The man who saved the Grand Canyon and essentially invented the modern environmental movement once asked me to “write a piece” about how to prevent “burn-out” in environmentalists.  My first response to his call to action was to ask: “why me?”  My second response, kept to myself, was to wonder what I would have to say in such a “piece.”  
     David Brower’s  (1912-2000) call for me to write happened in 1986.  It has not taken me over seventeen years to become articulate about the subject of perseverance, in general. It has, however, taken me that long to be able to produce what I believe to be the real benefit of Brower’s request.   In looking for ways to keep environmentalists active I also discovered ways that personal growth is good for the planet, ways the planet can aid in helping people add to their development, and ways to find happiness.   With this article, I am doing two things: 1) providing a notice of the piece Brower wanted me to write and 2) unveiling a new public education campaign.  The piece is called “The Heartwood Path™.” I call the campaign: “Better You, Better Earth.™”  
      Since the nature of something is often best revealed in its origins, I will explain here how Brower’s charge to help fight “burnout” in environmentalists led to something that is, in fact, good for everyone, good for the environmental movement, and good for the planet.  Like a prophet, Brower arose to the occasion, knew what was needed, and knew how to, at least, get it started.
     Given the alarming dropout rate for volunteer and professional environmentalists, given my passion to protect nature, and given my undying admiration for David Brower, I would eventually become excited about my new assignment. Not at first, however.     Here’s how it went down:
     David Brower, the man a book-writer called the “most prominent conservationist of the post –war period,” wanted me, then a seasoned regional representative for one of Brower’s organizations, (Friends of the Earth), to figure out how to help my eco-comrades persevere.  That was for me quite an honor. But it was also daunting, to say the least.
     “Why do you want me to write it,” I asked.  “After all,” I said, “who better than you,  to pen such a “piece?.” You have four more decades of experience than I, and nobody has a better history of successes.”
    His answer began curiously:  “ You live out there in the Midwest.”  I suppose for him the Midwest was the American equivalent to living in Siberia.  
    “And with practically no support “ he continued, “you stick to it, year after year, winning scores of conservation battles on a limited budget.”  Then came the part he knew would make me rise to the challenge, just to prove a point:  
     “ And, despite the low pay and isolation, you never give up.” There, he said it:  “isolation. ” He knew that would be the clincher.  Dave knew how I felt about being regarded as an “isolated, out of touch, hick from the sticks.” He meant that, except for periodic lobbying trips to the nation’s capital and trips to the West Coast because I had become a Friends of the Earth board member, I was largely isolated from San Francisco or Washington D.C—the two power centers for environmentalism.
    Looking like he realized his statement demonstrated a prejudice against the Heartland, he wryly asked with a self-knowing chuckle:  “How do you keep the fight going year after year after year? “  I was flattered.
     But then it hit me.  Despite my history of attempting to overcome “Midwest-ism” by attempting to be a good example of an articulate, dedicated, mover-and-shaker, I had no answer for the one man I admired most professionally.  I did not know what I did to keep myself from “burning out.”
     So, I set myself on a quest, and in the process of attempting to present “burnout” remedies for activists, my own and those proposed by others, I discovered something that can be good for everyone, especially those who seek to make a difference in the world without crashing.  Eventually, I would put all I learned into a course that I believe is beneficial to both individual participants and the planet as a whole.  
     Along the way to present this “piece” I discovered applied eco-psychology. With that and a host of other practices, I believe I am helping to develop a new arm of the environmental movement.  So fruitful do I believe this approach to be, I am now personally doing what I never dreamed I would do: I am transcending the approach I learned from Brower and others in the environmental movement: I am presenting a new, softer approach to the old militant one from my days working at Friends of the Earth and elsewhere.  This is not a change, for that would imply giving up the old approach. I believe Brower’s approach is still valid: fervently and legally use the political system to demonstrate, though media attention, local demonstrations, and letter-writing campaigns to governmental officials, that one’s will to protect wild places is greater than the collective will of everyone hell-bent to destroy such places.  This approach is great for winning conservation battles, but I fear in the years to come that it will not be enough by itself to win, using the jargon of my fellow eco-warriors, the overall “war to protect the environment.”  Saving individual wild places is a valid endeavor. But saving natural places alone will prove to be an insufficient solution to the global environmental predicament because during the fray to save a place (or a species, for that matter) little is done to correct the root cause of their impending doom.  To be truly successful, the environmental movement needs to add to its agenda changing the collective human mindset that is now leading to environmental destruction.  The magnitude of the job of reversing the psychological underpinning that promotes the ecological destructiveness of civilization understandably causes much of the burnout amongst environmentalists Brower was asking me to address. Indeed, lack of motivation occurs when one see a huge job but does not have the tools necessary to do the work effectively.  So the question arises:  “What sort of manageable “fulcrum” can be used to tip the big, collective mindset of humanity towards ecological sustainability?”  
     Given that we in the United States are blessed to live with a political structure that allows citizens to affect change, I am not advocating throwing out what works well on targeted campaigns. I am, however, about to propose an additional tool, a sort of fulcrum, one that is an adjunct to the traditional environmental advocacy approach.   The new approach I am about to present, therefore, is not a change but a transcendence. I am proposing that those who care about the environment add to their time-tested targeted tactics a new approach that will have a broad and deep impact.    I make this suggestion because I have found that when environmental advocacy is combined with helping people work to regain their psycho-spiritual sense of wholeness with nature, the total is greater than the sum of the parts—especially when the work is laid out along an understandable and doable pathway. Luckily, the work of two men can serve as a guide for my proposed deeper, two-tier approach to environment protection: 1) engage in targeted battles to save specific aspects of nature and 2) show those who care about the environment how to add to their personal growth, expand their world view, and become more effective sustainably.
     Thank God for David Brower, the man who did more for the Earth’s environment than anyone else. And thank God for Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D -- the man on a small island northwest of Seattle who is today sharing an approach to applied eco-psychology that will, if one follows a path such as the one I will describe here, save not only the earth but also individual people.  To date, the path I will describe here is for one’s personal growth and does not provide certification or degrees. Cohen’s courses, however, do provide certification and advanced degrees, including a Ph.D., which is the one I am presently seeking.
     The path I am about to describe is where the perseverance Brower wanted me to write about comes about.  And, beyond the attainment of perseverance, this path, thanks to Dr. Cohen’s applied eco-psychology, is also where one can find an amazing source of guidance, education, and the healing—all necessary for personal happiness, improved relationships, and a protected environment.
     Brower, more than anyone else, taught me how to “save the earth, one place at a time.”  I have used his approach to fight dams, nuclear power plants, lumber barons, and huge mining companies, with considerable success.  But, I have also seen the ill- effects of such battles on my cohorts.  For their own personal and private reasons, most of the activists that have worked with me in conservation are not still participating actively in the movement. Brower recognized this problem throughout the environmental movement and requested that I present a “burnout” cure. His charge made it possible for me to add “saving the earth, one person at a time“ to my suggested approach to environmentalism.  My proposed approach requires the following of the practices developed by eco-psychologists such as Michael Cohen along a path that I will describe here and, as you will see, make available free-of-charge to all readers.
     One of the key lessons I learned from Cohen is the value and purpose of gaining consent.  I will explain how to use the critically-important process of gaining consent in his approach to eco-psychology later in this article; but here, before proceeding, I am obliged to follow my training and to ask the reader for his or her consent to be led through a mini-demonstration course that is intended to show how Michael Cohen’s “Natural Systems Thinking Process”-- when used along a specific seven-step course-- will help the reader find peace on and with the earth.  If, before giving or withholding your consent to participate in this mini-demonstration course, you need more information, I suggest you go soon to the two websites mentioned below.   If, now or after you visit these two sites, you are not attracted to proceed, I encourage you to stop reading this article and wish you all the best. If, however, you are attracted to proceed because of your curiosity or your desire to make a difference without crashing, I welcome you to this introduction to a specific brand of applied eco-psychology, known as the Natural Systems Thinking Process,  and a free course of learning I call the “Heartwood Path.” The two websites are:
www.heartwoodpath.com   and www.ecopsych.com.
 I ask for your consent here 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.
    I have already summarized Brower’s way to saving the planet one place at a time, a time-tested approach that is likely to be familiar to members of the organizations he founded and, therefore, no consent is needed here. But now I lead you to saving the earth one person at a time, and since you may be that person, your concurrence about being led down this path is warranted.
     With your consent, I will bring you through an introduction to the Heartwood Path.  I will describe Michael Cohen’s applied eco-psychology and, more specifically, I will describe the basics what Cohen’s “Natural Systems Thinking Process” and the basis for it—what Cohen calls “Natural Attraction Ecology.” Then, I will in this article apply Cohen’s practices along the seven-step Heartwood Path so that you can experience the kinds of changes in perspective that will enable you to re-connect with the “whole” or the “Greater Self “ (a self that includes your environment, as opposed to your more narrow Individual Self), improve relationships, and help to preserve the planet. These changes are essential to the future success of the environmental movement because to remake the world a significant number of people will need to upgrade their perspectives.
     A better earth requires a better you.  Or, said in a way that removes the onus on you alone—a way that also probably originates from my upbringing in the Bible Belt-- for God’s Nature to be respected human nature has to be perfected.  
     Before anyone gets all prickly about “being perfected,” let me define what I mean.  Actually, it is more accurate to say “perfect-in-one.”  Here, I am not speaking of a pre-ordained measure of faultlessness, rightness, or flawlessness.  “Perfect-in-one,” what Jesus asked God to help us all obtain in his heart-wrenching prayer in Garden of Gethsemane, actually means “oneness.”  For our purposes here, it is the seeking rather than the attainment of oneness that is the crucial factor.  One of the best ways I discovered to seek oneness is Dr. Cohen’s applied eco-psychology that is based on what he calls “Natural Attraction Ecology” and serves to reconnect its participants with nature.
      Cohen reminds us that virtually all of us live most of our lives indoors, separate from nature.  We, therefore, do not experience how the world works so beautifully, sustaining itself without pollution and in balance by using fifty-three natural attraction senses that we humans inherit but, due to our nature-separated lifestyle, do not use (except for the well known five senses of hearing, sight, smell and so forth.)

The Basis for Nature-Connect Activities: Natural Attraction Ecology
    The foundation of Dr. Cohen’s methodology is called Natural Attraction Ecology. It can be summarized as follows:  Planet Earth is, or functions like, a living organism that has its own perfection. Our living
 planet’s global life community enjoys non-literate communication between
all its plant, animal and mineral members, including the sensory
 parts of humanity. All natural things are held together and in communion by “webstrings” of attraction. Webstrings are what tie together all the aspects of nature in the “web of life.”  They are natural attractions. According to Cohen, attraction is intelligent enough to be conscious of it being attracted and attractive.  Humanity registers the world through at least 53
natural
 senses
 (examples follow) that register natural attraction. These include the senses of reason, consciousness, and literacy. Nature generates joy, purity and balance because its essence is like a river of self-correcting natural attraction relationships that flow around, through, and in us.  Natural attractions have the power to recycle and restore relationships, to create optimums of life, cooperation,
 diversity, and beauty throughout the web of life, including humanity. Nature does not produce garbage or our runaway
 abusiveness, stress, pollution, isolation and disorders. These afflictions are not attractive. They do not support life. The purpose of life is to support life.
    By using Dr. Cohen’s methods, participants feel one with nature and achieve a sense of integrity that is integrated with the natural functions of the Earth. It is evident to just about anyone spending some quiet time in a natural area that nature has a powerful renewing and restorative effect on our psyche, thoughts, and feelings.  We humans know contact with nature works wonders. We inherit the ability to bond with nature from nature.  We humans are part of nature and it is attracted to help us live in balance with it as part of its attraction to support/nurture/purify its own life and to grow.  Time in a shopping mall rarely produces this effect. If nature’s ability to provide guidance, healing, and enjoyment could be bottled and sold, millions  of dollars could be made but adverse side effects would occur.  Life would be better if we were thinking in a harmless nature-connected mode most of the time.  Instead, we not only disconnect from nature, but we bury it under the nature exploitive story of our society.  Irritated, our nature-deprived psyche demands more satisfactions continually and thus fuels our economy while producing pollutants.  Learning to think in ways that help us make greater conscious sensory contact with nature, backyard to backcountry, has proven to help nature help us organically reverse the destructive and delusional story that we ordinarily march to.  Cohen provides the means to accomplish an earth-preserving way of thinking by focusing on the forty-eight “natural attraction senses” (described below) in addition to the five traditional senses.
     Our natural sense to breathe, for example, is an example of human/nature oneness. We breathe the Earth and the Earth breathes us, a purifying set-up that we naturally love, find attractive, and can easily recognize to be intelligent.  
     This and other earth-human relationships require no labels to function. This last aspect of natural attraction ecology is very important to the success of Dr. Cohen methods. There are no words or names in nature and we open ourselves to the misconceptions of nature-dominating stories when we put them there.  As Dr. Cohen says: “. . . there is no substitute for the real thing, if a person is not in conscious connection with webstring attractions, they are probably playing god in some way without the wisdom to do so.”  Worded stories are either outright fantasies or are mere representations of facts.  For these reasons,  the emphasis in Dr. Cohen’s methodology is not on words or labels (which are only used after the activities when one reports to others and attempts to achieve validation) but rather on the direct experiences of actions.  “Acts are facts, ”says Dr. Cohen.   Another example from natural attraction ecology is one’s sense of thirst. After doing Dr. Cohen’s related activity, one accepts that one’s thirst is as much a part of water as is wetness.  According to Natural Attraction Ecology, one’s thirst leads to an attraction to water and there is an inseparable relationship between the water and one’s attraction to it.  One’s experience of Greer Spring in Missouri, for example, is, according to Natural Attraction Ecology, as much a part of the local ecology as is the water’s coolness or wetness. This realization and many more are discovered in Dr. Cohen’s courses though direct experience, which is routinely validated through words with others.  
     Once we have added living in the “N”ow” to the “N”ameless, “I”ntelligent, “A”ttractive, “L”ove previously mentioned regarding the nature of earth-human relationships we have listed all of the ingredients of a particular form of  psychological consciousness the we humans naturally sense and enjoy; namely, a consciousness Cohen calls “NNIAL. “  Reconnecting with “NNIAL” is a vital component of Natural Attraction Ecology. As you will discover in the next section, using the Natural Systems Thinking Process to re-connect with NNIAL is psychologically replenishing and, therefore, a way to persevere.
 
The Basics of the Natural System Thinking Process
     Each of Dr. Cohen’s activities put the participants through the same basic sequence: find an attraction in nature (backyard or backcountry); make a sensory contact with this attraction, using any of one’s fifty-three natural attraction senses (which include the radiation senses such as the sense of temperature, the feeling senses such as sensitivity to gravity, the chemical senses such as the sense of appetite, and the mental senses such as the sense of humility and appreciation); obtain consent from the attraction to use it for your educational, counseling, or healing purposes (your continued attraction to the object is your consent to proceed and your un-attraction --perhaps in the form of noticeable ugliness or a feeling of lack of safety-- marks a lack of consent and is a call to move elsewhere); be thankful when you note how your natural attraction feels good; trust your thoughts and feelings arising from the contact;  psychologically assume the perspective of the attraction and wait for it to provide education, guidance, or healing, look for ways that  your contact improves relationships, validate your experiences by writing down your experiences;  and, after reading your journal notes aloud to yourself, share your written words with others.
     The asking of a natural object or place to give its consent may seem dubious to those who do not realize that the consent does not come through words spoken by animal spirits, trees, or places, but instead comes from a person’s continued reactions to the attraction to the natural object or place.  This is a critically important step in Cohen’s methodologies, as it creates within the participant a psychological state-of-mind that is non-domineering and suitable for the functioning of the fifty-three natural attraction senses and the resulting attainment of guidance, education, or healing.
     According to Cohen, those who are attracted to a more nature-centered life and who recognize the negative impacts of our way of life, can unbury nature’s way of living that has been covered over by living according the modern industrial society’s stories and labels that betray an undeclared war on nature. This “half-vast” way of living precludes us from using the natural attraction senses that enable us to participate in the beautiful way nature works.  It is, therefore, one of the chief causes of “burnout.”
     Living according to nature-disconnected stories, which range from the children’s tale of Little Red Riding Hood to the meta-story of the “American Dream,” is one of the main underlying causes for most personal and planetary dilemmas.  Nature-disconnected stories, prevalent through modern industrial cultures, tend to make people want, and to attempt to satisfy yearnings for connection with nature or a Higher Power with substitutes such as material objects, drugs, alcohol, or promiscuous sex. All of these substitutes inevitably fail to compensate for a lack of connection with the Whole and leave people with palpable holes in their souls.   When heard or read over and over again in one’s culture, a person begins to believe in nature-disconnected stories even when they lead to unsustainable actions and dire consequences.  Cohen’s methods redress these root causes of most maladies and help to give people and the planet a healthful future by enabling participants to find oneness with the real thing, not with the words that represent the real thing.  Using words only to receive guidance from nature is, using Cohen’s humorous terminology “like experiencing the gobble without the turkey.”
     Living “half-vast”, which is living according to nature-disconnected stories, is both ecologically disastrous and personally a burden that fosters burnout and other personal and planetary dilemmas.  The remedy, according Dr. Cohen, is what he calls the “Natural Systems Thinking Process, ” This tool can be used to heal any person from an array of lifestyle stresses that lead to burnout, depression, anxiety, and addictions.  It can be used to reverse challenging global and personal problems caused by nature separation that, in turn, causes abnormal wants that propel us into irresponsible relationships.
     The Natural Systems Thinking Process promotes education, counseling, and healing with nature.  This process is based on the principles of Natural Attraction Ecology, which identifies the strands in the web of life and indicates that they function according attractions. According to Natural Attraction Ecology, all relationships are held together in the web of life because they are attracted to do so.  Without an appearance of these attractions in our consciousness, which happens regrettably because we live indoors according to nature-disconnected stories, there occurs within us an organic void that feels like an uncomfortable psychological emptiness in our thoughts and lives. Attempting to fill this void, we want, emotionally and materially; and, as we want, there is never enough. Greed, stress, and recklessness become pervasive, at great peril to oneself, other people, and the Earth.
    The nature-reconnecting activities of the Natural Systems Thinking Process brings natural sensory attraction relationships, called “webstrings,” back into our lives. Their presence fights burnout by reinstating forgotten but re-invigorating personal and environmental relationships.
    After doing nearly one hundred of Dr. Cohen’s activities and after discussing the results of these activities with dozens of fellow participants, I can attest to the fact that Cohen’s methodologies help people overcome their nature-disconnected patterns of thinking and doing—a valuable metamorphosis that relieves stress, reducing wanting, and increases participants general satisfaction with life.  For the specific purpose of helping activists better themselves and to persevere in their environmental participation, a “bettermorphosis” would occur if one would apply Dr Cohen’s excellent methodologies along a pointed course of study such as the Heartwood Path developed by myself as a way to answer Brower’s 1986 call to write.

The Natural Systems Thinking Process Along the Heartwood Path
     By using the Natural Systems Thinking Process along the specific route of the Heartwood Path one comes to the realization that for a “better earth” to be possible a “better you” is necessary.  To make the person/planetary connection beneficial for all concerned (human and non-human) this “better you,” cannot just be a person who is educated in ecology, he or she cannot just be a person who is passively concerned about environmental destruction, he or she cannot even just be a person who knows how to make ecologically sound purchases or knows of the candidates endorsed by the League of Conservation Voters. All of these attributes are important. But, they are merely precursors to what is really needed because, being solely inner world shifts, they do not serve as a fulcrum for real, outer world movement towards bringing the civilization into balance with the environment. They will not, therefore, by themselves stem the tide of environmental destruction. In addition to all of these scattered inner world betterments, he or she must also have both an expanded psychological perspective (one that includes saint-like compassion for all sentient beings) and a workable, less random approach to activism that is personally doable, effective, inspires sustained involvement, and gets to the core of the problem: making the world’s economy subordinate to the environment and helping people both psychologically and behaviorally regain their rightful, ecologically-sound place in the scheme of things. Here’s how to do it:
     The Heartwood Path is a seven-step program that involves learning universal principles, anchoring one’s unique gifts to the world, integrating oneself into the whole, reconciling self and other through intimacy, going fast into action as an individual, going far into action with a group, and going long into action by connecting with the enchantment of daily living at home. It is available in books, free e-books, and is the topic of retreats—each described at heartwoodpath.com.
     By combining the Natural Systems Thinking Process and the Heartwood Path, participants become well prepared to live a green lifestyle, become prepared to develop a perspective that is suitable to making a real difference in the world, and  become prepared to stay active in an environmental movement that works to make both intangible inner world shifts (from ego to eco)  and tangible outer world  ecological improvements.  Here is how Dr. Cohen’s methodologies are employed along the seven-part Heartwood Path.
    In Part One of the Heartwood Path participants read the text and participate in numerous activities related to universal principles, including Ken Wilber’s  Four Quadrants --intentions, behaviors, ethics and physical systems-- and Herme’s Seven Universal Principles—everything is mental, as above, so below, all is in vibration, rhythm compensates, everything is dual,  every cause has its effect and every effect has its cause, everything has masculine and feminine characteristic , and “Become the change you want to see in the world.”  To further one’s examination of universal principles using Cohen’s Methods, participants along the Heartwood path are asked to go to a natural place and gain consent to do the activity and, once consent is granted (as marked by one’s continued attraction), ask what the natural attraction can share about universal principles.  The participants are instructed to remain still, come into awareness of any of their fifty-three natural attraction senses (such as the sense of visibility or invisibility or the sense of proximity and space), psychologically adopt the perspective of the natural area  or a natural  object in the scene, and glean from the scene lessons about universal principles.  Noticing how the decaying of leaf matter becomes soil, for example, might lead the participant to the important principle “what goes around comes around.” Noticing maple seeds landing in the middle of a pond might remind the participant of the principle “as you sew, so shall you reap.”  The principle “Whatever you do onto others, you also do onto you self” is demonstrated when a participant sees a man kill predators to stop them from eating his favorite trophy animal but then discovers that not having predators weakens the prey, making them unsuitable to the hunter.
    In Part Two of the Heartwood Path, in addition to determining one’s level of spiritual development; learning about seeking oneness; finding happiness that is abundant, authentic and abiding; and the importance of deferring and reassessing old habits, the participants are asked to do a few nature-connect activities, including this one:
          After gaining permission to become involved with it, psychologically adopt the perspective of the natural area, ask the natural area for guidance about discovering and maintaining your individuality.  Using any of your fifty-three natural attraction senses (such a your sense of appetite or your sense of form and design), determine ways that aspects of nature in the area demonstrate and retain their unique attributes.  Write down some attributes that you find attractive in a sentence such as “I find the tree’s sturdiness attractive.”  Then, once you have at least five such sentences, in each sentence, replace the word you use for the natural attraction with labels you use for yourself, making the sentence something like “I find my own sturdiness attractive.”  This will tell you a lot about what you find appealing about your own individuality.  Then, look for ways in nature that entities remain distinct from one another such as “Brown creepers almost always feed below the birdfeeder and nuthatches almost always feed up on the bird feeder.”  Then, the participants are asked to state something about the unique way they themselves eat.  
     Part Three of the Heartwood Path helps to expand the participants perspective from “me only” to “me and my folks” to “all folks”   to “all sentient beings” in numerous ways,  including:  by following numerous lines of intelligence such as  naturalistic, interpersonal, verbal linguistic, and bodily kinesthetic; by understanding the use of Native American medicine wheels; by encouraging the creation of “childlife refuges”; by going on vision quests; by learning how to perceive ecological conditions; by learning to attend; by perceiving relations; by adding context and processes to one’s perception of material objects; by maintaining flexibility of perception; by perceiving depth;  by using the imagination; by developing one’s ecological identity through sense of place maps and personal property lists; by understanding that any ethic is doomed if its practice causes those who live by it to perish and take their cherished moral notions with them; by learning to “let go”  and  by evoking the authentic whole through The Eleven Directions Ceremony.
     Each time one seeks an answer from a natural area the procedures employ any of the fifty-three natural attraction senses (such as the dreaming sense or the territorial sense)  and have certain common elements, such as:  thinking about a question to bring to nature or asking “What can you help me with today?;” thankfully gaining permission from an attractive natural area to visit it and to help you do this activity; opening and closing the eyes to pick out various attractions in the scene; using as many natural attraction senses as possible (such as touching a rock); avoiding the use of names by calling the natural attraction a “connection experience;”  imagining becoming each attraction; psychologically adopting the perspective of an essence and then  answering your own question(s);  returning to being yourself psychologically;  thanking this connection experience for being  and for participating in your quest; and writing down the answers to your questions and sharing them with others.
     One nature-connect activity used in Part Three of the Heartwood Path goes like this:  After gaining consensual permission to do the activity in an attractive natural place, use any of your natural attraction senses or sensitivities (such as the sense of weather changes or sense of play or sense of intuition) to determine how each seemingly separate element has ties of relationship with the whole. Be sure to include yourself in this mental exercise.  Catalogue numerous ties of attraction in words or as a drawing that looks like a web of relationships with lines between each relating part. On the lines label the nature of the relationship and how it is attracted to other aspects of nature. Notice the intelligence of the whole web, its attractiveness, and the love it displays in maintaining the whole.  Share your notes or map with others.
     For the reconnecting with nature activities in Part Four of the Heartwood Path, which is about the flip side of “letting go”—“letting come,”-- and how sexual intimacy can be used consensually to reconcile self and other, the natural attraction senses most often employed include the well known senses of taste, smell, touch, hearing, and seeing plus the spiritual sense, (including ecstasy and the capacity for sublime love), the hormonal sense, the electromagnetic sense (which includes the ability to generate current), and the sense of procreative urges. Part Four of the Heartwood Path teaches participants to make solo preparations for love, attract love into their lives, awaken sexual energy, store life-force energy, enhance sexual energy, transmute sexual energy from lust to love, and apply transmuted sexual energy to one’s whole life.  
     With consent, one’s sexual partner can be used as a natural attraction in the reconnecting with nature activities. But, when doing so, one will need to be on-guard for the interjections of unwanted nature-disconnected stories or self-serving names, stories, and labels. According to Cohen, it is best to seek guidance, education and healing from a place outdoors, the more natural the better.  In Part Four of the Heartwood Path, consent is sought and gained and the participant uses the natural attraction senses to seek answers from nature to questions about mystical lovemaking, Tantra, finding a mate, romantic love, and reconciling self and other.  How, for example, does the attractive tree maintain its individuality yet be one with the whole?  Or, how do various animals court their mates? How does the sexual behaviors of animals help them reconcile the tension between being an individual and being one with the whole?  Hearing no words and seeing no names or labels in nature, does reconciliation of self and other occur through exchanges of energy, through give and take, through the polarity of domination and submission, or through the changing of an animal from one that is merely instinctively seeking sexual gratification to one that is becoming a responsible mate and parent? Going to nature to find answers to such questions provides good lessons about the use of sexuality for transformation and not just for gratification.  Other lessons have to do with gender differences. Participants are encouraged, for example, to look at a river scene, with its solid, firm, and directing bank and its fickle and changeable flowing water and make telling comparisons that point out differences between masculinity and femininity (notice that I did not say “men” and “women”).
     Getting one’s mind right through methods described above a the crucial precursor to protecting the environment that is not normally included in the list of methodologies used by environmentalists.  Psychological improvements are crucial because every action, good or bad, is preceded by a thought. While it is critically important to expand one’s perspective and to “become the change you want to see in the world,” insignificant change will occur unless one moves effectively into action.
     After learning about universal principles, anchoring one’s individuality, integrating oneself into the whole, and reconciling the tension between self and other, it is time along the Heartwood Path to go into action fast as an individual. To this end, Part Five of the Heartwood Path is about personal motivation; the individual will; focusing one’s aspirations to action; doing whatever it takes; increasing one’s effectiveness; shifting from striving to arriving; and growing spiritually along the various motive pathways, including the pathways of responsibility, personal change, camaraderie and appropriate power.  In doing the nature-connect activities use your natural attraction senses (such as sense of season, sense of the rotation of the earth, or sense of time), seek consent, and after finding an attractive place in nature, look for ways to create metaphorical correlations between apparent motivations in the actions in nature and socio-erotic desires such as the yearning for learning, the longing for belonging, the urge to diverge, the resolve to evolve, and the zeal to repeal. Watching a deer, for example, standing chest-high along a river’s edge and submerging its entire head to pull up roots of aquatic plants, when most deer browse on dry land, can be seen as a metaphor to illustrate the zeal people have to repeal typical ways of doing things.
     From going fast into action by oneself in Part Five of the Heartwood Path we now move in Part Six to going far with a group.  Part Six of the Heartwood Path is about the collective will, making one’s involvement with others successful, following the standards of public life, making religion green, leadership, improving one’s team, and creating prototypes for what you want to achieve.
      One of the nature-connect activities used in Part Six of the Heartwood Path encourages the participant to find an attractive place in nature, use one’s natural attraction senses  (including one’s sense of seasons, one’s sense of excretion, and one’s urge to kill for food), obtain the pre-requisite consent, imagine that one becomes the attraction, and ask the attraction a series of questions. Some examples include:  how does the attraction serve with others to benefit the whole?  Who or what in the scene is demonstrating characteristics of leadership?  And what, if any, is the collective will of the natural place?
     The last part of the Heartwood Path leads the participant to persevere by restoring him or herself by recalling the enchantment of daily life at home.  This final section is about: the charm of the mundane; using your intentions at home through doing such things as:  listening to silence, discovering God’s truth in nature; embracing emptiness; giving birth to creativity; behaving at home in ways that allow one to be a true inhabitant; adding spirit to the home;  making nearby nature a real element in daily life;  living in a healing house;  making celebrations more meaningful; understanding ethical considerations at home; listening to the wisdom of the oppressed; using appropriate technology; praying;  managing anger;  creating a partnership with the Creator,  letting go and letting be, taking in the charm of children;  eating good food and tending a garden;  spending time with pets;  solving problems together with others;  ending the suffering of others;  arriving in justice as a prophet;  playing with sacred geometry;  seeking the assistance of a life coach; building or using the hardware for the operating system of the Greater Self;  and converting good ideas into established ideas.
     A nature-connect activity for this part of the Heartwood Path is encouraging participants to psychologically devote a portion of their yards (or, if one lives in an apartment, a portion of the neighborhood nearby) to meditative purposes.  This space, called a Temenos, is where one can go to think and act without fear, to commune with nature, and to be free from distractions. Regular visits to one’s Temenos is restorative, it helps re-direct one to one’s real purpose, and it encourages perseverance.  In one’s Temenos, one is more apt to connect easier with nature or a natural object, be available to guidance from nature, and leave refreshed and ready to resume daily activities sustainably.

Conclusion
     This article highlights what environmental activists can do to do to persevere and, beyond that, it reveals a way to leverage the work to protect the environment.  Brower’s call to write a piece on how to prevent “burnout” in environmentalists inspired in me a personal quest that provided the information needed for the “Better You, Better Earth™” educational campaign described here.  This campaign, by combining Dr. Cohen nature-connect activities and my seven-part Heartwood Path, leads to the possibility of real happiness through connecting with nature, improving relationships, and protecting the environment. Collectively, Brower’s activist approach and Cohen’s Natural Systems Thinking Process combine  along the Heartwood Path to make the much needed fulcrum for shifting participants’ mindsets and behaviors towards guarding themselves from “burnout” as they participate in protecting the earth’s environment.
     “Better You, Better Earth,” provides the answer to Brower’s question:
“How do we keep environmental activists from burning out.”  Big parts of this answer have to do with helping activists find helpful universal principles, grow as individuals, bond with nature, go fast into action, go far with an effective team, and go long through finding daily enchantment at home.  As it turns out, doing such things not only adds to the personal happiness of activists, it also provides a fulcrum that can be used by environmentalists who want to both win piecemeal campaigns and correct the widespread psychological root cause of the global environmental predicament.
      For more information on “Better you, Better Earth™,” watch the introductory video of the same name on YouTube or at www.heartwoodpath.com.  Through the website, one can find a helpful coach, order printed books, or download free e-books.  The unabridged e-books lead participants through each of the seven steps of the Heartwood Path mentioned briefly in this article.  A multi-media presentation is also available for live presentations.  All of this was inspired by and is dedicated to David Brower, the best friend of the earth.