There is an admonition in NLP that says, "if you keep doing what you have always done, you keep getting what you have always gotten." But perhaps we don't really have a choice about that. Perhaps the conflicts, the scrabbling for territory - whether it is the kind of territory that we can hold in our hands, or hold In our bodies, or hold In our brains - will continue to mark our time here. Perhaps, it is fundamental to our nature, and we cannot do otherwise. We can only learn better coping strategies. Perhaps we are sophisticated animals - no less and no more. We cloak our instinctual urges, but they are there nonetheless. and always will be.

Perhaps. But before we capitulate to the (comfortably) familiar, we ought to first consider that what we have been talking about IS the water we swim in now. And, so, it seems it is as it must be, as It can only be. We are animals, but let's not take the conceptual leap then of assuming that is all we are. The fact that we can make such conceptual leaps is evidence that it Is NOT all we are. Language changes everything. The ability to conceptualize through language creates levels of abstraction and complexity that make us different than animals in some very fundamental ways. (Notice that I did not say better then; but different.) Now of course a lot of grief and misery has come with our leap of language, and some folks would just as soon we step back into an existence without it. Not me. Language is one of the grand portals Into worlds of experience. As Graham quipped, "Words are the forceps of experience." If you want to see a real miracle, watch someone reading a book. Just watch. As you do, consider what you are witnessing; a person is scanning marks on a page, and those marks are turning into a trip down river with Huck and Tom, or into matter condensing out of the void in the universe's first tenth of a second, or into the smiling thoughts of the Dali Lama. Perhaps we can use that same ability - in new and transformative ways - to conceive of what is possible for us as human beings, to dip ourselves Into some different waters. What could those waters be? And how might we begin to get nicely wet?

To paraphrase Shakespeare, experience is all. The scientist seeing tracks of particles in a cloud chamber is having an experience, and his experience is no more or less real and full and meaningful than that of the touch of a loving hand upon your own or the wordless ecstasy of a mystic feeling the presence of god. There is, in a very real sense, nothing outside of experience. Certainty there may be worlds that exist outside of our experience, but the moment we know of them, they are an experience. Or perhaps another way to think of this is that we bring worlds into existence through experience. In fact, this is what I believe. This is real. You are real. This room is real. Our experiences are real. They are not, however, the only possible realities. Perhaps we are holding this room together with our shared realities. I don't know. I really don't know if we could join our perceptual hands In some new way right now and have this ceiling dissolve into a pinwheel of golden stars... Rats... Well, right now I do not know how to do that. In fact the only thing on that list that I do know can be changed is experience. We know that for us as Individuals. And certainly the work that you have been doing as researchers and practitioners of NLP has been - and continues to be - a source of experiential change and personal transformation for countless people.

When I was 10 years old, my parents took me to a movie called. "The Flower Drum Song." I saw this movie only once, and remember nothing about It, except for one song. As I recall the scene, someone was complaining about life, then someone else launched into a song whose refrain was, "A hundred million miracles... a hundred million miracles ... are happening every day!" That grabbed me at the time and, as you can see, stayed with me. Now with that little story (hopefully) greasing my way, I will now commit a bit of NLP heresy. Like the proverbial moth to the flame, I am naturally drawn to committing heresies. Despite the heat, I think this particular heresy is worth a closer look.