– Heartwood Path Waypoint 1.77 –

Consider The Ego

Distinguish Between The Ego And It’s Spoils
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While Ego drives one to excel, the spoils of the Ego such as the motivation to achieve or the motivation to make one youthfully attractive ought not be regarded as highly as the timeless rewards that are available as one develops spiritually. The spoils of the Ego are tools that can be used for immediate but temporary personal development, but they are not timeless. They will, in time, disappear. 

​Due to his Ego and his desire to hold onto its spoils, too many of us are taking life too seriously. As author Alan Watts says: “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun”  (Goodreads Website).

To Your Own Mixed Bag…​
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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 also go outdoors to the back yard or to the back woods, where the higher levels of negative ions in the air will improve your mood and wellbeing.
• Attention Restoration — With a pen and journal in hand, go to a natural area that is attractive, has a variety of plants and animals, and is tranquil enough to leave room for reflection. 
• Attractive Natural Being — Once you are in a natural area (the wilder, the better), look around to find a natural being that is attractive to you and remain near that being until the end of the activity.​
• 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 help you function optimally and establish in your mind a more helpful egalitarian relationship with the natural being.
• Appreciation And Gratefulness — After gaining consent to enter into a connection experience with the natural being, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations.
• Use Your Natural Senses — Beyond seeing, hearing, and the three other commonly recognized senses, use as many of the fifty-four Natural Senses as you see fit and document the ones that you use in your journal.
• HumaNatureConnect Activity — Wander without an agenda in a natural place or do the prescribed HumaNatureConnect Activity.

Considering Your Own Shame, Good Deeds, And The Ego
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For this activity, look for evidence of any lack of shame in your chosen natural being or its place. Then write down how your Ego makes you ashamed of things you do not know, ashamed for not being able, and ashamed for not being pure. After listing what you are ashamed of, think of the wisdom you would like to achieve, think of the vows you need to make or remake, and consider what you can do to be more compassionate towards all sentient beings. Are there apparent good deeds associated with your chosen natural being or its place? Find a giver and a receiver at your natural location. Do you see any psychological attachments to givers and receivers in Nature? Write down your answer. Make a list of ten planned good deeds. Write down how reacting to your shame by seeking wisdom, making vows, and planning good deeds allows you to counter the negativities of shame that come from your Ego. If you are attracted to take an extra step, write down how nature handles the act of giving and receiving in terms shame; diligence; accommodation; the impermanence of the giver, receiver, and thing given; and non-attachment to results.

​​​​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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• Date — Write down the date of your outdoor nature-communing experience.
• Activity — Write down the waypoint title and number each time each you do an activity.
• Location — Write down the location of your outdoor nature-communing experience.
• Natural Being Indicator — Draw a picture or write down in your journal a nameless way to remember your chosen attractive Natural Being; for example, call it your “____  ____ Connection Experience.”
• The Natural Senses Used — Write down all of the Natural Senses you used for this activity.
• General Description — Write a general description of how you did the activity and what happened.
• Freeform — Write, in freeform, what you found attractive about your natural being.
• Three Qualities — Write down three qualities you found attractive about your natural being.
• Three Learnings — Write down three things you learned from this activity.
• Self-esteem & Trust — Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of NNIAAL (Namelessness, Now, Intelligence, Alive, Attraction, and Love).
• Changes To Self — Write down what aspects of your Self, if any, were changed by this activity.
• Honor Yourself — Praise yourself and your commitment to making another stop along the Heartwood Path good for yourself and the world.
• I’m A Person Who. . . — Write 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 — Write down a sentence about how you would feel if you lost your ability to experience this connection.
• Nature Compared To Self — Create a sentence that reads: “I love this (insert words that identify the attractive natural being) because it is (insert words that refer to the qualities you like about the natural being); then, create a parallel sentence that reads: “I love (insert the word “myself”) because I am (insert the same qualities as before).”​
• Integral Immersion — Improve your journal writing by addressing what is, what could be, and what ought to be.
• Love Letter — Write a letter of gratitude to and from a natural being.
• Two-word Summary — Write 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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• Comment — Post your impressions and photos in the Comments section of this waypoint—the place for on-going discussion regarding this waypoint.
• Join — Engage with others in a Heartwood Path course or salon.
• Create — Start your own Heartwood Path salon that meets regularly online, by phone, or in person.
• Talk — Share your impressions with trusted family members and friends.
• Network — Post your impressions and photos on our EartHeart Networking Forum.
• Post — To see what conversations you can ignite, upload on social media your photos and impressions about anything pertaining to your journey down the Heartwood Path.
• Connect — Follow our account on Instagram, Like our Page on Facebook, Subscribe to our Channel on YouTube, and use hashtags such as “#heartwoodpath”, “#eartHeart”, and “#waypoint(insert course)(insert waypoint number) i.e.“#waypointkosmos5”).​

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Your input is vital. Enjoy sharing!

Heartwood Path Axioms:
Key Assertions From Waypoint 1.77

1.77.1.
Distinguish between the Ego and its spoils.

1.77.2.
The motivation to achieve or the motivation to make one youthfully attractive ought not be regarded as highly as the timeless rewards that are available as one develops spiritually.

1.77.3.
Since pain forces us to learn, a common impetus for most spiritual journeys is some form of suffering; and, ironically, the more pain one is willing to take on the greater the joy. 

1.77.4.
Confronting the dark side of life is important as an early step in spiritual growth because there is a big psycho-spiritual payoff when life’s problems are overcome.

1.77.5
While the Ego drives one to excel, the spoils of the Ego such as the motivation to achieve or the motivation to make one youthfully attractive ought not be regarded as highly as the timeless rewards that are available as one develops spiritually.

Dreaming Time Activity

For best results, write down your impressions of each night’s dreams in your journal, a vital part of your EartHeart Chronicles. Make your Dream Tending elaborate (so you get the most out of it) but do not make it cumbersome (as this could prevent you from continuing). Use as many of the following components as you see fit. Afterwards, where appropriate, share your Dream Tending with others.
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Before Dreaming Protocol​​

• Dream Prep — Prepare yourself for productive dreaming by decluttering your mind before sleeping. ​
• Journal Ready — Prepare to record your dream impressions by placing your journal so that you can make initial recordings in it without changing your dreamtime sleeping position.

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Dreaming Protocol​

• Remember This — Look to your dreams to tell you what you need to remember.​
• Open To Dream — Be receptive, fluid, interactive, and grounded as you dream.
• Wake-Back-To-Bed — Wake up after six hours of sleep, staying awake for twenty minutes, then go back to sleep.
• Shape-shifters — Watch characters that change in your dream to see into the possibilities of your own transformation.

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Nocturnal Pilgrimage 1.77

Some people may shun the Nocturnal Pilgrimage sections of the Heartwood Path because they do not like thinking about dreams. For many of these people, dreams turn into nightmares. Here’s how lucid dreaming can be used to neutralize and even reverse the negative impacts of bad dreams: when you are conscious that you are dreaming, as you are during lucid dreaming, one has a chance to use the event for healing; one has a chance to use the event to uncover what is plaguing you in your waking life; and one has the power to change what happens in the night time reveries, making them less difficult to experience.

After Dreaming Protocol​

• First Off — Recall your dream by staying in your sleeping position as you make your first attempt to remember your dream.
• Book Of Dreams — Create an entry in your dream journal using the following linguistic tools: 1) talking in the present tense, 2) using verbs ending in “ing,” 3) removing articles such as “an” or “the,” and 4) using capital letters when naming the Dream Characters—which can be any notable people, places, or things that show up in your dream.
• Title — Give your dream a memorable title. 
• Date — Write down the date of your dream. 
• Description — Write down a short, general summary of your dream.
• Mood — Write down how the dream affected your mood upon waking.
• Life Event Affecting Dream — Write down any events in your life that may have influenced your dream.
• Dream Characters — List all remembered notable “actors” in your dream, whether they are people, places, or things.
• Setting — Describe the location of your dream.
• Statement Of Problem — Write down the complication, challenge, predicament, situation, obstacle, plight, quandary, or misadventure presented in your dream. 
• Culmination Or Response To The Problem — Describe what you or another Dream Character did in your dream to respond to the problem presented in the dream.
• Conclusion — Describe how your dream ended.
• Beings Revealed — Write down how your dream seemed to be, if at all, linked in some way to your chosen attractive natural beings.
• Freud’s Approach —  Associate the actions of your Dream Characters with latent, infantile, repressed, or sexual drives.
• Jung’s Approach — Amplify your Dream Characters into Archetypes that are global in scale, symbolic, pervasive, positive, and helpful.
• Hillman’s Approach — Recognize your Dream Characters as animated, living beings by honoring their presence, place, and body.
• Right Information — Ask yourself the two main questions for Dream Tending: “Who is visiting now?” And “What is happening here?”
• The Richest Treasures — Do not force narrow interpretations upon the natural being impressions that reappear in your dream by condensing them into limited signs when it is more fruitful to simply engage with them as living beings that reside in your dream, possibly with infinite symbolic value.
• Privacy — Store your dream journal in a safe place and, where appropriate, share your dream with others.​​​

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Dream Council Protocol​

• Create Dream Figures — Periodically create physical representations of select Dream Characters using natural materials, give them some form of identification, and gather them together.

With the previous text and activity in mind, tend to your dreams. Then, continue your pilgrimage down the Heartwood Path by moving to the next waypoint: “The Deepest Self.” There, you will learn about how to gain a deep ecological consciousness by adopting a wider identification.

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