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L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. and
Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D.Min.
The Psalmist encourages us
to "Be still, and know … God . . ."
(Psalm 46:10a). He encourages us to " . . . wisely
consider his (God’s) doing. . ." (64:9-10)
and to ". . . consider his testimonies…"
(119:95b). Then in 63:5-6 he says, "My
soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my
mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips when I remember thee
upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches."
In this article, I request
that you find a place of stillness, consider
the subject matter and meditate deeply upon
its relevancy for you.
Take a moment to sit back in
your chair and just think about your identity. Meditate for
a few seconds or minutes about what you experience as your
identity. Upon completing this, consider how you experience
your own identity. What modality of awareness do you use to
create your identity? What do you see, hear, feel and/or how
do you talk to yourself to create your identity? Where do
you experience your most central self? (in your head, heart,
stomach, etc.)
So What Do We Mean by Identity?
When we examine this term identity,
we immediately recognize it as a nominalization, do
we not? In linguistics a nominalization represents an action
that one has frozen. One finds examples of nominalizations
in every day speech. Consider a spouse saying of their marriage,
"We have a poor relationship." This person has taken
an ongoing process of relating to one another and frozen it
in time and "labeled" it "relationship."
Note how much information such terms leave out and how such
labels can distort the facts. The word "relationship"
comes to us and presents itself as a noun (identity), yet
we cannot put it in a wheelbarrow. We cannot point to it,
see it, hear it, feel it, or weigh it. So what hidden verb
lies underneath it and within it? A better way of stating
such a problem – "We relate poorly by not speaking
kindly to each other, etc." The word "education"
like wise functions as a nominalization. "He has a poor
education?" What does that tell you? Very little if anything.
In what subject matter does he have little knowledge? Who
poorly educated him? Such thoughts freeze the verb-process
of educating into a noun – the nominalization "education."
Likewise with identity. Our
identities function as an ongoing process but many create
problems for themselves by labeling (nominalizing) themselves
with such identity statements as: "I am stupid."
Or, "I am unlearned." "I am ignorant."
One I heard recently, "I am ADD". Yes, a psychological
diagnostic book called the DSM IV consists of
a whole bunch of labels. Professionals use it as a guideline
in labeling their patients so they can collect insurance payments.
Regrettably, many patients buy into these diagnostic labels
as a permanent identity for them. An "authority"
such as a psychiatrist labels problems that people confront
with nominalizations. Often times individuals buy into these
labels/nominalizations and think that they can’t ever
break lose from them. Their "identity" gets stuck
with such terms as "manic depressive", "clinically
depressed", "borderline personality", etc.
An authority has told them this so they often believe they
must be and they stay there all their lives especially if
they get paid through disability and get free medicine for
it. Because an authority has given them this label, they buy
into it as truth for them.
The same thing happens but
at an even deeper level with children. This time the authority
figure equates to god – the parent. If your father and/or
mother continually labeled you by making statements like,
"You are stupid." "You will never amount to
anything." You will most likely believe them and live
out the part, maybe for the rest of your life. "You made
a "B", where is the "A"? Such statements
like that by parents gets interpreted by children in such
identity statements as, "I don’t ever feel like
I am good enough. I never can measure up." This results
in perfectionistic tendencies.
By such labeling/nominalization,
we box ourselves in to limiting identity statements thus limiting
our very lives.
But what does the Bible
say about such labeling/nominalizing? In no way do I mean
to dump a guilt trip on you or anyone else. I just want to
get you outside the "box" and allow you to consider
Jesus just may have more for you than the label someone has
given you and you have unconsciously bought into.
Identify - With the verb
in hand, we can now begin the process of discovery.
- How have you identified
yourself?
- With what have you identified
yourself?
- How have other people in
your life identified you?
- Where did you do you original
and formative identifying?
- How accurate or useful do
you find that original identifying?
This de-nominalizing process
takes the static nature out of the pseudo-noun identity and
restores to us the sense of movement and action involved in
this concept. Concept? Yes, ultimately our identity
only exists as a concept.
The word of God, constantly
calls us to re-concept ourselves:
"As a man thinketh
so is he." (Proverbs 23:7, KJV) Our self-concepts
determines our identity.
"Therefore, I urge
you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies
as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God--this is
your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer
to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by
the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to
test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing
and perfect will." (Romans 12:1-2, NIV)
"Do not lie to each
other, since you have taken off your old self with
its practices and have put on the new self, which
is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator."
(Colossians 3:9-10, NIV)
Since our identity does not
exist empirically in the external world, but only in the mental
world of mind by the activity of mind --it exists solely and
exclusively as a mental construct – "As a man thinketh,
so is he."
Identity-- It's All In Your
Head
Of course, where else would
we want to posit identity? As it turns out with the most important
of human realities -- they exist in our heads. We construct
them. We build them as mental representations that we
conceive. Identity, in this sense, differs in no way from
any other concept in our mind. So whether we conceptualize
time, space, relationships, causation (cause-effect relationships),
morality, destiny, origin, etc., a mental concept arises by
how we think about something. It comes into existence through
first representing something, then thinking various other
thoughts about that representation, etc. We change mental
concepts all the time. Has it ever occurred to you that you
can choose to change your identity concept?
Ultimately, this provides some
really, really good news for people who have built some very
problematic, nasty, obnoxious, and toxic ideas about themselves.
As they constructed their mental pictures, sounds, and sensations
in the first place, and then embedded them in various frames-of-references
-- so they can de-construct those forms and build more
enhancing and empowering ones.
De-Constructing
Old Identity Beliefs and Build
More Enhancing
and Empowering Ones:
Thus, the Scripture encourage
us to "transform our minds," to "put off the
old" and to "put on the new". The Scriptures
encourage us to, "Let this mind be in you, which was
also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought
it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no
reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was
made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as
a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross" (Philippians 2:5-8). And,
Jesus did not go around labeling Himself. He knew that His
identity rested in His relationship to His heavenly Father
and He did not buy into any of the labels others tried to
give Him. "Don't you believe that I am in the Father,
and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not
just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is
doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the
Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on
the evidence of the miracles themselves." (John 14:9-10).
To have the mind of Christ
requires that we "think" like Him. To have the mind
of Christ means we "conceptualize" like him. To
have the mind of Christ, means we "talk to ourselves"
like He talked to Himself. To have the mind of Christ means
we hold beliefs about ourselves as he held beliefs about Himself.
All of the cognitive sciences
present the same understanding about human functioning. RET
(Rational-Emotive Therapy) describes human experiences (C)
as resulting from some activating event (A) getting filtered
through our belief systems (B). Hence, RET’s ABCs of
emotions and personality. NLP describes subjective experiences
as arising from how we have learned (or failed to learn) to
run our own brains using various "languages of the mind."
The Hebrew idea put it in a proverb, "As a man thinks
(appraises) in his heart (soul), so he is." The Christian
idea described metamorphosis (Greek for transformation) as
resulting from "the renewing of the mind." Marcus
Arelius, the Roman Emperor and Philosopher also put it in
poetry: "men are not disturbed by things, but by their
interpretations of things,"
Conceptual reality, therefore,
including identity, operates as a function of thinking, conceptualizing,
thinking and meta-thinking, and human map-making. Identity
has no more "reality" than any other concept.
Yet It Feels So Real and
Solid!
Indeed, it does. Why? This
arises due to the very nature of the verb, identify. After
all, what differs from this concept (one’s self-definition
or identity) and any other concept lies in the fact that as
we define, describe, form and format, construct, and build
this concept -- we then step into it and identify with
it. In this way, we give our identity concept lots of power.
We invest it with "our very being." We make it "the
last word about ourselves."
No wonder then that our identity
concept carries so much weight and power and pervasive influence
in our lives. No wonder it can affect all aspects of our very
being: our state of mental health (our sanity), our physical
health, relationships, how we cope and master various aspects
of life, etc.
If we build a non-enhancing
or toxic concept of identity and identify with it, then we
won't question it. Then we will simply assume it as "real,"
"solid," "stable," and "unchangeable."
Then we will use it as our map of reality as we move out into
the world. It will thereafter govern our perceiving, thinking,
feeling, talking, acting, relating, etc.
Why then does it feel so real
and solid? Because we have embedded our representations (Image,
See Figure 1) of our "identity" into a larger frame-of-reference
with words. We have gone meta (above) and embedded it into
a reality frame. We do this by identifying with our thoughts
and feelings about things.
Figure 1
NLP Communication Model
Developmentally, we grow up
and get all kinds of negative and toxic ideas tossed our way.
"Can't you use your head?
What's wrong with you?"
"You're just lazy to the
bone --you'll never amount to anything!"
"Another ‘C’--
That just shows what an idiot I have for a son!"
"Four-eyes! Four-eyes!"
"I'll whoop you good for
stealing cookies from the kitchen, you little thief!"
To this we first create representations
(Images, See Figure 1) using the sensory representation systems.
Then later we start believing these ideas. We confirm them
as "real" and "valid" as we go meta (above)
our image made of on one or more of the pictures (Visual),
sounds (Auditory), feelings (Kinesthetic), smells (Gustatory)
and/or tastes (Gustatory) inside the image inside our heads
and say, "Yes, that's what I am." This then becomes
our frame-of-reference. We use it as our reference system
for our developing identity. We use it for self-definition.
"I'm just the kind of
person who doesn’t like personal discipline."
"I'm Irish and therefore
I just naturally have a hot anger."
"I'm a girl. That makes
me emotional and right-brained."
"I'm a cowboy and cowboys
don't show emotion."
"I'm from Mars. Sometimes
I just have to hide away in my cave. So leave me alone."
"I'm disabled. Therefore
I can't be expected to function like other people."
"I'm a child of an alcoholic,
therefore I'm have low self-esteem and problems in relationships,
and. . ."
Etc.
Once we build a frame-of-reference
and use it as our mental-emotional map for navigating life,
it becomes our reality strategy for living our lives. It becomes
our belief box about ourselves. Regrettably, few step outside
their limiting belief box to even consider the idea that they
may be "much more" than their limiting belief box
indicates. And once it reaches that level of development (and
abstraction), we just take it for granted. It becomes one
of our operational presuppositions that we just never question.
"Everybody knows that you can't change a person's identity!"
"Once a person reaches
seven, his or her personality is set."
Embed your mental construct
of identity in one of those ideas -- and you then frame it
as unquestionable, unchangeable, unalterable. And so it seems
and feels to you.
Aristotelian "I am"--ing
I hope that you have noticed
the language of identity as you have read to this point. But
in case you didn't -- go back to the quotes that I set off
and notice the languaging of identity.
We typically language the
concept of identity with the Aristotelian "to be"
verbs. "I am a failure." "I am a victim."
"I am phobic of getting rejected." This creates
the "I," a term which Gregory Bateson called, "the
greatest nominalization of them all." It generates a
"complex equivalence." This means we have taken
two things, one existing in the external environment--a living
breathing person, and another "thing" existing in
the mind--an idea, and then link them together.
EB (External
Behavior or Event) = (equals) IS (Internal State or significance)
For Korzybski, any and all
identification represents a form of unsanity. Why? Because
it represents a false-to-fact mapping of things. To say that
"I" am this or that facet of my experience, this
or that idea, this or that association, etc. severely limits
me as a person as it puts me into a box of labels and definitions.
It represents a false-to-fact
mapping, additionally, because it takes a set of processes
(i.e., actions, relations, behaviors, etc.) and attempts to
nominalize them into some Noun Box. This creates a static,
non-moving, and non-dynamic representation of me.
Jesus calls us outside
our limiting belief boxes. To Nicodemus Jesus said,
"I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom
of God unless he is born again" (John 3:3). Paul defined
this rebirth as a new creation, "Therefore, if anyone
is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the
new has come!" (II Cor. 5:17 KJV). The word creation
is the Greek word ktisis meaning in this context
"creation" (NIV) or "creature" (KJV).
To experience the rebirth of Jesus means He makes us all over
again. What we lost in the Garden of Eden through sin has
met its match in the re-creation of Jesus. These simple truths
come from The Gospels 101. Don’t you think it time
that we Christians get our identity from our new position
in Christ and not from what our parents or some authority
figure has told us?
A more true-to-fact mapping
our identity minds would assert this following:
"I exist as a human being
with powers of thinking, feeling, speaking, behaving, and
relating. I operate in the world using such mental constructions
as beliefs, values, understandings, decisions, etc. In other
words, I also believe, value, understand, decide, etc. I function
in mothering or fathering roles, as a worker in this or that
job, etc. I am more than my thoughts. I am more than my emotions.
My behaviors do not summarize the last word about myself.
I exist as so much more than any given relationship, task,
activity, or idea.
"I once lived as a sinner
but I have now accepted Christ. I have now put on His identity
and my worth as a person in Him is a
given. I believe and accept Romans 5:19 "For as by one
man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience
of one shall many be made righteous." I have taken
off the old and He has put on the new. He has given me
a brand new identity.
"As a believer in Jesus, I live my life constantly
becoming the new person He has created me to become. Daily
He takes off the old person and puts on the new person. As
with Paul in I Cor. 15:31b "I die daily." And daily
with Paul I say, "For which cause we (I) faint not; but
though our (my) outward man (self) perish(es), yet the inward
man (self) is renewed day by day" (II Cor. 4:16)"
This frame helps a person to
dis-identify when he or she has over-identified with any one
facet of life. It also maintains the motion and movement,
and the dynamic processes of thinking, feeling, acting, etc.
This, in turn, allows a person to keep changing, evolving,
growing, developing, and transforming.
You may say, "But in my
head I believe what you say, but I just can’t make it
work for me. How do I make those truths work in my inmost
self?" Great question, I (BB) hear it all the time from
therapy clients. To you I suggest the following as you remain
in your quiet meditative state:
The Re-Designing of Identity
Pattern:
1) Identify current identity.
Who are you? (How do you think
of yourself?) What words, terms, labels, metaphors, etc. do
you use in generating your own self-definition?
Define and describe yourself
with 10 words: nice, brave, quiet, caring, etc.
To what extent do you use the
following as part of the way you define yourself: your height,
size, race, strength, wisdom, friends, schooling, degrees,
social status, religion, place of origin, geography, etc.
How do others define you?
2) Identify Problems
What part or facet of your
self identity do you not like?
What would you like to change
or re-invent?
3) Identify a new, desired
Identity
Who would you prefer to become?
Knowing and believing Whom
Jesus desires to make of you, what would your new identity
in Christ look like? Feel like? Sound like?
Describe your Ideal Identity
with 10 words. Language your new identity with some of the
suggested Scripture above or choose some of your favorite
passages.
Visualize this Ideal Self fully
-- and edit it so that it meets all of the ten words. You
may wish to make the picture of your ideal self-brighter,
more colorful, closer, bigger, etc. Edit that picture of your
new self so that your hear Jesus say, "That looks exactly
what I can make of you."
Step into this idealized self
-- and experience being this kind of a person. Imagine yourself
living the life of that person. Just mentally step into that
picture and become that new person seeing through the eyes
of the new you. Hearing significant others in your life talking
to the new person Jesus has made of you. Listening to yourself
as you talk to yourself being this new person.
4) Step out and ask yourself
if any part of you disagrees with you becoming this Ideal
Self
What stops you from being this
way? Welcome these objections should you get a sense of any.
What States -- frames -- rules
– taboos, etc. would stop you from becoming this person?
If you get an objection, ask
the objection(s) the(ir) purpose in objecting. What do(es)
the(se) objections have for you? Careful. Often times these
objections come from old childhood memories and/or identities
and can really sabotage what Jesus has in store for you. For
those trained in NLP, these objections require use of the
Meta-Model of Language to expose them to the conscious mind
for reframing.
Recently I challenged a friend
to utilize their great intellectual ability to move out of
a low wage position and go to college so they could advance
their career. This person had an IQ as a child of 140. When
I asked this friend who is in her mid 40’s about doing
that she immediately replied, "But they said I couldn’t
do that. No one in our family goes to college." I immediately
asked, "Who is ‘they’?" She said my parents
and some aunts and uncles. I inquired, "When did they
say this?" "When I was a little girl." I directed
her to get a picture of one of those memories and to see herself
as a child hearing her parents and others tell her that she
couldn’t do that." She did. I then said, "It
is a lie!!! That isn’t true any more. You are no longer
a little girl. Your parents and family did the best they could
do. They came off their own limiting beliefs. Let it go. Put
a new meaning to those memories. Forgive their ignorance.
They meant your good. But they told you a lie. Let it go.
Paul said, "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I
understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became
a man, I put away childish things." (I Cor. 13:11 KJV).
It is time to put away that childish thinking and use that
marvelous brain that God has given you." That friend
just enrolled in college.
Watch those objecting parts.
They function as "bitter roots" (See Hebrews 12:15)
that can rise up and cause you trouble. Take them to Jesus
and let Him re-language them for you. I will direct you in
how to do that in just a moment. (See article on this Web
Site entitled "How to Take A Bitter Root to Jesus.")
What steps must you take in
order to move toward becoming this kind of a person?
5) Re-Designing.
Taking external constraints
into account -- re-design your Ideal Self so that it meets
your criteria.
Commit yourself to becoming
this kind of a person.
Identify what One Thing you
need to do today to begin this direction.
Identify the individuals in
your life who will support you becoming this kind of a person
--and tell them about your goals.
6) Integration
You should now have two major
concepts in mind. You have the old identity you desire to
change. You have the new identity that Jesus desires for you.
How do you get the new identity installed? I will tell you
how remembering that you have two marvelous powers at work
in addition to your thoughts. You have the Truths of the Scripture.
And, you have the indwelling Holy Spirit welding God’s
Word onto your hearts. Now, I ask you a question—which
in your mind functions more powerfully: your old negative
identity-beliefs or the power of God’s Word empowered
by the Holy Spirit? If you answered the latter, the following
cannot not but work for you.
Simply get the thought of your
old identity and then set it aside. Now, get the new identity
thought Jesus gave you and bring the new identity to bear
on the old identity. Just merge those two thoughts together
in your mind. What happens? Jesus wins, doesn’t He?
Now, if in #4 above you got objections, bring the new identity
you have in Jesus to bear (or merge them together) on the
objecting thought. Then once you have eliminated the objections
with the Lord’s new identity for you, bring the Lord’s
identity to bear on the old identity from #2 above.
Figure 2
Eliminating Old Identities with Our New Identity in Christ
Jesus
But Bob, that seems so simple.
Yes, it is. But never, I mean never, minimize the price Jesus
paid for us on the Cross. Without the Cross, we have no new
identity.
How does it work?
As we have discovered, our
identity exists only as a thought. We construct thoughts through
the word meanings we give our internal representations (images,
See Figure 1). Our internal representations (images) interact
with our physiology through our central nervous system, which
produces our states of being. Our states of being determines
our behavior, our walk, our talk,
Because the word-meaning we
give our internal representations, exists as "about"
our internal representations, they exist at a higher level
of abstraction. Now, not only do we have thoughts (word-meaning)
about our internal representation, we have thoughts about
other thoughts. The mind works as a self-reflexive organism
by thinking thoughts about thoughts.
Gregory Bateson in his classic
work Steps to an Ecology of Mind states that higher
levels of thought modulate lower levels. Suppose you have
hatred but come to hate your hatred, what happens? By hating
your hatred the hatred just might disappear. Higher levels
of thought modulate lower levels of thought sometimes by strengthening,
sometimes by weakening and sometimes by eliminating thoughts.
The concept
of higher levels modulating lower levels finds expression
with the Meta-states’™ model. Our brains have the
unique quality for abstracting. In NLP you read and hear a
lot about "logical levels." Logical levels refer
to higher level abstractions. Consider the following:
Figure 3
Logical Levels of Thought
In Figure 3
note how with each word going up, you move to a higher level
of abstraction. Start with the word "transportation."
We know that "transportation" functions at a higher
logical level than does the word "car" for transportation
includes "cars" but it includes more. The word "car"
includes the term "Car Door" but it includes more
than just a car door, etc. Hence, each word functions as a
higher order abstraction in that it contains what lies below
it and more. Important to the Meta-state™ model
concerns the discovery of Gregory Bateson that higher levels
modulate lower levels (1979). The term "meta-levels"
refer to higher logical levels.
In the Meta-state™
model, we utilize the power of higher levels in the modulation
of lower levels. The brain has the unique ability to internally
apply one thought to another thought. The brain abstracts
to another state level and reflects that state to another
state. Suppose you experience a primary state of fear from
some external event. Internally you may choose to apply the
thought of "appreciation" to your fear and take
appropriate action to any external threat. Or, you may choose
to apply another state of consciousness called fear to the
fear you had from the primary state of fear. Thus, you fear
your fear. Guess what you will get? Paranoia. You fear your
fear and the higher level fear modulates and increases your
primary state of fear and suddenly you experience paranoia.
But, notice the difference in outcome states when you apply
the meta-level state of appreciation to fear. What do you
get? You sure don't get paranoia, do you?
Michael formerly
defines Meta-states as,
A state
of consciousness about another state of consciousness,
i.e. fear of fear, joy of anger, sadness about fear, etc.
A Meta-state, driven in linguistics (words, language--a
meta-level phenomenon), refers to any state above, beyond,
and/or about any other state. These states transcend logical
levels, involve self-reflexive consciousness, and that
therefore exist as "spiritual" states. (1996)
Thus we understand neurologically
how the Word of God works. What happens when you bring the
love and forgiveness of God to bear on your bitterness towards
a fellow human being? Bitterness must go. What happens when
you bring your faith in Christ to bear on your fear? If your
faith in Jesus operates at a higher level than your fear,
your fears must go.
Now, what happens when you
take an identity statement like, "I am stupid" and
bring your new identity in Jesus to bear upon such an identity
statement? If within your thought/belief system, your belief
in Jesus operates at a higher level of abstraction than the
belief, "I am stupid" the old belief disappears.
If it doesn’t, build your belief in Jesus, intensify
it by making the picture bigger, brighter, more colorful,
etc. Then, really empower it with the Word of God with such
statements as, "I can do all things through Christ who
strengtheneth me" and then bring it to bear on the old
limiting belief. Just merge those thoughts together. Jesus
wins all the time.
References
Bateson, Gregory (1979). Steps
to an Ecology of Mind. New York, Ballantine.
Korzybski, Alfred (1941/1994).
Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian
Systems and General Semantics. (5th ed.). Lakeville,
CN: International Non-Aristotelian Library Publishing Co.
Michael Hall, Ph.D (1995).
Meta-States: A Domain of Logical Levels, Self-Reflexiveness
in Human States of Consciousness (Grand Junction, CO:
E. T. Publications.
Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D.Min.
1516 Cecelia Dr.
Gastonia, NC 28054
(704) 864-3585
Fax: (704) 864-1545
Bob@neurosemantics.com
http://www.neurosemantics.com
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D
PO Box 9231
Grand Junction, CO 81501
(970) 523-7877
Michael@neurosemantics.com
http://www.neurosemantics.com
© 1998 All Rights Reserved.
Bobby G. Bodenhamer, D.Min. and L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.
www.neurosemantics.com
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