Spiritual meta-programs

I first consciously noticed and made sense of the term meta-programs in one of my NLP trainings.

What are meta-programs and how do they come about?

The basic term “programs” refers here to the fact that we do not react arbitrarily, but in certain ways. Depending on the person, the contexts, and personal development, these are conditioned in the early years of life, then learned through imitation, and from young adulthood on often learned, adapted, optimized, etc. through our own exploration. They also change and differ according to further criteria in the context of personal development (e.g., dependence on type).

Gregory Bateson’s theory of learning can be applied here to draw conclusions about meta-programs by way of the ordering principles of learning.

The prefix “meta” indicates that a program does not run in direct form or in plain text, but on another (higher) meta-level. One example is the meta-program “Toward – Away from.” People usually avoid pain (away from) and orient themselves toward pleasure, joy, or gain (toward).

Later still in life, as I understand it, various forms of learning remain available for meta-programs: Of course, traumatic events, for instance, can even lead me to establish radically new or changed behavioral programs (zero-order learning—drill and conditioning—see also Pavlov).

Observation and examples of meta-programs

Much can be recognized from our actions and reactions, and meta-programs can be presumed (though not determined with certainty).

Meta-programs are always polar in structure, and neither pole is fundamentally good or bad as a way of behaving. It depends on context, situation, intention, awareness, and surely other factors as well.

Some examples of meta-programs, including equally exemplary behavioral options and explanations:

• Internal/external: Am I oriented more from myself, my thoughts, feelings, and experience? Or are the actions, thinking, and feeling of others what drives me? Do I tend to turn inward first, or do I talk to someone?
• Proactive/reactive: Do I like to take matters into my own hands early, or do I wait for circumstances, necessities, and perhaps something like greater clarity? A proactive driver might be prompted to step on the gas when a traffic light changes from green to yellow. It could also simply be an expression of (im)patience.
• Overview/detail: Do I need structure through a big picture, a plan, the greater whole, or the view of a model reduced to its essentials? Or do I prefer to look closely at how something works, how things work exactly on a small scale, and where there might be a particular lever to adjust?

Depending on the source and point of view, there are about 12 ways of describing, in meta-programs, behavior that can be observed in a great many people. What I consider valuable is engaging with this in general, with regard to myself and to others. It lets me consciously train the observation of differences in human behavior, which offers me insight, understanding, and options for potential personal change.

How do meta-programs change, and how do we change them?

Typically, changes and adjustments to our meta-programs occur with advancing development, self-knowledge, capacity for reflection, and so on, and increasingly also on higher levels of learning: For example, I consciously adjust behaviors gradually, again and again—I observe myself carrying out the “old” behavior until I have established others. Perhaps I play with the opposite behavior of a meta-program I know well in myself. And perhaps, through growing awareness, I also experience and define coherent new meta-programs for myself.

Spiritual application of meta-programs

By way of conscious perception, I arrive, on the one hand, at the point from which several meta-programs can always be observed at the same time (in myself or in others). That is always the case, because we cannot help but permanently live and show ourselves with all our facets.

On the other hand, this also gives rise, for me, to a spiritual view of meta-programs, which, as I type these lines, unfolds for me fractally in many ways.

• How can familiar meta-programs be interpreted differently and experienced differently from a spiritual point of view? Subtle or causal states of consciousness suddenly give the observable action an enormous boost in interpretation and experience. What does a “toward” do for a person with decades of meditation experience in higher states of consciousness? For me, an everyday state such as flow also belongs here.
• In what form of order or nesting do I observe my meta-program routines? Which one occurs first, which later? Which meta-program is absorbed into another? Which groupings do I experience, so that I create a meta-level of meta-programs?
• What meaning is generated by meta-programs that can be observed in their staging and frequent repetition, that lead to changed feelings, thoughts, and perceptions (or explicitly do not), and thus in turn trigger meta-processes? Does a form of emergence arise in the process?
• At what point does a meta-program cancel itself out, or do the polar ways of acting cancel each other out?

What originally prompted this post was the following question:

Which spiritual views, philosophies, orders, or the like can be described, from experience, as spiritual variants of meta-programs?

Starting from integral philosophy and Ken Wilber’s AQAL model (quadrants, levels, lines, states, and types), the following spiritual meta-programs emerge, for example, as a variety of polarity work:

• As holonic properties, communion and agency (striving for connection and union versus individualization and separation),
• as well as Eros and Agape (growth/transcending vs. integration)
• and, thinking in quadrants, interior vs. exterior (and which is which?) as well as I vs. We
• Gross vs. subtle
• Feminine vs. masculine
• Fractal vs. total
• Light vs. shadow
• Authentic vs. projected (also as an introject)
• United (all-one) vs. separate