ACT for Spiritual Development Hank Robb, Ph.D., ABPP, Boulder, CO 2012

1. ACT for Spiritual DevelopmentHank Robb, Ph.D., ABPP, Boulder, CO 2012 Accept the world as it is, was or may be. Choose, and willingly follow, your Leading Principles & Values. Teach others to do the same.

2. Assumptions You are one being in one universe.

3. Assumptions If you have the usual “body parts,” you have hands, feet, arms and a mouth. They are part of your one being.

4. Assumptions You also have a “mind” and a “spirit.” They, too, are part of your one being.

5. Assumptions Your feet are not your hands and your hands are not your mind and your mind is not your spirit.

6. Assumptions Yet, they are all part of the one being that is you.

7. Assumptions Conditions of the universe arose that brought you into existence and, one-day, conditions will change and you will go out of existence.

8. Assumptions The actions you take in your one life will affect the one universe of which you are now a part and that was here before you and will be here after you.

9. Assumptions Those effects may be characterized as great or small, good or evil, or in a variety of other ways. None of us knows, for sure, what effects each of us will have.

10. Assumptions However, each may know what effect was intended, if, indeed, one was intended.

11. Assumptions Whatever you are going to do you will do here and now, in this place and in this moment, because there is no “other place” and no “other moment.”

12. DESIRE Human beings have desires. They want “stuff.”

13. DESIRE - FULFILLMENT Fulfillment comes when you get what you want.

14. DESIRE - SORROW Sorrow comes when you don’t get what do you want, or do get what you don’t want.

15. FULFILMENTS: TWO TYPES Some fulfillments are like vegetables. They nourish you. Others are like cotton candy. They taste good in the moment and have little or no nourishment.

16. Happiness & Unhappiness These are names for two relationships we can have with our lives which will, inevitably, contain sorrow, fulfillment and the in between.

17. HAPPINESS: A Permission Giving Relationship with Life as Sorrow, Fulfillment and In Between.

18. Giving your permissionIS NOT giving your approval. That for which you give your approve is one thing. That for which you give your permission is something else. My wife approves of pickles in tuna fish. I don’t!

19. UNHAPPINESS: A Permission Withholding Relationship with Life as Sorrow, Fulfillment and In Between.

20. HAPPINESS IS NOT FULFILLMENT UNHAPPINESS IS NOT SORROW

21. P E R M I S S I O N G I V I N G FULFILLMENT YES NO YES NO

22. If you want HAPPINESS and don’t get it you will feel sad. And, your sorrow isn’t unhappiness. You could be sad and happy by maintaining a permission giving relationship with life as sorrow, fulfillment and in between. You could be sad and unhappy by maintaining a permission withholding relationship with life as sorrow, fulfillment and in between.

23. If you want HAPPINESS and get it, you will feel fulfillment. And, your fulfillment isn’t happiness. You will experience fulfillment because you wanted a certain relationship with life as sorrow, fulfillment and in between and you got that relationship. At least for the moment!

24. This mode of spiritual development does not aim at either fulfillment or happiness. It aims at Fulfillment AND Happiness!

25. P E R M I S S I O N G I V I N G FULFILLMENT YES NO YES NO

26. Some fulfillments are cool. Some fulfillments are very cool. And some fulfillments are WAY COOL!

27. Doc, how will I know which fulfillments will prove, for me, WAY COOL? I have no idea! And neither does anybody else, even when they claim they do.

28. PURSUING “WAY COOL” Try different things and listen for the “echo” inside yourself. “Way Cool” is like one instrument playing softly and if you follow it, it becomes louder and more orchestrated or it fades because it was an illusion.

29. PURSUING WAY COOL The experience is not so much like the world “talking” to you as it is something in you “resonating” with the world. The “tuning fork within goes off.”

30. Searching for WAY COOL means going on an adventure. Adventures have at least two aspects. You can’t know for sure how they will turn out. You have to have a sense of, at least, some danger.

31. That’s why jumping off a one story building is an adventure and jumping off a ten story building isn’t. We know how that turns out!

32. If you know for sure how it will turn out, that’s “Disneyland.” If there’s no sense of danger, that’s “a walk in the park.”

33. “Will I find ice cream, or anything else, WAY COOL?” You could ask those who never had any. You could ask those who have had some. You could read a book about it. You could eat some ice cream!

34. Thoughts, Images & Sensations “Mental Experiences” are largely made up of Thoughts: those “radio programs inside your head” & Images: anything with a “picture.”

35. Thoughts, Images & Sensations “Bodily sensations” include your heart beating faster or slower. Your hands feeling cooler or warmer. Your stomach feeling more tense or more relaxed.

36. Thoughts, Images & Sensations Sometimes you can control your thoughts, images and sensations. More often they just “arrive.” Jack and Jill went up the …

37. Little Miss Muffet sat on a … When was the last time “tuffet” was in your head? I didn’t know what a “tuffet” was until I looked it up I have a good “story” about how “tuffet” got in my head and no real memory. Lot’s of “stuff” that “shows up” is like that.

38. Thoughts, images and sensations come from: your personal learning history and your biological history – and so does your spirit.

39. Some Facets of “Spirit” (1) noticing, and noticing that we are noticing, (2) a sense of having been there for about as long as we can remember, (3) a sense of stability, like the eye of a hurricane

40. Some Facets of “Spirit” (4) the “buzz of being” rather than an evaluation, (5) sensing a certainty of bodily control without regard to thoughts, images or bodily sensations, and (6) the ability to “pick” what we do and the way we do it.

41. Formula for Human Liberation By making myself do something unpleasant, and refraining from doing something pleasant, in the service of something I make more important, I will never have to be a slave to circumstance.

42. In high school you do unpleasant homework, and don’t do things that would be a lot more pleasant. Just to annoy yourself? No. In the service of actually learning something or simply making better grades.

43. And some didn’t learn to act for something positive. They learned to act to avoid something negative such as keeping parents or teachers “off their back.”That was the “wrong” lesson!

44. LeadingPrinciples Leading Principles are like using a compass to go East or West rather than North. Follow a compass North and you will reach magnetic North. The compass neddlewill spin around and every time you walk away it will point you back to where you came from.

45. LeadingPrinciples Go East or West with your compass and you will never come to some place like magnetic North.

46. Goals versesLeading Principles Goals are places at which you can “arrive.” Have a baby. Get married. Graduate high school

47. Goals versesLeading Principles Leading Principles give direction rather than describe places to “arrive.” When would you be “arrive” at: Be the best parent I can be? Be the best mate I can be? Be as educated as I can be? You can always get up the next day and keep going!

48. LeadingPrinciples Give direction rather than location & do so without regard to location. Provide direction through the wilderness of life rather than a path through it.

49. Leading Principles “The path” is where you’ve been. If you are “on a path,” it is someone else’s path because NO ONE has lived your life before. You are the only one who can do it!

50. Values Values are WAYSof performing regardless of which Leading Principle you are following, e.g. honestly, considerately, kindly, thoughtfully, etc. Not many value deceitfully, inconsiderately, meanly or thoughtlessly; though they could.