. In North Carolina, children sixteen and over are considered
adults. But over-determined to take her daughter home, Sharon
tricked Carla out of the friend's house. A fight then developed
between mother and daughter. Just when Sharon lost her temper
and hit Carla, the police arrived. Sharon found herself under
arrest. She then had Carla move to her grandmother's home
in another state.
In describing
the trauma of these events, I asked Sharon to run a movie
of the confrontation and subsequent arrest. As I checked it
out, I discovered that Sharon had dissociated from the event.
I asked her to run the movie and stop it abruptly right
before the fight. She did. I then invited her to re-run the
movie and insert Jesus in the movie just before the
fight, and to then complete the movie. She did that as well.
Next I asked her to run the movie from beginning to end with
Jesus in it.
Afterwards,
Sharon described how she would have behaved much differently
had she realized the presence of Jesus during the event.
Then Sharon described a most interesting awareness. She said
that on her way over to get her daughter, she prayed and then
put on "the whole armor of God."
"I put
on the breastplate of righteousness and I had the sword of
the spirit." Sharon said this raising her arm up, symbolizing
the sword in her right hand.
"You went
as a soldier and so you ended up fighting, didn't you?"
"Yes,
I sure did." she said.
Later that
day, Sharon called me and said that she had called her daughter
Carla at her mother's home, and had apologized to her.
This reflects
the power of the metaphors that we bring to bear upon
our thoughts and emotions. Lakoff and Johnson mentioned this
in their 1980 book, Metaphors We Live By, which you'll
find described in Meta-States Journal (Nov. 1998).
As Sharon lived by her soldier and war metaphor, she went
forth in a fight mode and nearly got herself locked up. How
much better of an outcome would Sharon received had she gone
to get her daughter back with Jesus as her companion instead
of a warrior's armor. I (BB) notice teens wearing these "WWJD"
arm bracelets that reminds them to ask themselves, "What
would Jesus do?" What a great question to ask oneself,
and the arm bracelets provide a fantastic anchor. However,
this procedure suggests another question, "What would/will
I do when I have Jesus with me?" Michael E-mailed me
about this pattern, "This pattern works a lot like your
'Taking a Bitter Root to Jesus' pattern. It outframes
some piece of bitterness with a 'Flavor of Heaven'. Makes
it irresistable."
(c)1998 L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
and Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D. Min. All rights reserved.
www.neurosemantics.com
|