The Attractive Natural Being Impression
Keep Your Focus On The Inseparable Combination Of Natural Beings And Your Impressions Of Them
Photo by Patrice Schoefolt, Pexels.com.
Heartwood Path Axioms:
Key Assertions:
Happiness and sustainability are reduced when our subjective stories do not accurately reflect our sensations of natural beings.
Conversely, happiness and sustainability go up when our subjective stories accurately reflect not a separate reality but our sensations of objective reality.
A natural object without our impression of it would be an incoherent jumble and an impression without a natural object would be a self-absorbed mental fantasy, possibly even a mental mishmash.
Amid the Greater Self are countless individual selves that form all the vital and important distinctions, all the variety, and all the endless possibilities that make the world so amazing.
This waypoint contains a teaching that is critical to making the Heartwood Path work for you. It will also be invaluable to whatever else you do in your life. It begins the work of realizing that the world is not just outside of the mind and the mind is not just separate from the world. This learning is critical to understanding how one comes to know anything.
At this waypoint we will here be addressing two important ways of knowing: 1) knowing that relies on scientifically valid sensations and 2) knowing that relies on stories. These ways are very important for your growth pilgrimage on the Heartwood Path and for any other endeavor in your life.
Happiness and sustainability are reduced when our subjective stories do not accurately reflect our sensations of objective reality. Conversely, happiness and sustainability go up when our subjective stories accurately reflect not a separate reality but our sensations of natural beings.
The key teaching of this waypoint is to have you know that it is not a separate object that one is relating to when asked to find an attractive natural being, as you always will be asked to do at the start of each Heartwood Path Activity. To answer this call, you can pick an individual natural object such as a stone, a bird, or a tree. You can also choose to include in your chosen natural object the individual being and its surroundings. When choosing a natural being and its surroundings you are, in effect, choosing more of this compound object’s Greater Self––the individual and its setting. Whether you pick a bush (an individual being) or a landscape (part of the Greater Self), the natural beings that you are asked to seek and find attractive are not isolated objects but are really aspects of the outer world that are fused with your own inner world impressions of them.
One is not doing a pure natural science when one does Heartwood Path Activities. You will not be asked, for example, to study things that are somehow separate from your impressions of them. Nor will you typically be asked to focus on the mental images or constructs formed solely within your mind.
We are, therefore, also not doing pure psychology here. We are doing eco-psychology in a way that keeps the natural being and one’s impression of that natural being (be it a flower or a forest) fused. This constant combination of the outer world object and the inner world impression is a better reflection of how the world works.
For us on the Heartwood Path the natural being and our impression of it–– are always fused together in what I call a “Natural Being Impression.” As we shall see, this Natural Being Impression will work best for you when you give more specificity and power to it by making it what I call an “AttractiveNaturalBeingImpression.” For reasons explained subsequently, guidance, healing, and information flow best when the being and your impression of it are deemed to be attractive.
For our purposes along the Heartwood Path, a natural object without our impression of it would be an incoherent jumble. Also, an impression without a natural object would be a self-absorbed mental fantasy, possibly even a mental mishmash.
The point here is to avoid thinking that things are just things and mental impressions are just inner world events. It is implausible that a natural object, somehow separate and independent of its surroundings and the one observing it, can offer perceptible guidance in the form of signal––a message that comes from the natural being and goes to the admiring perceiver of that being. Those who go down the Heartwood Path do not behave like Dr. Doolittle talking to the animals.
It is, however, plausible and accurate to have the fusion of a thing like a natural being and one’s inseparable impressions of it provide what we are looking for in doing the HumaNatureConnect Activities at each Heartwood Path waypoint: important guidance, information, and healing. It is, furthermore, pointless to argue that nature cannot provide guidance. There is no coherent nature separate from our impressions of it. The guidance, the information, and the healing comes from the inseparable “being impression.”
When one does the sort of activities that are dotted along the Heartwood Path, one’s Individual Self puts a definite “spin” on the aspects of the natural being that is perceived. One colors the guidance that is received according to one’s own fashion. Here’s how and why this fashioning (this fabricating) is so important:
The How
Along the Heartwood Path, one applies one’s own perspectives, memories, and psychological state of mind to fashion, make, tailor, or shape one’s own guidance from nature. One begins this process by choosing natural beings (as you may have noticed, we don’t like to call them objects) that are attractive. This attraction––determined by our own unique preferences and distinct sensibilities––is a critically important component that allows for the flow of benefits that stem from proceeding down the Heartwood Path.
The Why
Here’s why regularly forming AttractiveNaturalBeingImpressions is so important:
We are working to overcome our nature disconnected way of thinking and behaving that has led us to dissatisfaction and environmental malaise. Dwelling on attractive natural beings puts us into a positive state of regard that sets in motion a receptivity to the life-affirming thoughts and actions.
By communing with an attractive natural being we open ourselves up fully to so-called individuals (natural beings) that we soon see are connected to the web-of-life (in natural settings and landscapes). We also quickly learn that the natural beings, the natural settings, the landscapes, and the web-of-life are all intelligent.
By following our attractions in nature, we naturally linger longer there. We are not repulsed. We are drawn by the attraction, which can be thought of as a sort of consent that enables us to glean the fullest amount of guidance, information, and healing.
By following your attractions you are able to become psychologically attuned to the same energy that attracted the Void to evoke the Big Bang (the flaring-forth of Creation), that attracts the Absolute to create each present moment, that attracts you to receive the sharing of the natural intelligence of the wholeness of nature, and to––simply put––live with the “vibes” that bring goodness, beauty, and truth into your life.
Once you set up patterns of connecting to attractive natural beings and pay attention to your natural senses (you have 94 and not just 6) you will bring goodness, truth, and beauty into your life (and into the lives of others) because you will have already created an AttractiveNaturalBeingImpression––that is already good (ethical, beneficial to all), already truthful (actual, not based on fantasy), and beautiful (coming from your own intentions, which are appealing because they come from the attractiveness and uniqueness of you). Your AttractiveNaturalBeingImpression will not be inappropriate because it will be formed with the help of Nature which was good when it was created and remains so through time-tested care and helpfulness, because it will be truthful (based on actual physical presence rather than by your own mental creations which may be fraught with delusions, fantasy, and psychological defense mechanisms and because it will be beautiful (always coming from the eye of the beholder, whose intentions are beautiful even when the beholder’s actions often are not).
You will be far more likely to continue to do the helpful activities along the Heartwood Path by regularly seeking out your attractions than you would if you were asked to go find something ugly in nature before each activity. If you have any doubts about the allure and positive influence of natural attractions simply remember a time when a beautiful setting induced positive thoughts and plans in yourself, or try to remember when perceiving an unattractive natural being led to positive thoughts, plans, or actions.
There is but one Greater Self. And amid this Greater Self are countless Individual Selves that form all the vital and important distinctions, all the variety, and all the endless possibilities that make the world so amazing. Do not live so much of your life indoors where your thoughts are colored by fantastical stories, where your thoughts make you devoted to acquiring more and caring less, and where you are isolated from the intelligence of Nature. You will need to establish AttractiveNaturalBeingImpressions to become the secular saint this series of courses is devoted to creating.
You do not need to form AttractiveNaturalBeingImpressions once you attempt to go beyond saintliness to sageness. That last step, where you give up pondering the world and instead turn to meditating on thoughts alone; is beyond the scope of this series of courses. No matter: very few people get to the psycho-spiritual stage of sageness. Very few people want to become a sage. By the end of this courses you may experience a temporary peak at sageness but, more importantly, you will by the end of this series of courses establish yourself on a permanent plateau of secular saintliness. You will be easily driven and prepared to help others, including Nature, without crashing.
Everything you may have read in the Heartwood Path course called Kosmos was offered to prepare you to begin your forward pilgrimage towards happiness and sustainability. It is now time to proceed toward GladandGreen Junction, in earnest. For the reasons that will be made clear as you proceed, it will be both necessary and delightful to begin this first post-preparatory leg of the Heartwood Path with a good understanding of the individual self, especially your own.
This understanding will come not only from reading but also from doing. For this reason, we shall put you immediately into the “doing” mode and, at the same time, put more flesh to the topic of the individual self by having you jump right into the following important activity.
To Firm Up Your Individuality By Seeing Natural Beings As Parts And As Wholes.
Photo by Skyler Ewing, Pexels.com.
HumaNatureConnect Activity
If this is not a day when you prefer to spend time in nature without an agenda, do the following activity:
