Interview with Wolfgang BERNARD
on the " original belief"
Serge:
Could one find answers concerning the meaning
of life in accomplishing an NLPtraining in the perspective
of presensorial perception?
Wolfgang:
There is a big difference between the search
for well-being and the search for the ultimate. However, most
people start asking themselves existential
questions because they do not feel well. NLP proposes a multitude
of therapeutic tools which help to get rid of psychological limitations
and it represents an efficient methodology of personal development
which enables us to manage our life in a more satisfactory way.
At the age of 20 a great urge to penetrate
the mysteries of life and death had arisen within me. NLP was
a fantastic tool in that quest in the sense that it helped me
to get my psychic life in a balanced state so that I could start
challenging the psychic structures that concealed the secrets
of existence. The way I am teaching NLP is based on my own experience,
and I propose NLPtrainings that help the participants to
uncover the mechanisms that mask the unified perception which
I call "pre-sensorial perception". Concerning your question
I would like to say that if one wants to know the meaning of life,
there are not several answers but only one: awakening. Nothing
can be done to achieve it. Nevertheless, NLPtraining in
the perspective of pre-sensorial perception can uncover the very
core of what we call identity
and which I called "the original belief." It is the
origin of all our emotional and mental structures that prevent
us from being the living response to your question.
Serge:
What made you discover your original belief?
Wolfgang:
Bringing hidden belief systems to
the surface is part of every NLPtraining. We all carry with
us a multitude of unconscious convictions that influence our lives
in many ways. After having unsealed them, I found out that behind
all these hidden beliefs there is yet another kind of belief that
constitutes what we call "identity": the original belief.
This work on myself was comparable to a detective's investigation
since the original belief, even more than all the other unconscious
beliefs, does everything it can in order to dissimulate its existence.
NLPmethods helped me greatly in this process of uncovering.
Serge:
Can anybody enter this process?
Wolfgang:
Basically, yes. But remember that the journey
of uncovering the original belief is comparable to an expedition
into a virgin territory. Nobody has been here before. It requires
even more preparation, more effort, more skill, more attention
and more directed work than ordinary expeditions. At the end we'll
find an astonishing revelation of wondrous purity, similar perhaps
to what explorers may experience within themselves when they have
reached their goals. But there is, among others, one big difference:
We'll remain in that experiential mode because we will have rediscovered
our intrinsic nature.
Serge:
Would it be possible to talk about the
mental preparations that are necessary to do that work?
Wolfgang:
Getting close to one's original belief
requires a rigorous mental preparation because it challenges the
sense that we're giving to our individual existence. NLPtraining
is able to deliver all that is needed in that respect except for
the most important inner attitude: great sincerity and honesty
towards oneself. When we become exposed to the very foundations
that constitute our identity, we get vulnerable to a feeling of
immense pain. The intensity of the pain of this existential wound
outrages all the physical and moral suffering that we have ever
had in our lives before. At some moment of this work we might
have the insight that we have built up our whole life on a lie,
in order to avoid the encounter with the pain of separation engendered
by the birth of our separating identity when we were a child.
Only the sincerity and honesty with ourselves will help us to
advance and to penetrate deeper and deeper into the abyss that
opens up within us. NLPprocedures concerning mental management
have shown their efficiency in this process. Here are some of
them:
"doing as if": kind of
mental gymnastics that allows us to change instantly inner states
and logical levels of thinking;
"to associate and to dissociate":
enables to represent an experience as an actor or as a spectator;
to be able to associate with an
inner state of comfort at any moment and to be able to dissociate
from an unpleasant inner state at any moment;
to be able to sharply define inner
states (pleasant and unpleasant ones) and to be able to pass from
one to another intentionally and instantly;
to be able to manage one's own inner
ecology in order to avoid psychic damage;
to be able to face all kinds of
inner contradictions and to be able to overcome inner resistances,
for example the upcoming of unconscious negative belief systems
and to know how to retrieve a neutral or pleasant inner state
at any moment;
to be able to manage the process
autonomously which also means to have the capacity to take completely
one's responsibilities for the process. The group members assist
each other in exhuming the original belief, but everyone decides
for himself to what extent he wants to put himself into question.
NLP differs from other "haveapleasantlifetechnologies"
that circulate on the market of spirituality and personal development.
The one who practices it does not only learn how to live a life
that pleases him and how to master his life in a way that he succeeds
in his personal and professional projects; he also learns how
to manage particular mental procedures indispensable for the confrontation
with himself on the most profound layer of his personality, which
is the original belief.
Serge:
What happens when someone has retrieved
his original belief?
Wolfgang:
Having exhumed it constitutes a good beginning.
Then one has to develop a particular kind of attention and a particular
kind of vigilance in daily life to become more and more conscious
of the manifestations of the original belief. As long as we do
not constantly live the dimension of pre-sensorial perception,
the original belief continues to influence us from beneath the
surface without our being conscious of it. When we act and when
we think there always is the hidden belief in the background,
suggesting that we do have an identity which is different from
what we perceive: the me-identity which perceives the other and
the surroundings. The original belief, principal element of identity,
acts like a filter between pre-sensorial perception and sensorial
perception. Let's suppose that the usual way of perceiving
the separation between the perceiver and that which is perceived
is not the only way possible for a human being. When I
engage in discovering the perception of nonseparation, first
I have to get to know how my mind creates that separation. To
do that, I have to examine myself as often as possible, especially
during conflicts and emotionally difficult situations: how do
I react when I've been cheated? when someone else treats me with
aggression? when there is more than one mishap during the same
day? when I get to know that someone I love is dying or seriously
ill? when I hear that my beloved has had a lover for a year without
me knowing it? what are the fears, the apprehensions that I suppress
in order not to feel them? This kind of observation of my emotional
reactions gradually brings to light a malaise which is permanently
nagging beneath the surface. It's the malaise of all malaises
emerging from the original belief. To become conscious of the
original belief means to uncover it without selfpity, instead
of avoiding the encounter with it.
Serge:
This is not happiness.
Wolfgang:
You're right. This kind of work on oneself
only makes sense if it is integrated in the quest of the ultimate.
The search for happiness is not on the same logical level as the
search for the absolute truth. The longing for happiness is one
of the characteristics of identity in quest of...avoiding malaises.
To confront oneself with the original belief does not mean to
encounter a temporary suffering, but to encounter the chronic
pain of separation. As long as we long for happiness, we oscillate
between good and bad, between wellbeing and malaise. We
are excluded from perceiving the very richness of lifehereandnow.
Serge:
What is the difference between the work
on oneself that you suggest and a successful psychotherapy?
Wolfgang:
A well done psychotherapy (re)establishes
identity. Awakening dissolves it.
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