Evolutionary Blog

Conflicts arise. For some of us, they arise more frequently than others. 

We all know this.

Conflicts can arise in our personal lives and in our relationships with other people. They can and do arise in professional contexts. And yes, they can even arise within ourselves.

In our personal lives, they can wreak havoc in romantic situations producing a lack of harmony and robbing us of the joy we expect those relationships to provide. In our professional lives they can corrupt professional associations or derail business deals affecting our financial outlook. When they occur within our selves, they can lead to inner turmoil, when we would rather experience harmony and peace.

This isn't exactly news.

What many of us fail to realize is that regardless of the context or the parties involved, we can use the same simple yet effective communication strategies to not only resolve the conflicts and problems, but to use them as a gateway to increased intimacy and connection, broader and deeper understanding, and ultimately, a positive outcome in virtually any situation--personal, professional, or individual.

With the tools we will cover in this mini-workshop, you will discover, gain, or acquire the tools that will allow you to:

• Find common ground where most are resigned to discord
• Expand the number of perspectives through which you can view yourself, others, and situations in general
• Navigate the delicate and often tricky waters of conflicts in romantic situations
• Negotiate professional agreements more effectively
• Overcome obstacles to an outcome that honor all parties involved
• Validate the other person/parties while still honoring yourself
• Create conversations that transcend the "problem" and communicate directly at the level of values
• Speak to the underlying message, rather then the superficial complaint being presented to you
• Dissolve internal conflicts within yourself where you are "of two minds" about something or feel "torn" between this and that perspective or desire

Decrease conflict and discord in your life. Increase joy, connection, intimacy, and success.

Start by adding the tools we will offer in this free evening workshop:

What: From Conflict to Connection
Where: San Francisco »RSVP« for exact location
When: Tuesday, February 12th, 2013 @ 7:15pm

Cost: Free.
Value: Huge

»RSVP« for exact location

Increase your capacity to handle whatever life throws at you. Enjoy true freedom. Reveal an ever-increasing degree of your Divinity ... and produce profound results in your life in the process.

Imagine being confused when someone asks you if you took something personally. Authentically confused–as in, that interpretation is actually confusing to you.

Imagine being free–finally–from the opinions of others defining who you are.

Imagine when the sh** comes down in your life there is just the sh** to deal with and your mind is fully in service–it is your slave, rather than you being enslaved and imprisoned by your own mind.  

Being free from the emotions that enslave most people--and at choice--fully.

I do not mean just in a specific context, like relationships or finances or professional–personal evolution is not context dependent–but free at core level, such that your natural emotional responses are more free–in every context.

Imagine “reframing” being unnecessary–unnecessary because the reframe is the frame that naturally arises.

Our ego and our emotions evolve in stages. Greater and greater expanse. Ever-increasing levels of freedom. Wider and wider embrace of all that arises–moment to moment.

This is important to you because your stage will determine how you interpret events as well as your emotional reaction to it--before any re-framing can occur. In other words, it is what governs your relationship to interacting with the world and with yourself. 

Find out how to accelerate the process so that you can reveal even more of your divinity--and produce results with greater and greater ease.

Discover:

• How you can rapidly clear negativities from your past leading to reduced
  • anger
  • fear
  • guilt
  • shame
  • Etc.
• How to build true esteem for your self--strengenthing your "immune system for what life throws at you"
• Debunking myths about ego and self-esteem that are not serving your expansion and healthy development
• Effective strategies for managing the most powerful force in your world--your own mind
• Effective approaches to Purpose, Relationship, and fufillment through deeper understanding of yourself and others

And a whole lot more. I have consistently received feedback that this could be fleshed out into a 3 day workshop, and this is just an introduction to the material.

Let’s accelerate the process of movement through the stages--so we can play more, love deeper, laugh longer–and hurt for only as long as is necessary for us to learn what we must learn to deepen our experience of ourselves.

To unfold our depths; to reveal our Divinity.

And isn’t that what it’s all for anyway?

Because who we are is pure divinity. Pure Spirit. “God/dess” manifest. Yet our particular manifestation is often clouded. And we live in the real world where we forget who we truly are. As you touch your hand to your heart you may begin to feel Divinity waiting, wanting to come out and play. Release your Divinity; release the highest within you.

Your Personal Evolution is the gateway.

Yes, it will take the gristly and gritty work of building the muscles of facility with Self.  AND it will be the most valuable endeavor you have undertaken.

Let's explore this unfolding together. Let's accelerate the process together.

What: Introduction to Advanced Personal Evolution
When: Saturday, February 2nd @ 11am-1:15pm in San Francisco
Where: »» RSVP «« for exact location

Cost: free

What is N.L.P.?

NLP--the set of tools titled Neuro-Linguistic Programming--is misunderstood far more often that it is understood. There is nothing new in NLP. There is no magic. It will not revolutionize your life whole-sum in one fowl swoop, contrary to the marketing of some. However, it can produce amazing rapid results in a specific context ...

So what is it?

The co-founder of NLP, John Grinder, says that it is simply a learning tool. Nothing more than a set if filters and tools to give you access to more of your neurology for the purpose of accelerated learning.

Gregory Bateson, the world famous behavioral scientist, said that NLP is the only class 3 learning tool on the planet.

What does that mean?

With NLP you learn how to learn. So then, why is NLP used the way it is used in the world most often—for brief and result-oriented therapy? This is a good question and certainly worth addressing. In the beginning, in the early 70s, there were therapists producing amazing results. They were Virginia Satir, the founder and pioneer of Family Therapy; Fritz Pearls, the pioneer and founder of Gestalt Therapy; Milton Erickson, the grandfather of medical hypnotherapy.

Additionally, there was the genius of Gregory Bateson--the world-renowned behavioral scientist. Given the results they were producing, the founders of this class of tools called NLP wanted to find out what patterns these geniuses were employing (at the meta level) that could be modeled, distilled, and reproduced.

So, with their permission, they were studied by the co-founders of NLP along with the supporting staff. Who were these people that modeled the original patterns of these therapeutic geniuses? John Grinder and Richard Bandler assisted by Robert Dilts, Judith Delozier, Todd Epstein, and Leslie Cameron-Bandler. If you’ve a scientific or skeptical mind, read anything by Robert Dilts on NLP. He will make you a believer. It could be argued that this original modeling is just one possible application of NLP.

That argument would be stunningly accurate. NLP is simply a class of tools. It allows you to distill out the structure, process, and context of any given experience. Because of this, I call NLP “the study of the structure of human subjective experience”.

Given that emotions are seemingly the biggest challenge facing human beings, then it could also be argued that investing so much time in studying the patterns of genius that have therapists get results was one of the most generous applications possible for this new-found tool. I would agree with that argument.

That was 30 years ago. Since then, NLP has come a long way thanks to the practitioners of this tool. They have modeled out many processes that the human being goes through naturally for the purpose of accelerated movement through said process.

For example—how does someone naturally resolve a traumatic experience and come out of it with an outlook of positivity and even gratitude? This has been modeled. How does someone align themselves on multiple, holarchical levels of their experience—environment, behaviors, capabilities, beliefs/values, identity, and Spirit? This has been modeled. How does a human being take a part of themselves that they previously disliked and through greater understanding and negotiation, use it as a gateway to core states of being and connectedness? This has been modeled. How does a human being take some parental experience that was traumatic for them and move to a place of resource, gratitude, and compassion? This has been modeled. What is intuition, the most useful of all trans-rational experiences? This has been modeled.

The world owes NLP a debt of gratitude. This may not even be acknowledged for another generation and that is just fine... NLP, as a field, does not care for dissertations or academia. This is largely why it is not accepted in the academic world. NLP, as a field, does not focus on whether or not something is true. “Truth” in this context has no meaning. What matters is whether or not something is useful. In that sense, NLP, as a field, is highly scientific.

However, scientific in the broad sense, not the narrow sense. By scientific in the broad sense, I mean this: experiment, get some result, and offer up your findings to a group of your peers for rigorous testing. In this sense, NLP is deeply and rigorously scientific.

Scientific in the broad sense. Not the narrow sense.

What is NLP? A set of tools to distill out models of excellence. Human models of excellence. Nothing more, but assuredly nothing less.

What is N.L.P.? a summary by Mark Michael Lewis NLP is sourced in the realization that that all human emotion is a function of how a person re-presents (represents, thinks about) any aspect of their experience. If you shift/change/alter how someone re-presents any aspect of their experience, you will shift/change/alter how they understand that aspect, what they feel about it, how they relate to it, and who they *be* around it. In more technical terms, a "top 10" might be:

1. The map is not the territory, the menu is not the meal - human beings make maps of their experience, they re-present their experience to themselves in the five senses/modalities.

2. How we understand, feel about, relate to, and BE around any aspect of our experience is determined by the map we make about that experience (our "occurring" world), not the experience itself.