Combine All Levels and Forms
Put Together All Levels Of Personal Growth–Archaic, Mythic, And Rational–With Higher, Trans-personal Forms Of Thinking, Speaking, And Acting
The Heartwood Path is a route of study, worship, service, wealth (not just monetary), fulfillment of desires, right livelihood, and liberation of the Soul. Along this path, you will discover how to move from dependence to independence to interdependence. It is this last stage that makes this pathway unique.
Combine all levels of personal development with higher forms of thinking, speaking, and acting.
Typically, self-help books encourage us to think of ourselves as individual agents needing improvement to succeed. This is true, but incomplete. We also need to work to improve the environment in which we live and we need to open ourselves up to the nurturing embrace of Nature.
Those who shun pilgrimages may end up living their lives on distorted beliefs and with low self-esteem.
The Heartwood Path is routed to allow a person to leave behind endeavoring in fear and dependency. The Heartwood Path helps people trade such striving for arriving at a “place” where love overcomes fear.
For those who find themselves at the mythic level of personal development and therefore have a certain set of religious-based responses, the frequent praising of The Absolute (which, by definition, can include the Judeo-Christian God) along the Heartwood Path will be welcome. While much of this course will be framed in rational and secular terms, it recognizes that to be fully developed one needs to integrate archaic, mythic and rational (scientific) modes of expression.
The Heartwood Path uses Nature’s gifts and the concepts of self-help, relationship improvement, and environmental protection to create a new way to benefit humaNature.
Embracing all levels—archaic (nature worshiping), mythic (deity worshiping), and rational (reliance on the scientific method)—within one’s personal development leads, after the kinds of practices described in this series of courses, to a personal trans-rational transformation.
Thus, the Heartwood Path does not encourage the denial of magic, myth, or reason, but a going beyond all shallower levels to deeper trans-personal forms (modes) of thinking, speaking and acting. These modes will be described later in this series of courses.
Those who do not undertake a spiritual quest such as the one undertaken along the Heartwood Path often end up feeling numb, traumatized, and valued for what they do rather than for who they are. Those who shun such pilgrimages may end up living their lives on distorted beliefs and with low self-esteem.
To a useful consideration of self-esteem, commune with nature, identify the rifts between where you are now and where you want to be qualitatively, affirm that your positive self-esteem makes you happier, and affirm that you are not fighting low self-esteem with the false comforts of excessive consumption.
In doing the activities that follow, be sure to remember not to be self-critical. Inner peace comes from acceptance of your current qualities while also identifying, not in a harsh way, what aspects of your life you could stand to improve.
