I agree, most NLPers do not have a monopoly on flexibility. In fact, most NLPers have gotten so caught up in the models that resulted from those early days that they have become very inflexible. As for your vision of the masses being able to discern their own perceptions from that which is possible, let alone what is actual…

I watched this special on the sinking of the Titanic. Here were all of these people who were on board a sinking ship. Yet, as the story is told, they trusted their own perceptions over that of the listing of the ship, the salt water that was making it's way up from the lower levels.

I have a friend who is a famous wildlife photographer. I once asked him how he was able to get the kinds of shots that he did. I told him that I thought he must have to really get to know the feeding, mating, watering, and sleeping habits to get in as close as he did.

His answer surprised me. He said that although that kind of knowledge was helpful, there was something far more important that he had to continue learning. He had to learn how to interpret his own behavioral patterns as means of continuously building in flexibility. Because in stalking a dangerous animal, if he became habitual in his approach, he would wind up being the one being hunted.

I can remember looking at him and saying, "That ought to be easy enough to do." And I can still recall his reply. He said, "Don't kid yourself. Some of the patterns we tend to repeat are so damned pervasive that we don't even suspect they are there."

Many of the people who were aboard that sinking ship, no matter what jargon they were using, wound up going down with it when it sank. Why? Because they were mistaking the map for the territory. Even in this most dangerous situation where the warning signs should have been obvious. Think about it. The ship is filling with water and listing. And what is going through their minds? It's a big ship -- it can't sink!

(Name deleted), I realize that the word flexibility is a nominalization. How you and I understand that word I think is quite different. If you truly think that the majority of people really see how obvious it is that the map is not the territory, you are wildly hallucinating. Especially in the helping sciences. Perhaps Jackie was referring from an entirely different meaning for the word flexibility than were you. I know I am.

I have come to understand NLP, not only from the useful models that it has and can produce, but from the point of the methodologies that drive those models. NLP has evolved over the years. Yet much of what I see happening out there in the world of NLP is recapitulation. Sure, you were on board in the early days. But what has that got to do with today. The simple fact that you age regressed twenty years to offer your opinion here is proof that you are tending toward and inflexible approach.

It continues to boggle my mind how people in the field of NLP tend to go backwards to it's conception as a means of discussing it's future. Doesn't even begin to represent a model that exemplifies flexibility, now does it? Much has happened over the last twenty years. Perhaps not for the field as a whole. But there are pockets out there where people are pushing the limits.

Be well,

Carmine Baffa