The history of the model
The current model is a product of 50 years experience in organising and operating camps with behavioural objectives. In 1953 we all worked intuitively, and I was no exception.

I had grown up in the tradition of the effectiveness of the natural environment in psychological healing. When I became a teacher it seemed appropriate to use this tradition to heal the credibility rift common between teacher and student and thus develop the rapport that is every teacher's dream.

My experiments in camping were at first intuitive and exploratory. I was guided by feedback in the classroom, from the parents of the youngsters, and the participants' evaluations of their camping experience in later years. They talked about the strong and positive effects these events had on their decisions in life, and the directions taken as a result.

After 15 years, I started to take the feedback seriously. Blissfully unaware of any other outdoor leader who was consciously developing the style of wilderness camping that I was using, I set out to plan wilderness experiences to maximise the transfer of what I deemed healthy ways of looking at values and attitudes, to life beyond the camp scene. I began to keep detailed written logs of the participants' reactions and responses to evaluations in tramps and camps in New Zealand and Australia, and tried to analyse the poorly defined but apparent spiritual factor.

By 1981 I had set out, as the product of my experimenting and research, a methodology which we would now recognise as Adventure Based Learning (Ellison, 1981). Influenced by Wilder Penfield’s discovery of a reservoir of unexpected memories (Zimbardo, 1979), the work of Eric Berne - the role of memories in interpersonal interactions) (Berne, 1963, 1964, 1975, 1979 and Claude Steiner (1984 - the therapeutic contract), I used a number of small models to formalise a methodology that we would now recognise as Adventure
Based Learning facilitation.

I was sufficiently confident of my ground by 1985 to publish privately through my consultancy, the initial presentation of the Aliveness Model in a comprehensive account of my approach to wilderness camping as a means of personal growth (Ellison, 1985).

Later papers and publications showed variations in language under trial at the time, and development of correlation with the Bicameral Model of brain function (Ellison, 1987, 1991, 2003).

The construction of the model
1. In this model I planned to integrate factors that are I saw as important in making decisions for change:
Choice, free will,
Memories
Beliefs, values, attitudes
Behaviours
Motivation
Rules of life,
Development of the individual
Model based thinking
Interpersonal relationships
Power
Sense of Adventure,
Physical experiences
Spirituality

2. The model was designed to be able to be explained easily to instructors and participants to facilitate the processes of change, so language to describe it was taken from the simple non-technical vernacular.

3. To achieve a high level of communicability, the model was to lend itself to non-verbal description that could be physically constructed, drawn, and talked about in concrete familiar terms on site, in a wilderness camp.

4. The model should provide useful predictions.

Building the model
Personal experience and experiment .
Observation and trialling took place 1953-1971, in approximately 150 small-
group, school-based wilderness camps and walks with behavioural objectives, of
an intuitive method of developing transfer.

Archive of logged information from clients and instructors.
Detailed records have been kept 1972-2002, of 402 personally conducted and small-group wilderness camps and walks. These documents in detail the techniques used and the responses of a wider variety of clients to leader originated evaluations allowing useful latitudinal and longitudinal analyses of individual and group reactions and outcomes. This research is the formal basis for the Aliveness Decisional Model and methodology.

Evaluation and Review
Feedback has been obtained 1979-1999, from 20 Seminar Camps with Instructors and senior participants, and 2000-2002 from my classes at Avondale College. The discussions and evaluations of methods and outcomes as observed and experienced were used in the review and modification of the Model of which this brief presentation can only provide a cursory review.

Introduction to the Aliveness Decisional Model
Walking through the Model
Figure 1: Birds'-eye View of the Aliveness Decisional Model (figure not able to be reproduced)

The Mountain of Memories
All through life we accumulate memories. They just heap up and we can picture ourselves as if we are sitting on a mountain of them.

Apparently because of the way our brain is structured, our memories act as if they are sorted into clusters. Three common influential clusters can be pictured as three ridges leading down from the summit of our Mountain of Memories to the world around.

Somewhere on the Mountain is our Point of Decision, which our Will, or if you like our Self, uses as Home, the place we start from when there’s a decision to be made. We are restless when we have to stay home.

The universal motivation to leave home
We act as if we have an unfillable hunger for things that make us feel more alive. It is more than a preference. It is a life need.

There is a universal motivation, which is always present in decision-making. This universal motivation is a want-to-feel-alive, to be conscious and to have our consciousness stimulated.

We act as if we have an insatiable hunger for recognitions of our selfhood, for affirmations of our existence, for Feelings of aliveness that stimulate our consciousness. All enjoyment hangs on the enjoyment of having this hunger filled. If we are hungry for things that make us feel alive, we say we are ‘bored’. We would rather feel good about ourselves than sorry for ourselves, but even this is much more preferable than having no Feelings of aliveness at all.

The desire for things that make us feel alive is so basic and powerful that it seems to be the only reason anyone does anything. By making conditions that control the supply of things that make us feel alive, governments, economies and individuals control people. We can get this consciousness of aliveness from volitional actions, sensations, relationships, and remembering.

Though some things that make us feel alive are on our Mountain, most are in the country around and when we set out to get them, we must travel through the Mountain of Memories we have accumulated. Making a decision is like coming down off a mountain to get supplies.

Any decision is about the best way down the Mountain for the aliveness we want Checking the options for a decision is like walking around the mountainside looking for a good way down. The closer you are to the top, the easier it is to get around. The further down you start, the more energy the ups and downs of the landscape take. Sometimes people seem to camp halfway down a ridge. Though this might give a quick way off, this sort of position predisposes the decision and limits the view of the other options.

Memories are used to make decisions
Three commonly used options in making decisions are the three memory banks of Feelings, Rules and Explanations.

Decision-making appears to involve a rapid examination of each memory bank in the order, Feelings, Rules, and Explanations, for information relevant to the goal. This is also the order of energy required to use the option, the time taken to reach a decision, and of the potential accuracy of the results. Each ridge has its characteristic language, degree of satisfaction, Feelings and emotional content.

In the use of this model, it should be borne in mind that mature decision-making involves inner negotiations with memories, which are also interacting with each other by tension and association. Personal behaviour is complex, and seldom is any one of these options carried to an extreme without combination with the others.

Memories of Feelings for fast and free decisions
Memories of Feelings include memories of both frustration and fulfillment in the search for things that make us feel alive. A decision in this region is guided by these Feelings to re-enact remembered situations without any attempt to think things through. Since most of these memories were laid down in early childhood, the behaviour re-enacted is often that of inappropriate childhood ways perhaps modified to marginal social acceptability, as well as of the sheer joy of being alive and free.

The resulting behaviour is spontaneous, impulsive, irrational, and maybe irresponsible or unruly. Its dominant feeling is one of freedom from Rules and plans. It is this freedom that feels threatened by others’ attempts to control, and leads to defensive behaviour. It is the stuff of fun and fights

Some key phrases expressing this mode of behaviour are: "I don't care", "I'll do what I like", "I want it now". Decisions made on the basis of Feelings are the fastest and often may lead to mistakes.

This mode requires the least energy to use and so is the usual avenue of decision when a person is very tired. It is highly emotional and is capable of giving both the greatest satisfaction and the greatest pain.

Memories of Rules for short cuts that must be obeyed
Memories of Rules include those Rules we have accepted from others and those we have made up for ourselves.

Not only do we remember the Rules, but we also remember the way they were enforced. We not only remember being controlled, but how to control. Being subject to power, we learned power behaviour.

In using Rules, we decide to think somewhat and not to act on impulse. However, to save time and energy that thinking an action out fully would take, we use a short cut. We act on any Rules we have accepted that seem to fit the situation. In using this area of memory, we are influenced by our memories of being subject to power and may re-enact remembered power behaviour that was associated with the Rules we use. Often this reflects the behaviour of parents or other powerful figures in our childhood.

The language of the mode uses "should", "must", "ought" and generates blame, threats and guilt. Decisions made on the basis of Rules are almost as fast as, but make fewer mistakes than decisions made on Feelings.

The Rules mode requires more energy to use and maintain than the Feelings mode, but less than the Explanations mode. It is therefore a more likely form than the Explanations mode of behaviour as fatigue sets in. It is also an emotional area of the mind because of the early age at which the first memories were impressed.

In spite of this, Rules behaviour gives the least satisfaction of the three options. It provides only conditional Feelings of aliveness, which depend on maintaining a position of control by obedience to, or rebellion against the Rules. Its dominant feeling is one of power. It is this power that feels threatened by others’ exhibitions of freedom, and so attempts to control them.

Memories of Explanations for predicting in untried situations
We make up and tell each other explanations about ourselves and our world, linking experiences of trial and error into models of cause and effect, in an attempt to make life predictable. This is the area of model-based thinking.

In using our remembered explanations, we decide to think out the probable results of actions by using forecasts from previous explanations to develop custom-built plans. The resulting behaviour includes observation, reasoning, prediction and experiment. Since the plan is custom-built for the occasion, there is little of the re-enactment seen in the other options, and the behavioural pattern is capable of being the most mature of the three options.

These plans may involve the appropriate use of Rules and the enjoyment of Feelings. A person acting in this explanatory mode say’s "I think" and "probably","how" and "why". Decisions made on the basis of Explanations take the most time and energy of the three options, but they have the potential to make the least mistakes of all the options and it is hard to think this way when tired.

The Explanations mode is informational, and has little emotional content, but while working from Explanations, the dominant feeling is one of responsibility for one’ s own decisions. It is able to give double satisfaction, providing Feelings of aliveness from successful planning and from the appropriate use of Rules and Feelings.

Explanations are powerful enough to affect how we use all the other options. An explanation that we have come to trust enough to use in decision-making without constant checking becomes a belief.

Repeated decisions using beliefs become a pattern of preferred and ranked ways of getting things that make us feel alive. This pattern of behaviours is a person’s value system, and gradually acquires the force of, and motivational power of Rules.

The power of a repeatedly and successfully used belief-value system is so great that it will generate motivational Feelings internally, without direct sensory input. These motivational Feelings are our attitudes.

Our attitudes lead to a disposition to act, which may replace model-based planning. A disposition to act will generate actions according to our values when the opportunity comes, generally without conscious planning. The results of these actions feed back to the original belief system, reinforcing or weakening it.

Successful beliefs also generate an imagined Ideal situation where our potential to survive in, and enjoy the universe is satisfied. In that Ideal lifestyle, we would never lack the best feelings of aliveness we can imagine.

We evaluate our life position against this Ideal. People organise their time and energy to approach as closely as possible and as often as they can to their Ideal situation and perceive their personal value in terms of their success in this attempt.

The common factors in our Ideals suggest that the Ideal is in no one place. We enter it wherever someone experiences a growing aliveness, exercises freedom, and lives without barriers. Whoever ventures in, grows in humanness. Such a traveler however short the stay, never returns the same person.

Coming down the Mountain
The options can be visualised as ridges with characteristic landscapes. There is the Forest of Feelings. You cannot see far ahead. There is hardly a track. The forest hides precipitous drops and long grass hides rocks deceptively. Going through the Forest can be fast and dangerous.

The Ridge of Rules is full of roads and tracks, some of them fenced. It is well signposted with directions, but the ways twist and wind through thickets and remnants of the forest. You can make fast progress down this Ridge, with more safety than through the Forest, but the tracks and roads control your going and arriving.

Lookouts and observatories, libraries and museums and workshops mark the third ridge, the Escarpments of Explanations. From here there are causeways built into the world beyond. People move through here slowly, checking the past, looking ahead. Of course, there are places where the landscapes seem to be mixed. Seldom do we act from simple motives. The way we choose to come down off the Mountain shows in the way we get our satisfaction from life.

Leaving the Mountain
Leaving the Mountain is risky, and the risk increases the further you go. Around the Mountain, the closest country is cleared and cultivated. We visit this most in our quest of aliveness. It is our Personal Comfort Zone, where we feel competent to gather alivenesses. The outer limit of this Personal Comfort Zone is the limit of our competence, physical and mental. This zone varies in extent in different parts around and sometimes on the Mountain, according to the individual. Attitudes move from boredom to interest as the Personal Comfort Zone is crossed and the Competence Boundary is approached.

Beyond the Competence Boundary is uncleared and uncultivated country. We know about it, but feel uncomfortable there because we don’t feel competent to cope with the ruggedness, and absence of comforts and amenities. We are uncertain of what might happen if we go there and we have not made ourselves competent to handle it. This is our Personal Discomfort Zone. A few steps into the wild side of the Personal Discomfort Zone bring wonder and excitement, but further penetration away from the Personal Comfort Zone brings anxiety and stress to the unprepared. The outer limit of our Personal Discomfort Zone is our Adventure Boundary.

Beyond this again, the landscape becomes thick, and closes in behind you if you try to penetrate it. It is the Unknown and Mystic Wilderness, where we have not been. All the competence we can learn and practice is never quite enough to give certainty here because you cannot practice the unknown. If the Adventure Boundary is crossed into the Unknown by the unprepared, the unsupported risk moves to distress and maybe disaster. It need not be this way.

Natural Spirituality
Somewhere, usually in the Personal Discomfort Zone is the Natural Spirituality Boundary. I have proposed as a working definition of Spirituality:
Spirituality is an unproven paradigm of an unseen connectedness of things, that underlies all model based thinking.

Spirituality assumes a linkage such that the competence I am learning and practising
here and now, will be what I will need in some place I have not been and in some time
I cannot predict. The events will be linked in an esoteric understandability: ‘when I get
there I’ll know what to do, and not before’. This paradigm of connectedness is essential
for learning, the basis of all science and moral behaviour

Spirituality is always present in risk and adventure when experience meets the unknown. The adventure factor is in all recreation, whether a game, a climb, or some creative activity, because there is always some uncertainty about how it will turn out.

There is also an ancillary definition of Natural Spirituality:
Natural Spirituality is the sensitivity of a person to, and trust in, an unproven and unseen linkage of things.

Enjoying adventure needs a willingness to approach uncertainty with the hope of finding our way through the unknown using our past experiences as a guide. We have a sense of an unseen harmony linking our past experiences with the mysteries ahead. The measure of one's Natural Spirituality is the degree to which one trusts the paradigm of connectedness.

Natural Spirituality is incomplete on its own. To make the most of our Natural Spirituality, we need to build a sub-model of where and how the linkage occurs, and which gives some guidance in using it to optimise our aliveness.

Re-zoning life by adventure
We can shift the Competence Boundary by gaining the competence that will help us cope with the uncertainty of the Personal Discomfort Zone, and thus shrink the zone until the Competence Boundary touches the Adventure Boundary at the Unknown somewhere.

As competence is learned, the Natural Spirituality Boundary is pushed ahead of it outward until it meets the Adventure Boundary. Here at the junction of risk, competence and spirituality, the will must choose whether to move ahead or retreat.

The basis for this decision is the application of the will to the Natural Spirituality factor, i.e. the trust of the connection between the practical experiences and the unpractised unknown in a situation of greater perceived risk but no greater perceived competence.

If the decision is made to venture, the will stretches the Natural Spirituality Boundary ahead of the competence, and in a role reversal one's Natural Spirituality drags the competence with it into a test against the risk. One's worldview as the basis of all competence training is challenged. The peak of the adventure is at the edge of the Unknown challenge when the Natural Spirituality is stretched until it "twangs". In a second the edge is passed and a new edge appears in front of us. It cannot last. It is a moment to be repeated.

Stretching Natural Spirituality out ahead and following it is an autotelic experience, which calls the adventurer back to repeat the achievement of expanding one's Natural Spirituality.

Re-entry
On returning home, the adventurer finds the Competence Boundary is permanently warped out and the Adventure Boundary has receded outward with a new Discomfort Zone between. But the stretched Natural Spirituality has not returned to its old dimensions and may not even have returned to its old place between the boundaries. Stretching the Natural Spirituality has now changed the individual's worldview, self-concept and decisional disposition.

The expanded Natural Spirituality now calls the returned adventurer to move camp further up towards the summit of the Mountain, to see the options, to review them frequently and easily, to experience oneself as an integrated person, acquainted with the wilderness within. Transfer has occurred.

Abstraction of the model
Mathematically considered, the model takes the form of a triangular pyramid, whose base represents the areas of option and whose apex is the faculty of decision. The volume of the solid can be taken as proportional to the memory bank content available. The variation of the solid from a regular tetrahedron is a way of indicating the relative importance of an option to the whole person. The proportional importance of the options varies as a person matures.

Correlation with the Bicameral Model of right and left-brain functions The Bicameral Model can be superimposed on the Aliveness Decisional Model with the division between the hemispheres running the length of the Explanations Ridge and through the summit. Feelings thus lie in the Right Hemisphere function cluster and Rules in the Left. Explanations are formed in both Hemispheres, though in different ways.

Samples of prediction from the Model
Planning and sequencing
Activities that provide the greatest aliveness maximise the use of model-based
thinking while they minimise the use of Rules based thinking.

As a group working in model-based thinking fatigues, interactions observably move from the language of Explanations to that of Rules. This change will signal the beginning of the restructuring of the group into those who want to lead and those who prefer to follow. Neither leaders nor followers who evolve in this situation are likely to be acting from model-based thinking.

If the signs of fatigue and change are detected early, the activity can be changed to an enjoyable Feelings based activity with a high degree of freedom. The mood of the group will naturally bypass Rules behaviour, and its problems, in favour of a more satisfying flow of physical alivenesses.

Leadership
Using your Rules memories to interact with people usually does not help make friends. Your Rules will probably trigger childhood Feelings of being controlled by other people, and make them feel small. People usually do not enjoy this.

If you use your Feelings of free enjoyment in relating to a group, Rule based people will feel insecure and threatened with a loss of control over their personal world, and Feelings based people will take it as an invitation to play. If as a leader, you do not want to play or threaten, you need to come from another angle.

Behaviours
The internalised Ideal of a participant will affect the way an individual is willing to allow a leader to organise their time and energy. Increased Natural Spirituality will provide a wider base to synthesise Ideals, the basis of morality.

Adventure
If you want to face increased risk successfully, then you must practise increasing your trust in models built on experience, into areas where you have no experience, and learning from the results. Increased Natural Spirituality will allow a wider range of contact with the Unknown, and of adventure.

Developing one's competence to cope with uncomfortable areas of one's own life and memories will also expand the Spirituality Boundary even though it occurs on the Mountain.

Model based thinking
A good working sub-model within the paradigm of Spirituality can enhance the use and enjoyment of Natural Spirituality and increase the resources available for improving the consciousness of aliveness.

Model-based thinking allows more effective use of Rules and Feelings, and produces more satisfying beliefs, values and attitudes.

Transfer
If model based thinking is not addressed, transfer of learning about values and attitudes will be limited. Transfer from a venture to the world outside depends on the extension of trust of a model beyond present adventure occasion to the world beyond the pale of the camp. This is an expansion of Natural Spirituality as a result of adventure, bringing a change in worldview and an increase in personal integration. Developing Natural Spirituality will enhance transfer.

People can make decisions on a camp that will affect the rest of their lives.

References
Berne, E. (1963) The Structure and Dynamics of Organisations and Groups. Grove Press, NY

Berne, E. (1964) Games People Play. Penguin, UK

Berne, E. (1975) What Do You Say After You Say Hello? Corgi UK

Ellison, A. C. (1981) Thinking about Camping, and Development Through Enjoyment. Unpublished manuscripts of papers delivered to a Conference of Youth Leaders, Yarrahappini Youth Centre NSW

Ellison, A. C. (1984) The Leadership of Rucksack Growth Groups. Unpublished paper presented at the Transactional Analysis Conference, Sydney.

Ellison, A. C. (1985) The most important weekend. Wilderness Lifestyle, Sydney

Ellison, A. C. (1987) The Aliveness Concept as Transactional Analysis for the Right Hemisphere. Unpublished paper presented at the 7th Australasian Transactional Analysis Conference. Sydney

Ellison, A. C. (1991) Three-dimensional Transactional Analysis. Unpublished paper presented at the 10th Australian and New Zealand Transactional Analysis Conference, Sydney

Ellison, A. C. (2003) Visionary Leadership with The Spirit of Adventure. Wilderness Lifestyle, Cooranbong

Steiner, C. (1984) Seminar Manuscript Notes: A. C. Ellison. Sydney

Zimbardo, P. G. (1979) Psychology and Life. Scott Foresman, USA