– Heartwood Path Waypoint 1.34 –

Introspection

Assess Your Spiritual Fitness
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Without the ability to listen or to be introspective, one misses vital signals the universe sends on one’s behalf. When, metaphorically speaking, the dripping faucet of life’s little warning signs fails to motivate us to do the preemptive work of a person-perfecting plumber, life sends a tidal wave just to stir us out of our slumber. Introspection, a crucial task of those who follow the Heartwood Path, is important because the fabric of life in the outer world is a precise weave of the thoughts and feelings in one’s inner world.

Experiencing one’s own inner world is a silent activity. Silence gives access to a clear mind; which, in turn, allows one to be more aware of the ebb and flow of energy and of the penetrating and projecting qualities of energy. Silence also allows for the revelation of negative energy often hidden by the clamor of life. Once revealed, negative energy can be processed and released. Thus, silence is not only golden; it is inspiring, as well.

Processing one’s own psychological pain or emotional suffering brings a bonus. When those who have not engaged in such processing face danger or disaster they tend to panic and fail. Conversely, those who have already experienced and processed calamities garner the necessary inner strength to overcome adversity, succeed in their outer world goals, and grow towards spiritual maturity (perfection). 

​Such experiences and processing affect or indicate one’s spiritual fitness. Assess yours in the following activity.

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To Assess Your Present Spiritual Fitness...

​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 move towards happiness and sustainability by reading the Heartwood Path text but also go outdoors to the backyard or to the backwoods, where the higher levels of negative ions in the air will improve your mood and well-being.
• 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.
• Source — Spend time wandering without an agenda in nature or, if you don’t have time to receive nature’s magic in this way, follow the instructions in the text at each learning station.
• Attractive Natural Being — Once you are in a natural area (the wilder, the better), look to find a natural being that is attractive to you and remain near that being until the end of the activity.
• Appreciation And Gratitude — While communing with your chosen natural being, appreciate it as you inhale and show it gratitude as you exhale.
• 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; receive information, guidance, and healing; and establish in your mind a more helpful egalitarian relationship with the natural being.
• The 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 prepare to document the ones that you use in your journal.
• Great Trustable Truth — Experience what is happening at the present moment in nature, paying particular attention to the role of both beauty and balance; remember that the impressions you form about attractive natural beings and natural areas, coming from your experiencing of them in the Now, are trustable; and recognize that the natural processes and features witnessed are a source of special, substantial, and irreplaceable truthfulness about both nature and yourself.
• Recall — Place the great trustable truth and any other insights that you discover in a mental lock-box so you can later record them in your journal.​

Assessing Spiritual Fitness
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For this activity, use a scale where 1 is strongly disagree, 3 is neutral, and 5 is strongly agree with the following statements aimed at assessing your spiritual fitness: Your life has lasting meaning. Your life is connected to all of humanity and the whole world.  Your job has lasting meaning. Look over your responses and write in your journal what they say about your spiritual fitness.

​​​​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 1.34

1.34.1
When the dripping faucet of life’s little warning signs fails to motivate us to do the preemptive work of a person-perfecting plumber, life sends a tidal wave just to stir us out of our slumber.

1.34.2.
Silence gives access to a clear mind; which, in turn, allows one to be more aware of the ebb and flow of energy and of the penetrating and projecting qualities of energy. 

1.34.3.
Silence also allows for the revelation of negative energy often hidden by the clamor of life.

1.34.4.
Once revealed, negative energy can be processed and released.

1.34.5.
The fabric of life in the outer world is a precise weave of the thoughts and feelings in one’s inner world.

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 1.34

For some time now you have been practicing dream association––correlating your dreams as signs of repressed anger or hidden wishes.  You have also been amplifying your dreams, growing them into universal symbols, well known stories, and archetypes. Now it is time to start practicing the third way of dream tending.  This stage, called “animating,” will the most important way we will be tending to your dreams as you progress down the Heartwood Path.  To animate a Dream Image, “you bring it to life in the here and now, rather than associating to the past or amplifying it into a myth of story” (Aizenstat, 2009, p. 23). Notice what the image is doing, how it is moving, how it is interacting with you, and how it affects you. Write your impressions in your journal.  
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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.
• 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.​​​

You are now ready to continue this course. Move to the next waypoint, titled “The Journey,” and prepare to grow up more fully. As an alternative, go someplace else and hope that you somehow learn how to act right in public. As we all know, it is not productive to fret over the good ole days. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

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