Dear John and Carmen, On page 302 of Whispering, you begin a severe critique of Dilts' Neurological Levels. Reading your critique raised many questions in my mind as to your own organizing principles for what constitutes NLP and what doesn't. Please note that I'm in no way a defender or an offended fan of Dilts' Neurological Levels. My simple understanding of the organizing relationship of Dilts' Neurological Levels is "drives," "determines," or "influences." Spirituality "drives" identity, identity "drives" beliefs, beliefs "drive" capabilities, and so forth. To me, the organizing relationship between elements of the Neurological Levels "model" (I don't know if it qualifies as a model in your eyes) is analogous to the organizing relationship between elements of the Chain of Excellence presented on page 233 of Whispering. We can argue that the nominalizations "spirituality" and "identity" are inadequately represented or inappropriate to the "model," but the organizing principle of their relationship seems sound to me. Am I missing a fundamental difference here? And if that is the intended organizing relationship of the Neurological Levels, would it be a legitimate part of NLP? Is the Chain of Excellence a legitimate part of NLP? If so, what specifically makes it a part of NLP? Also, what makes an NLP model an NLP model? Is a Swish Pattern a model or a technique, or something else? How can we effectively use the distinction between "pattern" and "model" in our exchanges? The more I progress in my reading, the more confused I become as to what is included and excluded in your definition of NLP. This is good! If it is an activity, when concretely do I begin NLPing and when do I stop? If it's not an activity, what is it? If it's the modeling of human excellence, do all the activities that go into preparing for that modeling pertain to NLP or not? There seems to be a lot of distilling – extracting patterns – and design – recombining distilled patterns – in what we refer to as NLP and it creates a hell of a hodgepodge. The lines that separate NLP from non-NLP are blurry at best. Either that or my mind is a blur. With all possibilities now wide open, I look forward to your comments! All the best, Martin