With Clean Language you preserve the metaphoric qualities of the client's experience. We know about the Environment and our Behaviour through sensory experience. Capabilities, Beliefs and Values are constructs of the human mind. They only exist in a world of concepts. We have all seen particular trees but no one has ever touched the concept 'tree'.
Concepts are a different order of reality from the physical world of rocks and people kicking rocks.
While our sense of self and our connection to things greater than ourself are constructs, when we access these states we know they have additional significance for us. People usually answer that question non-verbally or they use metaphorical language. Our research indicates Identity and Spiritual experiences are most often represented symbolically. Just as we use our sensory experience of the physical world as the 'raw material' for our conceptual world, so we use that same experience of the physical world as the raw material for our symbolic world. Thus the symbolic is always hidden or embedded within the conceptual and the physical.