Killing The Part Of Me That Is My Father -
Parts, NLP & Language
NLP uses a parts model, which I once saw demonstrated by Paul McKenna as follows.
He had a large black garbage bag which was to represent the unconscious mind (we call it the energy mind instead). He dug in it and produced two glove puppets, put one on each hand, and these proceeded to have an argument with each other - a demonstration of the classic "parts conflict". This parts conflict scenario is something that does happen, we are familiar with it, and so we are generally happy to accept the idea that people have "parts". In and of itself, that's already both dubious as well as problematic; where the concept of parts begins to move into insanity is when we start talking in terms of, "The part of me that is my father."
Now I have been unhappy with the parts model as being a far too simplistic and divisive model of a fluent organic system to be of any great practical use for a long time; and finally got around to formally replacing the parts model with a different model, the aspects model, which does not delineate information by sorting for content, but instead, by sorting for time, as there is only ever one aspect present at any one moment in time, and the consciousness inhabits different aspects sequentially. It has many advantages apart from making parts "conflicts" a thing of the past, and these include being able to work with pin point precision on the state of a person as defined by time without having to even worry about other states that may be inhabited at another time, and which play no part in what's going on at any one point in time where a particular aspect is present.
When we are dealing with time defined aspects which are state snapshots, we don't need "parts integration" - instead, we can move each aspect towards a different state if necessary. Further, we can note correlations between states and physical influences such as illness, substance interference, stress and so forth, and all of that leads to a far more organic overall self concept which even allows a person to sequentially take on different points of view in consciousness, without that being a problem.
The word "parts" is an interesting word; it partitions something that you can't partition in that way. Human consciousness and memory are interactive flow systems; it's like trying to chop up a flowing river into parts and lifting up that part so you can study it in isolation; of course what simply happens is that you can't lift a part of a river, it all flows away and you're essentially left with nothing. Or you can start to make fish tanks out of various stretches of the river, but do that and the very nature of the river becomes irretrievably corrupted when the information flow between "the parts" ceases.
A part is not a good metaphor for the human neurology full stop.
It's barely bearable to talk of parts in that context; where language then bridges us into insanity is when we start talking and thinking in terms of "the part of me that is my father" or "the part of me that is Uncle Joe" or even worse, "the part of me that is the abuser".
If we step back a moment this doesn't make any sense, it is false, even as a metaphor, or especially as a metaphor, as metaphors are very precise in the way they describe the Universe.
There is no "part" of any person that "is" any "other person".
You are you, I am I, he is he and she is she. Once again, full stop and period.
- However, what the term "I have a part of me that is my Aunt Mary" seeks to describe, and describes very badly and in a structurally damaging way, is some kind of data that was derived from Aunt Mary or by observing/experiencing/interacting with Aunt Mary, and that actually exists as a part of a person's overall data collection.
Now you my dear reader may think that this is some hairsplitting semantics I'm doing here, but the fact is that people have literally gone insane BELIEVING that "there is a part of me THAT IS THE DEVIL" and acting, feeling, and thinking accordingly.
Do you remember how you first felt when you heard that idea that "you are the people you've met" or that you are a collection of other people's "parts" for the first time?
Can you remember that far back?
Or the idea that every single person you see in a dream "is actually you"?
If you were shocked and repulsed by the idea, good on you!
If you still are shocked and repulsed by the idea that you are possessed, infiltrated, inhabited, haunted by all these different "people" "who are" "a part" "of you" - even better!
For "they" "are" not - you only have data to deal with that you have accumulated in their dealings with them.
But even data can get away from you if you don't know what it is, how it works, or how to control your data so it becomes useful rather than a kind of virus that causes endless "parts conflicts" and misery, strife, disembodied voices shouting abuse across time and space, and all the other appearances of that data as you go through life and try to make sense of who YOU are.
The first step to controlling anything or getting in sync with it, getting into some kind of what we call Even Flow with anything, is to stop being afraid of it, to stop demonifying it, to stop making it into some kind of monster that it isn't, and take a reality cheque or two.
- By getting our heads around the fact that there is no "part of you that is your father" at all, but only a data collection of all manner of thoughts and sensory impressions, and that this data is absolutely readable AND WRITEABLE, a great many amongst us can take a deep sigh of relief and say, "Thank goodness for that ... Well, if it's only data, then I could ..."
Indeed. You could do all sorts with it.
You could re-sort it anyway you like. Filter it anyway you like. Label it anyway you like. Make parts out of it but I really wouldn't. Data is essentially innocent, and the rule of thumb for human beings goes that the more data you have, and the better your data management is so that this is interconnected and the bigger picture may emerge, the more successful and happy you get to be in your life.
For data to be useful, it needs to be connected, it needs to flow. It can't be partitioned off, walled in, left in a no-go zone within our systems.
Of course, you can't connect Aunt Mary to Father to the Dalai Lama, but you can connect up the DATA so there is exchange, energy flow, and all of it arranges itself in such a way that you are getting more than the sum of the parts, a form of experienced wisdom emerging where everything you've learned is valuable and contributes to your greater understanding of yourself and the world around you.
And this is the final benefit of thinking and acting in terms of data, rather than "parts" - with the divisions gone that were consciously and artificially placed between the data subsets, pertaining to this and that, to him and her and so forth, evolution occurs across the whole system whilst at the same time the understanding of what is actually you comes into being, like in a Venn diagram, that space in the middle where all the subsets overlap, where there is access to everything.
A central space of "I" that is steady and clear, and that is in essence the conscious master of its own data.
Sounds interesting?
Play with it.
Find out if you can understand that "the part of me that is mummy" is only data, and what happens to that data and your ownership over it if you approach it that way.
A fascinating experience, to be sure, and definitely a way out of "thinking inside the little boxes" that the parts model suggested by presupposition.
Dr Silvia Hartmann
June 2010
References: The Time Model Of Infinite Aspects - Events Psychology, DragonRising, 2009
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