The Value of Uncertainty, Intentions, and Persistence
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Embracing the Unknown, Ambiguity, Paradox, and Uncertainty.
Go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if so, use the optimal functioning you will receive from being with your chosen natural object to embrace uncertainty. Assume the essence of your natural object, and, as it, use the greater objectivity and broader perspective this assuming affords to you as you face your uncertain future. Ponder how not knowing can be enlivening, how good signs lead to complacency, how hopeless leads to giving up, and how if the future is undecided there is room for one to “play a role in influencing what will happen” (Macy and Johnstone, 2012, p. 230). This influencing begins with one’s intentionality––the choice-making that is the bridge between one’s history and one’s future. An intention is a preference for the kind of world one wants. Such a world is evoked through intention plus persistence. Write down in your journal how your history, your intention, your uncertainty, and your persistence together mold the kind of world you want.
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Resonating With Your Higher Purpose
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Resonating With Your Higher Purpose.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, use the natural sense of “hearing including resonance, vibrations, sonar and ultrasonic frequencies” (Cohen, website: http://www.ecopsych.com/insight53senses.html) to resonate with your higher purpose. For this activity, I want you to write down your answers but then say them back out loud to yourself, another person, or your natural object. Hearing your responses will make them resonate more fully to the depths of your being, adding to their significance and holding power. Hypothetically speaking, if there was no chance of failure, what would you most want to do to help heal the planet? Write down your answer and then say it out loud, as if your words are a powerful geyser erupting from the ground. What project could you achieve in the next year that would contribute to this goal or project. Again, vocalize your answer. Write down and then vocalize the resources you have that will help you with your goal or project. Include inner resources such as your knowledge, persistence, or experience and outer resources such as relationships and money. Write down and then vocalize what resources, inner and outer, you will need to acquire. What obstacles will you face that lie outside of yourself. What obstacles will you put up yourself that, if not dismantled, will keep you from achieve success. Voice and write down how you will overcome these obstacles. Write down and allow to erupt from your voice box the very next things you can do to move yourself toward your goal.
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of NNIAL. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called “G/G Statements” using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
Make Plans By Catching Visions
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Making Plans, Beginning With a Vision.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, use the natural sense of pupation including cocoon building and metamorphosis (Cohen, website: http://www.ecopsych.com/insight53senses.html) to make transformative plans. To be truly transformational, the plans need to lead to the fulfillment of objectives (which are quantifiable) and the fulfillment of goals (which are not quantifiable), and both goals and objectives need to be compatible with one’s dream or vision (which can be expressed well in a way beginning with the words (“I see in my mind a picture of . . . (insert many descriptors). It is not uncommon to have difficulty developing such a mental picture. But, despite the difficulty, it very important to have a vision. It serves like a destination that all goals, objectives, and plans lead towards. As Seneca said: If one does not how to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable. In a similar vein, more recently ex-Beatle George Harrison wrote these lyrics: “If you do not know which way you are going, any road will get you there.” Having a port or a way to go that is exciting is not only necessary for planning, it is also important to one’s motivation and for the avoidance of burnout. “The ability to ‘catch’ an inspiring vision,” writes Macy and Johnstone, “is therefore key to staying motivated. When we’re moved by a vision that we share with others, we become part of a community with a common purpose.” (2012, p. 163). “Because we can never know for sure how the future will turn out, it makes more sense to focus on what we’d like to have happen, and then to do our bit to make it more likely” (Macy and Johnstone, 2012, p. 167). To catch a vision, devote uninterrupted time to the task, bring both your attention and intention to the task, write down the results of your vision catching, and, if difficulties arise, imagine yourself thirty years in your ideal future. This last step, borrowed from Macy and Johnstone ( 2012, p. 176-178), will not only be more likely to help you develop your mental picture but also, by using your imaginary hindsight, you will see the steps that enabled you to step into that perfect picture or vision. To see such a picture, close two eyes and use the third one–the eye of intuition. For another approach, try this: With eyes closed complete the following sentence: “Something that inspires me at this moment is (fill in the blank) (Macy and Johnstone, 2012, p. 176). Remember that you have come to your attractive object for a reason. Use it as a part of your co-intelligence, one part coming from you, the other part coming from the natural object. Tapping into the intelligence of your natural object––the “I” in NNIAL––allows the metamorphosis of your vision to develop further. Assuming the essense of your natural object and speaking on its behalf tends to keep the thoughts that arise from being too private, too individual, and too suitable for personal or corporate benefit rather than being for the benefit of all. You can support the pupation of your dream further by working to make your vision more or less broad. A broad but unclear vision about a sustainable society, for example, may become more “catchable” if it is made less broad by visualizing one aspect of the sustainable society, such as clean air, and then, in turn, taking an aspect of this narrowed vision, such as fewer cars and trucks, and narrowing it down again to an even less broad aspect of fewer cars and trucks––bicycle lanes, for example. Once the vision is neither too broad nor too narrow it will become clearer in your mind. Take your vision, made clear by broadening it or widening it, and incubate it further by describing in detailed writing what you see in your mind’s eye.
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of NNIAL. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called “G/G Statements” using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
Honor And Become A Good Ancestor
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Honoring and Becoming A Good Ancestor.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, counter the normal tendency to forget you ancestors by jotting down what they have done for you that helps you with the Great Work! Recognize that you may be an ancestor to others and how, once you develop an expanded sense of time, your sense of care and responsibility naturally grows. When your sense of time expands to include prehistoric times, your ancestors begin in your consciousness to include non-humans ––ancestors that had not yet evolved into a human form. Thinking of these ancestors, and how some started as sea-living organisms, evolved to become land animals, and then continued to evolve as sea mammals, how does such thoughts make you feel about the chances of humans today evolving in ways that enable them to live lightly on a sustainable planet. How does such deep time thinking affect your sense of our chances of altering technology and changing behaviors that are more suitable to the maintenance of a sustainable environment (a sustainable Greater Self). While in the mode of deep-time thinking, write down what you think future generations will say about us, about the way we used up resources, and about the way we had to overcome great forces to make necessary corrections. To influence what they might say, in your journal, tell future generations the first steps taken in this epic struggle, tell them the most important steps, and tell them how you feel about working on this noble cause.
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of Nature. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called G/G Statements using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
What It Takes To Get Going On Environmental Action
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Pushing for Environmental Action.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, write down what I takes for you to get going in a bigger way with environmental actions. Write down both what it takes from the outside to empower yourself and what you do yourself to feel empowered. Remember power is as much what you do as it is what you have. Also, consider that your empowerment is bolstered when you think “We can” and not “I can’t.”
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of Nature. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called G/G Statements using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
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Identifying How The Great Work! Is Operating Through You
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Overcoming the Sense of Powerlessness.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, write down the ways the Great Work! of leading yourself and others to that place where personal happiness meets planetary health can happen through you. When doing so, describe more about what you can give rather than just about what you can gain.
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of Nature. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called G/G Statements using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
Identify How You Obscure Your Sense of An Ecological Self
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Identifying Your Cognitive Quirk of Obscuring Your Sense of an Ecological Self–a Self Imposed Limitation that Leads to Environmental Problems.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, write down in your journal your response to the following statements:
Says Arne Naess: “..the extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public the false impression that they are being asked to make a sacrifice––to show more responsibility, more concern and a nicer moral standard. But all of that would flow naturally and easily if the self were widened and deepened so that protection of nature was felt and perceived as protection of our very selves” (Macy and Johnstone, 2012, p. 86).
Says Immanuel Kant points out an important distinction for you to consider now: “We tend to perform moral action our of a sense of duty or obligation. In contrast, we perform beautiful acts when we do what is morally right because it is attractive to us, the action motivated more by desire than duty. When our connected self is well developed, we are more often drawn to beautiful acts. When we lose our sense of felt connectedness, we miss out on this sort of beauty, with tragic consequences” (Macy and Johnstone, 2012, p. 91). Write down how you relate these statements to your understanding of Natural Attraction Ecology, as presented earlier in The Enduring Stream. After writing down your responses, imagine what you would say to a stranger who asks: “Who are you?” Write down how, if at all, you define yourself as a “flow of becoming” rather than a “fixed thing with characteristics that can’t be changed” (Macy and Johnstone, 2012, p. 93). Describe in your journal what happens through you. Describe how you feel about the notion that your emotions do not arise solely from within your individual self but come from your ecological self as well.
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of Nature. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called G/G Statements using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
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Build a Pile of Remembrance
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Acknowledging Your Feelings of Ecological Loss.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, determine what is being lost in nature, either locally or globally. Near your chosen object or in a special secluded place nearby look for objects that represent each of your feelings over lost aspects of nature. With these objects build a pile of remembrance––a cairn––wherein each object is a token of your mourning for loss in nature. Consider this cairn as a way for you to acknowledge your feelings of loss and grief. Return to this symbol and add an object to it each time you feel grief over what is being lost. Allow the building and visiting of this cairn as a way for you to break up any discounting numbness you may feel over ecological losses. Obviously, this cairn will not “correct” your negative feelings nor will it fix ecological problems directly, but that is not its purpose. Your Cairn of Remembrance Over Ecological Losses is, nevertheless, an important task of the Great Work! for it helps you express the validity and significance of your pain for the world. Use the validity and significance of your pain to take positive steps towards finding solutions.
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of Nature. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called G/G Statements using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
Feel the Pain of the World
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Connecting With the Pain of the World.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, take a moment to express gratitude more fully. Give thanks for the oxygen you are using which would not be there had it not been for the tireless work plants have done to make our atmosphere breathable. Thank the plants in your immediate environment for doing their part in absorbing carbon dioxide and, thereby, reducing the greenhouse effect that contributes to the global climate change that, if unchecked, could make the planet dangerously overheated. After showing your gratitude extensively, experience the flip side of gratitude, which is fear and anguish. Write down in your journal what troubles you about the plight of the environment, locally, nationally, and globally. Then turn to your responses to these problems. How, if at all, is it your role to work on solutions? How, if at all, are you reluctant to get involved for fear of standing out in a crowd? How, if at all, does knowledge of the information about environmental problems threaten your political or commercial interests? In what ways, if at all, are your worries about the environment too upsetting to think about? What do you know, if anything, that you can do to correct environmental problems? In what ways, if at all, do you feel that your actions on behalf of the environment will not make any difference anyway? Write down in your journal anything pertaining to your pain for the world, include any feelings of outrage, alarm, grief, dread, and despair. As you write down your comments about your pain for the world, if any, imagine that the planet is feeling these pains through you. Imagine the feelings of pain for the world coming into you from the planet and then out from you so they do not stick to you in a way that is debilitating. But instead of just paying attention to your normal inhalations and exhalations, image that the incoming air is filled with the pain of the world. Allow this pain-filled air to move in through your mouth or nose, then passes through your heart before before it reconnects with the wholeness of the web of life. Feel the countless hardships coming in through your nose and moving through your heart before returning to the environment. Just create in your mind the sensation of this flow, both in and out. Allow the sorrows to ripen in your heart before passing them back to the web of life. Do not worry that you will be harmed by all of this grief. Your heart is as big as the world. Use these ripening sorrows as fertile mulch in which you expand your knowing. If you feel no pain but only numbness or if you feel only your own sorrows, note these thoughts in your journal and try this activity again. Recall the words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “What we need most to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying” (Macy and Johnstone, 2012, pp. 60-75).
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of Nature. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called G/G Statements using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
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Know Your Inner Guide – The Magician
HumaNatureConnect Activity: Getting to Know Your Inner Guide––The Magician.
With pen and journal in hand, go to a natural place, the wilder the better, find an attractive object, see if it retains its attractiveness for at least ten seconds, and, if it remains attractive, assume that this is a sign that you have the object’s consent to use it in this activity. While admiring your chosen object or place, appreciate it with your inhalations and give it gratitude with your exhalations. Doing so will give you the optimal functioning that will be helpful as you do this activity. After obtaining your chosen object’s consent and setting up your optimal functioning, use two of the Natural Senses and Sensitivities –– “Sense of self including friendship, companionship, and power” and “Sense of mind and consciousness” (Cohen, website: http://www.ecopsych.com/insight53senses.html) –– as you read the follow excerpts from Carol S Person’s book Awaken the Heroes Within and then answer the questions below, using the perspective of your chosen natural object that you imagine is both informed about all aspects of your self and, unlike you, is fair and objective about your recollections of your inexplicable achievements or magic.
“When the Magician is active in our lives . . . we begin to notice synchronistic events––that is, meaningful coincidences, such as when we need to know something and a book containing what we need practically fall into our lap . . .” (Pearson, 1996, p. 196).
“The Magician in us also has the power of naming. If we do not accurately and objectively name ourselves and our own stories, we are at the mercy of how others see us and every off-the-wall voice in our head. . . Naming reality from the perspective of the Soul can empower ourselves and others. How we name something determines our experience of life” (Pearson, 1996, p. 197-198).
“Private rituals are often essential for keeping the Magician connected and in touch with the deeper aspects of his or her nature and hence the cosmos. Ritual prayer, meditation, and centering meditations help unify conscious so that work can be done with internal static” (Pearson, 1996, p. 203).
With these statements in mind and with the perspective of your informed, objective natural object, answer the following questions. When doing so, think about the past and the present.
How much or how little are you (and your family, coworkers, and friends) under the influence of The Magician?
Is there anything about your relationship with The Magician that you wish were different?
Write down three things you learned from this activity. Write down how, if at all, this activity changed your self-esteem or trustfulness of NNIAL. Write down what aspects of your self were changed by this activity. Write down three different so-called G/G Statements using the following format “This connection experience tells me that I am a person who__________. Write down a sentence about how you would feel if your ability to experience this connection experience was taken away. Write down two words that summarize your response to this activity.
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