KC, I will be as helpful as possible. You've requested that I define congruence and as my post stated: "At this point, my understanding of congruence/incongruence seems to be very tacit and I would like your guidance in assisting me in defining the word with appropriate boundary conditions." It seems you are asking of me that which I'm seeking an explicit understanding of. So, we wait together.... Next, a semantically dense word does not signify one, specific, clear meaning but can be interpreted any number of ways (or obviously not at all). Another example from NLP is the word "rapport." John and Carmen gave a very clear definition of rapport in Whispering (until the index is complete I'll have to paraphrase)that being when the agent of change has the unconscious attention of the client. I've seen the word rapport thrown around and it actually sounded as if the NLP practitioners were using "have rapport with" and "like" interchangably. As I'm sure you know, someone can have your attention but you don't necessarily like them. Finally, you asked for a real-life example of congruence. I can think of a very simple example that has been a thread throughout my life the past 18 years. In my NLP trainings I tell  people it is possible to live with complete choice about how we orient ourselves to what happens to us in life. I also say that we can maintain states that support us as the authors of our experience so that we end up with more of the things that we want. This notion that human beings are cause-effect, stimulus-response creatures is malarkey. So, if you look at my behaviors over time you will find an impeccable alignment of my actions supporting those words time and again. Hope this helps. Best, Jeisyn