Egos: Connecting with the Individual Self

Egos

Egos

Connecting with the Individual Self

Don Pierce

Heartwood Path

Copyright © 2022 by Don Pierce

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Contact:

Heartwood Path

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805-689-7042

www.heartwoodpath.com

ISBN/SKU: 979-8-9857352-2-2

EISBN: 979-8-9857352-3-9

To my loving parents, Don and Marilyn.

Contents

Introduction

1 Individuation

2 The Attractive Natural Being Impression

3 Animal Totems

4 Ways Of Knowing

5 Defense Mechanisms

6 Object Relations

7 Frameworks

8 Safe Places

9 Social Psych.

10 Inner Speech

11 Added Vitality

12 Self Importance

13 Exchange

14 Heady

15 Trail Blazer

16 Contentment

17 Inventiveness Bands

18 Imagination Prompts

19 Bridge To Oneness

20 Many Minds

21 Perpetual Education

22 Perpetual Nature

23 Sense-ational Fun

24 Clutch Mystery

25 Complete Mind

26 Financial Triumph

27 Ideal You Ahead

28 Cosmic Consciousness

29 Cove Of The Spirit

30 Spiritual Acclimation

31 The Beanstalk And The Tree

32 Branch One

33 Branch Two

34 Branch Three

35 Branch Four

36 Branch Five

37 Branch Six

38 Branch Seven

39 Position Of The Psyche

40 Soul Initiation

41 World’s Soul

42 Talk Of The World

43 The Spheres

44 Up And Around

45 Roll

46 Pull

47 Sole And Melded

48 Evoking

49 Familiarity

50 Active Breathing

51 Practice Mindfulness

52 Mental Tonic

53 Sound’s Helpful

54 Tuneful

55 Samadhi

56 Elation

57 Pleasures Vs. Gratifications

58 Awesome Goodness

59 Romantic Relationships

60 Suggestions

61 Acts And Traits

62 Enduring Trumps Temporary

63 Vital Aim

64 Exemplary Compassion (Part One)

65 Exemplary Compassion (Part Two)

66 Exemplary Compassion (Part Three)

67 Exemplary Compassion (Part Four)

68 Scrutinize

69 One’s Shoes (Part One)

70 One’s Shoes (Part Two)

71 One’s Shoes (Part Three)

72 Self-occupied

73 Big Shot

74 Expanding Benevolence

75 Concealed

76 Proof

77 Bounds

78 Real You

79 Personal Space

80 Discernment

81 Mining For Gold

82 Highest View

83 Coverage

84 From Me To Us All

85 Dream Council

86 Wisdom

87 Crucible

88 Share

89 Unstuck Pleasure

90 Unlinked

91 Untamed And Tidy

92 Ought To

93 Stoneface

94 Horizons

95 Sacred Hoop

96 Splendid Expectations

97 Acknowledgement

98 Unfolding

References

Appendix

Acknowledgments

About The Author

Heartwood Path One-On-One Guidance

Further Action

Read This First

Although anyone may find the practices, challenges, and understandings in this book to be useful it is made available with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher are engaged in presenting specific medical, psychological, emotional, sexual, or spiritual advice. Nor is anything in this book intended to be a diagnosis, prescription, recommendation, or cure for any specific kind of medical, psychological, emotional, sexual, or spiritual problem. Each person has unique needs and this book cannot take these individual differences into account. Each reader is encouraged to engage in a program of treatment, prevention, and cure only in consultation with a licensed, qualified physician, therapist, or other competent professional.

Introduction

EGOS: Connecting With The Individual Self

Wholeness begins with the individual. Evoked, colored, and interpreted by the uniqueness of each individual person, all of nature, all of the environment, and all of the universe would not be known nor complete without you. You are one of a kind. And your novel perspectives influence both what you perceive and the way the world becomes. For these reasons, we continue our outgoing path of learning with the general topic of each person’s novel style, original view, and idiosyncratic approach. These are the some of the best peculiarities that make the world so varied and interesting.

Although not mandatory, if you have not read the first two books in this series, you may find it helpful to purchase and read them. Kosmos gives you the overview of the Heartwood Path and important background information. Logos presents important and pertinent universal principles, aimed at helping you to prevent swimming upstream in life.

If you prefer to forge ahead, without going back to the previous book, you can always go to www.heartwoodpath.com and press the link for one-on-one guidance. This service makes going down the Heartwood Path even more enjoyable and productive.

The present book—Egos—will help you identify and protect the important gifts that you bring to the world. We are honored that you are about to bring these gifts to the world with the help of the Heartwood Path. Proceed by moving to the first waypoint in Egos: Individuation.

1

Individuation

Hold Firm To Your Uniqueness

With a critical mass of people anchoring their uniqueness in the ways described in this book, we can avoid global tragedy, prevent widespread heartbreak, stem the tide of environmental devastation, and create conditions that will preserve all of our positive agendas. Most people are unaware that we are in the midst of a dark night for all species.

Within this night is the eye of an evolutionary perfect storm, where conditions are coming together that, without bold corrective actions, will cause the demise of billions of fellow earthlings. Fewer still are aware that the Twenty-First Century—a time of quiet horror and pain for humans and non-humans, alike—marks a birth on a massive scale of a time of improved intelligence and grace. All births are painful, including births of renewal.

This renewal can only happen if we do the necessary work, as described in this book and elsewhere. The collective offspring of this birth of renewal needs to be an embodied divine humanity.

We need such folks to grow into the kind of secular saints this series of books aims to develop. Such good folks need to have ensouled bodies, masculine and feminine energies, and the capability to perceive using both heady concepts and bodily sensations.

They will need to have the fortitude to resist the mainstream, obsessive, dissociated, chilling commitment to thinking in terms of separation, objectivization, and control. By reading this book, you will be given the ability to use a newly acquired free-flowing, supple, intuitive intelligence that comes from a brain you probably do not know you have. By changing your self in the way described in this book you can become a midwife that aids the birth of a more feminine outlook and approach.

This feminized outlook and approach is capable of ending the semi-demented denigration of the wild, both within us and outside of the enclosures (our homes) where we too often waste the bulk of our lives, filling the perceived emptiness of our own company by watching senseless, televised programming.

From television and other sources we are programmed to be dissatisfied, to want more, and to work for others to gain what we think will make us feel better. Over time, we are lulled to accept ruinous divisions such as the separability of mind from body, or the separability of man from nature, or the separability of self from other.

We begin this book in the way most of us currently think—as if the individual can be separated from the whole. Each of us is an individual, and, as people with agency, we have our own uniqueness. This individuality marks half of our being, with integration into the whole—discussed in the next book—making up the rest.

We may not be able to stand alone, but we can learn about our individual aspects; and, in this learning, we will begin to see how by working on ourselves we affect the whole. While this book is about the individual and the Ego, remember: as we relate to our individual bodies, so too do we relate to our world; and as we deepen our experience of the body, so too do we deepen our experience of the world.

This series of books will make it possible for you to tap into the enormous source of intelligence that comes to you via your own newly acquired abilities to feel, deep in your bones, both Nature and a glorious sense of Wholeness. The state of wholeness feels like a lack of injury, like nothing is missing, like everything is complete, like everything is perfect, like everything is unbroken, and like you are in a peaceful state of total unity. It is an immensely satisfying feeling of love that seems native to your Soul. It is a feeling of joy marked by healthiness, satisfaction, and uncut oneness.

You will never perceive this natural unbroken wholeness—this ultimate fulfillment—until you able to feel in a more complete way with your individual body. As we shall see, this feeling of wholeness is difficult because our culture encourages us to focus on the functions of the well-known cranial brain—on concepts, rationality, analysis, and separation—rather than on a blending of the cranial brain with the little-known brain at the other end of the spinal column—the enteric brain—which governs feelings and the sense of unity with the whole.

It need not be this way. We need not be mired in abstractions. We can know and use our masculinity (our propensity to be a disembodied doer) but, even as we do, we ought to also keep and use our femininity (our propensity to be a felt body). Simply put, be both the action and the actor.

Our culture could support the yearning to be free, to have creativity, and to be present amid the myriad of things. But it doesn’t. And it ought to because we need all three—freedom, creativity, and presence. There is no freedom without creativity and presence, nor is there creativity without freedom and presence, nor is there presence without creativity and freedom. We need to be able to walk around on these three legs, on these three aspects of our wholeness, so that our Selves can be complete, so that we can awaken to the integration into the whole to which our Selves belongs.

There cannot be integration into the whole without an individual being integrated. And there cannot be an individual alone, living without the whole.

You are one of these three-legged individuals—having one-leg yearning for freedom, one-leg yearning for creativity, and one-leg yearning for presence. To put all three of these useful yearnings to good use for yourself and the world, you cannot expect society as a whole to guide you. The guidance that you need requires the individual. Without individuals there is no freedom, no creativity, and no presence. Your three-leggedness means that it is you as an individual that has to guide and, therefore, create a better future. You, armed with the three yearnings, are perfectly suited for this role.

You may be a man or you may be a woman; but; either way, you have a mixture of masculine and feminine qualities. The masculine in you makes you a doer. The feminine in you makes you a being. You are a unity of doing and being. The doer in you streamlines, and gets right to the job at hand. The being in you multitasks, connects, and communicates. It is your feminine side that lives in accordance with the rhythms of nature and seeks to minimize aggression and war.

If you tend to wonder What should I do? more than you wonder How should I be? the masculine side is likely to be dominant in you. We will discuss more about such gender differences in the Heartwood Path book entitled "Eros. And we will discuss the abiding reality of life, found in one’s relationship with the whole, in the next book. Here, we are focusing on the entity that is being related. With a title like Egos you may suppose that we will be discussing in this course the egregious, hard-to-control impulse to acquire more and more. The subject of that misdirected drive is introduced in this Heartwood Path book and expanded upon in a later book entitled Ethos".

Egregious wealth can be thought of as a measure of one’s ability to abuse the world. Certainly, with greater affluence one has the wherewithal to purchase more than one needs. Such consumption often comes at considerable cost to other people and the environment.

Wealth does not measure one’s ability to do good. For this reason, we will in this course focus on a better measure of goodness: one’s openness of heart, one’s ability to transform, and one’s yearning to grow in depth by adding layers to one’s spiritual development.

You will not need wealth to be successful as you progress down the Heartwood Path. You will need compassion, a sense of justice, and an unswerving commitment to reduce suffering.

We begin with the individual self, as if it stands alone when really it does not. A fabrication, the individual self is part of the duplicate world of concepts and words. I say duplicate because the individual self is not real, but a duplication of the real that comes in the form of concepts and ideas. The individual self is not made of stuff, but it is a metaphorical process, a man-made character that we shall use for literary clarity.

Despite its fictional nature, the self is extremely important to you as an individual. A fragile conceit, all reality appears to be contingent upon the individual self, which is never out of relationship with the whole. We can only speak and act as if we have no relations. In reality, nothing, including the individual self, exists alone. We can, however, talk about it separately. But let us always remember, the Self has no perseity. It is not an actual separate entity. Defined in the English Oxford Dictionary as "the quality or condition of existing independently, perseity is a false notion because isolation is a meaningless fantasy. Everything is sustained by the whole. How to overcome "perseity"—the false notion upon which the whole of western civilization is established—is addressed in the Heartwood Path book, entitled, Collectivos.

How the individual self relates to the whole brings up the notion of rights and responsibilities. An individual’s right is a possession that one has and typically wants to defend. A responsibility is a relationship with the whole. Such ethical distinctions are discussed in more detail in the Heartwood Path book: "Ethos."

Without thinking of it as a fiction, we often place the individual self in the head, in the private isolation chamber of the brain. This placement is our way of getting ahead but it is not a good way to achieve enlightenment—that is, all-aware unbroken harmony.

It will as you progress down the Heartwood Path often be acceptable to be empty of ideas so that you can be more in touch with your feelings. The insensate cranial brain, a numbskull, is the center for masculine doing. The sensate enteric brain is the center for feminine being. At each waypoint you will be asked to create a duplicate world of words. In doing so, always remember that you are creating a replica or re-creation of the real thing.

In the activities for this series of books, use words to record your impressions. Specifically, focus on NNIAAL—the Universe’s inner world constitution: Now’s Nameless, Intelligent, Alive, Attraction, Love. If truthful, write down your impressions about becoming massively connected, about how you can feel the distinction between abstract substitutes/duplicates/models and the experience of the present. Failing to feel this distinction will put you right back into society’s trap, a prison where fear of feminine being leads many of us to become tyrannical doers who placate our typical fear of being with the acquisition of possessions. The upcoming waypoint will help you learn how to correct this planet-wrenching tendency. There, you will learn how to perceive with what can be thought of as your two heads: the head for the creation of concepts and the head for bodily sensations. Let me explain:

We have a cranial brain which is the seat of our mental processes. We also have a visceral or enteric brain, located in the pelvis, which is the seat of our nonverbal consciousness. For much of your activity along the Heartwood Path, moderate the use of the brain in your head so that you can allow to come forth the feelings of your visceral brain in your lower body. Doing so will be important because you will be asked, over and over, to minimize conscious thinking and to highlight the feelings of conscious being. This process occurs in the individual, which is why we are addressing the topic of individuation here. As you proceed down the Heartwood Path and later in life, do not allow the head to always be the rightful ruler. And do not allow the masculinity (or any man) to be the supreme creation of the universe. The balancing of the head and the heart and the brain and the pelvis will enable you to develop a consciousness that is axial (head to tail, cranial brain to enteric brain) rather than unipolar (head or tail, cranial brain or enteric brain). It is through your axial consciousness—your ability to both think and feel—that you will become particularly well suited to making sure that for every right there is also responsibility. As you learn to develop such axial consciousness, you will be pleased about how good it feels; and you will realize that to be present in the world means making room within the corridor between the head and the pelvis for the world to be present in you. This room-making is extremely pleasurable, so much so it will make you glad to replace the known self that is a fiction made up of duplicate entities and words with a wondrous felt self that is made up of one’s body, of the revelations of felt currents, and of the expansion of compassion. Once this felt self emerges, the known self falls away. In its place is a grounded abiding presence that is also the blossoming of one’s core. And, in its place is a glorious feeling of being connected to all that is.

As you engage in the practices of this series of courses, you will be undergoing a hero’s journey aimed at healing the primary wound of our culture: the rupture between thinking and being. As a result of this journey, the self will dilate beyond the boundaries of your skin to include the presence of the universe.

This delightful opening to the whole of the world occurs within the individual, but not within an individual who is crass or brutish. The wonderful feeling of opening up to the whole occurs within a person who is gentle. As it turns out, our sensitivity, more so than our willpower, helps the world. In Ecclesiasticus, one of the books of the Apocrypha in the King James Version of the Old Testament, it is written: Many are in high place, and of renown; but mysteries are revealed unto the meek.

The concept of being meek is a familiar sentiment that is often confused with timidity or a retreating demeanor. By encouraging meekness, I am not suggesting that individuals going the down Heartwood Path need to lack strength. I am instead calling for a grounded presence that allows one to be in the world’s stillness in innocence. A meek person can stand tall in humility before Spacious Presence. A meek person can be patient and un-resentful under injury or reproach. A meek person can have a grounded gentleness of heart. She is one who can usher others into a relationship with the present while being fully sensitive to it. To be meek is not to dress or speak in any particular way. It is rather a willingness to be open to the illumination of vivid companionship, open to the mind and hearts’ sensitivity, and to use the medium of love for communication with anything. Writes Philip Shepherd:

The gentler you are with yourself, the more fully you will be present. When you can be gentle with your whole life, your whole life will be present. Of course, gentleness is soft, but its effects are not. It opens the door on the flux of the world, the only reality, which moves with the power of a whirlpool. Not everyone chooses to give over to its pull. If you do make that choice, your grounded gentleness will carry you into an ocean of truth . . .Your ability to respond depends on the yielding spirit of gentleness, and whenever gentleness is offered, your ‘responsibility’ will be activated (2010, pp. 314-315).

If we want a peaceful world we as individuals will have to be peaceful. Indeed, the world we make replicates the one we experience within.

In this Heartwood Path book you will learn about how individual and largely unconscious inner world mechanisms underlie the world’s ecological predicament. You will also learn how understanding your own psychology and developing your individual self are initial steps towards finding that place where your own deep happiness meets the world’s deep hunger for sustainability. Getting to know oneself through inner reflection is the foundation of any spiritual quest.

You will occasionally be looking specifically at the individual, singular Realm of Interiority. This is the realm of your intentions. Here, you find your purpose.

Your purpose, aims, and Will are inner world events that you do not solely produce by yourself. They are part of the Universal Source. Your role is to become attuned to them. Pardon the expression, but I invite you to use your so-called little mind to tap into the world’s Big Mind, which is really your own mind expanded. This broader and deeper mind knows what you are to do with your life. The Big Mind directs a friendly universe, one that always works on your behalf.

When you look within, you concentrate all Spirit at your point of attention. In doing so, you will discover that you are much greater than you previously had known. You become what you like to become. The power of intention is revealed as:

creativity,

kindness, 

love, 

the appreciation of beauty (which is wholeness, reverence for life, and truth) and the ever-growing expansiveness of life, 

unlimited abundance in the nonmaterial realm, and 

receptivity to receiving and giving guidance. (Dyer, 2005). 

As this book progresses, we will be looking at the core of the problem. And, we will address solutions. As we shall see, one cannot just stick an intention into the blank space of the mind because there are some curious occurrences (called defenses) going on in there. These inner world events may get in the way of a magnificent future, both for oneself and for the world. For this reason, defenses—described subsequently—have to be understood and dealt with before one can begin to think about working out solutions.

For now, however, before working on your defenses, learn to create more beauty by uncovering what is beautiful about yourself and by applying your own beautiful uniqueness into all of your actions. Begin each Heartwood Path Activity in the customary fashion:

by going into nature,

by seeking out an attractive being found there, a 

by opening yourself up to Nature through all of your fifty-four natural senses (described subsequently). 

Then, as instructed in the following activity, read the text in the left column and answer the questions about yourself in the right column.

To A Positive Self-concept…

HumaNatureConnect Activity

Start-up Protocol

If this is not a day when you prefer to spend time in nature without an agenda, do the Heartwood Path Start-up Protocol found in the Appendix.

Connecting Positively With The Individual Self

For this activity, create a positive self-concept. In the first table, read the statements below (in the left column) and give your related impressions (in the middle column) now and in the right column at the end of this book. Also note that there is another table aimed to encourage you to write down what you hope you will achieve regarding your self-concept by participating in this section of the Heartwood Path. After writing down declarations as instructed in the two tables, place your statements together in an envelope. You will be instructed to open this envelop at the last waypoint for this course. It will be interesting to read what you say after anchoring your individual self as a result of taking this course. Notice in the second table below that you are given space to write down your reactions to your own growth at the end of this course.

Recreate the next two tables below. Fill in your answers and put them in an envelope to be opened at the end of this course.

Follow-up Protocol

For best results, write down your impressions of this activity in your journal using the Heartwood Path Follow-up Protocol found in the Appendix. Afterwards, consider sharing your interpretations with others.

Heartwood Path Axioms

Key Assertions From Waypoint 3.1

3.1.1.

The inner world of individuals underlies the world’s ecological predicament.

3.1.2.

Great happiness comes to those who find that place where their own happiness meets the world’s hunger for sustainability.

3.1.3.

The way one thinks about one’s self shapes who one is and informs the way one makes decisions.

Nocturnal Pilgrimage 3.1

For best results, write down your impressions of each night’s dreams in your journal using the Heartwood Path Dreaming Time Protocols found in the Appendix. Afterwards, consider sharing your Dream Tending with others.

A major theme of all of the Nocturnal Pilgrimage sections for this course is lucid dreaming, You are having a lucid dream when you are aware that you are dreaming.

You are not lucid in your dreams when you are only aware of them as memories after you wake up. That is unconscious dreaming.

Lucid dreaming has some variety to it. Sometimes a person having a lucid dream is only slightly aware of it and can act or make decision within the Dream. Other times a person knows that they are dreaming but still sees the Characters and action as separate from themselves. When you are aware that you are dreaming, see the action and Characters as parts of yourself, and can control the action and outcome of the dream, you are having the type of lucid dream needed and sought by those making a pilgrimage down the Heartwood Path. How to have such dreams, how to keep your lucid dream going, and what to do with your dreaming time power of lucidity will all be imparted to you as you progress from waypoint to waypoint in this book or course. Be patient. Lucid dreaming usually requires the kinds of skills that come from practice. You will get there. But, for now, sleep and dream Tend to your dreams, using the procedures listed in the Before Dreaming, Dreaming, and After Dreaming Protocol plus a few extra suggestions listed here:

Additional Heartwood Path Dream Tending Suggestions

Rather than jump to immediate attempts to interpret a dream, pay attention to what is actually presented in the dream itself. 

Focus your attention on the particularity of the setting for the dream—the dreamscape.

During your dream, follow the way the dream is presented to you.

Notice the characters and creatures of the dream.

Look for similarities, contrasts, and repetitions.

Become curious about the dream.

Perceive the Dream Images as the voice of the world and/or the dream as the dream of the earth.

Interact with the Dream Images as living beings (by having conversations with them, for example).

Imagine using all of your senses to communicate and experience the Dream Images, Characters, or Settings.

Move with the feelings and rhythms of the Dream Images and let go of such notions as being beautiful or appropriate.

When working to incubate a certain dream—that is, to call forth a particular dream—do not express your desire vaguely or with any length. Your intentions become more powerful with single-pointed clarity and brevity.

With your knowledge of the subject matter of this waypoint—the topics of holding firm to your individuality, lucid dreaming, our Dream Tending protocols, and giving power to your intentions—you are ready to move to the next waypoint, entitled The Attractive Natural Being Impression. There, you will learn how nature shares its intelligence with you. And, as you make this transition, remember:

Positive change requires positive vision.

Action is blind without vision.

2

The Attractive Natural Being Impression

Keep Your Focus On The Inseparable Combination Of Natural Beings And Your Impressions Of Them

This waypoint contains a teaching that is critical to making the Heartwood Path work for you. It will also be invaluable to whatever else you do in your life. It begins the work of realizing that the world is not just outside of the mind and the mind is not just separate from the world. This learning is critical to understanding how one comes to know anything.

At this waypoint we will here be addressing two important ways of knowing: 1) knowing that relies on scientifically valid sensations and 2) knowing that relies on stories. These ways are very important for your growth pilgrimage on the Heartwood Path and for any other endeavor in your life.

Happiness and sustainability are reduced when our subjective stories do not accurately reflect our sensations of objective reality. Conversely, happiness and sustainability go up when our subjective stories accurately reflect not a separate reality but our sensations of natural beings.

The key teaching of this waypoint is to have you know that it is not a separate object that one is relating to when asked to find an attractive natural being, as you always will be asked to do at the start of each Heartwood Path Activity. To answer this call, you can pick an individual natural object such as a stone, a bird, or a tree. You can also choose to include in your chosen natural object the individual being and its surroundings. When choosing a natural being and its surroundings you are, in effect, choosing more of this compound object’s Greater Self—the individual and its setting. Whether you pick a bush (an individual being) or a landscape (part of the Greater Self), the natural beings that you are asked to seek and find attractive are not isolated objects but are really aspects of the outer world that are fused with your own inner world impressions of them.

One is not doing a pure natural science when one does Heartwood Path Activities. You will not be asked, for example, to study things that are somehow separate from your impressions of them. Nor will you typically be asked to focus on the mental images or constructs formed solely within your mind.

We are, therefore, also not doing pure psychology here. We are doing eco-psychology in a way that keeps the natural being and one’s impression of that natural being (be it a flower or a forest) fused. This constant combination of the outer world object and the inner world impression is a better reflection of how the world works.

For us on the Heartwood Path the natural being and our impression of it—are always fused together in what I call a Natural Being Impression. As we shall see, this Natural Being Impression will work best for you when you give more specificity and power to it by making it what I call an AttractiveNaturalBeingImpression. For reasons explained subsequently, guidance, healing, and information flow best when the being and your impression of it are deemed to be attractive.

For our purposes along the Heartwood Path, a natural object without our impression of it would be an incoherent jumble. Also, an impression without a natural object would be a self-absorbed mental fantasy, possibly even a mental mishmash.

The point here is to avoid thinking that things are just things and mental impressions are just inner world events. It is implausible that a natural object, somehow separate and independent of its surroundings and the one observing it, can offer perceptible guidance in the form of signal—a message that comes from the natural being and goes to the admiring perceiver of that being. Those who go down the Heartwood Path do not behave like Dr. Doolittle talking to the animals.

It is, however, plausible and accurate to have the fusion of a thing like a natural being and one’s inseparable impressions of it provide what we are looking for in doing the HumaNatureConnect Activities at each Heartwood Path waypoint: important guidance, information, and healing. It is, furthermore, pointless to argue that nature cannot provide guidance. There is no coherent nature separate from our impressions of it. The guidance, the information, and the healing comes from the inseparable being impression.

When one does the sort of activities that are dotted along the Heartwood Path, one’s Individual Self puts a definite spin on the aspects of the natural being that is perceived. One colors the guidance that is received according to one’s own fashion. Here’s how and why this fashioning (this fabricating) is so important:

The How

Along the Heartwood Path, one applies one’s own perspectives, memories, and psychological state of mind to fashion, make, tailor, or shape one’s own guidance from nature. One begins this process by choosing natural beings (as you may have noticed, we don’t like to call them objects) that are attractive. This attraction—determined by our own unique preferences and distinct sensibilities—is a critically important component that allows for the flow of benefits that stem from proceeding down the Heartwood Path.

The Why

Here’s why regularly forming AttractiveNaturalBeingImpressions is so important:

We are working to overcome our nature disconnected way of thinking and behaving that has led us to dissatisfaction and environmental malaise. Dwelling on attractive natural beings puts us into a positive state of regard that sets in motion a receptivity to the life-affirming thoughts and actions.

By communing with an attractive natural being we open ourselves up fully to so-called individuals (natural beings) that we soon see are connected to the web-of-life (in natural settings and landscapes). We also quickly learn that the natural beings, the natural settings, the landscapes, and the web-of-life are all intelligent.

By following our attractions in nature, we naturally linger longer there. We are not repulsed. We are drawn by the attraction, which can be thought of as a sort of consent that enables us to glean the fullest amount of guidance, information, and healing.

By following your attractions you are able to become psychologically attuned to the same energy that attracted the Void to evoke the Big Bang (the flaring-forth of Creation), that attracts the Absolute to create each present moment, that attracts you to receive the sharing of the natural intelligence of the wholeness of nature, and to—simply put—live with the vibes that bring goodness, beauty, and truth into your life.

Once you set up patterns of connecting to attractive natural beings and pay attention to your natural senses (you have 54 and not just 6) you will bring goodness, truth, and beauty into your life (and into the lives of others) because you will have already created an AttractiveNaturalBeingImpression—that is already good (ethical, beneficial to all), already truthful (actual, not based on fantasy), and beautiful (coming from your own intentions, which are appealing because they come from the attractiveness and uniqueness of you). Your AttractiveNaturalBeingImpression will not be inappropriate because it will be formed with the help of Nature which was good when it was created and remains so through time-tested care and helpfulness, because it will be truthful (based on actual physical presence rather than by your own mental creations which may be fraught with delusions, fantasy, and psychological defense mechanisms and because it will be beautiful (always coming from the eye of the beholder, whose intentions are beautiful even when the beholder’s actions often are not).

You will be far more likely to continue to do the helpful activities along the Heartwood Path by regularly seeking out your attractions than you would if you were asked to go find something ugly in nature before each activity. If you have any doubts about the allure and positive influence of natural attractions simply remember a time when a beautiful setting induced positive thoughts and plans in yourself, or try to remember when perceiving an unattractive natural being led to positive thoughts, plans, or actions.

There is but one Greater Self. And amid this Greater Self are countless Individual Selves that form all the vital and important distinctions, all the variety, and all the endless possibilities that make the world so amazing. Do not live so much of your life indoors where your thoughts are colored by fantastical stories, where your thoughts make you devoted to acquiring more and caring less, and where you are isolated from the intelligence of Nature. You will need to establish AttractiveNaturalBeingImpressions to become the secular saint this series of courses is devoted to creating.

You do not need to form AttractiveNaturalBeingImpressions once you attempt to go beyond saintliness to sageness. That last step, where you give up pondering the world and instead turn to meditating on thoughts alone; is beyond the scope of this series of courses. No matter: very few people get to the psycho-spiritual stage of sageness. Very few people want to become a sage. By the end of this courses you may experience a temporary peak at sageness but, more importantly, you will by the end of this series of courses establish yourself on a permanent plateau of secular saintliness. You will be easily driven and prepared to help others, including Nature, without crashing.

Everything you may have read in the Heartwood Path books Kosmos and Logos was offered to prepare you to begin your forward pilgrimage towards happiness and sustainability. It is now time to proceed toward GladandGreen Junction, in earnest. For the reasons that will be made clear as you proceed, it will be both necessary and delightful to begin this first post-preparatory leg of the Heartwood Path with a good understanding of the individual self, especially your own.

This understanding will come not only from reading but also from doing. For this reason, we shall put you immediately into the doing mode and, at the same time, put more flesh to the topic of the individual self by having you jump right into the following important activity.

To Firm Up Your Individuality By Seeing Natural Beings As Parts And As Wholes…

HumaNatureConnect Activity

Start-up Protocol

If this is not a day when you prefer to spend time in nature without an agenda, do the Heartwood Path Start-up Protocol found in the Appendix.

Finding Individual Or Collective Natural Beings

For this activity, form the habit of picking out natural beings within your view that exhibit their own unique individual selves such as a rock, a tree, or a flower and pick out (usually more expansive) natural beings within your view that exhibit their More-Than-Individual-Selves-– their unique selves presented in a setting. Such More-Than-Individual-Selves will often be a forest, a beach, a scenic view, or a natural landscape. Can you see that individual beings are not really independent but only seem so when you allow your mind to hold an impression of them as individual objects? As you view the More-Than-Individual-Self, can you make your mind hold your view of a natural landscape as one attractive natural being? How about the whole world? Can you think of the earth as one living being?

Follow-up Protocol

For best results, write down your impressions of this activity in your journal using the Heartwood Path Follow-up Protocol found in the Appendix. Afterwards, consider sharing your interpretations with others.

Heartwood Path Axioms

Key Assertions From Waypoint 3.2

3.2.1.

Happiness and sustainability are reduced when our subjective stories do not accurately reflect our sensations of natural beings. 

3.2.2.

Conversely, happiness and sustainability go up when our subjective stories accurately reflect not a separate reality but our sensations of objective reality.

3.2.3.

A natural object without our impression of it would be an incoherent jumble and an impression without a natural object would be a self-absorbed mental fantasy, possibly even a mental mishmash.

3.2.4.

Amid the Greater Self are countless individual selves that form all the vital and important distinctions, all the variety, and all the endless possibilities that make the world so amazing.

Nocturnal Pilgrimage 3.2

For best results, write down your impressions of each night’s dreams in your journal using the Heartwood Path Dreaming Time Protocols found in the Appendix. Afterwards, consider sharing your Dream Tending with others.

As you lie in bed tonight, form the intention that you will awaken your feelings during your lucid dream, especially in that exact moment when you realize that you are awake in your dream. Do not just record what you see in your dreams. Pay as much attention to how you feel.

Continue moving down the Heartwood Path during your nighttime slumbers. Dream, and look for clues in your dream that point to your sense of self, and particularly: to your self-confidence, to your ability to accept criticism, to your ability to set obtainable goals, to your willingness to take risks, to