Neurolinguistic Programming

[volcanogeorge]

What's everyone's thoughts regarding this?

haven't really got an opinion on it but your username is awesome

[Mortal]

I think some of you are missing the point, or maybe I'm the one missing it. But this idea of "the laws of attraction" is nothing more than the "seek and ye shall find" nature of the human mind. There are some truths in NLP in respect to thinking positively will change your behaviour and put you in different situations than if you had thought more negatively about things. There's a direct causal relationship going on to do with real world interaction dynamics. There isn't some unseen psychic force coercing reality to your whim because you're focusing on certain things.

Ideas like that come from a belief in a certain system, we all have systems of belief (visa-vi understanding, they're one and the same.) (look at religion/science/psychology/maths/language e.t.c.), its an inescapable aspect of the human mind, every aspect of understanding/dealing with reality is essentially an abstract system of the mind (there is no spoon, no really, there actually isn't, but that's another story.) The point is, the human mind is completely conditioned to perceive things through the paradigm of specific systems, and once a certain system/belief is in place, the mind will colour perception along those lines. Which is why one person may have a religious experience, another person may seek medical help. Neither are 'true', but both 'real' as far as subjective reality is concerned. What's more influential is when people gather that believe in the same system because then the 'individual' is receiving feedback from the external world that's reinforcing that belief system, not simply from seeing 'coincidences' or other events that confer suspicion but actual human feedback which is much more intellectually potent and will do much more to reinforce this belief paradigm as being objective. When the 'truth' is in-fact, that it isn't. There comes a point where so much self conditioning and connecting of dots has happened that the person completely commits to that system because to them it 'makes sense', it must be true because it makes complete sense. But the point is, the mind has made it make sense, because in reality the world and every situation in it is a blank slate, it is the mind alone that colours it into a specific perspective, a perspective completely pre-determined by the belief structures we have in place, and are in turn re-enforced by the subconscious decision to perceive that situation in the way we chose to, its a complete psychological catch 22 and a very deep reaching and fundamental aspect of the mind.

I used to believe in a lot of far out things, at one point i thought i was a 'star child' that had come to help the earth evolve, i used to really look into metaphysics and all kinds of odd notions about the unseen sides of reality. I was much younger then though and have since spent a long time looking into and learning about the nature of the mechanism of belief within the human psyche from various philosophical and psychological perspectives and have since gained much more of a perspective on that entire arena, instead of simply running within it, on some level i feel like I was cheating myself, I feel quite ashamed that I had the ideas I did when I had them, it's a little shameful to become aware of how naive i was.

The point I'm making is that with things like "the laws of attraction" and "NLP" work entirely as a function of the mechanism of belief paradigms and should be understood as being just that. They have no actual hold or effect on objective reality in the physical world. Coincidences and apparent events that reinforce these things as being true are only seen because the mind perceiving them that way is conditioned to do so.

We live in a chaotic and emergent system where any series of random events can occur, like a number of glasses being placed on the table. That would have still happened regardless, except, Mortal, had you not been in the same frame of mind, you would not have noticed nor would it have been a 'significant coincidence' to you, it would have simply been an aspect of the background hum of experience we go through everyday. We find things to reinforce our beliefs because it consoles us as a reflection that we are in a common experience.

To quote:

...that really help to reinforce the idea of how much control you're in.

Which is essentially exactly what I'm talking about.

Its like with the idea of Karma. There is a common miss-conception that karma is some unseen universal force of morality, making sure people that do bad things get their just deserts. Which is a silly notion. Actual Buddhism understands the concept of Karma as the act of cause and effect within the universe. If you are a bad person, you will unavoidably find yourself in bad experiences because of the millions of dynamic effects your choices will make on how your social existence is evolving. Its a causal relationship within social dynamics again. Which is how everything on this level works.

So going back to NLP, it 'works' because its altering the way you interact with the world to being someone that's more pro-active. Directly effecting things on a social and personal dynamic level, any notions about tapping into some secret psychic energy and other people subconsciously tapping into that is ultimately unfounded conjecture and as stated simply a mechanism of the minds tenacity to develop abstract systems, of which, these notions are added 'fluff' and redundant tertiary glitter to make the whole thing seem a little bit more like a cool shared secret for 'those in the know', reinforcing the quazi validity of the belief, allaying any potential for anxiety that would be there if the person had any doubt in the notion he actually knew what was going on around him, you could call it a form of deep routed cognitive dissonance. We create our own versions of objectivity, which is impossible because we are bound to a finite locale and veiled by the mind. But we call it objective, decide on it and commit it to being so because we have nothing else, while needing for our own comfort to think we are objectively aware of our surroundings, understand the system that we perceive it as and in control of our interaction with it.

check out Taoism. That's about the only existential philosophy I agree with on any level. and Emanuel Kant is great reading material for things on the subject of belief and other mechanisms of human perception.

Theres a lot there for me to tackle. Currently, one of my flaws is that im not great at taking in and responding to large amounts of writing (english never was my favourite subject) so instead, i'll just pick bits out and respond accordingly. so i do apologise on that front, but don't assume i didnt read the whole thing.

firstly, if what you are saying is to be true, can that not be applied to what you are saying? you are talking about belief systems and how that when things are reinforced in the mind they become 'real'. so by making sense of what youve read up on, studied, been taught etc you now readily dismiss these ideas. youve collected a belief, fortified it in your mind and now accept it as the 'truth'. where as you wouldn't actually know about anymore of the truth than anyone else.

I'm not saying your wrong, a lot of what you say i definitely agree with, but in a different light. but before i continue, let me just ask you...do you see your ideas as realistic or cynical?

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

You're completely right. If what I'm saying is true, then I'm also part of it, it makes sense to me because I've committed to believing it. Its a contradiction/paradox. Because it being true debases the ground upon which you base the assumption of it being true.

I see my views as my views. they hold no ultimate truth about anything, they are simply a collection of perspectives I use to make sense of the world. I know nothing, non of us do. The distinction I am trying to make though is seeing them as that and not believing in them as some kind of ultimate truth, but yes it is completely self defeating.

I see my ideas as realistic in the sense that they make the most sense to me, the depth to which we individually look into aspects of existence gives us each a unique grounding upon which to base our perspectives. It's my truth, just like you have yours, non of us have the ultimate answer, what's interesting is speaking to people with other views while seeing the entire converse as a series of separate bubbles of subjectivity trying to gain an understanding of the external.

So in that respect my views are both realistic and cynical, cynical because my views will ultimately not allow other views that are in contradiction to the system of understanding/belief i have developed as an individual, and also realistic, because the apparent realism my views have to me is the contrast such contradiction is drawn from.

[wayoftheworld]

cool discussions above.

[parson]

NLP works like yoga, or hermeticism, or psychedelic drugs in that it allows a programmer to program the mind and alter the entire personality

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

NLP works like yoga, or hermeticism, or psychedelic drugs in that it allows a programmer to program the mind and alter the entire personality

Metaprogramming

[parson]

[parson]

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

The Doors of Perception + Social Constructionism = Transcendental idealism

Which is essentially my original point!

[parson]

learn more about hermeticism before you say more dumb shit about the law of attraction!

[parson]

it's true that the human mind is geared towards finding what it's looking for. the trick is that the universe is actually rearranging to make this happen. i realize that is a huge leap for most people. hermeticism is based on the experimental method though. nobody says to believe anything. try the shit and see what happens. no faith, no religion, no belief. just experiments and results.

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

it's true that the human mind is geared towards finding what it's looking for. the trick is that the universe is actually rearranging to make this happen. i realize that is a huge leap for most people. hermeticism is based on the experimental method though. nobody says to believe anything. try the shit and see what happens. no faith, no religion, no belief. just experiments and results.

I was with you for a minute. I'm agreeing with what you're saying (implying) so i don't get what you're saying (is the before post aimed at me?). The universe is only rearranging things to make the apparent notions of the "human mind" realize themselves only as much as the (notion of an) individual is becoming an active influence within his own effect on reality, presuming the "individual" is a valid concept. Bah language is so hard sometimes. We are still finite entities, but are an implicit flow within a self reflecting reality mirror, taking that which it perceives to be reality, ergo it 'being' reality. Both being a reflection of that, and a manifestation of that reflecting back in on itself, in turn effecting its own dynamic flow.

which is what i was trying to say. Individuality, and such that arises from that is an illusion, we are more like (collectively) a language that has manifest within 'suchness' to pin abstractions within the infinite, in order to try and form comprehension of the "I" we all inhabit, as the "I" ultimately as that is an inevitable, but manifest through a fracturing of its entirety, in so much as the human condition is concerned.

below that all notions are mute and mere colouration of that journey, individualism is a by-product alone and essentially an illusion. So all notions and specifics of the "human experience" (again ultimately an abstraction) are part of the illusion. Names, labels explicit formulations, so on, are the colouration that causes us to all to become synergized with our internal collective manifestations, and are there-for mute.

The whole idea behind the philosophy of the collective sources you linked is pointing to this same idea. "Escaping/transcending the human condition", and realizing through that process that you're inescapably a continuous paradox in so far as you are capable of perceiving your existence while being the existence from within which you are perceiving yourself.

[parson]

i'm just saying that you're missing out on a key function of the universe, which is to rearrange itself according to your thoughts.

reality is a projection much like OSX or Windows. you can literally reprogram the universe with your mind. the universe is malleable. the mind is the projector. access the mind and change reality. y'all don't presently have access to your own minds for the most part.



a hundred years ago i'da been executed by the wizard class for casting pearls before swine, but the cat's been outta the bag since like the 60s. they got that Eschaton goin on now and all so it's okay to tell folks about sorcery.

[parson]

but yeah i hear ya. we're all one.

[test_recordings]

When I read 'Hermeticism' I thought "the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn"... I was reading in to this, may follow it up though branch out in hermeticism in general. It sounds kind of like Islam with its non-dualist panentheism...

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

i'm just saying that you're missing out on a key function of the universe, which is to rearrange itself according to your thoughts.

reality is a projection much like OSX or Windows. you can literally reprogram the universe with your mind. the universe is malleable. the mind is the projector. access the mind and change reality.

See this is what I have a problem with. I would agree that 'reality is a projection' but you have to defined 'reality' because we might be talking about different things. In my opinion the only 'reality' you could ever experience is your own internal map, your own personal isolated subjective bubble. Restricted to and created entirely within the nature of how the abstractions of the human mind process the information we receive as finite locales of consciousness. Every one of the senses, time, space and the breaking down of experience into labels (spoon e.t.c.). We see not 'reality' but a projection of reality. Which yes, we can change, but by that we are not changing anything ultimate, we are simply altering an aspect of our own bubble.

I think that's an important distinction to understand. That firstly 'reality' as far as anyone could possibly comprehend is a creation of the mind experiencing it, that it is completely removed from any kind of objective 'true' reality, which we have no control over bar our actions and influences upon the external, that we can only ever experience through the veil of our own projections.

And secondly that any 'altering' of reality is only altering the type of 'reality' that we personally experience on an individual and completely isolated basis. That its silly to presume that you are literally effecting the formless absolute that transcends, surrounds and is the route of all our internal realities, because we have no direct connection to that anyway, it is the substance from which perception solidifies for the individual, to say we have any control over that is in my opinion confusing your projection/reflection/map for the true substance of existence, which it will never be for as long as you have a mind, a finite locale, an ego and identity and a system of 'mind/perspective' from within which you process experience. You cannot escape the mind and without it you cannot experience, but for there to be any truth in what you're saying we would have to exist within a direct connection with objectivity, which is impossible while needing the notion of a finite locale and all the systems 'of' the mind in order to experience existence, It's mutually exclusive, you cannot have both.

So the only thing you ever have control over is your map. Not the thing the map is representing. Without the map you have no foundation upon which to base experience let alone have any form of influence or control over something you have no capability of being aware of in the first place.

The funny thing about all this. Is that me and you debating this stuff is exactly what I was talking about in my original post. Non of this holds ultimate weight, because we are just stating our own personal truths. We are both bound by our own personal maps of reality and stuck very much in our own bubbles. So we protect and defend and describe what it is we hold so precious to ourselves. To call it the ultimate is dissolution, to see them as true only to ourselves is true, which is a self defeating sentence I know, but only if you fail to recognise that in saying that I am only speaking from my own subjectivity.

[magma]

Haha, this got kooky fast.

NLP is, like most wonderfully fanciful scientific theories, a massive exaggerated inference into the knowledge available at the time... in this theory's time, the 1980s... luckily since then, real scientists have tested quite a few bits of it and shown most to be fairly useless. Repeatedly referenced single cases of success are no match for wave after wave of clinical failures.

We understand the brain better than this now... it's no reason to stop dreaming, but it is probably a good time to get yourself up to date on your reading.

I had a conversation about it whilst being seduced by a real live neuroscientist last week*.




*I really did. Enough clues yet, wub?

[parson]

i'm just saying that you're missing out on a key function of the universe, which is to rearrange itself according to your thoughts.

reality is a projection much like OSX or Windows. you can literally reprogram the universe with your mind. the universe is malleable. the mind is the projector. access the mind and change reality.

See this is what I have a problem with. I would agree that 'reality is a projection' but you have to defined 'reality' because we might be talking about different things. In my opinion the only 'reality' you could ever experience is your own internal map, your own personal isolated subjective bubble. Restricted to and created entirely within the nature of how the abstractions of the human mind process the information we receive as finite locales of consciousness. Every one of the senses, time, space and the breaking down of experience into labels (spoon e.t.c.). We see not 'reality' but a projection of reality. Which yes, we can change, but by that we are not changing anything ultimate, we are simply altering an aspect of our own bubble.

I think that's an important distinction to understand. That firstly 'reality' as far as anyone could possibly comprehend is a creation of the mind experiencing it, that it is completely removed from any kind of objective 'true' reality, which we have no control over bar our actions and influences upon the external, that we can only ever experience through the veil of our own projections.

And secondly that any 'altering' of reality is only altering the type of 'reality' that we personally experience on an individual and completely isolated basis. That its silly to presume that you are literally effecting the formless absolute that transcends, surrounds and is the route of all our internal realities, because we have no direct connection to that anyway, it is the substance from which perception solidifies for the individual, to say we have any control over that is in my opinion confusing your projection/reflection/map for the true substance of existence, which it will never be for as long as you have a mind, a finite locale, an ego and identity and a system of 'mind/perspective' from within which you process experience. You cannot escape the mind and without it you cannot experience, but for there to be any truth in what you're saying we would have to exist within a direct connection with objectivity, which is impossible while needing the notion of a finite locale and all the systems 'of' the mind in order to experience existence, It's mutually exclusive, you cannot have both.

So the only thing you ever have control over is your map. Not the thing the map is representing. Without the map you have no foundation upon which to base experience let alone have any form of influence or control over something you have no capability of being aware of in the first place.

The funny thing about all this. Is that me and you debating this stuff is exactly what I was talking about in my original post. Non of this holds ultimate weight, because we are just stating our own personal truths. We are both bound by our own personal maps of reality and stuck very much in our own bubbles. So we protect and defend and describe what it is we hold so precious to ourselves. To call it the ultimate is dissolution, to see them as true only to ourselves is true, which is a self defeating sentence I know, but only if you fail to recognise that in saying that I am only speaking from my own subjectivity.

the menu is not the meal. i know korzybski.

but i also know hermes trismegistus. the universe is mind. all is waves, etc. reality is plural and malleable.

i know that by having magma blocked (altering the map) it doesn't alter the territory (magma still exists)

but i also know that by altering my perception of reality, i can alter what i attract and experience and thusly alter the entire universe, which is fractal by nature. an infinite net of gems, each one reflecting every other one.

[Turnipish_Thoughts]

the menu is not the meal. i know korzybski.

but i also know hermes trismegistus. the universe is mind. all is waves, etc. reality is plural and malleable.

i know that by having magma blocked (altering the map) it doesn't alter the territory (magma still exists)

but i also know that by altering my perception of reality, i can alter what i attract and experience and thusly alter the entire universe, which is fractal by nature. an infinite net of gems, each one reflecting every other one.

This kind of thing is always rife with double entendre. Again I'll try and explain the small points I don't agree with you on.

"Reality is plural and malleable."
As far as my logic allows "Existence" is plural, but "reality" can only ever be singular because of the nature of the mind, in that consciousness is purely a collection of abstract concepts formed internally. You don't experience the waves, your 'experience' of reality (colour/sound/time/space e.t.c.) are apriori concepts formed internally. Its a trip.

"but i also know that by altering my perception of reality, i can alter what i attract and experience and thusly alter the entire universe."

How can altering your perception of something effect the thing in its self? it Can't. it's effecting your perception of it, the word "your" is important here, because you only ever have any kind of control over personal experience/perception. Using the term 'attract' can be taken in a number of ways. If by attract you mean your actions in the physical world will alter what experiences you have because of those actions, then yes, its basic cause and effect. But to believe that you could some day fly because you 'will' yourself to do so (ergo 'attract' that reality) is taking a huge leap of conjecture and believing in it, which involves all kinds of intellectual faux pas'.

Only your physical actions can ever alter anything external, yes your thought can alter your future actions, but those thoughts can only ever actually indirectly effect anything, by being carried through with real actions/choices.

Even to go so far as to say that by changing your perception you are altering the entire universe to me sounds like something is a-miss. Again with the double entendre's, by 'the universe' do you mean your personal bubble of subjective experience (in other words "your universe") or do you mean "the actual universe"? Because the latter is ridiculous.

And i know you're going to argue with me because from your perspective I'm not 'clued up enough' in what you're trying to explain to believe what you're saying. And yes, you completely believe what you say and have experienced things that prove it to you. But is that not simply because the thing in question is a system of belief you have committed to believing in and there-for have a mind conditioned to see things from within that paradigm? Is there anything ultimate/external/objective at play here then? or is it simply a mind as ever remaining true to the basic mechanism of mind?

What I have been trying to describe over this conversation is just that. The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, and how far these poles of perception reach into our experiences.

There are many parallels between what me and you are saying, which is interesting as I have come to these conclusions by becoming versed in things like Eastern Mysticism (Taoism, Zen/Mahayana Buddhism), Writings of Yaqui Indian Yogi's; And then Western Existentialist Philosophy, immanuel kant, Friedrich Nietzsche e.t.c.; and a lot of interesting experiences on Mushrooms, LSD, weed e.t.c.

Something I have come to notice between the different poles of research is that there are at times many contradictions between points raised, and the important distinction to me is that generally the more conservative the belief paradigm is in letting concepts enter its theorem; the more self supporting each element of the concept is in relation to argument from outside the theorem, the more able it is to withstand scrutiny from valid arguments to the contrary.

From my experience, I tend to lean towards more widely accepted theorems of mind and consciousness, because they innately have more objective weight than less socially accepted theorems (and there are reasons for that), but also do accept concepts described in parallel to them from other belief paradigms, and what can not stand when scrutinised I see as merely a creation of human imagination.

Jumping in and readily believing anything, even when it seems readily believable in its own light is a dangerous game, especially when the context is one of deep thought and consciousness exploring, there are many elements to this area that are basically gibberish. (subjective experience Vs objective reality). Learning to accept that was one of my biggest steps forward in actually making sense of this sort of stuff. Because otherwise you're going to spend a long time defending notions that simply don't stand or ultimately make any sense in a wider arena, when 'all else' is taken into account.

[parson]

i think reality could be described as plural based on your model of individual reality tunnels as well as using the 10 dimensional model of string theory that posits that alternate realities branch off when we make decisions. it's fallacious i believe to think we're stuck in some crystalline realm where things are solid and that the fundamental objective reality is interpreted subjectively.