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Project NatureConnect |
The Nature Of It All. How Do We Belong?
"Ishi, (the last hunter-gather Native American) was sure he knew the cause of our discontent. It stemmed from an excessive amount of indoor time. 'It is not a man's nature to be too much indoors.'"
......- Theodora Kroeber"All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the children of the earth."
.......-Chief Sealth
........(Ecclesiastes 3:19, Ted Perry, John Muir)
It is our personal and collective relationship with nature that determines our sanity, our future and the future of the earth.
Much has been written about how we need to save the planet but the deeper truth is that it is essential if we are to save ourselves.
How conscious are we about our interactions with the natural world? How do we passionately incorporate nature's intrinsic health into our own healthy sense of self, other and livelihood? Do we acknowledge this deep and penetrating partnership in a renewable way that serves both people and planet?
These are compelling questions for us as we face a most precarious future.
We Lose What We Most Love
As nature's resources are diminished so is the quality of our lives. As the quality of our lives diminish, we lose touch with our natural ability to connect to the web of life within which we are so intricately bound. It becomes a cycle of loss. The nurturing link between our human lives and our earthly home gets broken. We are driven to seek more and more satisfaction in the material world, which means we consume more and more of the very resources we need to sustain our love of the natural world. We get further and further away from our innate sense of meaning and being. We lose what we most love-about ourselves, the world to which we belong and our sense of the sacred in everyday life.Nature's Saving Grace
In these difficult times, we are virtually on the edge of losing our ability to save both ourselves-and our earthly home. Yet the saving grace is simple: We will save what we love. And when we stop long enough everyday to reconnect to thenurturing sustenance of nature, we emotionally reconnect to what is most deeply satisfying in our human experience-belonging. We re-learn to love the very essence of who we are as living breathing perfect beings on a living breathing perfect planet. It is a generative partnership that happens when we enliven all our senses with the awareness of nature's grace, intelligence and sustenance. We find and feel that we, too, are part of the very grace and intelligence we celebrate in nature.
Restoring Our Sensory Connections To Nature's Intelligence.
Project NatureConnect is first of all committed to helping us-as individuals-restore our connection to our place in nature's transcending grace. Then, through NatureConnect activities, we learn how to genuinely connect our thinking to the web of life that is always around us, always nurturing us, always waiting for us to wake up. We are bonded to living in awareness and equilibrium with nature, in hope and in love. Living in that awareness we create a future for our loved ones and our extended human family.
The Science of Nature's Regenerative Powers.
This website is special because it is doable. It offers a web of possibilities-for everything from personal growth to professional gain. It is based on the NatureConnect work developed by Michael Cohen over a span of 40 years of studying, teaching, writing about and experiencing the regenerative power of our natural experience in the natural world. His work is a science and an art, the result of decades of practice working with communities of people in natural areas, all culminating in a process that helps us recover what it is we have forgotten, what it is we love, what it is we can save.Healing Our Relationships
It is time for us to come out from behind the addictive socializing and economic forces that keep us disconnected from the Earth and each other. It is time to re-learn how to let the wisdom and renewing energies of nature transform destructive patterns into balanced and loving relationships that can help restore both personal worth and global harmony.
"The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford forever!"
....-Henry David Thoreau, Walden
- by Janet Thomas
Next: What We Do
As stated elsewhere, after you obtain information about the Project NatureConnect program from the web site by using the Navigation guide (left column), a free, helpful 15 minute discussion by phone with a faculty member is the most effecient way to customize the program to your goals.
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INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION Special NGO consultant United Nations Economic and Social Council
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Readily available, online, natural science tools
for the health of person, planet and spiritP.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313 <email> www.ecopsych.com
ORGANIC ADVANCED ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Director
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All programs start with the Orientation Course contained in the book
The Web of Life Imperative.
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