– Heartwood Path Waypoint 1.13 –

Optimism

Maximize Qualities And Be Satisfied With Quantities
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There are reasons for optimism. Our history shows that we as a species can do the work suggested by Einstein: “widening our circle of compassion.”  The shift to live according to a new ecological paradigm is not significantly more daunting than our other previous massive shifts. We as a species, for example, made the leap from hunters and gathers to living in agricultural communities. Then, called again to face big cultural changes, we again made another big leap, this time from living in agricultural communities with simple technology to living mostly in cities and suburbs with complex, modern technology.  James George points out that we are “endowed with some degree of freewill, and therefore with contradictory capacities for both self-destructive behavior and for extraordinary breakthroughs of creative energy and intelligence” (George, 1995, p.105). I, for one, think that we will, after trying everything else, eventually make the right choices. 

If we can make the shift from being hunters and gatherers to being agriculturalists and if we can make the shift from living in agricultural communities with simple technologies to living in urban and suburban communities with complex technologies, which required huge shifts in perspectives and behaviors,  it stands to reason that we can also shift from a state of lower well-being that comes from always demanding but never quite gathering up  more and more stuff to a higher state of well-being that goes with being satisfied with having enough stuff.

To Become A Maximizer...

​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.

"Maximizing" Vs. "Satisficing"
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For this activity, look for ways that nature maximizes qualities (examples: adds diversity, displays beauty) and seems to be “satisfied” with quantities (examples: hermit crabs do not fill their houses with stuff nor do they attempt to have more than one house, black rhinoceros browse on shrubs and, therefore, do not compete for food with white rhinoceros that graze on grass). Write down at least three specific examples that you can perceive during this activity of nature both maximizing qualities and being “satisfied” with quantities. Then make a plan for how, in five different ways, you can become a maximizer of qualities and a “satisficer” of quantities.

​​​​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 1.13

1.13.1.
Given other huge shifts in human perspective,  it stands to reason that we can also shift from a state of lower well-being that comes from always demanding but never quite gathering up  more and more stuff to a higher state of well being that goes with being satisfied with having enough stuff.  

1.13.2.
Become a maximizer of qualities and a “satisficer” of quantities.

1.13.3.
For help with life’s big changes, look for ways your dreams may be signs of latent wishes or repressed anger.

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 1.13

Work on making Freudian associations with your dreams by looking for ways they may be signs of latent wishes or repressed anger. Here’s a few tips to help you with this important analytical tool:

1. Choose an image that really gets your attention in your dreams.
2. Look for characters, people, creatures, a natural scene, or a natural being. And 
3. Pick images in your dreams that seem to linger into your waking life. As accurately as you can, write a detailed description of the Dream Character.  Look for ways to connect this character to ideas, feelings, and events from your life. Do not bother trying to find the one right answer. Instead, observe where free associations take you (Aizenstat, 2009, p. 21). ​

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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.​

After writing your description, continue on your way down the Heartwood Path by looking for examples of optimism and pessimism in nature after you move to the next waypoint: “Self-absorption.”

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With this combination package you can read the material at home or in nature. If you choose, you can leave your mobile device behind and bring the printed Heartwood Path Kosmos book with you into nature as you complete your daily outdoor activities.

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Click here to go to  
​the next waypoint:
"Self-absorption"

You have now completed 13 out of 117 waypoints in Kosmos.