YOUR EPISTEMOLOGY/
YOUR EMBODIMENT
Because the word "epistemology" sounds academic, it's easy to fall into the
trap of thinking that epistemology, and specifically your epistemology
about anything in particular, is merely intellectual or academic. Yet in
reality it is not! Instead, your epistemology determines how you experience
life in your body.
Why is that? Because when you think, you think ideas, and your ideas
inevitably get located in your body. This ideo-dynamic or ideo-motor aspect
of your mind-body system describes how you are a neuro-semantic and
neuro-linguistic being. That means that "as you think, so you feel." As
you think, so you activate the motor cortex in your brain which then sends
messages to your body. In the end, you embody those ideas and experience
them kinesthetically.
Nor is this new. You already know that depending on what you're thinking,
and how you're thinking, so you will feel and experience. That's why you
can think about all sorts of problems that could happen in the future
(otherwise called 'worrying') and if you do it long enough and with enough
intensity-you can make yourself sick with worry. You can create headaches,
migrains, upset stomach, even ulcers. Isn't that amazing? You have the
ability to embody your worrying thoughts so your body bears the blunt of
those thoughts.
The principle that I'm getting at is this: As you think, and the way you
know what you know, determine the emotional states and the physiological
states you experience. Your epistemology -your embodiment. Your
epistemology-your emotions.
Now let's get personal. What are you embodying? What is deceptive about
this process is that it takes time. The feedback from your body regarding
the way you're thinking does not happen immediately although you can speed
it up. Add a lot of very intense emotions (fear, anger, sadness, etc.) to
an idea and you can more quickly get yourself into a physiological state.
Robbins does this in his fire walks. He adds massive desire, passion, and
excitement to get people into physiological states where they walk on hot
coals.
But normally, it takes weeks, months, even years for your way of thinking to
result in psycho-somatic illnesses and diseases. This is what makes the
process deceptive and what prevents us from gaining awareness of what we are
doing to ourselves via our thoughts. Yet embodiment, as a process, is
inevitable. It is what the body does. Your body, and mine, takes thoughts
and translates them into a kinesthetic code. What results are our emotions,
emotional states, attitudes (disposition of body), and the well-being or the
ill-being in terms of our body functions.
Here is something that I think should cause all of us to pause and deeply
consider what we are doing to ourselves via our thoughts. Ultimately, the
way you think and know (your epistemology) becomes incorporated in your
body.
To what extent do you think fearful, apprehensive, dreadful
thoughts?
To what extent do you think angry and aggressive thoughts during
the day?
To what extent do you think sad, depressive, and fatalistic
thoughts?
To what extent do you think in terms of competition, win and
lose?
To what extent do you think in terms of envy and jealous of
others?
Another subtle factor of our thinking that leads to undesirable embodiment
is the kind of thinking you do all day. Years ago I did a public
demonstration of coaching with a person who had been brought in from the
outside, who knew nothing of NLP or Meta-Coaching. I began by asking what
he wanted to accomplish which was important to him and he told me what he
did not want. I asked, "When you don't have X, what will you have?" He
again told me more of what he did not want. That repeated 4 or 5 times.
Ah, a pattern! I asked, "What is your job or career?" It turned out he did
quality control on airplanes.
"So all day long the kind of thinking you do is looking for what's wrong,
what you don't want, what should not be there. Is that right?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Well, now I know your problem and the solution. ... [long pause during
which he began to look increasingly interested] It is your best day-time
thinking that is now preventing you from enjoying your life. Your looking
for what you don't want has been so strong, so embodied, that you feel stuck
and unable to change it. If you'd like to change that-that would be your
solution."
What does this mean for you and me? It means that the way you think all day
(or a good part of the day) can become a thinking habit which prevents you
from doing other kinds of thinking. The solution is becoming aware of your
thinking habit and then thinking-about-your-thinking chose when it is useful
and when it is not. All that requires is just some basic "mind" training.
