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Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.
Greenwich University
WEBSTRING TRANSLATION
an essence of the Natural Systems Thinking Process
Back To Basics
After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor Bob Hope said:
"We are going to win the war because we pray to God."
"But the Japanese pray to God, too," replied Jerry Colona
"Sure, but who can understand them?"
The state of the world shows that nature disconnected cultural stories often bring about conflict at personal, social and international levels. The web of life webstring model is different. It is a nature connected cultural story based on modern ecological knowledge, scientific research and validating what we experience. This frees us from the nature conquering stories that deteriorate us and Earth.
In the webstring model, we are in contact with nature within and around us. Webstrings, being conscious, intelligent non-verbal attractions we and Earth hold in common, attach to each other in our psyche, blend, and thereby provide increased knowledge, unity and fulfillment with people and places. In this way nature connections help us build relationships that avoid the destructive traps our stories too often contain.
The cultural challenge of webstrings is to validate them objectively as non-verbal attraction sensitivities, as intelligences with ther own integrity and role in natural systems. They have existed throughout time, long before contemporary thinking arrived and placed our nature disconnected cultural, economic and spiritual values on them. We experience them in nature, each other and ourselves as 53 distinct natural attraction sensations. We must learn how to validate them as such if we are to avoid contaminating their integrity.
Webstrings are attachers. When detached from nature and immersed in cultural or spiritual nature disconnected stories, webstrings attach us to our stories and their adverse effects as well as make us change resistant.
Institutions support those of us who learn the skill of validating webstrings within the scientific webstring model framework that underlies contemporary thinking. The wisdom to meet this challenge lies in having the ability to verbalize the sensations webstrings bring into our language- based consciousness and thereby become G/G. That verbalization connects with the webstrings others also experience. It brings us into wholeness with people and planet through relationships that include verbal communication. For example, calling an attraction to water "Thirst" uses a word that brings the sensation itself into consciousness. Identifying webstrings as sensations is quite different than the way people normally think about how the world works, as shown by people's descriptions of webstrings: "They are hereditary." "They don't really exist," "Metaphors" "Instincts," "Metaphysics" "Spirituality." "We don't study them in my field." "The light of enlightenment" "Meditations" "God." "Devas" "Angels." "Christ consciousness." "Higher Power." "Muses." "Interdependencies" "Holy Ghost." People also name therapies that attach their names to the strings and legally own them as such.
It is important to note that rarely are these ways of identifying webstrings authentically connected to nature nor required to be connected to nature. Thus our disconnectedness continues. Most often these words connect to disconnected, false or abusive stories about nature within and around us.
In our nature separated society it is no surprise that the strings are seldom called "Consciousness," "Intelligences," "Sensations," "Attractions," "Loves," or "Nature." We are disconnected from validating them as personal natural experiences that are therefore undeniable. If we did not do this, it would interfere, if not stem, contemporary society's runaway conquest of nature and disenfranchised people. We would not hurt ecosystems or people simply because it would not feel right. Sometimes that is called morality or ethics.
In the webstring model, the essence of our separation from global wisdom and balance is that our literate way of knowing and thinking is in denial. It denies sensation and denies that sensation is the web of life, nature, registering itself in our consciousness as attractions or loves. As the state of the world shows, this does not make sense.
"The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name" said Confucius and others. Be wise. For example, it is wise to identify the sensation for desiring water as the webstring of Thirst (#21), a feeling that is as real and factual as water. Identifying webstrings as non-verbal sensation or feeling attractions of, by and from nature, unifies our verbal consciousness and thinking with the non-verbal intelligence of natural systems.
Whenever we are conscious we always experience one or more webstrings. After all, consciousness is a webstring (#43) too. When other webstrings register on it, it brings them into awareness. When our thinking is unaware of webstrings that are present, to our loss we think and build relationships without the support and wisdom that intelligently guides nature and creation in constructive equilibrium. The deteriorativng state of the world and how we feel reflects this.
This page is designed to help you increase your webstring consciousness.
Let me share the blind walk, from when I did it in September 1994
"Weary. I've been doing email for a while, now for my hour break outside on the mountain. Should I? I'd like to do the blind trust walk activity because I find that if I don't do the activities and relate to the course through them, my new brain finds sneaky ways to take over and tell stories not directly connected to nature. To hell with it, there's no timetable on the course, The natural attraction in this immediate moment is the mountain trail. I do it every day, when possible, running up it for exercise, leisurely walking down following my attractions in the back country.
So I start running up the trail, my new-brain kicks in and says "But what about the blind walk?" I figure nameless nature is trying to say something here so what I do next, I've never done before. I run up the mountain trail with my eyes closed ....and my fingers crossed.
The nameless takes over. I'm amazed. I don't know why, but I'm always amazed and delighted with my connections to it. I can tell where the trail is while I'm running, OK trotting. At first I feel like I'm in an airplane being tossed by the wind as my balance, deprived of sight, tries to find new signals. My mind swims but the webstring of gravity speaks and keeps me erect. The sound and texture of the brush on the sides of the trail steer me towards the middle, If it starts getting easier to run the webstring of reason tells me I'm going to the downhill side of the trail. It helps me compensate for it so as to stay in the middle. I actually can sense the correct balance between going uphill and downhill to keep me in the middle. Sometimes I trip over a tree root on the path but all kinds of senses cooperate to balance me and I recover each time. I'm running through my ancient home and part of me knows it, only it. Occasionally I open my eyes for a second and the usual increased intensity of color is not what grabs me. What I feel instead is a sense of disbelief that I'm still on the trail and not tumbling down the steep hill to my left. I'm safely cradled in supportive sensations including reason which says "Don't push your luck, 5 minutes is up and even if it isn't I'm worried about all of us. I'm in contact with self. This is going to go nowhere but downhill sooner or later." I agree and resume running with my eyes open, wide open, for now the once familiar trail looks like something I've never seen before. I'm running in the after-aura of the eyes-shut experience. I'm also re-vitalized."
"How many of the 53 webstring sensations did I sense? " I ask myself. Is it important for me to know? The number isn't but the names are. Much of our pain comes from being attached, to staying in one sense and getting hurt when civilization beats on it. If I know a natural sense by name, I can know it "green in green" in my new brain. This is valueable because:
1. I am "webstring conscious" and thereby aware that when stressed I can go to a natural area and find webstring attractions there that will help me put myself into balance.
2. I can make new-brain sense by calling upon another sense by name, and thereby switch into another nature- connected attraction, where I don't hurt at the moment.
3. I can reasonably share with others verbally what I sensuously experience in a relationship.
4. I get a deeper conscious understanding of my inner nature's connectedness with itself, others, and natural areas because I can think about it and convey it with words that are the "right name" for it.
5. I can scientifically validate my sensory experiences and dreams because webstring are facts of nature for example: thirst is as real and true as is water. Everybody naturally understands that.
If I stay in only a few senses, when Western Civilization comes banging at the door, I have nowhere to go so I take pain, get hurt, shut down and hurt others. No wonder the hunting-gathering people were nomads. When with the sensory natural world, go with natural attractions and callings.
The years tell me that an essence of green in green is being able to name which of the 53 natural sensations you are experiencing at any given moment. Without this we suffer the disconnectedness and pain of conflictingt stories, of differing "isms." Stories often clash, but natural senses naturally blend, like the many different ways of experiencing touch (22 in all) so that you can bring them to the screen of consciousness and therefore know your twig, rock or berry with your eyes closed. It is very important to be able to accurately translate webstrings into the right name for them.
An example of webstring translation:
See the { bold } inserts below for webstring conversions based on the webstring sense list on Page 48 of Reconnecting With Nature.
Chuck wrote about Gravity:
I ask my {webstring} sense of gravity for permission to become involved with it. My first experience is a feeling of awareness of myself as a being. A feeling of "Is-ness" fills my awareness. {webstring screen of consciousness} I AM says myself to myself. Hum. Where did that come from? I ask. {webstring of reason}
I continued to connect with my sense of gravity and to trace how I know I am aware of gravitational attraction. My {webstring} senses of touch and pressure come to awareness. They speak of an attraction to the Earth, gravity {webstring #12}. My sense of polarity comes to mind as I become aware of up and down in the field of gravity. {Is it a sense of polarity or the webstring of direction adding additional information?} I still feel somewhat disconnected from my sense of gravity in and of itself. It is like I can know it indirectly, only through my other senses. Even so it is very strong, so strong I seem to take it as a given and don't notice it at all.
I scan my body for evidence of gravitational influences. They are everywhere. Gravity predates life. Evolution { multi-webstring self organization } took place in this gravitational field and the Universal Mind { web of life} has put it to good use in us. I especially sense the passage of food through my body and how gravity assists the process. {Motion and other webstring attractions also play here internally. To demonstrate this I used to have my students held upside down and then have them swallow a cracker}
I go external and look for sensory connection to gravity in my environment. It just finished raining and the raindrops falling off of the trees onto the ground with a small splash inform me of gravity's existence { Don't motion, color, size, and sound, webstrings register as part of this?}. I see the form of the trees { the webstrings of design?} and how they have utilized the gravitational field and their sense of polarity {see above} to become what they are. Nature uses gravity as a standard, a constant that is absolutely reliable, a force that can be worked against {like branching trees) and with (like roots). {in cooperation with distance, direction, temperature, light, darkness, moisture, motion, color, and other webstrings}
My sense of reason starts informing me of the nature of gravity. How Dr. Einstein pondered gravity his whole life without fully comprehending the nature of this force. How gravity is an attribute of matter, substance. How it is operative on the opposite end of the spectrum of energy, and how they are unified in essence. Gravitational attraction and electro-magnetic attraction are the two forces we experience. One is generated by energy, the other by cold dark matter. They interact in ways we only barely understand { in terms of the material/physical interpretive story, not necessarily the webstring attraction story} but they have some underlying unity { they are attractions }.
The sun is rising and a pink light illuminates the clouds. My { color webstring } world is filled with a diffuse pink glow that makes the greens pop out in a most beautiful way. I must return go experience this more fully. I dance the Tai Chi form {story?}, moving my body in the gravitational field. I connect as deeply as I can with my sense of gravity as I move {my reason webstring gives and gets permission from my motion and direction webstrings?} . Again, I feel my existence, my beingness. Connecting with my body, my bones, as mass, as weight that shares a mutual attraction with Earth feels so good. I have a sense of something ancient. Something very comforting. A secure feeling. A feeling of being loved {All webstring attractions}. I am reminded of Dr. Cohen's activity where we tug on a plant. I always have a sense of being drawn into my being {becoming conscious of the web of life within me} when I do that. Connecting with myself as substance {webstrings of touch, place, community.} My nerves seem to really like this {webstring of play}. They say "This is what we are here for, to bring you into your being and unite your mind and body {Webstrings of language and reason.} Use us for this and we will reward you with good feelings and a sense of stability and security {webstring rewards and fulfillments}.".
All the while that I am going deeper and deeper into my physicality I feel this counter force, this energetic impulse moving in the opposite direction, moving me toward my mind and consciousness. I feel the polarity within. A continuum from pure mass {Gravity} to pure awareness { lifeweb including language }. If I can hold the balance between the extremes I feel whole, if I move too much one way or the other I am out of balance. I sense that I (and I think most of us in this life) tend {are programmed into being} overly drawn toward the mental pole, the world of stories. {new brain acclaiming itself}. If I develop my sense of gravity and embodiment more fully, and return to it often, perhaps I can connect more fully with my center {congress of webstrings} and live there all the time. I hope so.
{When I visit in nature and know myself as a pole, like the north pole, where all the lines of longitude are instead webstrings and move with and through me as walk the countryside, I feel centered as a stabile equilibrium of webstring diversity}
Now you try doing this by continuing:
Continued
http://www.ecopsych.com/ecowebstrings2.html