The rational process outlined in the schematic above can be illustrated by reference to an account
given by former President Musharraf of Pakistan.  It is of a meeting in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11
between Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader and at that time head of the Kabul Government, and the
Saudi prince who was in charge of Saudi Intelligence.  This narrative is drawn from “In the Line of Fire”,
a book by Pervez Musharraf that was published in 2006 while Musharraf was still the President of
Pakistan (Free Press, New York, pp 212-214).

The meeting was attended by the Director General of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence.  According
to Musharraf, Mullah Omar took offence to a remark by the Saudi, who was there to demand that the
Taliban cease their protection of Osama bin Laden.  Visibly furious, Mullah Omar left the room and
then came back a few minutes later -- wringing wet from having given himself a rapid cold shower.  He
evidently did that to quell his anger for, on his return, he announced more or less the following:

"If you were not my guest in Afghanistan, I would have done you dire injury.  I gave my word to bin Laden
that he could live in Afghanistan if no other country would accept him.  No other country has.  Osama
fought tirelessly and courageously to rid my country of the Soviet yoke.  Now what is he to do?  If he has a
grudge against the United States, my understanding is that he has good reason for it."

Although this announcement (a not unreasonable one from Mullah Omar's perspective) is my
paraphrasing, I have no doubt that it is essentially true to what actually happened.  Why do I believe
this?  Pervez Musharraf was educated at the Artillery School of Pakistan, which my father helped to
found in 1947.  My paraphrasing conforms with the essential details provided in his book by Mr.
Musharraf, whose terse ways of expressing himself remind me very much of the tersely veracious ways
of speaking of my father, who, in 1947, was attached to the newly formed Pakistan Army -- as a
Lieutenant-Colonel on loan from the British Royal Artillery.

Mullah Omar did not know about IHXENs, of course.  As far as I know, neither did the negotiators of
either the USA or the USSR when they were negotiating the "balance of cold war terror" in which the
current nuclear arsenals were built.  Did they, however, have the presence of mind or social
independence exhibited in that meeting by Mullah Omar?  But I digress, for whether Mullah Omar's
views of religion and politics and society were apt for his country is not in debate here.  The essential
purpose of my recounting this story is to explain that, although Mullah Omar’s taking a cold shower did
enable him to overcome the worst of his anger at that stage of the proceedings, his articulation of an
IHXEN could have assisted him much more.  Not only would it have saved a change of clothes, its
association with the IHYNN process would have empowered him to discover his needs at a much more
profound level, and likely also to articulate in a much more attractive way.

If he had "unpacked" his anger fully, perhaps by means of the rational process presented in the chart
with which I began this essay, Mullah Omar might well have avoided making a critical assumption that
his mind, seemingly automatically, had made for him.  Before presuming that the Saudi had actually
intended to insult him, he might instead have reflected that the Saudi would have been obliged, both
by diplomatic tradition AND by Muslim tradition between guest and host (and in this case all three
counted themselves Sunni), to clarify his remark.  Only an interruption of a virtually automative
(reactive) impulse to anger would have enabled the Mullah to do this.  And a powerfully convenient
linguistic way of doing so would have been to say:

"I have anger now.  (Pause to let the undoubted authenticity of such an IHXEN be recognized and to
provide time to work through the IHYNN process).  I confess that I have difficulty avoiding taking
your remark as an insult.  Is that what you intended, Your Highness?”

The Saudi would then have been obliged to clarify his remark in such a way that it eliminated all
possibility of insulting the Mullah.  We can’t be sure, of course, that the Saudi would, in that
hypothetical case, have responded by opening further “space” between the two principals sufficient to
keep them talking.  But, in principle, if Mullah Omar had presented the Saudi with that question, the
Saudi would have had that option.  Unfortunately, Mullah Omar’s cold shower was not sufficient to
keep present in his mind the possibility that, even if the Saudi’s momentary intent was to insult him,
his more rational and ongoing intention could be teased out otherwise by just such questions.  The
curiosity to ask such a clarifying question, which is essential if one is to complete, without
presumption, the third and fourth columns of the process table above, did not, however occur to him.

The consequences of not clarifying the Saudi's intent, in favour of believing that he could read his
interlocutor's mind, were profoundly negative for both Mullah Omar and his Taliban colleagues, as
they were also for many Afghanis and Pakistanis.  As we now know, the Saudi returned to report to his
principal that no progress was possible in apprehending bin Laden; and the United States Government
of George W. Bush then decided to bomb an already desperately suffering country -- thus creating yet
more Afghani refugees for Pakistan to support.  Moreover, bin Laden has still not been
apprehended in spite of  a change of government and the deployment of thousands of international
troops and many diplomatic conferences.
Have you ever noticed how one often loses conscious connection with one's true needs when
experiencing a strong emotion? or how often one ignores the life wisdoms contained in milder
emotions unless one becomes acutely aware of what they are as they pass through one's experience?

To become more conscious of what emotional energy is animating one's behaviour and how it is doing
so, one may safely articulate the "I have 'X emotion' now" (IHXEN) linguistic.  A research team at the US
National Institute for Mental Health has proven, clinically with fMRI brain scans, that becoming
conscious of extremely negative emotions such as anger or fear does help one calm one's brain.  Here is
a link to where one can find an Abstract of the team's research.  It was completed in the year 2000.  

Novices in this new field of Rational Emoto-Linguistics often initially imagine that the purpose of
practising the IHXEN linguistic is primarily to make one feel better.  But this is not so, at least not
immediately.  The purpose of practising IHXENs is to facilitate more rational problem-solving than
one is capable of accomplishing when caught in the irrational leanings of emotionally excited states of
being.

Eye-Zen English coaching involves articulation of the IHXEN linguistic, by both coach and client, in
order that the client becomes more conscious of his/her emotion.  The client then becomes better able,  
to practice a rational process for identifying his or her true, i.e. long-term non self-sabotaging, needs.  
In IHXEN exchange partnerships, the application of Eye-Zen English principles, practices, and processes
accomplishes the same end.

Experiences of strong emotion can make or break a partnership or team.  How to use the energy of
strong emotion to make, rather than break, relationships?  The utterance of an authentic, as distinct
from a rhetorical, IHXEN is always – in my experience and that of the small group of IHXEN
practitioners now forming – a "relationship connector".  This is so even if the emotion being
experienced by the IHXEN practitioner is considered dangerously incorrect socially or politically.  I
discovered this about 5 years ago while serving as a pro-bono consultant to the owner of an
organization whose bottom line was deteriorating alarmingly.  Before then, I had been considering
IHXENs as being only likely to be accepted as authentic if the emotion described fell within a
politically correct band near the emotion of concern.

This discovery occurred as the result of my saying, when anger was indeed the quality of my emotion in
a management meeting at this client's organization, "I have anger now".  The upshot was that my
client's leadership team immediately fell silent and began to pay what I sensed as close visual and
auditory attention to me.  Then, after a considerable and somewhat electric pause in the conversation,
one of them asked: "Why do you have anger, Angus?"

The pause -- evidently induced by my resort to a culturally incorrect, but very authentic YET ALSO
INOFFENSIVE, IHXEN -- gave all parties opportunity to do some serious thinking.  It had also, I
suspect, triggered a motivating embarrassment!  In any case, the outcome proved to be very felicitous.  
The attention that my IHXEN evoked enabled me to figure out how to get across to the meeting my
perception of what the true cause of my anger was; and the upshot was that much more engaged
curiosity began to take root in a team that had, to that moment, often been satisfied with habituated
attitudes of cynical skepticism.

In other words, my resort to an authentic IHXEN provided a safe means for me to be express myself  
authentically, i.e. without either denying my own pain or triggering another's.  I suppose also that my
solution sprang from a hope deep within me, far interior to my anger, that a positive change in the
behaviour of my client's leadership team would follow -- for that is indeed what actually began
happening.

After a few such "moments of truth", IHXENs became accepted by this "group-forming-into-a-team" as
a reliable means to facilitate resolutions of disputes among managers; and it was only a few weeks
afterward that the bottom line of my client's distribution and service enterprise began to rise -- in a
couple of months quite sharply.  It was also then that I began, for the first time fully consciously, to
have confidence that, even in the dire strait of experiencing a very politically incorrect emotion,
articulation of an authentic IHXEN releases genuine but non-insulting feelings, and thus facilitates the
gains in teamwork that produce gains in productivity.

Although the mild emotions we notice usually help us to become aware of our true needs, extreme
emotions often need considerable "unpacking".  We often believe we must repress expressions of strong
emotions.  But when we do so, they rigidify into longstanding moods, which will then obscure
(disconnect us from) what we truly need in a future moment of challenge.  We can, however, learn how
to "unpack" such moods rationally.  The chart below indicates how we can accomplish this.  Starting
with an "I have 'X emotion' now", where 'X emotion' is a noun, or a modified noun (but not a clause
having any verb), we can discover accurately what we next need by working through the following
rational process:
Major General Percy S. Cunningham
(Click on his miniature for access to his
great grandchildren's Book Proposal Site)
Working with IHYNNs:
Unpacking IHXENs to Make True Needs More Conscious

by
Angus Cunningham
Principal, Authentix Coaches
Latest update made on: 100426
Brief Overview of Eye-Zen English Linguistics
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Please scroll down below the diagram
for the narrative involving Mullah Omar
"I strongly believe that to whatever degree I support the consciousness that there is such a thing as
a "careless action" or a "conscientious action", a "greedy person" or a "moral person", I am
contributing to violence on this planet.  Rather than agreeing or disagreeing about what people are
for murdering, raping, or polluting the environment, I believe we serve life better by focusing
attention on what we are needing." -- Marshall Rosenberg, author of "Nonviolent Communication: A
Language of Life" (2003, Puddledancer Press)
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Suppose for a wild moment that Mullah Omar had learned IHXENs in his native Pashto, and that the
Saudi Intelligence Chief had learned IHXENs in his native Arabic.  Suppose that before this meeting
they had intensively practiced IHXENs with a coach.  Might they have reached a level of proficiency
where they had learned, on feeling anger within, to discover the specifics of the needs that anger so
often obscures by its "natural" expression in most cultures as a strong desire to punish a "wrongdoer"?  
Might the Saudi then have returned to tell his principal that Mullah Omar had expressed his needs for
help in maintaining both his pledge to bin Laden and his desire for friendship with the United States?