Immagination Prompts

Employ creativity-producing behaviors.

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Key Assertions: While all the stages of inner development affect one’s creativity, it is not necessary to reach advanced stages of inner development to demonstrate some form of creativity. Creativity-expanding behaviors include: altering, arranging, designing, combining, paraphrasing, generalizing, modifying, questioning, rearranging, reconstructing, regrouping, renaming, restating, reordering, revising, rewriting, varying, valuing, simplifying, and synthesizing. Before one can preserve anything in the external world, one needs to preserve and enhance access to the freedom and creativity one finds in the inner world. One needs to be able to look at existence not only as an “it,” but also as a “we.”Humans seek to preserve nature because our happiness depends greatly on the natural environment, because we have a deep psychological relationship with the diversity of life forms, and because we seek to repair the spirit of fraternity we had with the natural world which was torn apart when we began to live our lives mostly indoors.

While all the above stages of inner development affect one’s creativity, it is not necessary to reach advanced stages of inner development to demonstrate some form of creativity. To increase creativity, certain creativity-producing behaviors can be employed at any level of inner development. These behaviors include: altering, arranging, designing, combining, paraphrasing, generalizing, modifying, questioning, rearranging, reconstructing, regrouping, renaming, restating, reordering, revising, rewriting, varying, valuing, simplifying, and synthesizing. Many times people open themselves to the possibilities of greatness merely by adopting such creative behaviors or by forcing themselves to think in ways that are not part of their normal mental habits.

Before one can preserve anything in the external world, one needs to preserve and enhance access to the freedom and creativity one finds in the inner world. One needs to be able to look at existence not only as an “it,” but also as a “we.” This can be done both by going through the stages of inner creativity (as described in the previous section) or by doing some of the things listed in the previous paragraph.

Photo by Don Pierce.

HumaNatureConnect Activity

Recording Your Impressions Regarding Statements That Reflect The Thesis Of The Heartwood Path Course

For this activity, record in your journal your impressions on the following quotes, both from Eric Lambin:

Humans “have an interest in preserving nature, because our happiness depends greatly on the natural environment” (2012, p. 9).

And

“Sheltered in our cities, secure in our cars on our paved roads or in our heated and air-conditioned houses, we are detached from what is at the heart of humanity: our biological roots, which plunge deep into the natural world; our psychic relationship with the diversity of life forms; an anchoring in the beautiful landscapes; and a fraternity with the animal world” (2012, p. 11).

Photo by Yunus Tuğ, Pixels.com.