Hello, Dr. Grinder. 1.  You wrote, "...a sort of hallucinate as you go approach." What specifically do you (or anyone else interested) think people using meta-programs halucinate?  And how?  A possible problem I perceive - that you would know more about than me - is, "Meta-program distinctions applied by NLP professionals distinguish humans according to  believed-in psychological characteristics of humans." A question about that problem is, "Do humans have innate psychological characteristics that determine the behavioral cues associated with meta-programs?" A hypothesis is, "The nature of meta-program distinctions allows anyone who applies the distinctions to determine  information about a subject that doesn't confirm whether meta-program behavioral cues depend on the presence in that subject of any one meta-program rather than some other.  An NLP professional who determines someone else's meta-programs does so by finding behavioral evidence that confirms the presence of one meta-program rather than another, but contradicting evidence is available to find and that contradicting evidence is not found." To prove that hypothesis, someone could demonstrate that conditions, contexts, or processes of an NLP professional's interaction with a client exist which lead to the NLP professional finding evidence for the presence of particular meta-programs in his client, even when strong contradicting evidence is available to the NLP professional. In my opinion, meta-program distinctions have no more validity than racist or sexist beliefs do.  Meta-program-contingent qualities and tendencies in people are found in the same way as sexist and racist characterizations of people are found; the qualities and tendencies don't exist in the person in whom they are found nor in any  population in which they are found.  But a person can be said to have behaviors that are characteristic of him or her.  So notice that any characteristic that is described in terms of a cause for that characteristic may be distinct from the same characteristic described in terms of another cause or no cause.  English makes expression of that distinction ambiguous.  For example, (a) "That angry white!" (the caucasian person who is angry) (b) "That angry white!" (the caucasian person who is necessarily angry if he is caucasian, regardless of any circumstances of his life.) In the case of meta-programs, (a) "He sorts for people." (the person who is sorting for people at the moment) (b) "He sorts for people." (the person whose meta-program determines that he sorts for people, rather than that he sort for things, or sort for locations, or sort for whatever). Suppose an NLP trainer took unintentional advantage of that fact. For example, stating during a seminar that, "People who sort for people do so when they need to connect to people.  We all need to connect to people sometimes, so it's important that you all be able to sort for people."  The confusion could be clarified if the trainer stated, "People who sort for people do so by <<...>>.  we all need to connect to people, so be sure to <<...>> a lot." But the trainer could have said, "When you need to connect to people, do the following: <<...>>." and not mention sorting for people as part of the process.  The phrase "sorting for people" may not be an accurate abstraction of the process I wrote as "<<...>>". If the process described by the phrase "sorting for people" had a behavioral equivalent in the same way that "feeling good" has behavioral equivalents, then to say that, "The phrase 'sorting for people' is just a more general way of saying '<<...>>'." may be inadequate reason to continue describing the real-world referent of "<<...>>" in terms of 'sorting for people'.  To say that the phrase 'sort for people' describes a behavior is to confuse the manifestation of a behavior with the reasons the behavior's actor had for performing the behavior; you may even confuse the reasons the behavior's actor had for performing the behavior with some causes of the behavior's actor's performed behavior.  If a client sorts for people, his reasons may have little to do with his behavior toward people.  And someone who does <<...>> may believe he lacks the ability to change his own behavior of sorting for people.  His trainer might reassure him later that he just needs to add more meta-programs on, but that is to use a different definition of meta-program than the one he feels hopeless about.  "I couldn't change how I connect to people if I tried!", he thinks.  Adding on more meta-programs wouldn't change that about him.  I do think meta-programs are fallacious constructs to the extent that they characterize a person, whatever the effect that the concept termed "meta-program" can have on someone's optimism. 2.  You wrote, "...this difference more than any other aspect of what is offered as responses in these threads has led me to respectfully excusing myself from further discussion (or, at least, until some quality improvements in the argumentation occurs) of this topic." OK, but I still wanted to reply to what you wrote, because I had a response to reply with.  -nj