Safe Place
Establish Holding Environments
Photo by Pixabay
Experience negative feelings without being overwhelmed by them. Safe environments provided by attentive parents, therapists, close friends, and loving partners allow for the expression of negative feelings.
EartHearts take people to safe, so-called “holding environments;” that is, outdoor places where people can learn, feel, be physical, be themselves, and plan how to expand their kindness.
To observe the impact of doing random acts of kindness, commune with nature and then watch what happens when you pay a fee for someone, give flowers to passersby, give up your seat to someone, provide refreshments to others, and smile while saying hello to strangers.
A challenge for those heading to Gladandgreen Junction is to experience defensive feelings without being overwhelmed by them. To avoid such emotional meltdowns, the experience and expression of such feelings is best conducted in the kinds of safe environments provided by attentive parents, and later in life by therapists, mentors, teachers, close friends, and loving partners.
Such so-called “holding environments” (Koger and Winter, 2004, p. 49) are not only created by loving parents or supportive spouses. They can also be provided by attractive natural beings or natural environments. In all cases, holding environments offer any of the four kinds of endowments participants said they hoped for as we worked to develop the Life Adventures Outdoor Center in Belleville Illinois:
A place for doing physical activities of all kinds––fun activities that extend their skills, offer risks and challenges, but have adequate safety measures.
A place for thinking––a place for discovery, study, and learning; a place where the intellect can be stimulated; a place where participants can learn more about themselves and the world.
A place for feeling––a location full of color, beauty, and interest; a place that engenders a sense of pride and ownership; a place where participants can be small, vulnerable, caring, cared for, and appreciated.
A place for being––a location where participants can be themselves, where participants can be recognized for their abilities, be private if they choose, and have their choices accepted.
These are the kinds of opportunities eartHearts seek to provide in their groups (salons), in their temporary retreats, and in the inspired programs they hold at permanent destinations they seek to protect and/or develop. The four attributes of holding environments are the opportunities people can use to recollect their wholeness during the light of day. As we shall see, people can also uncover their wholeness during the day or night.
To Compassionate Action…
Photo by Maciej Cisowski, Pexels.com.
HumaNatureConnect Activity
Observing The Impact Of Doing Random Acts Of Kindness
For this activity, come back from your time in nature and, without delay, do random acts of kindness and record how doing so makes you feel. Ideas for random acts of kindness include paying a fee or toll for someone in line behind you, giving flowers to passersby, giving your seat to someone standing, providing supplies or refreshments to schoolmates or workmates, improving the conditions for your chosen natural being without harming other beings (providing water during a drought, for example), and smiling and saying hello to someone you do not know.
Photo by Jonas, Pixels.com.
Nocturnal Pilgrimage
Sleep. Attend to your day dreaming. Examine your memories of your experiences with your chosen attractive natural beings. Use association, amplification, or animation, whichever you determine that gives you the most insight.
To proceed well, you will need to be able to distinguish lucid dreaming (which is controlling a dream once you are in it) from incubating a dream (which “allows you to set the stage for your dream before falling asleep). Putting these two together makes for some very productive sleeping. Both lucid dreams and incubating a dream will be covered more extensively later in this course.
When you get better at either lucid dreaming or incubating a dream you can work on making your dreams help you recover lost parts of your self. This will be done by looking over your dream journal entries to see if any of your dreams contain advice on how you can become happier and whole.
Give it a try now. Look in your dream journal for Dream Characters, often sad or injured people, who may be symbols of your emotional difficulties or repressed experiences. Look for Dream Images that match some aspect of your self. This can be done by affirming your intention to become whole. If you have lost your energy, for example, look for Dream Images with lots of energy and imagine absorbing it through the pores of your skin. If you are anxious, unite with a soothing waterfall while reminding yourself that its waters heal anxiety. “Use dreams to become mentally whole by reuniting with lost parts of yourself” (Tucillo, Zeizel & Peisel, 2013, pp. 200-204).
