This evening I met a mature philosophy student, Sikh by birth and exploring about six spiritual paths at the same time, varying from Tantrism which urges him to indulge in sensual pleasures, and Gnosticism which is all about renouncing them.

Unsurprisingly, he's confused in the midst of all this. He believes he's not ready for the world of work, and is tempted to go to India to study with a guru. His current lifestyle is enabled by his ability to get funding for his studies, and he's adept at living on a low income.

Obviously, I'm making value judgements about this guy, and I don't pretend otherwise. To me, he seemed more lost than anyone I've met in a long time, articulate and introspective but unable to come to a conclusion about anything.

Many NLP approaches are based around making people feel good to make decisions, but this guy is suspicious of good feelings and has a seemingly endless ability to prevaricate. I'm not drawn to intervening in his situation since it's none of my business, though I would if he asked me to.

How do you go about working with someone who isn't prepared to use feeling good as the foundation for making choices? Similarly, depending on what model you prefer, he was neither congruent nor centred, and sees no reason to be so -- what do you do in such a case?

adrian r wrote:

How do you go about working with someone who isn't prepared to use feeling good as the foundation for making choices? Similarly, depending on what model you prefer, he was neither congruent nor centred, and sees no reason to be so -- what do you do in such a case?

Perhaps he is using a different representation system to make these types of decisions.

John

I would be more pessimistic about things if I thought
there was any chance it might a difference but it won’t

Is feeling good a part of the primary experiences or is it just a result of meaning given to primary experiences?

Have you explored secondary gains with this fellow? Like, what would happen if he came to a conclusion about anything? What would happen if he settled on a philosophy? My knee-jerk reaction is that this guy is using "soul searching" as a means of avoiding the real world--a way of further extending his childhood, as it were.

Or maybe he's one of those guys who takes forever to make a decision about anything. Is this a special case, or does he possibly have a really shitty decision-making strategy? Does he tend to get a lot of "buyer's remorse?"

Most people seem to "adopt" whatever religious beliefs their parents had, or at least, something very close to them. Have you explored reasons why this guy hasn't done that? There might be some fruit in there; who knows?

No, you offer some useful suggestions that might come in handy if I come across the guy again, but I didn't go in those directions on first meeting.

Hmm, this is becoming a theme. Went for lunch with a friend, and a mutual pal turned up. First pal says "Adrian's too happy with all this NLP, James is too down -- I'm fine in the middle."

Is this possible? That NLP can make someone 'too happy'??? I think not. But again it raises the idea that some people are suspicious of happiness.

adrian r wrote:

Is this possible? That NLP can make someone 'too happy'??? I think not. But again it raises the idea that some people are suspicious of happiness.

Absolutely, I think so! For all sorts of reasons. Jealousy, because they think it may be fake, Cultural reasons.

Sometimes culture and religion can give us a secondary gain to feel bad. One of the central messages of Christianity, for example, is that self-sacrifice is good. (Mind you, there are plenty of good things about Christianity too!).

As I've said in a few threads, I have been and still am a bit of a worrier. But I've worked out that one of the reasons I worry about others is because of the 'secondary gain' that I think I'm kinder because I worry. Nonsense of course.

Carry on being happy though!

Steve (happy face, you see!)

adrian r wrote:

Hmm, this is becoming a theme. Went for lunch with a friend, and a mutual pal turned up. First pal says "Adrian's too happy with all this NLP, James is too down -- I'm fine in the middle."

Is this possible? That NLP can make someone 'too happy'??? I think not. But again it raises the idea that some people are suspicious of happiness.

Remember also it's OK to feel sad sometimes when you have lost something or someone and anger is OK to for example when you get mugged.

It's what happens once you recognise those states that counts not the fact that you are never in them.

John

I'm rubber and you're glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks on you

Oh, I'm not compulsively happy. While I was calm when attacked last week, and have slept fine since, I have also felt determined to do what I can to get the perpetrators punished. And been frustrated this morning at a surgery by a worsening in the condition of a leg ulcer I have been sporting for some months.

Just some musings...

It sounds like your student uses 'options' (six religious directions), 'never convinced' meta-program and may be 'away from' values led.

You could ask him what he wants and doesn't want and what is important to him and see what happens.

From a strategy perspective, perhaps he exits the TOTE on a -ve rather than a +ve response. If that is what serves him.

Some religious paths call for abstinence, pain, poverty and suffering.. perhaps he is drawn to these paths to enlightenment than to spiritual joy, the good life and abundance?

In other words, When feeling bad is thought to be good.

Does he want help?

What does he consider to be his problem (not what do we consider his problem to be)?

I can remember many times myself being lost, lost in thought, lost in the moment, lost in an amazing book.... He has some exciting and marvelous paths to go down, and wow is he in for some discoveries.

I do hope he understands that forest he is walking in is not the world and that there are other options...?

As a philosophy graduate myself the illusion of philosophy, enlightenment, existensialism, nlp, religion is that it gives the seeker/ knower the illusion that they know a bit more about the world than everyone else.

It can feel good tho, even if it involves being depressed becasue you are the only one who can see the "true" state of the world.

Perhaps your fella will wake up one day and go "Oh shit!... what about life?"

And perhaps between then and now he will create some fantastic writings and thoughts to share with the world...

As for working with someone not basing their choices on feeling good I think that is fine. Feeling good isn't necessarily a good basis of making choices. Think pigging out on chocolate watching telly, getting pissed v.s putting some hard labour into preparing for an important meeting.

Back to this fella - it sounds as if he is happy being lost?

And if he's simply feeling confused (too much info not organised) you can help him with straightforward basic smd work on confusion?

Nina
Nina Madden - Profile

I used to feel guilty feeling happy when my Nan was in a bad mood. if SHE was feeling unhappy then I had to too or else I would get those dirty looks. As a school girl who was being looked after by her - I obeyed.... and so feeling happy for me was something that didn't happen a lot back then. That's how the idea thatfeeling happy is bad can get installed at a young age and then takes an NLP training to teach you what you had been missing )))

Could your man's thing be that he is afraid of losing approval of those he loves who are displaying unhappy behaviours? Just a guess.

Happy now ? I hope so )

adrian r wrote:

Unsurprisingly, he's confused in the midst of all this. He believes he's not ready for the world of work, and is tempted to go to India to study with a guru.

You don't study with a Guru until after you've fulfilled your Dharma. For most, that means getting a job, getting married, having and raising kids, etc.

How do you go about working with someone who isn't prepared to use feeling good as the foundation for making choices?

I'm like that myself. I've done too many good-feeling-but-wrong things to trust good feelings as a guide to good decisions.

It doesn't have to feel good. It has to feel right. It has to feel correct.

he was neither congruent nor centred, and sees no reason to be so -- what do you do in such a case?

You were there, and I wasn't. So I'll ask you this: was he congruent in his incongruence? There are good reasons for an honest spiritual seeker to be incongruent, and when I'm there I feel frustrated and confused. If I'm congruent, if I'm accepting that I don't know, I'm visibly congruent too, but when I'm not, and if I'm honest with myself about it, that shows too.

I'm tempted to agree with the person who speculated that the guy is hiding from adulthood, based only on your response to him. Asking him the "well-formed outcome" questions, and helping him to answer them, might be beneficial either way.

Michael_DeBusk wrote:

You were there, and I wasn't. So I'll ask you this: was he congruent in his incongruence? There are good reasons for an honest spiritual seeker to be incongruent, and when I'm there I feel frustrated and confused. If I'm congruent, if I'm accepting that I don't know, I'm visibly congruent too, but when I'm not, and if I'm honest with myself about it, that shows too.

I'm tempted to agree with the person who speculated that the guy is hiding from adulthood, based only on your response to him. Asking him the "well-formed outcome" questions, and helping him to answer them, might be beneficial either way.

There was no congruence in his incongruence. It felt more like he was attracted to whatever shiny new thought was presented by those more congruent than himself. Hiding from adulthood was pretty much my conclusion, and I frankly had no desire to help him, partly through sensing that I would become the latest in a long line of people to make an impression in the putty of his self -- as Robert Anton Wilson said 'A disciple is an asshole looking for a human being to attach itself to'.

Also, I'm of the opinion that's it not actually my role to make things better for everyone who I come across. That suggests notions of martrydom, which has no appeal: I aim to create difference strategically, starting with my own life. I know martyrs, and it's not a healthy way to live.

adrian r wrote:

There was no congruence in his incongruence. It felt more like he was attracted to whatever shiny new thought was presented by those more congruent than himself.

Eh... might be a good guy to practice trancework on. Throw nominalizations at him for about ten minutes and see what happens.

Also, I'm of the opinion that's it not actually my role to make things better for everyone who I come across.

"Alms for an ex-leper!"

I know martyrs, and it's not a healthy way to live.

There's another t-shirt! "Martyrdom is no way to live"

Yep... seems to me you're well shut of him until he really wants something.

From the OP, this looks like a guy who is just enamoured by a lot of systems of thought; he is not even aware that some of them conflict with eachother, when taken together! I think it's best to leave him to make choices for himself. If he needs help, and asks for it, there is some scope for assisting him.

Vivek.

adrian r wrote:

Many NLP approaches are based around making people feel good to make decisions ..... How do you go about working with someone who isn't prepared to use feeling good as the foundation for making choices?

use one of the approaches that isn't based around making people feel good to make decisions. His choices are a function of his state and feeling 'good' is only one possibility.

Who is best placed to know which state is most approriate for his decision making - him or a practitioner / change agent / whatever / whomever ? Neither him nor someother are, so why go generating a filter that may be entirely inapproriate to his next encounter with whatever he has difficulty with.

Renee --

assuming I did want to work with him -- and I have no intention of doing so -- then I would likely work on installing some kind of kinesthetic signal to let him know what a good decision is. I say install, since he seems to do without such a signal at the moment, being instead primarily attracted to his conception of a paradigm's intellectual novelty. And, if I was to do that, I'd be inclined to make the feeling a pleasant one to give him a reason to adopt the strategy on a regular basis. That kinesthetic basis is lacking at the moment, and I'd rather he had one that made him feel good than bad.

My guess is that it goes without saying that you'd proceed with an idea, calibrate feedback, adjust etc until you get the feedback you are looking for. So it's kind of redundant to discuss specifics of what you would initially do in a hypothetical situation you've no intention of actually pursuing. But so what ...

adrian r wrote:

I would likely work on installing some kind of kinesthetic signal to let him know what a good decision is.

how would the signal know when to make itself known ?

adrian r wrote:

I say install, since he seems to do without such a signal at the moment, being instead primarily attracted to his conception of a paradigm's intellectual novelty. And, if I was to do that, I'd be inclined to make the feeling a pleasant one to give him a reason to adopt the strategy on a regular basis. That kinesthetic basis is lacking at the moment, and I'd rather he had one that made him feel good than bad.

sounds like an issue of where his interest and focus of attention is rather than an issue of not having a signal. Also I'm not sold on the idea of the signal necessarily being better if it's a 'pleasant' signal. The purpose of the signal (as I am understanding/guessing your intentions) is that it is sensory based feedback - nice is an interpretation - which has no place at the table unless we want to limit his 'strategy' for decision making ???

renee wrote:

how would the signal know when to make itself known ?

I'm not sold on the idea of the signal necessarily being better if it's a 'pleasant' signal. The purpose of the signal (as I am understanding/guessing your intentions) is that it is sensory based feedback - nice is an interpretation - which has no place at the table unless we want to limit his 'strategy' for decision making ???

A lot of this is in the realm of aesthetics/style. Also, heading into angels on pinhead territory -- and hence redundant -- since we're discussing hypothetical approaches to dealing with someone I almost certainly won't be working with. So, I'm not going to contribute further to that aspect of this discussion, except to say that on reflection I probably agree with you that some 'bad' feelings might be useful as well as good ones, to help him sort for choices that are useful/generative. You can fill in the blanks about how that works from your own paintbox.