Understand The Value Of Consent
Beings Thrive Best In Welcoming Environments
One of the key lessons I learned from Dr. Michael Cohen is the value and purpose of gaining consent. Due to the benefits of seeking and gaining permission—the most important for us here being the resultant development of a sense of equanimity between all participants, including between a natural being and its admiring human in the nature connection experience—I ask for your consent to be led down the Heartwood Path.
I ask for your consent because it is my experience that applying eco-psychology practices along the Heartwood Path is life-changing and one ought to not lead a person to life-changes without seeking consent. I recommend that you only give your consent to be led down the Heartwood Path if you are curious about it and eco-psychology or if you seek personal and environmental improvements. Your continuing to partake in this waypoint indicates your consent.
“The eco-psychologist Michael Cohen has made a life’s work of reconnecting people with nature . . . (He) believes that one of the most important laws we have forgotten about the earth is the Law of Attraction and Consent. For life to thrive—not merely hang on but thrive and expand—Cohen believes it needs the consent, or welcome, of its surroundings” (McElroy, 2006, p. 82).
Understand the value of consent.
Certainly one would be more attracted to people and places that are welcoming.
“How does a place become welcoming?” you may ask. Plants and animals, according to Cohen, feel the sense of attraction and consent in numerous particular ways, through a host of natural senses mentioned previously. Each time you seek consent from your chosen attractive natural being, you will know you have the beneficial energy of consent when your hands and body feel comfortably warmer, when you feel uplifted, when you feel drawn to the being, when you feel more energized, when you experience greater clarity, or when you feel lighter. If I notice any of these things along with my attraction, I interpret them as a sign of consent or permission to continue with the HumaNatureConnect Activities.
If, however, you feel your hands starting to get colder; if you feel nauseous, saddened, repulsed, or confused; if you feel your energy dropping; or if you feel pushed away, it is best to just nod respectfully toward the being and move to a more welcoming partner. If I feel any of these negative responses, or if I notice myself moving in a counterclockwise direction, I know in my heart that I do not have consent or permission to continue with the present being for the current particular HumaNatureConnect Activity.
We live in a world where consideration has profound value. Before engaging with a natural being or with a setting to have a connection experience, as suggested repeatedly in this series of courses, ask for the consent of that being or setting before continuing to seek advice or guidance. Doing so, aloud or in your head, promotes welcoming warmth, relationship, and peace.
By asking for permission to have a connection experience wherein you seek guidance from a natural being or setting, and by gaining consent that comes in the form of continuing attraction, you as the “asker” no longer feel like a blundering intruder. Such attraction opens one up to the feeling of being welcomed and supported. Asking for permission to remain and feeling the consent through the continuing attraction makes the human in the person-to-natural being or person-to-natural setting relationship feel less domineering. This lack of domination helps the person become more sensitive.
Being sensitive is a requirement for the reception of guidance from nature. If one does not feel welcome and supported one won’t be in a frame of mind that allows for the sensitivity to feel the advice carried on the subtle vibrations that resound in nature.
