Hi everyone, I'm Matt from Cambridge, 22, did my practitioner last year with Richard Bandler and John La Valle (NLP Life Training) and liked it but uneasy about it at the same time. My question is can lies teach you truth, or if not lies then metaphors? Both my trainers told metaphor stories that I believe were dense with lies and it made me untrusting towards them. Don't say change the belief, why would you trust a person who lies? Maybe I have my religious education to deep but to me lying is a big no no. I loved the trances and the vibe and I think NLP is well cool in ways but I don't get why the lies. I am not a killjoy but this aspect gets in the way of me learning even though I think I'd get a lot from doing a masters. Any comments?

mattj wrote:

Hi everyone, I'm Matt from Cambridge, 22, did my practitioner last year with Richard Bandler and John La Valle (NLP Life Training) and liked it but uneasy about it at the same time. My question is can lies teach you truth, or if not lies then metaphors? Both my trainers told metaphor stories that I believe were dense with lies and it made me untrusting towards them. Don't say change the belief, why would you trust a person who lies? Maybe I have my religious education to deep but to me lying is a big no no. I loved the trances and the vibe and I think NLP is well cool in ways but I don't get why the lies. I am not a killjoy but this aspect gets in the way of me learning even though I think I'd get a lot from doing a masters. Any comments?

Wow, don't believe in hanging about do you? Straight in with the heavy stuff.

Welcome to the the mad house.

Couldn't figure out what the issue with lies was until I re-read this.

My question is can lies teach you truth...

My question is - are you studying NLP to find the truth.

Remember to have fun as you search.

John

There's nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitive child

Hi Matt,
Are metaphors lies? And if they are, is that not also true of novels and fables and dare I say it parables. My view is that the lesson is in the story not the story itself. I suspect that the more you search for the truth the more elusive it will become. Those who know THE TRUTH as opposed to the truth have stopped looking. Once you find what you are looking for, you have succeeded and need venture out no more.

Best Wishes
John

Hi Matt, welcome to the site.

I think I know where you are coming from. I remember stories from RB which at the time I thought, nice story, however, I dont believe a word of it! The stories about the chap with a fear of snakes and a chap who believed the devil spoke to him and he went on to be a sales man. Maybe they are true, to be honest I have no way of knowing either way. Ultimatly I believe RB was not just rambling about exagerated stories nor was he really talking about snakes or salesmen at all, he was in fact sharing concepts of illnesses and concepts of how to move on from them. Ultimatly remembering the story means you remember the problem and fix. I do a lot of work with children and I make stuff up all the time. My friend this... my neighbour that.... all lies. More importantly I am linguistically programing them to remember to be kind, courteous, think things through or whatever is required at that moment. For me, rather than tell kids they are wrong, bad, or whatever I choose to say "my friend used to swear alot and it got to a point that people were so fed up listening to all the bad words that nobody listened to him, when he asked people with a polite and courteous way he got what he wanted".

In fact the story I just wrote to you is a lie, it never happened, but I hope the metaphor of the story expressses my view on this.

Do things need to be claimed to be try in order for them to be a lie? Or is a story just a story?

You probably never walked too far from your parents when in the woods because of knowing about Hansel and Gretel and you probably have an over aware sense of danger from sharkes everytime you go into the sea due to the jaws films. Stories are a very powerful way to teach people. If you can make peace with the fact that not all stories are true then hopefully it will no longer remain an issue or barrier for you.

You don't need to believe in the same things as I do, that is no problem, you can relax and just enjoy this site anyway. I had a friend that struggled to understand things my way, well I say I had a friend, very bad things started to happen to him and ..........

Welcome to the site,

Thanks

Matt

I guess I'm a funny kind of guy. When I was about 20 or so, I remember I had some questions about the whole God thing and I was also bothered by some things the Church of England was doing, or, more accurately, that some people were doing in the name of the Church. So I set off one morning, jumped over the wall at the back of Lambeth Palace and wandered in to have a chat with the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I found out something very useful that day. Most people don't get to go into the private areas of Lambeth Palace and it's pretty wild when you do. You know when you go to a hot country and you leave the cool, air conditioned airport and suddenly hit a wall of warmer, humid air, and instantly you feel something different? That's how I began to feel myself tingle as I got into the private area of the palace, and although I didn't think much about it at the time, what I realised afterwards is there's something very special that surrounds what some people do. You can talk about it in religious terms or new age terms or scientific terms, and it doesn't really matter what you call it because there's simply something about focussing your consciousness in certain ways that almost sticks to the walls, especially in a place like Lambeth Palace, which has been home to the archbishops of Canterbury for nearly eight hundred years.

What I learnt from that day is that while I don't necessarily understand and certainly don't agree with a lot of what the archbishops do, it has its own kind of integrity. I also realised that if you have a question about what someone is doing, you can just ask them. The funny thing is, I was telling this story to someone a while ago and she kept wondering if all this is really true. I don't look like the kind of guy who breaks into palaces. Well, not now anyway. And it was funny because she kept looping back to the same question, and it wasn't a question that was going to help her to get to where she wanted to go, but it was important to her because she had an idea of how she wanted to get there. So I thought in this case it's going to be easy because we were talking in the House of Commons where I used to work and the library there is a fantastic resource which among other things has a copy of every newspaper ever published in the UK, at least for the last 100 years or so. There's so much there it's unbelievable, but over time a lot of things happen. So we wandered around the library and I kept chattering away with a few more stories and the next time I noticed her mind wandering about the truth, I flicked out a copy of the Daily Telegraph from a certain date, and she saw in front of her that the front page splash was a photo of me and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a story about how I'd interrupted his garden party. The thing is, he wasn't even having a garden party. The journalist probably added that bit just to make it seem more interesting or for some other reason. Who knows why journalists do half the things they do? It didn't really matter though because my friend became convinced that the stories were true enough after reading this, and in her own mind she began to make all the changes she needed so she could go back and listen to those stories again and this time notice what's really important. Those stories themselves have a meaning that isn't about the content, and whether there was a garden party or not, it doesn't really matter because inside your brain it's less important to have a record of what happened and much more useful to focus on how you want things to happen in the future. That's what an NLP training should really be about. It doesn't make sense to go to a theatre show and keep thinking "it's a stage, it's a stage, it's not real". That's not why you bought your ticket.

Stories can be powerful tools for change and it's largely because of how they connect abstract ideas to sensory representations. What's important is not the historical provenance but the effect those stories have on an audience. And storytelling is of course just one aspect of what goes on during a training. I was waiting at an airport with Peter Sailsbury once and we were joking that if Richard Bandler wanted someone to pass him the salt, he'd probably begin telling a story... and it's funny to imagine it that way, but there's a lot more going on with him and with John than those stories inside of stories. My comment is it's great to have questions and doubts. The walls I try to jump over these days are the ones that separate what's useful and what's not useful, and too many people do a training and just believe every word of it as gospel. I think you'll do well so go at your own pace and do what feels right for you.

Hello Matt,
I appreciate your honesty, and hope you'll appreciate mine. Any stories I told are true. My reputation is that I tell it like it is, always have, always will. Ask those who know me well enough that perhaps they shouldn't trust my stories, either. If you were to ask any of my corporate clients, they'd say" "La Valle is a pain. The reason I keep him on is because he tells me what I need to know, not what I want to hear." But they wouldn't know if I was lying to them, would they. Until they take and use what they have to the best of their abilities . . . or prove me wrong.

While I cannot verify all of Richard's stories personally, those I was present for, and that he told, are also true. Far fetched? Probably for most people, but you haven't lived the life Richard has, nor mine, although his has been much wilder than mine could ever have been, of course.

Embellished? Perhaps for a purpose . . . but one would never know, unless they were there for their own experience with either of us, and then heard the story later . . .

Then again, if you've read any of the earlier books, yet, you would recognize that all surface structures are lies, since they are not the experience, nor even the deep structure, and so there is a choice: Is it a lie, or not . . . ?

The best clue for you is in your own post .

Skepticism is a good thing. I encourage it. Keep it, and wear it well. The thing that most people have difficulty with is the truth (if even we can define that).

Now, would I be so bold and dare come out here to tell these lies, or would I dare not to have and kept offline, as I usually do (because I'm very busy).

Have I done it to perpetuate your beliefs, or to challenge them? . . .

Keep that skepticism and prove yourself to only yourself . . . it will amaze yourself immensely . . . unless you lie to yourself, that is, and unless lying to yourself is useful to yourself . . . then how would you know, because you would then believe it to be true, unless this is all a lie to trick you, of course.

Either way, thanks for the feedback . . . Come to that Master Prac and challenge me through yourself . . . after all, if/when you want to work with people on their issues, would you believe everything they would tell you? If you had to lie to them, in order to help them change, would you? These are just questions that lie in the future. But the questions aren't lying in themselves, it's the answer that will divulge what could be the truth . . .

Best Regards, John L.

mattj wrote:

Hi everyone, I'm Matt from Cambridge, 22, did my practitioner last year with Richard Bandler and John La Valle (NLP Life Training) and liked it but uneasy about it at the same time. My question is can lies teach you truth, or if not lies then metaphors? Both my trainers told metaphor stories that I believe were dense with lies and it made me untrusting towards them. Don't say change the belief, why would you trust a person who lies? Maybe I have my religious education to deep but to me lying is a big no no. I loved the trances and the vibe and I think NLP is well cool in ways but I don't get why the lies. I am not a killjoy but this aspect gets in the way of me learning even though I think I'd get a lot from doing a masters. Any comments?

I know this is a slight side line, but when is the next Master Prac you are running John? How can I find out more info about it? Thank you, Katie

Hello Katie,
Thanks. It's this summer in the US with Richard. Best thing to do is go to NLP Seminars and Bandler DHE Information Order Form and complete that form. We don't have the info released, yet, but will probably in March.
You can always email me privately for these things at jlavalle@purenlp.com so it's offline.

Regards,
John La Valle

Katie_Abbott wrote:

I know this is a slight side line, but when is the next Master Prac you are running John? How can I find out more info about it? Thank you, Katie

Woah, plenty of food for thought here. Thanks to all who replied. I'm glad I said what was bugging me and will think about the replies. Thanks specially to John for telling me it straight.

mattj wrote:

My question is can lies teach you truth, or if not lies then metaphors? Both my trainers told metaphor stories that I believe were dense with lies and it made me untrusting towards them. Don't say change the belief, why would you trust a person who lies? Maybe I have my religious education

They aren't lies. They're parables. Jesus used them, so they must be OK.

Matthew
telling a story which may seem to be not credible (even if it is true) can serve the function of an anchor of doubt. The same way that when you heard stories that seemed plausible and true for you created a different anchor, one of credibility.
By successfully telling stories which reinforce both those states/ anchors it then becomes possible to anchor suggestions for your benefit. Maybe you might have thought at some stage that you could not do something, that you doubted your ability? And maybe you found to your surprise that you could do it and found yourself surprisingly confident for no apparent reason??
I have spoken to many people who have experienced John and Richard in training who had no idea of the complexity of what both those masters were doing.

They got the changes and the training but had no idea of the advanced skills that those trainers were using because they are so damed good at it.

From my experience both John and Richard use what ever they need to use to get the result for someone that needs it. Even to the point of that person getting the change and not realizing that it has happened until much later. Do they always get the credit? Sometimes not and sometimes those people will even condemn them as rude etc etc because it was covertly done.

At one training I spoke to Richard off stage in an interval and he broke a pattern I was using that he had spotted. It involved a lot of expletives which some people may find unacceptable from all manner of reasons. I was shocked at the time but in reflection later I realized what had happened. I could have walked away and thought all manner of things
about him as a person (which I did for about two hours until the coin dropped), ultimately he considered helping me more important than my evaluation of him as a person from a position of ignorance after the very abrupt pattern interrupt he conducted. He saw an oppotunity and gave me what I needed. Job done!
I admire that conviction of character.

Things are not always what they seem, but if the outcome is with good intention for the recipient surly that counts as a plus?

Peter

The way I'm understanding this so far is to say the stories aren't the training but they change how we think and that's the training. There's a lot of trusting the trainer involved in this.

mattj wrote:

The way I'm understanding this so far is to say the stories aren't the training but they change how we think and that's the training. There's a lot of trusting the trainer involved in this.

Matt

[Please ignore what follows if not appropriate - these comments have nothing to do with NLP or anyone related to that subject - they are just my own 2 cents]

No trust required. Just determine whether your training outcomes are being met as you go keeping them continually under review and adjusting them as necessary.

If you are not sure what your training outcomes are then you need to do some work on them.

John

The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim

John,

Suddenly I find myself fascinated with the idea of whether a submarine can swim!

What say you?

Venus

venus_brown wrote:

John,

Suddenly I find myself fascinated with the idea of whether a submarine can swim!

What say you?

Venus

I say forget all about it and leave it to your unconscious mind to sort out.

John

Little girls are small and cute only to adults but to one another they are not cute and they are all life-sized

Not only can submarines swim but they can hold their breath longer than a whale.

venus_brown wrote:

Suddenly I find myself fascinated with the idea of whether a submarine can swim!

If I'm on one, I'd rather know it can float.

Hey Mathew,

Are you sure it was "what" they said that made you untrusting towards them? If it was, then the dangerous thing is that you are claiming to know what is true and what is not regarding what is "possible" and not possible using NLP.

However if you are willing to accept perhaps those were metaphors (since you brought it up) then a metaphor does not need to be true AND sometimes for it to be a metaphor it must be false. As in many predicative and nominal metaphors according to Pragmatics.

From another thread in which I wrote:

Metaphors are not suppose to be exactly as what they are referrng to, otherwise it would not be a metaphor at all it would be an example of the exact same class/category.

There are different types of metaphors. In the field of pragmatics for example, Stephen Levinson (on his book Pragmatics from Cambridge university Press on page 152-3) refers to three kinds:

1. Nominal metaphors.
The claim is that a metaphor of the x is y variety is not actually a comparison between two objects x and y but between two propositions (x being F, y being G).

2. Predicative metaphors
The conceptual form is G(x) or G(x, y). There is a property F and an entity y such that x Fing is like y Ging.
Example; Mrs. Gandhi steamed ahead

3. Sentential metaphors
Some metaphors are categorically false like "Mrs Gandhi steamed ahead" as she can't really steam ahead, however sentenial metaphors are identified by being irrelevant to the surrounding discourse when literally constructed.
Example:
A asks: What kind of a mood did you find the boss in?
B replies: The lion roared.

This is not all there is to metaphors but it is a good example of different forms that can be used and are used regularly.

Metaphors are also used to install strategies, to generate and anchor states (sometimes a "not beliving something" state may be used to break limiting beliefs later on) and metaphors can also be used to install ideas by following a logical structure.... many applications for metaphors.

It is also very possible you untrusting them came from other aspects of communication and human interaction and not necessarily "what" they said.... or at least it is more plausible it was from the different values and beliefs expressed by them in relationship to yours.

However if there were lies you are aboslutely certain were lies then if you post an example or two we might be able to explain the reasons for them or simply go who knows why they said that.

Hope this helps too. I have a busy month so I hope I get to check what you thought of my reply.

Gabe

peter108 wrote:

At one training I spoke to Richard off stage in an interval and he broke a pattern I was using that he had spotted. It involved a lot of expletives which some people may find unacceptable from all manner of reasons. I was shocked at the time but in reflection later I realized what had happened. I could have walked away and thought all manner of things about him as a person (which I did for about two hours until the coin dropped), ultimately he considered helping me more important than my evaluation of him as a person from a position of ignorance after the very abrupt pattern interrupt he conducted. He saw an oppotunity and gave me what I needed. Job done!
I admire that conviction of character.

I was just reminded of the Piranha Brothers especially Stig O'Tracy.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jmnspyj-eY&feature=related"]YouTube - The Piranha Brothers Part 1[/ame]

John