Photo by Don Pierce
There is always time to make improvements in your Self. To do so, use the next five suggestions on your loved ones and yourself:
Review what you liked about the past day or week.
Reflect on what positive occurrences are likely to happen in the next day and make a deal with yourself and others to promote positive behaviors.
Make New Year’s resolutions and conduct midyear assessments of progress towards meeting goals.
Acknowledge when you are using your own key individual strengths to build up your virtue.
Chant positive affirmations, as described in the following activity.
To Powerful Pronouncements…
HumaNatureConnect Activity
If this is not a day when you prefer to spend time in nature without an agenda, do the following activity:
Start-up Protocol
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.
Chanting Positive Affirmations
For this activity, use your natural sense of hearing including resonance, vibrations, sonar, and ultrasonic frequencies, to chant positive affirmations. Write down a phrase about yourself using the present tense, such as “I am happy to be fit and trim.” Generally, affirmations do not have to be about your individual self. Any positive statement, stated in the present tense, will do. For this exercise, we are focusing on affirmations about yourself. For our purposes here, it is not recommended that you affirm your desire for more money, a new car, a bigger house, or any other goals in the Realm of Exteriority. Focus instead on aspects of your Realm of Interiority, such as wanting inner peace, more confidence, or greater feelings of love. By focusing your attention inwardly, you are not giving up your desires for external objects or conditions. By focusing on your inner world you are simply concentrating on the source of external goodies––your own mind. Remember, everything begins in the mind. Focus your attention on your good vibrations pertinent to inner conditions, the quality and subject matter of your thinking. To practice making and experiencing the vibrations of a positive affirmation, repeat your phrase over and over, aloud. Play with the tones and rhythm until you find one that fits. Chant your phrase loud for several minutes. Then, whisper your chant for a while. Next, remember your chant in silence for a few minutes. While sitting in silence absorb the experience without trying to understand it. This sequence of chanting loudly, whispering, and attending to silence will be explained subsequently. For now, just try it. Then, in your journal, make and fill out a table like the one below.
Element Of Self-esteem Changed By This Activity
Yes
No
Unsure
My Impressions Of How This Activity Changed My Level Of Self-esteem
I put more value in my opinions and ideas.
I focus more on my strengths.
I give myself more credit for my skills and assets.
I more strongly believe that I am capable and successful.
I can more easily accept positive feedback.
I am less fearful of failure.
I feel less likely to boast as a way to cover up my inadequacies.
I am more assertive in expressing my needs.
I am more able to form secure and honest relationships.
I am more realistic in my expectations.
I am less likely to be overly critical of myself and others.
I am more resilient and better able to weather stress and setbacks.
I am less likely to experience feelings such as worthlessness, guilt or shame.
I am less likely to develop eating disorders.
Other
Other
Are you reasonably thankful of Nature? Are you beginning to trust Nature because of its lack of predetermined goals for you, or because it has been time-tested over the eons, or because it is composed of so many nonjudgmental actors? Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Perhaps you are, by now, becoming more trustful of nature because communing with it has allowed for the upwelling of sound guidance, or the receiving of kind treatment, or the provision of serene space where you can sort out matters of importance. If you like, in your journal, recreate and fill in the following table, adapted from a survey by Dan Oestreich, to determine your changed level of trust with Nature as a result of this activity (Oestreich Associates. www.teamtrustsurvey.com).
Ways To Trust Nature
Level Of Change In This Element Of Trust In Nature As A Result Of This Activity (5 For High Level Of Increased Trust, 3 For No Change, And 1 For Low Level Of Change)
Description Of Changes Level Of Trust in Nature As A Result Of This Activity
I felt like I got along well with Nature.
Differences were worked out amicably.
I felt like I received understandable and helpful feedback from Nature.
I felt free of blame while communing with Nature.
I felt comfortable taking risks in my interactions with Nature.
Nature stayed with me despite the sensitive and conflictual issues presented.
Nature was free of cliques and alliances and was able to make me feel like it was on my side.
Nature remained vulnerable and supportive to my concerns.
I felt like the guidance I received was a shared responsibility.
Guidance happened in a timely fashion.
Nature presented no self-serving arguments.
Nature did not try to prove itself to be right, nor did it attempt to protect its interests over mine.
I felt the discussions were held in a spirit of cooperation and compromise.
I was able to come to conclusions I would not have been able to make alone.
I felt like my interests and sensibilities were respected.
I felt allowed to bring up any topic of discussion.
Other
Other
Follow-up Protocol
Natural Systems Reflection Process
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.
Journal Components
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.
Nature Compared To Self — creating 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, creating a parallel sentence that reads: “I love (insert the word “myself”) because I am (insert the same qualities as before).” If only one follow-up component can be done at any one waypoint, do this one. It reveals a lot about the participant quickly. In group settings it is a very good way to get pertinent conversation underway.
Ride The Green Wave — determining whether you understand and agree with all of the Ten Green Wave Validation Statements. In your journal, give yourself a plus sign (+) if you do agree and a minus sign (-) if you do not agree. Do not worry if you do not give yourself a plus sign (+). These notations are merely for your own information. Regardless of your own plus or minus assessments, you are always free to move on; or, if you are attracted to do so, you can always revisit the waypoint, ask for Guidance, and/or redo the activity.
Two-Word Summary — writing down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
Nocturnal Pilgrimage 2.60:
Tend To Your Dreams Before Heading To The Next Waypoint
Sometimes it is hard to remember even tiny fragments of your dreams even if you wake up and do not move right away, as previously suggested. By slowly moving to the right side, or stomach, or back, or right side, you may roll into the memory of your dreams. The trick is to find the position you were in when you were dreaming. In finding it, you can use the dream to help heal your physical illness.
“The Dream Image linked to our bodily disorders are themselves often out of order, broken, malignant, or damaged in some way,” writes Aizenstat. “In Dream Tending we treat the physical disorder by treating the wounded image. . . When the image returns to vitality, so do we.” (2009, p. 191).
Improve your vitality by moving to the next waypoint: “Acts And Traits.” When you get there, be sure to balance the reading with actively seeking out your attractions in nature. As usual, reading alone will not be enough. By getting out into nature you will create more activity in two important brain centers: the anterior cingulate, which, when active, creates emotional stability and a positive mental outlook, and the insula, which, like the anterior cingulate, heightens empathy but also plays a role in the development of the emotion of love. Urban scenes do not significantly activate either of these parts of the brain (Selhub & Logan, 2012, pp. 30-31). Enjoy the next adventure!
