Hello (name deleted)

I want to respond to this subject for the sake of clarification, my own clarification. Is there a need for conscious appreciation? My answer to this question would depend on what is meant by conscious, and for that matter what are you wanting to appreciate? Is there really a conscious mind? Or is this expression a term used to describe some processes? Is what this word *conscious* is trying to describe the same for everyone? I don't think so? In fact I know so!

And now for the appreciation part of the question. What exactly is it you are wanting to appreciate? I would hope the answer to this question would be your life and just how good you can feel inside of it. Think about this. Gee, I spent an entire life time wrapped up in a vain attempt to unlock a set of descriptions that would better help me understand what I haven't yet learned how to do. Besides that, the descriptions we will come up with will be just that, descriptions! They can never be compared to the actual skill or experience itself. Remember words are two steps removed from actual experience, they are used to describe a thing, not replace it. When you go to a restaurant do you eat the menu or the meal?

Sure, I like being able to take things apart and put them back together again, even better I like being able to improve them. I know a guy who works for one of the largest computer companies in the free world. He designs and builds a particular component for that company. The other day he came over to my house to discuss with me the future of microprocessor chip technology. I turned on one of my computers and said to him "take this for a spin"--if you will. He looked at me with a smile and said that he didn't know how to use a computer. I thought that to be an interesting response. Here he understood how to design a single component that would eventually wind up as part of a whole system. Yet he had no clue of the actual real world (shared reality) use of that component when integrated into the system it was designed for in the first place.

So what do you want to appreciate consciously? A single component or the whole system. I have met many practitioners in the field of NLP who have come to truly appreciate parts of that system. Some people call them techniques which are followed step by step. We don't even drive a car, lift a fork, or remember phone numbers that way. If the road that we usually take to get to the store was closed we would have to stay home and starve. How then do we take a set of precise skills that are designed to be used together as a whole and do them consciously. That is what you mean by conscious appreciation, is it not? Again I don't know what you mean! Have you really thought it through? What exactly do you want? Is what you want worth having? Again I really do not know!

I, on the same hand, prefer to consciously appreciate that my unconscious can do all of those things for me, unconsciously, I can always find a way. How many times have I heard the words *it can't be done* yet it was done anyway. If *consciously* the thought was that *it can't be done* then how did it get done? Which leaves me with the appreciation that I don't have to figure something out consciously in order for it to get it done. That is why I have unconscious processes in the first place. So that what I perceive to be my conscious mind can enjoy the perceptions of daily living, while my unconscious does everything else.

You want to understand something? Do it first! Then when you talk about it, the words you will be using as a means for the descriptions you will be offering, will have a fundamental internal experiential foundation in which to attach themselves. You will then be speaking from a point of experience, and that is something that can truly be appreciated!

Stay well

Carmine