– Heartwood Path Waypoint 1.101 –

Octagon Of Joy

Play With The Eight Forms Of Pleasure
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The Pillars Of Happiness described previously apply to the eight forms of pleasure: primal, pain relief, elemental, mental, emotional, sensual, sexual, and spiritual.  Without each of these forms of pleasure one will not have the steadfastness to endure the pilgrimage to Gladandgreen Junction. Instead of being carried forward by your pleasure, one will likely become weary, distracted, or disinterested.  Without pleasure any endeavor becomes a tedious chore and the positive results are left to those who, instead of focusing on the languor and length of the pilgrimage, find some sort of delight in each step along the way.  

Here are our substitutes for longueur (fatigue from lengthiness) ––our ways to keep any pathway of growth from seeming to be protracted, dragged-out, or interminable: Primal pleasure is feeling good by going with the flow; walking on air; and feeling buoyant, elated, exulted, and high. Soothing aches and pains through therapeutic or emphatic touch is the pleasure of pain relief. Elemental pleasures include play, movement, and making pleasing sounds. Curiosity, the craving for information, and learning are all mental pleasures. Love, avoidance of fear, and moving away from threats as a result of anger are the components of emotional pleasure. Love moves one toward what promises emotional nourishment. Love sires all positive emotions: including liking something or somebody; feeling thankful, hopeful, trusting, eager, and enthusiastic; and feeling exultation, awe and bliss. One experiences sensual pleasures when one lingers over and enjoys a stimulus. Spiritual pleasures need not be limited to relating to God or cultivating the immortal Soul.  While religious fervor can certainly be a form of spiritual pleasure, what is really producing the pleasure is the feeling of being a part of or connected to something that is larger than one’s self. Fulfillment comes from coming to terms with deep spiritual matters such as life; death; one’s place in the whole scheme of things; and being a part of something good, larger than one’s self, and divine.  

Limiting your capacity to experience any one of the eight forms of pleasure will, in turn, limit your capacity to enjoy all the other delights. Also, cultivating your capacity to enjoy some of the more basic forms of pleasure—such as laughing or feeling buoyant—adds to your ability to heighten your response to more complicated forms of pleasure—such as sexuality.

​Laughter creates the shortest bridge between two individuals. It does so because it brings forth the kind of joyousness that counters contempt and indignation. When you are sad you attract emptiness. When you are happy, the world laughs with you.

To Eight Forms Of Pleasure...

​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.

Assessing How You Are Supporting (Or Not Supporting) Your Pursuit Of Pleasure

For this activity, determine how you are using authenticity, courage, excitement, and challenge to support your pursuit of the eight forms of pleasure. Do so systematically by recreating the table shown below in your journal and filling in your responses.

​​​​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 1.101

1.101.1.
Laughter creates the shortest bridge between two people.

1.101.2.
Love sires all positive emotions: including liking something or somebody; feeling thankful, hopeful, trusting, eager, and enthusiastic; and feeling exultation, awe and bliss.

1.101.3.
While religious fervor can certainly be a form of spiritual pleasure, what is really producing the pleasure is the feeling of being a part of or connected to something that is larger than one’s self. 

1.101.4.
Fulfillment comes from coming to terms with deep spiritual matters such as life; death; one’s place in the whole scheme of things; and being a part of something good, larger than one’s self, and divine.  

1.101.5.
Limiting your capacity to experience any one of the eight forms of pleasure will, in turn, limit your capacity to enjoy all the other delights just as cultivating your capacity to enjoy some of the more basic forms of pleasure—such as laughing or feeling buoyant—adds to your ability to heighten your response to more complicated forms of pleasure—such as sexuality.

Nocturnal Pilgrimage 1.101:
Tend To Your Dreams Before Heading To The Next Waypoint

It is often difficult to remember your dreams. Elsewhere in this course there are suggestions for how to increase your chance for dream recall. Here is one tip not mentioned elsewhere:  “ . . . try switching sleeping positions. Lie on your side, roll on to your back, go to your stomach, but do so slowly. You can often recall the experience (of the dream) more easily by lying in the position in which you had the dream” (Tucillo, Zeizel & Peisel, 2013, pp. 55-57).

With this in mind, sleep, dream, when you wake up get back into your sleeping position to help you remember your dream. Then record your dreams in your journal. Whatever your intentions were for your dreams, phrase them in the present tense. If you are looking to, in effect, wake up in your dreams while you are asleep, and thereby become aware that you are dreaming and possibly control your dreams, have the intention (before falling asleep) to have such a lucid dream and state that intention in the positive, using a phrase such as “I am lucid and aware in my dream” (Tucillo, Zeizel & Peisel, 2013, pp. 57-68).

​When ready, move to the next waypoint: “Sound Wellness.” Keep heading to Gladandgreen Junction.

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the next waypoint:
"Sound Wellness"

You have now completed 101 out of 117 waypoints in Kosmos.