I’ve got a lot of feedback about these two articles. By far the most common question is what exactly do I mean by ‘self destruction’? Hopefully this clears it up, although, like anything to do with the ‘self’ it is a fairly abstract concept. But…
In NLP there is a concept of ‘parts’ were by your ‘self’ is broken up into little pieces, each with their own ‘agenda’ if you will. Obviously, they are all a part of you, and they all mean well, but the thing is that even though all your parts mean well, they don’t necessarily all agree, and even if they agree on the result, their ways of getting there won’t necessarily line up.
When I talk about a rebuild, I am talking about going down deep into these parts, and finding conflicting parts so that you can address them. The thing is that chain reactions happen, but they only effect other parts on that same level and above, of your ‘self’.
Because of this chain reaction, the deeper you go down into your self, the more other parts are effected by the change. Sometimes you only need to address parts of your ‘self’ that are in the higher levels, but sometimes, for a variety of reasons, you may need to go down to these deeper levels and do a ‘rebuild’.
A rebuild is going deep, deep down so you’re effecting massive parts of your self due to this chain reaction that occurs. It’s a rebuild because there’s so much that has changed, and at such a deep level, that you’ll be a different person. If all went well, a better person, more in tune with the direction you want to be heading. To extend the metaphor, it’s definitely a rebuild, rather than a redesign :)
As I said, it’s a bit of an abstract concept, but I don’t think there will ever be an ‘absolute’ way of describing what goes on inside of yourself. The way I look at it is a small solid ball, wrapped in layers and layers of interconnected panels of different sizes and shapes. The ball is your unchanging core, the panels are the parts of your ‘self’ and due to the odd sizes of the panels, changing one means the panels around and above it are effected.
The reason I called it self destruction is that, although you’re rebuilding it, going through a process like this requires the metaphorical ‘destruction’ of much of your self. Going back to my analogy, short term fixes are are putting new panels over broken, grinding panels. The more you pile on top the more unstable it becomes.
Why would you put panels (parts) over other panels? You will be doing that forever. Every time you go through a significant event, or experience something new, you’re adding a new panel, a new part of your self.
I believe that most of the time people address the parts of their self that conflict with the new ‘panel’ automatically, either in their sleep or by mulling things over in their head. Sometimes it takes a while, and people spend some time in turmoil. Hard times, but they usually fix things up eventually.
But sometimes, especially if there was a lot going on at once, or you experienced something exceptionally disturbing, perhaps something that caused you to repress memories or deny the existence of some ‘parts’ then you may be building your ‘self’ on unstable ground. This is when a rebuild is necessary. This is when you’ll need to go through a bit of ‘self destruction’ to address the deeper issue and progress.
Another question I have gotten a few times is, by self destruction, do I mean suicide. I definitely don’t mean suicide! You’re only going to experience this ‘plane’ from this perspective once, and no matter what the circumstances, you should never be in so much of a rush that you can’t wait for what’s next!
I hope this answers some questions, but at the end of the day, as I said before, this is an abstract concept, and there is no right or wrong here.
As always, I’d love to hear your opinions! You can get in touch with me using the feedback form – this goes strait to my personal email and I do reply to every email – although it sometimes takes some time :)
This post was converted automatically from the old bmindful article archive. Some of the mentioned links or references may no longer exist.
“How easy it is in our life, to miss what’s being offered.” — Paul Haller
