Dragons to Princes
by
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

DRAGON SLAYING: Dragons to Princes -  Brand New Second Edition (2000) What do you do when you get into a Dragon State? How do you respond when fear, anger, guilt, shame, and other negative emotions become the very frame of your mind? What then? How well do you handle feeling fearful about your anger, guilting your sadness, depressed about your guilt and other meta-muddle convoluted states? Dragon Slaying describes a cutting-edge model of the mind, Meta-States which will enable yo to take control of your mind at all of its reflexive levels. Dr. Michael hall will guide you to becoming a Dragon Master so that you can tame, transform, and slay the Dragons that would otherwise torture and sabotage.  (Paperback, 308 pages $25 & $4 S&H -- $20 plus $4 S&H for members of The Society of Neuro-Semantics). Published by Neuro-Semantics, Grand Junction, CO.

YOU'VE GOT TO READ
THE NEWEST EDITION OF
DRAGON SLAYING

Get the Inside Story about Dragons
What they are
How to Identify them
How to tame, slay, or transform them

You probably already know it, but there are Dragons everywhere! Push any human being to his or her limits and, presto, out pops a Dragon. Some will roar. Others will whimper. Some will huff and puff and rage and carry on in dramatic and melodramatic ways. Others will just roll over and act dead.

Dragons. They undermine our sense of personal mastery, empowerment, and happiness. Yet they emerge as simply functions of our mind-body states. As such, they simply represent our neuro-linguistic energy fields that govern our lives and determine the quality of our experience.

Dragons. Some are just plain downright toxic and need to be slain. Others are just out-of-control mind-body states that need to be tamed and harassed and used for more energy and vitality in life. Others are states that need to be tempered and balanced by other resources. Become a Dragon Master as you learn to manage your mind-body states for health, happiness, wholeness, and fun.

From the

Introduction

I wrote Dragon Slaying because we humans so easily and frequently find ourselves in emotional states and states of mind that we can only call "Dragon states." I wrote it also because by using Meta-States we can fairly easily get ourselves out of those states. Would you like to have that kind of power and elegance in managing your states? You can. With the Meta-States Model (which you'll learn about in this book), you will be able to consciously shift from a dragon-like state and put yourself into a princely state.

How does such magic occur?

It emerges from the power of discovering how to effectively manage not only your states but your higher states of mind-and-emotion, your meta-states. By discovering and developing skills for state management, you will be able to tame, transform, or slay dragons the dragons that roar and pillage in your mind.

What do all of us need when we access a dragon state of anger, fear, dread, negativism, fatigue, sadness, discourage, etc.?

We need a model whereby we can understand the experience itself, how we created it (yes, it's all a matter of our own creations), and what we can do about it.

• What in the world is going on?
• Why do I feel this way?
• When I feel this way, what causes me to think, perceive, and behave as I do?
• How do I sabotage myself and my relationships when I get into these dragon states?
• How did I ever get into this frame of mind and how can I get out of it?

Understanding alone (as we all know far too well) does not, and will not, empower us to actually change things. We also need an ability. We need the ability to take control of our states. We need the personal power to take effective action in doing something effective and productive so that we do not let our Dragon States sabotage us. The ability to take effective action, which is what we mean by personal "power," comes with practice, training, and skill development. We also need a process that assists us in developing the quality of personal power of "running our own brain" as we learn to take charge of our states.

I have based this work on the Meta-States model which grew out of several fields: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), Cognitive Behavioral psychology (i.e. REBT, Rational-Emotive Behavioral Therapy), Korzybski's General Semantics model of the Levels of Abstraction, Bateson's Levels of Learning, Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy and paradoxical intention, Glasser's Reality Therapy /Control Theory, etc. This has given rise to an extension and expansion of NLP which we call Neuro-Semantics^®. These fields provide the basic theoretical basis for this meta-level model and how it allows us to work with consciousness in a more systemic way.

The Meta-States model (1995) revolves about an understanding and appreciation of the levels of thought. Using the mechanism of self-reflexivity, we simply follow the flow of thought as it reflects back onto itself as we think about our previous thinking.

What did you think about that?

What do you now think about your thinking about that?

Meta-States puts this information together in an organized way in order for us to track our jumps to higher levels and the loops we move around in (conceptually) as we generate higher and more complex mental and emotional states.

This allows us to consider our states of mind-emotion-and-body and the different kinds of states we get into, as well as the effect that states have on our everyday experiences. And what value does that hold for us? It allows us to observe these loops without getting caught up in them or dominated by them. When that happens, a "Dragon" state typically emerges.

After I first wrote the first book on Meta-States and focused on "reflexivity in human states of consciousness," many said that they found that it too theoretical, academic, and complex. "Can't you boil it down? Can't you make it more simple?"

Dragon Slaying (as both a book and training) represents the first attempt at making Meta-States more user friendly and easier to access and use. In this work I have attempted to put into a form that I think you will find readable, immediately useable, insightful, and practical.

What you have in your hands is essentially a transcript of the first Meta-States training workshop which was entitled, Dragon Slaying / Taming. I have also included Peanuts cartoons in order to keep the reading interesting and illustrative. Originally, I had hoped to have reproduce the cartoons, but upon contacting Charles Schultz and discovery that it would cost over $300 for each cartoon, I decided not to go that route. I do trust that you'll get the point and enjoy the humor even from the written form.

Prepare yourself also for encounter some words that may be new to you. If you find it strange or happen to miss the initial definition of some term (and don't want to reread pages to find it), skip to the back to the glossary of terms.

Finally, I gratefully thank my associates Dr. Bob Bodenhamer and Debra Lederer for working through the text proofing and adding valuable comments and to my son Mark Hall for his extensive art work as well as to my daughter, Jessica Hall for her contributions to this latest edition.

And now, may you thoroughly enjoy your exploration and learning
as you allow yourself to become truly curious
about how you can empower your mind-and-emotions
in new and enhancing ways
as you discover some exciting ways
to simply bring some resourceful thoughts and feelings
upon some of your mental and emotional states
so that you become fascinated by the playful interaction
of your consciousness thinking about itself
as you access some of your higher states,
and wonder, really wonder,
just which dragon states you'd like to deal with first,
and whether you need to tame it,
transform its energy, or slay it,
and whether when you do that
some new princely state will automatically emerge,
or whether it just opens up space
so that you can begin to design engineer for yourself
some highly resourceful states
that would put more vitality and zest into everyday life,
but you can ... now ... even as you begin..

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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©2000 Bobby G. Bodenhamer and L. Michael Hall. All rights reserved.