[Verse 1 - Contact with the Present] Narrow the stimulus, sharpen the eye Orient the senses to what's standing by Not the story I tell but the thing that I see A pure tact, unmixed — just the world touching me [Verse 2 - Acceptance] A feeling's a motivating operation Pushing me to escape, to run from sensation Give it a shape, a color, let it sit Now it's a discriminative stimulus, not a permit to quit [Chorus] Middle-level names, but the roots run plain Tacts and autoclitics, not some hidden domain No relational ghost required to explain Just the verbal operants doing what remains [Verse 3 - Defusion] The listener living in my own skin Takes every word I say and lets it right back in So I qualify it soft — "not a fact, just a thought" A descriptive autoclitic saying don't trust what's bought Mary had a little... the words just run their frame Well-worn intraverbals, automatic, not a flame [Verse 4 - Self-as-Context] I am scared, I am glad, I see the red, I see the blue Out of all that varied noticing, a smaller I breaks through Abstraction's a peculiar verbal art Pulling one thin thread from the whole environment's part Not a soul, not a self sitting still and true Just an abstract tact for the place where the variables come through [Chorus] Middle-level names, but the roots run plain Tacts and autoclitics, not some hidden domain No relational ghost required to explain Just the verbal operants doing what remains [Verse 5 - Values] Words that hand new weight to what's ahead A verbal motivating operation, quietly bred Makes the loving text more likely, makes it land More reinforcing when I reach it with my hand [Verse 6 - Committed Action] Contact with reinforcement, that's the whole design A rule that names the payoff, plain and in a line "When I move toward it, life feels more alive" The rule evokes the doing, and the doing helps it thrive [Bridge] Same foundational principles, nothing new to add Just tacts and autoclitics doing what they always had No need to build a hexaflex of borrowed folk-psych parts Skinner had the units sitting in his cart [Chorus] Middle-level names, but the roots run plain Tacts and autoclitics, not some hidden domain No relational ghost required to explain Just the verbal operants doing what remains
