In our work at FeelGood we often use a simple model for creating change that’s adopted from another non-profit, The Hunger Project. The model has three steps—Vision, Commitment and Action—and I’ve been thinking about how it can be applied as a spiritual discipline.
Vision
As you would expect, the first step, Vision, is about establishing an inspiring and motivating outcome.
An often-articulated Vision for a person interested in the spiritual life is to be a fully loving and present human being, always able to respond constructively, creatively and compassionately to the needs of the moment. In this envisioned state, there is no resistance to what is, and no attention or energy is given to one’s insecurities, anxieties, compulsions, resentments, or regrets. Instead we lose ourselves into each moment, and in losing ourselves discover our inescapable connection to all that is.
Commitment
Commitments are the decisions we make in advance that we know are essential to fulfill our Vision. In the spiritual life, the commitment is to address whatever it is that keeps us from being in a loving, responsive state. That means we do not give ourselves the option of staying hurt, angry, resentful, or in any other emotional condition that clouds our perception and keeps us out of relationship with reality.
Action
Finally, the Actions are the specific steps we take to fulfill our commitments. If our commitment is to address any and all obstacles to being a loving human being, the actions are how we do so. In the spiritual discipline, the action always comes down to detachment: detachment from our expectations of our self, of others, of reality. It’s possible to make it more complicated than that, but when you get down to the fundamentals, some form of detachment is always what’s required.
Non-Action
It is in the Action step where the spiritual manifestation of this model veers into unique and most likely counter-intuitive territory.
Normally, we want to take action to fix a problem or correct a mistake. In the spiritual implementation of the Vision, Commitment and Action process, however, the action is to not to correct or change. The action is to accept…to surrender to the reality of our condition… to not resist even our resistance.
There is a reason for this, and it gets down to the essence of the spiritual process. It is only in complete acceptance of reality and our humanity—only in a total lack of desire to change even the things about the world or ourselves that we find the most abhorrent—that we discover what has been called our “ground of being”—the place where our actions are, finally, no longer motivated by egocentricity.
Having confronted and accepted our worst fears about the world and ourselves—and come out of it whole—we find that we no longer feel the need to act out of a sense of self-preservation, and instead act out of an intuitive awareness of being cradled in an unconditionally loving universe.
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