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Project NatureConnect
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....... | The Whole Story. "We
are biologically conceived as children of Mother Nature to suckle the
loving breast of her health, balance and beauty. Upon our birth into
Industrial Society, it is as if it socializes us to be nurtured instead by a
bottle of whiskey that it sells. For the remainder of our lives we suffer the
destructive effects of the whiskey until we connect with nature's power
to help us transform our whiskey "habit" to benefit all. - Michael J. Cohen |
How Nature Works: NNIAAL Stories that Help Convey the Value and Outcomes of Nine
Leg Thinking.
These
pages describe the essence of the Big Bang natural attraction energy
seed,
including Gravity, the
Gluon, the Higgs-Einstein Unified Attraction Field and Boson along with other
sub-atomic particles and energies. Together they have consciously danced and grown through the eons into being Nature
and the Universe that we know today.
These "grand unified"
particles and energy fields were predicted by Albert Einstein who was
unable to create a theoretical equation that would explain their
existence and how they worked. In 2012, the glue that Einstein's
intuited, the Higgs Boson "God Particle" attraction field of the
Universe was identified by physicists at the CERN accellerator in Switzerland.
The seed's process and progress from Nature's Big Bang original moment of time and space until this moment is the unified field whole of life, an intelligent, unified, GreenWave dance of the Universe that we live in and that we are. It is the totality of Nature, the name given to the whole of Science/Universe/Nature/Earth/Humanity (SUNEH)
The attraction seed's regenerative powers provide hope for what we may
regain by
thinking and feeling with nature. This suggests that the mysterious
origin of the seed was the attraction of pre-universe attraction consciousness to
express or manifest its attraction to become more attractive.
"If you wish to make an apple pie (or anything else on Earth) from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
- Carl Sagan
The essence of the dance of Life is its attraction/desire to survive. Why would the life of the Universe not be its attraction to do this? What evidence is there that the Standard Universe (SUNEH) is not this attraction in action?
TAKE THREE MINUTES TO MEET AUTHENTIC NNIAAL BY MEETING YOURSELF:
1. Be reasonable, learn from experience. Go to the most natural area or thing that is convenient and find something there that attracts you or is attractive to you in that moment.
2. Ask this attraction "Who are you without your name or labels?" and for a minute or more pay attention to what response you get. Then
3. Ask yourself "Who am I without my name or labels?" and for a minute or more pay attention to what response you get.
4. Each moment that you discover any attractive things that 2 and 3 have in common is a moment that you are meeting NNIAAL consciously.
5. If you think this activity is an intelligent way to get to know or love NNIAAL, note that you now have experienced and own each of its letters. Do you sense that NNIAAL would like you to share this experience or what happened with someone else?
When you learn to think out of the box you enjoy a felt sense of the Big Bang and NNIAAL attraction and attractiveness because you are dancing in its non-story moment's time, space and energies of the attraction seed that have become that living moment.
Grand Unified Field: By not incorporating NNIAAL in his deliberations, Albert Einstein was limited and unable to "prove" or demonstrate his Grand Unified Field Theory with Physics and mathematical equations. He seemed unaware that his heroic desire, self-defense and attempts to do this was "Grand Unification" expressing itself in and through him, moment by moment simply because to be in the time and space of the moment, everything has no choice but to be in unified oneness (Grand Unified) with the moment. Where else can it go if there is no other time and space for it? If we think that there is, then our mentality is in another Universe using its language which is foreign and often destructive to Science/Universe/Nature/Earth/Humanity (SUNEH). This makes us obligated to give up our advanced technologies if we are to enjoy a fair and balanced relationship with SUNEH.
Our challenge, as was Einstein's, is to let ECHN help us act based on the self-evident, unifying properties of NNIAAL rather than attach our personal NNIAAL to contradicting, inaccurate and limited stories along with their detrimental results (6)." NNIAAL-disconnecting stories are inaccurate because during the moments they are created their message, by definition, has lost contact with the NNIAAL truth of those moments (in denniaal).
Our leaders seldom teach us that, scientifically, NNIAAL is the essence of our Big Bang Universe as well as the essence of love and that excessive separation from Natural Attraction produces disorders due to love-deprivation. They also fail to teach us about the effects of this omission.
Individuals trained in ECHN ultimate intelligence will enable the world to build peaceful, green, relationships and economies because the Higgs Boson field is us (7, 8). If you are attracted to best register and know what ECHN is and you are attracted to reading to the end of this sentence, these attractions are NNIAAL-54 senses in action as you.
We know and are NNIAAL when we have, and know full well why we have, consent from a natural area to be there and, moment-after-moment, without thought or spoken words, we feel attracted to attractions there while sensing they are attracted to us. That mutual "love" is NNIAAL, SUNEH-54 as it knows itself. It is the all unifying aliveness that exists in the dance of these moments that we humanize by correctly speaking them from direct sensory contact with them. I symbolize such moments with a Mimbres pottery image from 1000 years ago in the American Southwest. We suffer our troubles when we replace it with our corrupt flags and logos and then can't find it.
PeakFacts are a warrantied, 9-leg literate knowledge that results from the self-evidence produced by conscious NNIAAL contacts with nature's dance, in and around us, backyard or backcountry.
NATURE'S ESSENCE: Responses to "What is NNIAAL?"
Thinking, feeling, meditating/breathing or relating while using the NNIAAL acronym brings my whole attractive history with nature and humanity to my conscious mind (thoughts, feelings and spirit) that is part of this history. It can do the same for you once you learn how to do it by strengthening your inherent ultimate intelligence
The first N reminds me that Nature is "Non-literate" and "Nameless." It does not know itself, communicate or organize itself with words and stories, as does humanity. Instead, it consciously organizes and operates via the pulse of natural attractions that, in each moment, are consciously seeking fulfillment and attractively finding satisfaction by creating and flowing into being additional attractive, mutually rewarding relationships and attachments.
The second N reminds me to be conscious of "Now," that Nature's upwelling, pulsating, attraction energy dance and its non-literate beauty only exists and operates in the immediate moment, the "Now" of life. Like the dance of a flowing river, in the next moment the attraction relationships are different, they have changed and grown into additional dancing attraction relationships.
Since "literate us" is part of nature's conscious dance and flow of attraction power, the Now includes our stories about the past and future. We can only change these stories and our consciousness of them in the Now. The stories, however, are not nature, they are human nature. Stories that omit the Now of contact with nature, our non-literate Other Body help produce the negative effects of dualism.
Nature consists of a free will, conscious, self-organized and flowing attraction dance, a non-literate river of self-correcting connections that produce life-supportive, balanced relationships, attractions or attachment connections, that are not stories. They are the immediate dance pulse of mutually supportive, in the moment relationships that communicate with us and that we can register through at least 54 natural attraction senses. These senses/sensations/sensibilities are "naturespeak" to and from our body mind and spirit as part of the non-literate attraction Dance.
The I in NNIAAL reminds me that nature is "Intelligent," that its self-organizing, homeostatic wisdom enables it to wordlessly create balanced attractive optimums of life, cooperation and diversity without producing any garbage. "I" reminds me that, Intelligently, nature seldom displays or causes the abusiveness, disorders or isolation that we suffer. This is intelligent because the latter are not attractive. They are mostly the effects of Industrial Society's dualistic, nature-disconnected and conquering stories about the natural world, not how nature works
"I" signifies that each thing in nature has the Intelligence to be that thing in purity and balance and to intelligently transform into other supportive things when so attracted.
The fact that through the eons nature's-consciousness has been able to peacefully actualize and sustain its attractive natural homeostatic perfection on personal, local and global levels demonstrates monumental Intelligence.
The A helps me sense that instead of using stories, from day one, nature continually has consciously grown and manifested itself through an energetic dance of natural Attractions and that they, moment by moment, become pulsating, free-will, attachment relationships and new Attractions. In the "Now", the unpredictable life of nature's unfolding friendly "natural essence" is an upwelling, a flowing, bursting variable stream of living strong and weak Attractions whose dance balances out and manifests itself as every aspect of the plant, animal and mineral web-of-life community and its energies, including us, our our emotions and our psyche.
The second A helps me be Aware (conscious) and sense that natural attraction is a fundamental essence of Aliveness and its dancing spirit.
Our desire to survive is the attractive dancing heartbeat and rhythm of aliveness, the natural Attraction consciousness in us to continue living as ourselves in support of nature's survival. This vital desire consists of a congress of 53 additional fluctuating natural sensory Attractions that resonate with each other and seek equilibrium. One of them is our Attraction to be literate, the rest are felt senses and sensibility awakenings that are attracted to have us to become literate about them so we may more consciously think and feel with their supportive grace. Doing this is an antidote for the destructive aspects of dualism including addiction.
"A" includes that Attraction is the self-conscious, homeostatic, dancing pulse of Authentic, Ancient, Alive, Awareness in Action from moment one throughout the eons.
The L in NNIAAL reminds me that what we experience as Love is the pulsating dance of natural attraction in action in us. Our story world can attach our inherent natural Love to the attractive nature of the natural world, Earth, our Other Body, including itself as ourselves and others, or we can attach and bond it to story-constructed, nature-foreign, literate technologies, blueprints and beliefs, or we can do both.Stories are a literacy that is usually dualistic, disconnected from, and a substitute for the ecointelligence of our inborn attraction to nature and its lasting rewards. Again, nature is active relationship-building aliveness and communication, not a story. It is the real thing, not an unbalanced substitute or abstract.
Most of our nature-disconnected stories produce destructive side effects because they separate our consciousness from nature. Detached from nature's life and wisdom, the dualism in these stories become a form of death. The stories are prejudiced against the holistic essence of nature because they are separate from and do not contain the Intelligence of nature's attractive purifying and restorative ways. We have yet no story, or other substitute, for our innate, sensory/emotional and conscious love of the universal Earth wisdom of authentic nature, our Other Body."
Since we know the "NNIAAL" qualities of the time/space continuum universe that we see today (BioSUNEH), including ourselves as part of it, we can reason (theorize) that the essence of the original natural attraction seed contained the roots of these qualities. This brings new facts into play: the original natural attraction essence had to be alive in some way. It had to have some kind of motivation and consciousness and intelligent, free will desire to grow, moment by moment, into greater attraction, to pulsate, dance and resonate into becoming, through diversity, an ever increasing and stronger universal attractiveness whose homeostatic balancing, self-correcting and purifying powers we experience today in nature and its beauty, around and in us.
UNIVERSAL NNIAAL QUALITIES:
Each of these natural powers is attractive and is a function that has grown from the fundamental Big Bang natural attraction in action.
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. The genome for life has been calculated to originate, not on Earth 3.5 billion years ago, rather more that 10 billion years ago in the natural attraction of atoms and the universe during that early period.
It can be accurately said that this conscious, NNIAAL, attraction essence and its attributes is what the Universe has "given us." considering that it is us and vice versa.
Visit photographs of your/our NNIAAL origins in the as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope Select Here
Keep in mind that your attraction in this moment to make this visit is 13.7 billion years old and is the same NNIAAL attraction you see in the film that births stars that birth atoms that are us. It is also the same NNIAAL that made some folks build the telescope and take the pictures.
Duality: Note that we spend much of our "story life" trying to define and answer questions that arise about the how? what? when? and why? of life, Earth, nature and the universe. Each answer we come up with usually leads to duality (one or more additional questions and answers) and therefore more questions and arguments endlessly. This results because we learn to reject that aliveness, consciousness and other qualities of the natural attraction dance (as above) are self-evident to each individual. They register directly on our 54 senses. They are, and have grown from, the inherent, attractive potential of C-NNIAAL singularity, an undivided, non-literate yet conscious, unified, natural attraction energy field (Higgs Boson and Gravity Waves) in the original moment of the Big Bang.
This single, organic and conscious unifying dance seed can be seen as being a truth of the Big Bang moment, no matter its often fiercely argued origin or source.
"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts (find new facts)."
- Albert Einstein
The
attraction dance being the seed of the Big Bang and Universe including this
moment fulfills Einstein's "Unified Field Theory" that he spent the
last decades of his life trying to establish via Physics
formulas. With the seed and Universe being NNIAAL as well as missing, (Attraction
and Aliveness being the two A's in NNIAAL) Einstein turned instead to
God, not Organism Earth to identify the Unified Field that PNC
activities help us register as attraction. He never seemed to see
the value of recognizing that no matter how good a scale is, it cannot
weigh itself, so he probably didn't work with wholeness being
whole-life, being NNIAAL.
Film A fascinating video claims to show the reality and value of NNIAAL in action with respect to people and animals. It portrays, if and where it's not corrupt via editing, the genius that we are born with and potentials we have buried in us as members of contemporary society in relationship to the attraction dance of the Plant, Animal, Mineral and Energy Kingdoms.
CONCLUSION
The acronym NNIAAL helps
my/our thoughts and feelings recognize that they can be consciousness
that is not in denial, that I should make space in my life to
Consciously see NNIAAL.
Once
understood as a reminder, like the sound of a ringing alarm clock, not
a word, when seeking peace or additional information, especially in
nature, I find it helpful to identify all natural things that I become
aware of, including myself, with the word "NNIAAL." I and others
find this singularity slips us into "enlightened" perceptions and experiences of our Other Body/Earth that
might ordinarily take much longer to achieve, if ever.
In 1985 in a book about the International Symposium Is the Earth A Living Organism that I wrote with Dr. Jim Swan for Julian Bach, I assigned the name "Bio" to SUNEH (Scientific Universe Nature Earth Humanity) to identify it as being the pervasive life energy of the Universe. With the 2012 discovery of the Higgs/Einstein attraction unification field, "Bio," meaning life, is the correct scientific and common name for SUNEH.
NAKED ALIVENESS: The unifying dance of the Universe (SUNEH) is the attitude or posture of our body, mind and sprit, moment by moment. I call it "Bio" meaning life and I spell it NNIAAL to correctly sense it.
- Michael J. Cohen
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NNIAAL: The Natural Sense of Community"In Scotland, farmers are overturning their hay bales to exterminate rats that live beneath them. A trio of rats tries to flee but, unlike the other fleeing rats, these three stay closely together which limits their ability to escape. This attracts the farmers. Upon investigation, they find that the middle rat of the three is bliind; its companions are guiding it to safety. Deeply moved, the farmers do not kill these rats. Instead, in awe, they respect them."
From Arnold M.
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The Natural Sense of Community: West VirginiaConsider this event concerning the ingrained ways of a deeply rooted, theoretically unchangeable group of hard core killers. In the West Virginia mountains, an isolated, dedicated hunting club found a month old male fawn whose mother had been killed by a car.
For a week, these middle aged men, each with decades of devoted deer killing expertise, were attracted to feed the fawn formula from a bottle, which it suckled with half shut eyes of ecstasy. In return the fawn licked their hands, sucked their earlobes and sang them little whining sounds of delight from deep within.
When the hunt broke up, these men dispersed leaving the fawn eating grass and craving its bottle. They made vague promises to return to this remote place. They said they would, if time permitted, trek the mountain and feed the fawn. A few weeks later, one of the hunters phoned the others to see if anybody knew if the fawn has been fed or had survived. He discovered that without each other knowing it, five of the hunters often visited the fawn and fed it, so it was actually getting fat. Although the fawn might be shot by someone who did not know who the deer was, it lifted his heart to think that the fawn had a chance at life because some hardened deer hunters had gone out of their way to give it to him. Significantly, he knew for sure that none of his hunt club members would shoot it.
From Stan W.
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The Natural Sense of Community: Washington State
I recently participated in a hurried, almost stressful training program for people whose differences kept them arguing amongst themselves. They had little interest or time to hear an explanation from me of the unifying and healing benefits of the reconnecting with nature process and they therefore omitted it from their agenda. In the midst of this hubbub, a young bird flew into the meeting room through the door. It could not find its way out. Without a word, the behind-schedule, argumentative meeting screeched to a halt. Deep natural attraction feelings for life and hope filled each person for the moment. For ten minutes that frightened, desperate little bird triggered those seventy people to harmoniously, supportively organize and unify with each other to safely help it find its way back home. Yet when they accomplished this feat, they cheered their role, not the role of the bird. They felt like hero's for the moment and congratulated their humanity for its wisdom and compassion. In their story of the incident, the role and impact of the bird went unnoticed. They returned to the hubbub of the meeting, as if nothing special had happened. They completely overlooked that the bird had united them while it was there, something they could not do without its presence.
From Mike C.
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Natural Experience
A Story from Dancing Coyote, a Native American
"Mike, my people had no word for 'environment' Living in nature we only had what you are calling 'natural attractions,' no such thing as indoors. Why don't you try this? Think for two minutes now about an attractive experience you've had in a natural area, an experience that attracts you to want to have it again. What made it worthwhile? How did it feel? What was attractive about it? What were you sensing?"......................"Now, after these two minutes, notice how you feel: more content, peaceful, more self satisfied and alive? Doctors say lower blood pressure and less stress, strengthens the immune system, too. And that's just from bringing memories of natural attraction energies into your thinking. The real experience in nature was far more potent, that's what made it memorable. But what you ordinarily learn to do is disconnect from nature and find a substitute product instead. You bottle and sell something that produces similar results. Soon you are psychologically addicted to the bottled stuff and producing its profits and environmental side effects, too, rather than returning to, and giving added value to, the real thing, nature."
Mmmmm. You know, me telling you this this makes my chest tighten up. I still feel the stress from, sixty years ago, being dragged from my desert family to the government indoor school (Cohen 2002 y). Makes me think you and I must be brainwashed to spend most of our life indoors. But, then again, your thinking was born and raised indoors. Maybe you just don't know any better (Cohen 2002 o). You were so young you can't remember the pain. But, it shows up in your stress, and in your fear of nature, and in your bigotry against us 'Indians' too. Unlike us, you applaud this crazy way of thinking."
From Mike C.
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The fictional, but accurately parallel story of Gulliver and the blind island community along with the updated Seven Blind Men and the Elephant convey a helpful essence of the incidents that appear on this page.
From Mike C.
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I thought late last year of changing my life in regards to living simpler and rented my house in town to friends and have been living out on my property in the woods with man, daughter and dog since January. I totally love it. When we had a cyclone out there in Feb. there was nothing as far as possessions or power to blow away... lots of trees down yet mostly very exciting and a good late summer clean up of all things. Our biggest concern was being with each other, dog included as the weather passed.
I especially have noticed that I am now stronger in my sense of who I am in relationship to the social paradigm that I work in and deal with. From this stronger sense of living outdoors self I have had way more energy for my work, and an identification of non-attractions clearly and faster. I sleep better... much better - I bath outdoors - I talk with birds in the morning while preparing breakfast and I have access to usual computer stuff in my house in town when I want it.
I recommend making the change, simplify and grow stronger.
From Gina C.
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The Natural Sense of Community: Australia
Paul: It's not hard to be outdoors where I live in Australia. And if one opens the front door and the back door at the same time, kangaroos will hop through, taking a short-cut to the billabong. On one occasion, I was impulsive enough to start walking (like Forrest Gump) into the outdoors of this big continent. Eighteen months down the track, I was still on the road but by now, a friend of the weather and no more chatter inside my head. That day I looked across the fields at a mountain range and impulsively, headed into the bush and up to the ridges that had never been settled by the colonists. Two years later, I realized that I had been on a pilgrimage for three and a half years; 5 times around Australia and along the entire length of the Great Dividing Range of the East Coast. I had come to the conclusion that I was me and nobody else (this was a source of great merriment); and a thought had formed in my head to "stay close to the water and be kind to the children". I had absolutely no idea what this meant; but it was comforting to know that I was not being told by some Wrangler to throw myself in front of a train to stop the troops from going to war.
In all, I spent seven years in the Australian bush welcoming a delightful surprise each day and addressing each of the local animals by name. The last period involved loving a woman, raising a child and building a stone cottage. When I eventually returned to make a contribution to society, I regarded the move as "flying on instruments" but it somehow seemed the appropriate thing to do with my life.Mike: Thanks for your letter, Paul. In case you believe that we need to have a majority of the population obtain your level of consciousness, you might appreciate http://ninelegs.com which is attempting to achieve this goal. Seems like you consistantly nineleg.
Paul: Yes, I lapped up 4 + 5 Legs with gusto.
Mike: You mention being "Wrangled" Here's what one of our student's just wrote about that: "Wrangler experiences have been a major force to be reckoned with in my life for the past couple of years, especially since I started this nature-connected counseling course. Exposing my wrangler voices in these exercises has been some of the best therapy I have ever given to myself. I also gain self-esteem when I hear others' wrangler stories, as I understand that this is a universal challenge, and not some major flaw in my personal character. I see the value in combining the 4 and 5 leg thinking into 9-leg, although I do not relate to the language at all, so I am constantly defining when I read the words. I do believe that I am sometimes an agent for supporting a learning environment for those around me, but I have much work to do in being the change myself first."
From Paul J.
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Integration
I have worked in the complementary healing field for over 30 years and after reading the course material and some of Dr Cohen's work I realized that the direct connection between Nature and the healing process can effect powerful changes in people's lives and that of the planet. The two are so intimately connected that the health of humankind is reflected in the health of the planet. How can one treat a human being without observing her/his relationship to the Gaia, the mother of us all?
I work mainly with women of all ages. I have young clients suffering from Anorexia Nervosa and various addictions, middle aged clients experiencing menopause and elderly women suffering from depression as well as various physical disorders such as arthritis and osteoporosis.
Case 1: Anorexia Nervosa
This client is a 17 year old girl who has had a history of depression. Since she was a small child she felt she didn't belong here and has great difficulty with eating. She was diagnosed as anorexic 6 weeks ago, and had suffered heart problems as a result. I started working with her after this diagnosis. I found that she also has a problem with being grounded. I intuited that this was her first incarnation on Earth, and that she felt lost and disoriented here.
I felt it the most important aspect of her treatment was to get her grounded to help her feel safe. This involved getting her to connect with earth as an element and as Nature by being in a beautiful natural area and connecting to the environment in a focused way as outlined in the NSTP course. She spends time in Nature daily and has made good progress. She now eats three meals a day with enjoyment. Her weight has picked up; her depression has lifted and for the first time she has expressed joy at being on earth.
Case 2: Menopause & depression
A 56 year old woman has been experiencing symptoms of menopause such as hot flushes, depression, tiredness and loss of enthusiasm for life over the past year or so. She came to me about 4 weeks ago.
She lives in town and previously had not had much experience in Nature besides holidays at the sea. All her children had left home, and her marriage was "boring and lifeless". I started her treatment with a ritual to help her acknowledge moving into the wise woman or "Crone" archetype. She now has an understanding of the spiritual aspect of this time of her life, and that she is being drawn to connect in a stronger way to the earth. She now has taken up gardening as well as spending time using the NSTP exercises in nature. She is also taking Black Cohosh herb to assist with the physical symptoms.
The change in this woman is very positive. She has vigour, enthusiasm and energy and is passionate about nature. She now regularly walks with the mountain club and has lost weight.
From Diana W.
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The Natural Sense of Community: Maryland
Where we live, on the Eastern shore of Maryland, the gentle waters run in and out like fingers slimming at the tips. They curl into the smaller creeks and coves like tender palms.
The Canadian geese know this place, as do the white swans and the ducks who ride an inch above the waves of Chesapeake Bay as they skim their way into harbor in the autumn. By the thousands they come home for the winter. The swans move toward the shores in a stately glide, their tall heads proud and unafraid.
They lower their long necks deep into the water, where their strong beaks dig through the river bottoms for food. And there is, between the arrogant swans and the prolific geese, an indifference, almost a disdain.
Once or twice each year, snow and sleet move into the area. When this happens, if the river is at its narrowest, or the creek shallow there is a freeze which hardens the water to ice.
It was on such a morning near Osford, Maryland, that a friend of mine set the breakfast table beside the huge window, which overlooked the Tred Avon River. Across the river, beyond the dock, the snow laced the rim of the shore in white. For a moment she stood quietly, looking at what the night storm had painted.
Sudden she leaned forward and peered close to the frosted window.
"It really is" she cried out loud. "There is a goose out there!" She reached to the bookcase and pulled out a pair of binoculars. Into their sights came the figure of a large Canadian goose, very still, its wings folded tight to its sides, its feet frozen to the ice.
Then from the dark skies, she saw a line of swans. They moved in their own singular formation, graceful, intrepid, and free. They crossed from the west of the broad creek high above the house, moving steadily to the east.
As my friend watched, the leader swung to the right, then the white string of birds became a white circle. It floated from the top of the sky downward.
At last, as easy as feathers coming to earth, the circle landed on the ice.
My friend was on her feet now, with one unbelieving hand against her mouth.
As the swans surrounded the frozen goose, she feared what life he still had might be pecked out by those great swan bills.
Instead, amazingly instead, those bills began to work on the ice. The long necks were lifted and curved down, again and again; it went on for a long time. At last, the goose was rimmed by a narrow margin of ice instead of the entire creek. The swans rose again, following the leader, and hovered in that circle, awaiting the results of their labors.
The goose's head lifted. Its body pulled. Then the goose was free and standing on the ice. He was moving his big, webbed feet slowly. And the swans stood in the air watching. Then, as if he had cried "I cannot fly!", four of the swans came down around him. Their powerful beaks scraped the goose's wings from top to bottom, scuttled under its wings and rose up its body, chipping off and melting the ice held in its feathers.
Slowly, as if testing, the goose spread its wings as far as they would go, brought them together, accordion-like, and spread again.
When at last the wings reached their fullest, the four swans took off and joined the hovering group. They resumed their eastward journey, in perfect formation, to their secret destination.
Behind them, rising with incredible speed and joy, the goose moved into the sky. He followed them, flapping double time, until he caught up, until he joined the last end of the line, like a small child at the end of a crack-the-whip of older boys.
My friend watched them until they disappeared over the tips of the farthest trees. Only then, in the dusk which was suddenly deep, did she realize that tears were running down her cheeks and had been for how long she did not know.
This is a true story. It happened. I do not try to interpret it. I just think of it in the bad moments, and from it comes only one hopeful question: "If so for birds, why not for man?"From Marlow S.
Continued: enjoy additional personal first-hand NNIAL related stories
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ORGANIC ADVANCED ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
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