Zen Peace and NLP End State Energy

The Buddha said:

"To be free from passions, to be calm, is the way"

Zen Buddhism aims for peace. Neuro Linguistic Programming when used as a philosophy for living, ends for End State Energy. End State Energy is a concept developed (I believe) by John Overdurf. 

Zen aims to strip away our beliefs, our attachment to the future and the past, to physical objects, people, religious beliefs. When such attachments are stripped away, we are left in a state of peace.

In NLP End State Energy is the energy you will feel, the state you will be in, when you have resolved all your issues. By imagining that we have resolved our issues, and our attachments, we can begin to feel that End State Energy. As we begin to access the End State Energy, our problems and issues begin to fall away naturally.

Let's consider that again: End State Energy is the state we will have when our problems are resolved. Imagining our problems are solved allows us to begin to access that End State Energy. When we access the End State Energy, our problems fall away.

The role of the coach in NLP is to hold the space open, so the client can begin to access their own End State Energy. How do we do this? We take our client into the future, into that possible future where they have resolved the issue at hand. As they experience that future time, when the problem is solved, we draw their attention to the state that they feel NOW.

AS NOW exists only in the present moment, as they experience the future NOW, they are able to experience that future state NOW.

Peace

Shawn Carson

NLP Training in New York

Where is knowledge

A man called Maulingaputta came to the Buddha. 

Maulingaputta was a wise and knowledgeable man and a teacher. He came to the Buddha seeking answers to his questions. The Buddha agreed to answer his questions on one condition, that Maulingaputta stay with the Buddha for one year without speaking. If Maulingaputta could do that, the Buddha promised to answer all his questions.

At this Buddha's disciple Sariputta laughed, then he apologized to Maulingaputta, saying "I was not laughing at you, rather I am laughing because the Buddha said the same thing to me, and after a year of silence, I had no more questions. Even though the Buddha asks me for questions, I find I have none."

When we act as an NLP coach, we are not there to answer our client's questions. We are there to help our client to find their own answers.

We do not do this by asking our client to remain silent for a year. This might be impractical in our modern world. Rather we hold the space for our client to explore their own truth, even if only for an hour.

The way we do this is through questions. Questions allow us to guide our client through their own experience, and find their own truth. When they find their own truth, then like Sariputta, they find they have no more questions, and are surprised at the peaceful answers they have instead. 

When we ask our client for their question, and they find it is gone and they cannot find it, that is when we know we have been of assistance.

Shawn Carson

NLP training in New York

Triggering Negativity

What triggers us to feel bad? What triggers our negativity?

These are questions of importance if we wish to maintain a positive state. Obviously the answer is different for each of us. 

• For some it is fear, fear of public speaking, or fear of death, or fear of loss
  
• For others it might be anger at a perceived insult, or at our own helplessness
• For still others it may be jealousy, at someone who has more than we do, or has things that we desire

Whatever negative state we find ourself in, it begins with our thoughts, perhaps triggered by something we see or hear around us. It ends with our feeling of fear or anger, or jealousy. The place immediately before this first thought, is our place of power, the place where we can change our emotional path.

"Before the first thought" is very still and quiet, but as soon as the first thought happens, the chain reaction begins, and the next thing you know, you're responding on an emotional level

John Daido Loori - Cave of Tigers

So how do we find this still, quiet place before the first thought? Traditional Zen would say we should recognize and accept the negative emotion in order to be free of it. 

Going into the anxiety, going into the fear, going into the emotion, then being it, seeing the thoughts that lead to it, frees you.

John Daido Loori - Cave of Tigers

In NLP we take this road of Zen. As a coach we hold the space for the client, allowing them to slow down time enough to follow the train of thoughts from the emotional state they feel, all the way back to that still quiet place before the chain of thought begins.

From that quiet place, we can plan a new route, a new set of thoughts (or internal representations), called a "strategy" in NLP, to take us into a peaceful state, or a state of confidence, or whatever emotion we wish to feel.

Shawn Carson

NLP Training in New York

Thoughts and Emotions

Zen says:

"Thoughts lead to other thoughts and the whole stream of thoughts turns into what we call an emotion"
John Daido Loori - Cave of Tigers

NLP says that our state, our emotional state, is a result of a series of thoughts, that we have. Each thought may be a self-talk (things that we say to ourselves), or a picture, or a sound, or a feeling or behavior. When we have run through this series of thoughts, we end up in a certain emotional state.

In NLP we call each thought an internal representation, and we call the series of thoughts a strategy.

By tracking and noticing the thoughts or internal representations we have, we can begin to change them in order to reach a different emotional state, or let them go entirely, to reach enlightenment!

Shawn Carson
NLP Training in New York