Feeling the Heat

Debra and I spent the last week of August in San Antonio, Texas, at the Healing Touch Program Worldwide Conference. Because we had a lot of stuff (primarily manuals and CDs) we needed to take, we drove from Michigan. The drive took two days, with the second day starting just east of the Mississippi River. We went past Little Rock, Arkansas, Texarkana, Dallas, and Austin before reaching San Antonio. We had a good view of the Texas drought.

Although we had seen TV coverage of the drought, that’s not the same as seeing the effect on the land while . . . → Read More: Feeling the Heat

What Is NLP?

Most readers of the Beyond Mastery Newsletter and this blog already know what the letters stand for: Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and most have some idea of the meaning behind the term. Our use of language, our mental “programming,” and our neurology are interrelated. When one changes, the others change as well. The interrelationship is dynamic and ongoing. A standard definition for the term is, “the study of the structure of subjective experience,” which means that those who “study” NLP are studying the various ways subjective experience is structured.

This concept presupposes that our subjective—internal—experience differs from objective—external—reality. In Korzybski’s famous . . . → Read More: What Is NLP?

What’s the Deal with Science?

If you’ve been paying attention for the past 20 or 30 years, you’ve probably noticed that “Science” keeps changing its mind about a lot of things. Also, if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ve probably noticed that Galileo’s “problems” with the Catholic Church have been a recurring theme. It seems to me that the conflict between “science” and “faith” is at the center of a number of what might be called “modern problems.” Problems of the sort that Galileo had with the Church have, of course, occurred in a variety of ways over the years. In general, . . . → Read More: What’s the Deal with Science?

Details

One of the things NLP teaches is that details are important. Details have always been important, of course, but they are often overlooked. A TV show I saw recently had a couple of detectives enter a mosque to talk to the Imam. He has them leave their shoes in the entryway. We see them remove their shoes, and we watch the female detective use her shawl to cover her head. We watch them have their chat with the Imam, and then we watch them leave the mosque without stopping to put their shoes back on before hitting the cold and . . . → Read More: Details

Hate Speech

A few days ago in Tucson, Arizona, a young man named Jared Lee Loughner shot and killed six people and wounded 19 others, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who seems to have been his principal target. Since the shooting, much of the media coverage has focused on the possible influence of “hate speech,” which demonizes those who have certain opinions or otherwise belong to identifiable groups.

The event and the media coverage of it reminded me of three of the books that have influenced my own thinking about language and its relationship to thought and action: Science and Sanity . . . → Read More: Hate Speech