Association for Contextual Behavioral Science

Dear Amy,

Thanks for posting the presentation. I read Cooper's book as a teenager, and really can't accurately recall details, but was influenced. I do not believe in the supernatural (as you don't)or the afterlife of an individual, and yet have engaged in the practices of many diverse religious groups because I valued those practices. (By "valued" I mean found them reinforcing directly and/or through conditioning). This sounds like I'm minimizing your valuing of "God-ing" but I'm not, so please sustain uncertainty for a time. We are different in terms of our "awareness" behaviors, and I accept that this may be a significant difference.

My verbal repertoir(s)in which the verbal expression "GOD" interact have become so diffuse as to make the "word" rather meaningless (functioning to raise the probability of no one super measurable Bx over another) for me. Yet by the definition of God-ing in your presentation, I would say that I am probably doing so often (but not always). For example, interacting with the enviroment including self-as-context is definitely happening because I'm not dead. I'm doing "Commitment to valued living" when I am acting mindfully on various levels of mindful. For a while after looking at your presentation, I thought that "acting mindfully" might be a lot like God-ing, but I suspect the analogy is flawed.

Okay, now, here's where I ask you to define your terms. This is in the interest of coming to an understanding of your valuing God-ing. In addition to acting mindfully, there are values implied in your definition of God-ing. I may share your values or not, but I am not sure what exactly these words mean to you: 1) "one-soul connectedness", 2) self (in context of "self-fidelity"), 3)"eyes of God" (I suspect Cooper's definition but want yours), 4)"just" (in the context of "being just, forgiving, and kind")

I will try to explain my understanding of these terms so that you can target my thinking as you think is effective:
1) "one-soul connectedness": I think that there is no one-soul, that there are all a lot of I-here-nows that interact with eachother on a continuum of no to some awareness and under the influence of some shared contingencies including a lot of long term shared consequences of our global interactions. I don't know what "one-soul" is although I've tried out many "believed" definitions. I buy "connectedness" hook line and sinker, and am glad to do so.
2) "self": behaving as I-here-now in the context of the immediate environment including respondent behavior and verbal repertoirs that result from human and individual history AND that enable prediction of future consequences (define loosely on the prediction thing). I might roughly add "organism" (meaning just plain body) here.
3) "eyes of god": a perspective of the universe outside of the causal stream. I pretend this exists sometimes, but don't buy it. You may, however have another definition I can live with.
4)"just": I can see how "acting justly" with the words held loosely can work for a person. I have a very cynical definition that I hope will not be too much of a turn off: Just action= action under the control of social contingencies that have trained up verbal behavior, involving credit and blame, and that accompanies actions toward others who are said to "deserve" the treatment given. By this definition, I have acted more or less justly, but I am working on acting "justly" in a way that means acting to participate in contingencies that distribute "goods" (or reinforcing results)for practices (not to "others") that I predict will lead to reinforcement for me and US globally. I am having touble with "credit" and "blame" as they are labels hard to hang. If they can be hung, though, and rewarded (or not), I think they can be hung on practices, not "others". I suspect you may partly agree and so wnt to know how you've explored "just".

I think this post is mildly annoying, so thanks for your patience with it, Amy. I wish you a lot of God-ing.

Tami