– Heartwood Path Waypoint 1.91 –

Actual Unity

The Power Of Both Eros/Thanatos And Awareness/Equanimity
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To progress into the far reaches of the Heartwood Path, the eartHeart takes a difficult and often terrifying step: the abandonment of the sense of a separate self. This step is difficult because the Ego repels one back to a lower level or tricks one into accepting false symbols of transcendence rather than actual unity. These ultimately unsatisfying stand-ins for true unitive experience include money, fame, power, profane sex, titles, drugs, and food. These enticing yet unrewarding tokens of non-dual awareness can be overcome through the power of both Eros and Thanatos.  

Eros can be thought of as that positive, ontological hunger or force that draws a person toward non-duality. This force can lead one to a higher developmental stage. 

Thanatos—death anxiety—does its part in the drive towards a higher developmental stage by encouraging the person not to commit physical suicide but to accept the death of the separate sense of self. One reason why so many people in Western society strive to control Nature—including the female—is the fear of becoming separate and the view that Nature is the source of infirmity, finitude, and death. 

Talk of the erotic and of death is disconcerting to some, a discomfort that is less than helpful in one’s quest to grow, to be happy, and to live in a healthy environment. If such talk makes you squirm, I encourage you to get over it eventually; but for now, let us get right to the topic of the other key set of wings for one’s practice down the Heartwood Path (which has a point of completion, much as house-building has a completion) and thereafter (which means the work of growing as a person using the Heartwood Path goes on after you finish these series of courses, much as houses are always being remodeled and used in various ways far after they are built initially).

These wings of practice are vital tools for the worthwhile task of acknowledging, experiencing, and bearing reality--a primary goal of most worthy spiritual paths. I am speaking of awareness (seeing clearly) and equanimity (calm abiding). Care exists in the tension between these two poles of our practice. On one pole there is awareness, which has to do with clear seeing, the mind, wisdom, the no-self, seeing through the self, insight, acknowledging reality, and reliance on the Seer. On the other pole, there is equanimity which has to do with calm abiding, the heart, compassion, the self, building up the self, bearing up to reality, and relying on the Mother. The Heartwood Path––the practice laid out in this course–– spans between both of these poles, as any good psychotherapy would.  

For those of us who travel the Heartwood Path, as you are doing in a summary and additive way by reading this course, the mother is not just your maternal biological parent. Along with this mother, we will be describing the transformative role of both significant feminine partners (discussed in detail in The Heartwood Path for Couples course) and the Mother Earth (described in the pages that follow). By spanning both poles--awareness and equanimity--we will make sure that we are not just relying on the mind but also on the heart. 

My jobs working with people with special needs (mental illness and developmental disability), my comforting and consistent paternal grandmother, my loving mother, my time at the breast of Nature, and the significant female partners I have had in my life have shown me the value of the dual awareness/equanimity approach to personal growth. These relationships with the feminine have demonstrated to me clearly that, in personal transformation, the application of both mind and heart, working in tandem, is an important requirement. Anyone being cared for will do best when they are both . . .

— informed by awareness, which we will show to mean way more than seeing clearly or being book smart (we will, by the way, show that the world is awareness and that there is, therefore, no sense in quibbling over whether guidance from Nature comes from non-human natural sources or from the human mind), and when they are
— assured by equanimity, which comes, not from clear seeing or the libraries of schools and towns, but from the compassionate handshake of therapists, the laps of grandmothers, and the lips of lovers.

As you work toward your goal of finding happiness or improving environmental quality or attaining a state of non-duality (described next) you can apply your own individual mind and heart to the task of furthering your own growth. To this end, your mind does a fair enough job on its own but your heart does not do this work so well alone. A good way to your own heart is through the heart of another. 

Here we come to a crucial lesson, and it has to do with non-duality. This lesson is illustrated by the falseness the duality inherent in my own (and probably most person’s) choices. When it comes to choosing between clearness of awareness (seeing clearly) and equanimity (acts of compassion and nurturing), for example, I would like to have both but if I had to chose one, I would in a knee jerk reaction pick equanimity any day. 

This choice is an illustration of both the allure and the falseness of duality. Compassion, and any of the other warm aspects of equanimity, tends to keep the person seeing clearly longer because it adds a welcome sense of calm abiding. It is, therefore, alluring to pick compassion but doing so is a false choice for two highly instructive reasons: 

First. The loving embrace of the Mother, the Earth, the therapist, the grandmother or the lover is only knowable through awareness. 

Second. As we will prove in certain clearly marked activities throughout this book, the appropriate arms of the guru or therapist, the lap of the loving grandmother, the guidance of the Earth, and the lip of the lover are not really warm things at all. They, like all other so-called things, are arisings of awareness itself. This is one of the biggest lessons in life and, in a smaller sense, it is instructive here because soon in this book you will likely encounter a quandary—am I guided by non-human natural objects (beings) or am I guided by my own brain? Like my quick desire to choose equanimity over clear seeing, such either/or questions are misleading because they stem from duality. They are answered by the non-dual reality that such things as attractions in nature are not physical objects (beings) but are arisings in the oneness of awareness itself and so, that being the case, why make the distinction? The guidance you will receive in doing the activities of this course does not come solely from a natural being nor solely from your own mind. It is not one nor the other. It is all one and that one is awareness.

To Cognizance And Composure...

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​HumaNatureConnect Activity
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If this is not a day when you prefer to spend time in nature without an agenda, do the following activity:
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Start-up Protocol
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• Read The Text — Use your literary sense, your mind sense, and your reason sense  to read your way towards happiness and sustainability but do not just be an arm-chair traveler. Use your other natural senses as you also spend healthful, fun, and productive time in nature on your way to Gladandgreen Junction.
• Attractive Natural Being — With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural area and look around to find a natural being that is attractive to you.
• Appreciation and Gratefulness — While admiring your chosen being, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations.
• Consent — Once you find an aspect of nature that is attractive to you continuously for at least ten seconds, think of your continued attraction as your consent to have a connection experience that will lead to your optimal functioning.
• The Natural Senses — After gaining consent to enter into a connection experience with the natural being, have available the list of Natural Senses. Mix it up by using at least one radiation sense, one feeling sense, one chemical sense, and one mental sense, to widen your perception, and add variety to your experience.
• HumaNatureConnect Activity — After reading the text, finding a natural being, appreciating it, gaining its consent, and scanning the list of natural senses, use your heightened awareness and nature-induced optimal functioning to do the following activity and engage in as many follow-up components as you see fit.

Covering The Poles Of Transformation
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For this activity, answer the following questions:

1. How do you define awareness? 
2. What or who has helped you become more aware?
3. How has your awareness helped you to grow thus far in your life?
4. Where have you experienced calm abiding most in your life?
5. How has the feminine or “the Mother”--male or female--played a role in giving the kind of vital assurance that has helped you to grow as a person?  
6. How would giving up both your awareness and your assurance affect you and your growth as a person? 
7. How, if at all, can your effort to grow as a person be aided by awareness (clear seeing, the mind, wisdom, the no-self, seeing through the self, insight, acknowledging reality, and reliance on the Seer) and can your effort to grow as a person be aided by equanimity (calm abiding, the heart, compassion, the self, building up the self, bearing up to reality, and relying on the Mother or the Feminine). 
8. What would be the positive or negative result of using awareness and equanimity to achieve personal transformation? 

Write something down even if you are dissatisfied with your ability to answer such a question. It will be interesting to compare your answer now to your answer after taking this course. To write out your answers, create a table like the one below in your journal:

Personal Growth	Positive Results	Negative Results
From Awareness	​	​
From Equanimity	​	​

​​​​Follow-up Protocol
Natural Systems Reflection Process
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     For best results, write down your impressions of this activity in your journal using as many of the following components as you see fit, afterwards, share your interpretations with others.
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Journal Components
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• General Description — writing a general description of how you did the activity and what happened.
• Freeform — writing, in freeform, what you found attractive about your natural being.
• Three Qualities — writing down three qualities you found most attractive about your natural being.
• Three Learnings — writing down three things you learned from this activity.
• Self-esteem & Trust — writing down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of Nature.
• Changes To Self — writing down what aspects of your self, if any, were changed by this activity.
• Honor Yourself — praising yourself and your commitment to making another stop along the Heartwood Path good for yourself and the world.
• I’m A Person Who . . . — writing down three different so-called “G/G Statements” using the following format: “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________.”
• Feelings If Activity Taken — writing down a sentence about how you would feel if you lost your ability to experience this connection.
• Two-Word Summary — writing down two words that summarize your response to this activity.​

The Heartwood Path Exchange:
Swap Your Ideas, Impressions, Photos, And News With Others
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• Post your impressions and photos in the Comments at the bottom of the page
• Engage with others in your Heartwood Path course or salon
• Create your own salon that meets regularly online, by phone, or in person
• Discuss your impressions with trusted family members and friends
• Post your impressions and photos in our EartHeart Networking Forum
• Post your impressions on this specific waypoint on our Facebook Page
• Join the broader conversations on our Facebook Page
• To see what conversations you can inspire, share your photos and impressions about anything pertaining to your journey down the Heartwood Path on your Facebook page, on Instagram, and on other social media accounts. If you like, include “#heartwoodpath” and “#waypoint(insert waypoint number here)” wherever pertinent

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Your input is vital. Enjoy sharing!

Heartwood Path Axioms:
Key Assertions From Waypoint 1.91

1.91.1.
The abandonment of the sense of a separate self is difficult because the Ego repels one back to a lower level or tricks one into accepting false symbols of transcendence rather than actual unity.

1.91.2.
Unsatisfying stand-ins for true unitive experience include money, fame, power, profane sex, titles, drugs, and food.

1.91.3.
Care exists in the tension between the two poles of compassion: on one pole there is awareness, which has to do with clear seeing and the mind; on the other pole, there is equanimity, which has to do with calm abiding and the heart.

1.91.4.
Not separate from the viewer, so-called “things” are not independent material objects but arisings of awareness itself.

1.91.5.
In dream interpretation, do not rush in too quickly with your bright ideas of what the images mean; for doing so will rob them of their intelligence and replace this substantial capacity with your own, which may not be as revealing.

Nocturnal Pilgrimage 1.91:
Tend To Your Dreams Before Heading To The Next Waypoint

As living images that are part of the inner world of nature and part of your inner nature, Dream Figures, like natural beings and nature itself, have their own intelligence. All living beings, imaginal and tangible, speak according to their own fashion. Some in vibes, some in symbols, some in pillow talk. Nature’s intelligence, like your intelligence, lives, in part, in the images of the dreaming psyche. So this intelligence can be witnessed in dreams, and brought forth more fully during Dream Tending. This intelligence is not located in “a preexisting system of early family or symbolic explanation” (Aizenstat, 2009, p. 51), which is why Freud’s dream association and Jung’s dream amplification are likely to be true but partial, potentially accurate but not nearly complete enough for our purposes along the Heartwood Path. “When we rush in too quickly with our bright ideas of what the image means, we rob it of its native intelligence and replace it with our own, which may not be as illuminating. We want to hear its knowledge, not ours” (Aizenstat, 2009, p. 51).

I believe that during the day or whenever it is not presenting itself in someone’s dream, the Dream Figure lives, in part, in the multitude of natural beings that give Nature its diversity and beauty. Being respectful to both natural beings and their Dream Characters takes the seeking of consent to engage in connection experiences with the former––the natural beings––and asking for permission for eye-to-eye contact during Dream Tending with the latter––the Dream Characters  

With the polite relational protocol described in this course (which includes asking for consent, as described), the sojourner has an excellent chance to obtain guidance from nature, which, as you will see, sometimes “speaks” more clearly in dreams than it does in the field. In any of your dreams, including the ones you may have tonight, are you seeing any Dream characters (humans, animals, supernatural beings, individual plants) that seem to be the same thing as or symbolically related to your chosen attractive natural beings? Write down your impressions and reactions to this section in your journal.  

Then, move to the next waypoint: “Singularity.”  Happy traveling!

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the next waypoint:
"Singularity"

You have now completed 91 out of 117 waypoints in Kosmos.