New Nature-Connected
Online Degree Program Healing Center Holistic Grants
Scholarships and
Jobs for body-mind-therapy healing, to strengthen Self-Help,
Counseling, and Human Nature
Education to Heal Personal and
Environmental Disorders.
Apply Now: online ecopsychology
courses, degrees, scholarships, training.
ARTICLE:
ORGANIC
PSYCHOLOGY
The whole-life art and science of Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature (ECHN)
A
readily available Natural Attraction Ecology remedy and preventative to
heal
dualism and Natural
System Dysfuction (NSD)
How
we come to our senses by learning to trust our human nature and our
sensory experiences with natural systems in and around us.
If you are a living
watermelon cell living inside a living watermelon and you injure its
life, you also injure your own life and vice versa.
It's 2015, A.D. The life of Planet Earth is known to act like a living
organism; nobody can prove it is dead. It is insane to injure
Organism Earth yet that's what we are paid to do and to profit by doing
it more.
ECHN is an antidote for this madness. Folks get paid for
applying this remedy.
- Project NatureConnect
SPONSOR:
Project
NatureConnect
Organic
Psychology and Natural Attraction Ecology
Healing center distance learning to increase person/planet wellness.
.
PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: HOW
TO CREATE MOMENTS THAT LET EARTH TEACH
Educating
Counseling and
Healing With Nature
Body-Mind-Therapy Healing Degrees, Career
Training Courses and Jobs On Line
Project
NatureConnect
offers
nature-centered distant learning that enables you to add the benefits
of nature-connecting methods and credentials to your degree program
and/or your skills, interests and hobbies.
We honor your
prior training and life experience by providing grants and equivalent
education credit for it.
You
may take accredited or professional CEU coursework and/or obtain a
Nature-Connected Degree or Certificate in most disciplines including
body healing, mind healing, healing therapy and other interests. A
partial subject list is located at the bottom
of this page.
- Improve
your income and
satisfaction through independent, interdisciplinary or integrated study
and Ecopsychology.
- Help
people connect their
thoughts and feelings with the self-correcting and renewing ways of
nature.
- Heal
deteriorated personal social and
environmental well being.
- Add
the self-correcting sunlight beauty and
spirit of the natural world to your life and community.
Visit our Homepage
for
complete information
What they won't teach you at
Harvard or Yale:
ORGANIC
PSYCHOLOGY:
A
readily available remedy and preventative for
NATURAL SYSTEM
DYSFUNCTION (NSD)
How Natural
Attraction Ecology helps us come to our senses by learning to
trust our human-nature sensory experiences with natural systems within
and around us.
A
treatise that conveys practical information for personal, environmental
and global well being that we are taught to ignore because our society
denies that it has NSD and is addicted to its destructive artificial
ways and its conquest of natural systems within and about us.
Michael J. Cohen,
This article contains excerpts from the book The Web of Life
Imperative, Chapter
One and is based on the professionally reviewed Natural Attraction Ecology description in Educating Counseling and Healing With Nature. It is the most complete way to start the Orientation Course.
Source: Material that appears on
this web page treatise and its links is drawn from articles that have
been professionally reviewed and published in The Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, Journal of Environmental Education, Interpsych
Journal of Mental Health, Greenwich University Journal of Science and
Technology, Councelling Psychology Quarterly, Proceedings of the North
American Association for Environmental Education, Journal of the Oregon
Counseling Association, Taproots: Journal of Coalition for Education
Outdoors, The Trumpeter, U.S. Department of Education Educational
Resources Information Center, Outdoor Communicator, Clearing Magazine,
Nature Study, Between the Species, Cooperative Learning, International
Journal of Humanities and Peace and others. (see MJCohen
personal page)
|
"We are dysfunctional socially and environmentally
because we are cut off and isolated from the world of nature and the
natural."
-Albert
Gore and others
.
"Project NatureConnect provides holistic sensory
tools that help our psyche genuinely connect with natural systems
within and around us. We overcome Natural
System Dysfunction,
its destructive effects and our
discontents. Our personal, social and environmental well-being
improves, by using sustainable organic psychology education and
counseling techniques. They work because they enable our 54 natural
sense to tap into the wisdom of nature's balance, grace and restorative
powers on Earth."
-Michael
J. Cohen, Ph.D.
|
Synopsis:
This article demonstrates
that although most of us suffer to some degree from Natural System
Dysfunction (NSD), we are born as part of nature and the intelligence of its perfection,
its grace, well being, balance, beauty and restorative powers. Nature
is held together, communes and interconnects itself as a global
community through many natural system attractions and sensitivity to
them. We inherit the ability to consciously experience and register at
least 54 of these natural attractions as our senses, such as thirst,
hunger, sight, reason, community, temperature, consciousness and place.
Nature vs. Nurture: Our
culture/society educates, socializes and adulterates us to live, on
average, 95 percent of our lives indoors, separated from nature. Over
99 percent of our thinking is removed from how natural systems work
within and around us. With respect to our psyche, this is like removing a
fish from water. It produces NSD and its destructive effects in people
and places.
Our 53 natural senses are
frustrated and injured by their severance from their nurturing natural origins in
natural systems. For relief, our indoor thinking attaches them to our
less-than-perfect, cultural relationships and technologies. This
erosive substitution conditions/bonds us to suffer our stress, troubles
and discontents.
To make the human nature
adaptations needed to improve personal, social and environmental
well-being, we must use tools that are an antidote to NSD, that help us
transform our destructive bonding into constructive relationships.
This article helps us
benefit from the Organic Psychology tools of educating, counseling and healing with nature. They help us enjoy good
experiences we have had or will have in nature, backyard or
backcountry, or with our pet, or with the wind, sea or stars. Using
numerous quotations it demonstrates that great thinkers throughout
history have long recognized the grace, transformation value and
restorative powers of good experiences in nature.
Authentic nature is
non-literate; unlike us, it does not reason or communicate with words.
Natural System Dysfuctions arise because our society's cultural rewards
habituate us to register our personal life, and all of life, through
abstract language-reason ways of knowing and being that carry the duality of being foreign to
the non-literate, attraction sensitivity way nature works. This removes
from our consciousness the 53 beneficial, non-verbal sensory callings
and balancing ways of natural systems and their rewards. We disconnect
our thinking from being sensitive to eons, ways and wisdom of natural
systems around us in the environment, and their expression within us,
our 53-sense inner nature (our natural born "inner child").
Because the rest of nature
does not use our survival ability to think in abstractions, our
literate intelligence prejudicially rapes, demeans and conquers nature,
thinking it to be "a dirty, illiterate, non-intelligent, bloody tooth
and claw savagery." This fear prevents our thinking from consciously
connecting with attractions in natural systems within and around us or
even believing that this can be done. To our loss, our mind, heart and
spirit can't register or benefit from nature's peaceful eons of
sensitivity, balance and regenerative relationships because we
disconnect our conscious selves from it. This disorder has been
identified as NSD.
Our NSD loss of contact with
authentic nature makes us feel stressed and lackluster. We are
unfulfilled and deficient due to our estrangement from nature's
vitality and resilience. This produces depression and low self-worth;
it causes us to excessively crave rewarding sensations and goads us to
excessively use artificial substitutes for nature, be they responsible
or not. With nature's cooperation, beauty and renewing powers missing
from our lives, we want, and when we want there is never enough; greed,
vulnerability, frustrations, discontents and anger result.
A sensory nature-connecting
Organic Psychology tool, the Natural Attraction Ecology Natural
Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) helps our human nature
reverse the destructive NSD disconnection of our mind from nature and
its resulting adverse personal and environmental effects. NSTP enables
us to genuinely reconnect our senses and thinking to their balancing,
nurturing and renewing origins in natural systems. This nurture of
nature provides our consciousness with the lasting wisdom of nature's
safe and responsible fulfillments.
When we add NSTP to
counseling, education and healing techniques, we reconnect our psyche
to nature's perfection and its renewing powers. This body healing and
mind healing tool for healing therapy helps us
thoughtfully overcome NSD and reduce our personal and environmental
disorders.
Apply Now: online jobs, courses,
degrees and scholarships. .............................................................................................................
|
SUGGESTION:
read this article once through for content and to respond to the "Something
to think about" questions it raises. Then return to explore the
links that attract you.
Introduction
"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
"It
is quite clear to me after several years in the environmental movement
that all physical problems of man's impact on the environment -
pollution of the air and waters, the desecration of the land, the
contamination of the food chain - all start within the environment of
man's mind."
.....- Maurice Strong,
.....Founder or the United
Nations Environment ....Program,
.....Co-chair of the Commission
on Global ....Governance,
"If
you slice off part of a ball, you make both the ball and the slice
dysfunctional; neither will roll with the same perfection as when the
ball was whole. The same holds true for our extremely indoor lives.
They slice our mind, heart and spirit from the nurturing restorative
powers of nature, of the 'ball,' our living planet Earth."
.....- Michael J. Cohen
We are born as part of
nature. From the beginning of humanity's time on Earth we have embodied
nature's ability to produce and enjoy the homeostatic perfection of its organic
balance and beauty.
Our society is extremely separated from nature. As our socialization
disconnects our human nature and thinking from the whole of nature and
re-attaches it to our artificial indoor ways, we produce duality and Natural
System Dysfunction (NSD), the many nature vs nurture troubles
that neither nature nor nature-centered people display or create.
Globally this disconnection has placed people and ecosystems at risk.
To
our loss, by rewarding us with its money, power and support, our
society's prejudice against
nature conditions or addicts us to disconnect our thinking
from nature's balancing and restorative ways and the state of the world
reflects this. If you question whether or not the NSD thinking that
produces our troubles is a prejudicial addiction, just try to change
it. You might then ask yourself "Am
I really who I think I am?"
A
KEY TOOL
To
more fully understand NSD and how and why we remain disconnected,
consider the following intelligence test question, a type of question
that ordinarily helps society determine our mathematical aptitude to
qualify for a better job or higher salary:
If you count a dog's tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog
have?
"Five," of course, is the correct answer on a math examination if you
want to pass and get ahead. Intelligent people say "five" because it is
valid in mathematical systems and contemporary thinking. Math is highly
regarded and rewarded by our society. It is a core of scientific method.
However,
we don't solely live our lives or think in mathematical
systems. Our natural sense of reason can consider what we know from our
actual contact with a real, normal dog, too. That's when our multitude
of 54 natural senses
come into play: senses of sight, touch, motion, color, texture,
language, sound, smell, consciousness, community, trust, contrast, and
love.
Each
of these senses provide us with further nature vs. nurture information.
Each helps our sense of reason recognize the effects of NSD and make
more sense and more informed decisions. They enable our human nature
thinking to register that a tail is different than a leg, that
a dog has four legs, not five, no matter what is correct in
the story of mathematical logic.
Does
the fact that we have 53
natural senses, instead of just five, surprise you? Aristotle
reasoned in 340 B.C. that we have five senses and we are today born
into knowing that "5-leg" story today. However,
consider
this allegation:
"Aristotle
thought there were eight legs on a fly and wrote it down. For centuries
scholars were content to quote his authority. Apparently, not one of
them was curious enough to impale a fly and count its six legs."
.....- Stuart Chase
It
is a grave mistake for us not to take seriously the nature vs. nurture
difference between natural
sensory (4-leg) and disconnected abstract story (5-leg) ways of knowing
and our learned prejudice for the latter. As our book, The Web of Life Imperative,
shows, when these ways are not in balance, the NSD schism between their
different means of registering the world often produces destructive
relationships, stress and conflict within and around us.
Being
conscious of the label or name for a color is is a 5-leg function
while the sensory ability to register color itself is an 4-leg function
found in many animals and plants. You may directly experience the powerful influence of our highly trained and literate 5-leg way of knowing.
Human
nature and mentality consists of two dualistic phenomena:
Natural sensory (Four-leg ) knowing is a magnificent
psychological and physiological phenomenon with deep natural system
sensitivity roots into the eons, the heart
of Earth and the universe. It registers in
the older lymbic brain that makes up 90 percent of
our psyche. It brings our widely diverse multiplicity of natural senses
and sensory ways of registering the world into our immediate awareness
so that we can think with them. We are biologically, psychologically
and spiritually built to know and relate to the world through them, as
do the rest of nature's sensitivities for members of the web-of-life.
The
Old Brain and the whole of nature work through natural
attraction energy that was part and parcel of the creation of our universe
Abstract story thinking (Five-leg) knowing produces important
awareness through theories, imagination, labels and stories. However,
like a movie playing in our mind, it is a shortcut to reality. It, like
a movie, is not real, rather it abstracts reality through only three of
our
53 natural senses: language, reason and consciousness. They connect and bind
with each other via the newer frontal neocortex brain that makes up 10
percent of our psyche.
A
trustable 5-leg sentence that makes us conscious of something that is
reasonable is considered a story that is "true" or "a fact." However,
when we do not also seek and think with 4-leg natural sensory ability,
our abstract "truth" is disconnected from the whole of nature. This
results not only in personal desensitization but in the separation of
our thinking from the balanced grace and restorative powers of Earth's
natural systems within and around us. This profound loss produces the
many destructive side effects of our artificial world, dysfunctions
that we can not readily solve with nature-disconnected abstract
thinking alone.
The
New Brain is not trustable when it produces or believes stories that are isolated
abstractions.
"An
actually existing fly is more important than a possibly existing angel."
.....- Ralph Waldo Emerson
.
"We
can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we
created them."
.....- Albert Einstein
Whole thinking (Nine-leg) knowing addresses NSD. It produces a unifying,
whole-life, integrated, globally intelligent and balanced re-connection
between our connected natural senses and our abstract thinking
abilities. It also brings to our consciousness our inherent connections
with and our inherent natural attraction love of our Mother
Nature and Mother Earth, the beauty grace and restorative ways of
natural systems. This, to our benefit, helps us relate and co-create
more harmoniously and sustainably with natural systems in ourselves,
each other and the environment. It is trustable because is does not
mislead us by omitting important "subjective" information.
The
Whole Brain consists of natural attractions socialized by abstract
stories (socialized attractions) that can be
measured as intelligently reasonable or unreasonable by the sense of reason determining
their long term effects in support of the global life community (personal
and global quality of life).
Our
most challenging personal, social and environmental problems from NSD
result from us being paid, or otherwise rewarded, to embrace
disconnected, abstract 5-leg thinking and suffer its destructive
estrangement of our consciousness and thinking from the truths and ways
of nature connected 4-leg sensory knowledge. Personally and globally,
this habitual nature vs nurture disconnection underlies our troubles,
dysfunctions and discontents. It limits our human nature ability to
more fully enjoy, respect and make sense of life and creation. Today,
2011 A.D., over 25 percent of the American public is mentally ill, 80
percent suffers from stress and over 85 percent is in some kind of
counseling or support process.
"The
intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful
servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has
forgotten the gift."
.....- Albert Einstein
"We
are dysfunctional socially and environmentally because we are cut off
and isolated from the world of nature and the natural."
.....-Albert Gore
Human
behavior is rooted most deeply in nature's intentions and desire. The
rhythms of nature underlie all of human interaction: religious
traditions, economic systems, cultural and political organization. When
these human forms betray the natural psychic pulse, people and societys
get sick, nature is exploited and entire species are theratened.
...-Stephen Aizenstat
Apply Now: online
ecopsychology jobs, courses, degrees and scholarships.
Our
limited abstract thinking is unreasonable and detrimental. We might
kill or hurtfully stress a dog if we make it run too fast or far
because we think that it has five legs. However, that is exactly what
our socialization
is doing to us and the environment. The destructive nature vs.
nurture results speak for themselves in the deterioration of emotional,
psychological and biological systems within and around us.
Beneficial
Change
How
can our society change for the better if environmentally sound natural
system information, like this article, is
five-legged?
- We
receive and consider it in the 5-legged 15% of our mentality, the new
brain.
- Due
to NSD, it, like a bigot, has prejudiciously been 99.9% disconnected
from and is out of tune with the value of nature.
- It
has been financially and socially rewarded to conquer or exploit nature.
- It
has been disconnected from 4-legged sensory information that is
obtained through sensory contact with the self-correcting perfection of natural systems, backyard or backcountry.
Our
ability to change and be more supportive of natural systems within and
about us, is similar to getting the KKK to applaud the value of a
person of color. It's like "Talking to a brick wall." Due to NSD, with
respect to the environment, we lack "eco-intelligence." "Our whole life thinking is 24 cents short of a
quarter."
During
the sixty years since the publication of Fairfield Osborne's Our
Plundered Planet our mentality and relating has dramatically
changed to accommodate new technologies and the behaviors they demand.
We have accomplished this because we are not prejudiced against them.
Whole,
9-leg thinking enables us to thoughtfully bring nature's balancing and
restorative powers to our mind, reasoning and heart and add them to modern science. Therein lies our
salvation.
"Upon
arrival, the play of fresh wind, waves and colors on the rocky
shoreline filled our senses. A loving feeling of awe and belonging soon
unified us when only minutes before we were angrily competing for
status and to be winners"
- Project
NatureConnect participant
HISTORY
OF ORGANIC PSYCHOLOGY AND NATURAL ATTRACTION ECOLOGY
In 1952, in consultation with Dr. Paul F. Brandwein at Columbia
University, Michael J. Cohen
began to investigate why a more cooperative and friendly attitude
prevailed among graduate students while they were together on a field
trip to a natural area than when they were in a classroom. At that time
the answer seemed to be that "They were getting away from their
problems," not that they were being nurtured by natural systems
outdoors to be less competitive and more thoughtful sensitive and
supportive of each other and the area.
From
his personal history and education, in
1959, Dr. Cohen founded
a camp and expedition education school program based on whole-life thinking and relating
(9-leg). The National Audubon Society and many others called it the
most revolutionary school in America. They said it was "utopian" and
"on the side of the angels" because it produced cooperation at every
level and it did not display or produce the troubles that normally
plague human nature and contemporary society.
The
abstract reasoning secret to each participant's success, as well as the
success of the school, was that it made sense learn how to thoughtfully
learn while incorporating 4-leg natural sensations and feelings that
arose from their newly regrown sensory roots in natural area
ecosystems. These sensations acted as nature's guiding voice. They
replaced the NSD voice of "normal," often destructive ways that
ordinarily played in their mind even when they visited
natural areas.
The
value and rewards of "old brain" natural sensory connections freed the
participants' senses from their bonds to questionable 5-leg stories. It
helped them re-bond their senses to their sense of reason in congress
with 52 other rejuvenated natural senses while these senses were
connected to their nurturing origins and home in nature.
The above resulted
in bonding to consensus-based 9-leg human nature thinking, literacy and
relating that included information from, and the regenerative healing
powers of, natural systems. Each participant learned to thoughtfully
hold nature in awe and reverence as part of their general intelligence. This has recently been shown to increase IQ.l.
The path to full sanity
To
many abstract thinkers, this whole-human
nature way of thinking sounds ideal or impossible, but year
after year the beneficial results
of nine-leg knowing speak for themselves. They improve NSD
relationships and reduce stress, conflict, dysfunction and a wide range
of associated disorders. It is the addictive 5-leg prejudice against
nature that we each carry that prevents us from enjoying this process
and its rewarding outcomes.
Apply Now: ecopsychology online
courses, jobs, degrees and scholarships.
CHALLENGE
YOUR MIND
Can
we help our thinking reasonably enable us to come to our senses?
"I
go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in
order."
.....- John Burroughs
A responsible society acknowledges its destructive effects and acts to
eliminate them. The destructive NSD effects of industrial civilization
are undeniable with respect to its impact on the health of the web of
life and natural systems in people.
The
web is nature itself, a biological, connective, balancing, natural
attraction system process that the natural world and people's sensory
inner nature
(subconscious "inner child") hold in common.
Our basic abstract story relationship with nature has been to conquer
nature, exploit it and be rewarded in the name of economics, progress
and survival. We have done this so successfully that we are in denial that the rewards
we have obtained have psychologically conditioned or
addicted us to abusive, unsustainable ways of NSD thinking and
relating. For this reason, our personal, social and environmental
problems have become runaway. Addicted, our human nature no longer
knows how to stop assaulting nature around and within us although we
know we should and we desperately want to. Again, if you don't believe
this NSD is addictive thinking and behavior, just try and change it.
With
respect to our relationship with the web of life, we must go back to
basics. We must transform our NSD addictions to nature-substitutes and
learn how to be part of the web in a more constructive way. For too
long, in spite of great ancient and modern wisdom to the contrary, our
undeclared prejudice against nature has led us down our detrimental
path.
Knowingly
destroying our own life support system is a form of insanity.
.
"The purpose of life is to live in agreement with nature."
.....- Zeno, circa 520 BC
"Wind
over the lake: the image of inner truth."
.....- I Ching circa 1200 B.C.
What
is the web of life?
Experts
often depict the web of life by gathering a group of people in a
circle. Each person is asked to represent some part of nature, such as
a bird, soil, water, etc. A large ball of string then helps members of
the group see the interconnecting relationships between things in
nature. For example the bird eats insects so the string is passed from
the "bird person" to
the "insect
person." That is their connection. The insect lives in a flower, so the
string is further unrolled across the circle to the "flower person."
Soon a web of string is formed interconnecting all members of the
group, including two people representing humanity. An additional red ribbon
connects them. It represents that they alone can connect
with each other using word and story literacy.
Dramatically, people pull back slightly and sense how the string
peacefully unites, supports and interconnects them and of all life.
Then one strand of the web is cut signifying the loss of a species,
habitat or relationship due to NSD. Sadly, the weakening effect on all
is noted. Another and another string is cut. Soon the web's integrity,
support and power disintegrates along with its spirit. Because this
activity reflects the reality of our lives, this has brought some
participants in the activity to tearful feelings of hurt, despair and sadness.
Earth and its people increasingly suffer from "cut string"
disconnection, yet we continue to cut the strings.
Something to think about:
1.
To my loss, due to NSD, do I unknowingly cut or injure strands of the
web of life within or around me?
2.
Do I know how to stop myself from doing this?
Every part of the global life community, from
sub-atomic particles to weather systems, to sensitivities, thoughts and
feelings is part of the web of life. The intelligent natural attraction
process by which
they interact produces nature's harmonious, supportive ways and
prevents our runaway disorders from occurring in nature.
The process nature uses consists of interacting
while in contact with the whole of the web through its web attraction
strings. As part of the Web, we, along with everything else, are born
with this 9-leg ability. Our troubles begin when our abstract thinking
doesn't recognize or use it, denies its existence or hurts it. It
usually remains alive in us but
it becomes subconscious to protect us from constantly feeling its
frustration or hurt.
"There
is a constant and intimate contact among the things that coexist and
co-evolve in the universe - a sharing of bonds and messages that makes
reality into a stupendous network of interaction and
communication. It is this 'sharing of messages' in Nature
that keeps it in balance."
.....- Ervin Laslo
Something to think about:
3.
Am I aware of the strands of the web of life that I was born with and
still contain?
4.
Do I enjoyably use them and their ways to build responsible
relationships with people and places?
5.
Due to NSD, have I been taught or forced to make them subconscious?
Dr.
Cohen often asks the web of life activity participants if they ever
went into a natural area and actually saw strings holding things
together there. They say"no, that would be crazy." He responds, "If
there are no strings in nature, what then are the actual strands that
hold the natural community together in balance?"
It is always very, very quiet.
Pay close attention to this significant silence. It flags the missing
link in our thinking, perception and relationships that produces many
troubles. Dr. Cohen and others have identified 54 webstring natural
attraction senses
that people share with nature. For example, a sense of hunger
connects the bird to the insect, a sense of place
connects the insect to live in the flower.
The web's sensitivity strings are a vital 4-leg,
natural sensitivity part of survival, just as real and important as the
plants, animal and minerals that they interconnect, including
ourselves. The strings are as true as 2 + 2 = 4, sensory facts as
genuine as us. As part of nature, our human nature is born
with the natural ability to register and know them empirically
(through nature-contact thinking and awareness) but we learn to seldom
recognize or exercise this ability. Without seeing, sensing or
respecting the strings in nature and our inner nature, we break, injure
and ignore them rather than nurture them. We omit how we attractively
experience
them so knowing the web of life becomes complex
and mechanical.
The disappearance of the natural attraction
strings in our
consciousness produces a subconscious void, an uncomfortable NSD
psychological emptiness in our human nature thoughts and lives that we
constantly try to fill. We want, emotionally and materially, and when
we want, there is never enough. We lose inherent feelings of natural
wholeness, of self-worth and self esteem. We become greedy, stressed
and reckless as we try to gain webstring fulfillment and self-value.
This places the Earth, others, and ourselves at risk.
"We
have these prejudices and as long as we think that these prejudices are
valid we exclude huge subjects of thinking. And that exclusion is what
is really blinding."
...........- Dr. Amit Goswami
Today, the NSTP's organic psychlogy nature
reconnecting activities enable us to reverse NSD by bringing webstrings
natural sensory attraction relationships back into our lives. Their
presence in our thinking helps reinstate balanced 9-leg personal and
environmental relationships. They help us register that our planet is,
or acts like, a living organism, Mother Earth, as Dr. Cohen noted in
1965 and describes in How
Nature Works. There he notes that the dance of natural systems operate the
same in Organism Earth as they do in a wolf, tree, forest or us. Earth
is our other body with one major exception: industrial society thinks
differently than Mother Earth works.
"The Earth is a functionally integrated system -as
much an organic being as you and I- that exists not for man's benefit
but for it's own.
...........-
David Laing, The Earth System
"We do indeed belong here. The earth is more than
just a home, it's a living system and we are part of it."
...........-James
Lovelock
"Speak
to the Earth and it will teach thee."
...........- The
Bible, Job: 12, 7
Something to think about:
6.
Am I aware of the strands of the web that lie within and around me?
7.
Is it important to me to stop thinking in nature-disconnected ways of
NSD that place Earth and its people at risk?
Apply Now: online degrees, jobs,
courses, and scholarships.
Source Of The Strings
The strings are physically and biologically of, by
and from
nature and creation. At some level
of sensitivity-consciousness register as
attractions in plants, animals and minerals. Since you are part of
nature, the strings are in
you. You can learn to nurture them back into
your awareness and and relate harmoniously to them through a
nature-centered self-improvement process that helps us let the strings
consciously teach us their knowledge. Many people disbelieve this
because our human
nature is 5-leg story (as represented by the red
ribbon) taught/programmed to conquer, not respect, nature
including the webstrings. We have also often learned that the strings,
that manifest themselves as dozens of senses in natural systems within us (our
inner nature, inner child, self or being), are taboo, flaky,
subjective, spiritual, unscientific, bad, wrong, etc. Thus, many
webstring senses can have hurt attached to them, hurt that blocks the
webstrings from freely entering our consciousness where they can be
felt and enter our values and thinking. Often, out of hurt and
frustration, the strings disappear rather than support us when we need
them. This removal of our natural power leads to apathy and NSD.
Something to think about:
8.
Is my 5-leg thinking prejudiced against the strings and nature's ways
to the point that it influences my relationships?
9.
Am I apathetic when I'd benefit by being active?
To
remedy NSD and connect with nature our thinking must include a sensory
4-leg way of knowing. Our natural senses connect us with the living
Earth around us in every moment. If we don't understand our
interdependence and relationship to nature, it is because we have 5-leg
disconnected our webstring senses from their source. We have dismissed
them as irrelevant. We have forgotten their significance. Yet,
throughout history, many people have cherished their webstrings and
recognized their importance:
"We
cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand
invisible threads, and along these sympathetic fibers our actions run
as causes and return to us as results."
.....- Herman Melville
.
"All
things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not
weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to
the web, he does to himself."
.....-Chief Seattle/Ted Perry
.
"There is one common flow, one common breathing, all things are in
sympathy."
.....- Hippocrates circa 450 B.C.
Scientifically,
it is clear that the dance of natural systems organizes itself with webstrings.
Moment by moment, the dance is attracted to create additional strings
and connections that increasingly weave, balance and repair the web of
life. This is not done haphazardly; rather it forms a natural
attraction
intelligence, an ecology that produces nature's optimum of life,
diversity,
cooperation, balance and beauty. It is worth remembering that the
process is inclusive and caring enough to globally produce and sustain
the web of life without creating garbage. At the macro level, nothing
is left out, unattached or unwanted, a way to describe unconditional
love.
"And
the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of
love, is to begin from the beauties of earth."
.....- Plato circa 400 B.C.
.
Something to think about:
10.
Can I allow myself to believe that natural relationships contain, or
are, a form of unconditional love?
Apply Now: online scholarships,
ecopsychology jobs, courses, degrees
Attraction
Energies
Experts,
including Albert Einstein, and Jonas Salk, recognize that from
subatomics to solar systems, common sense and all intact relationships,
physical or otherwise, must be held together by something. Without this
"glue," they would fall apart, and they don't That "something" is an
essence of nature, the pulsating natural attraction energies that Cohen calls
webstrings.
By
definition alone, the statement, above, makes sense. What we call
repulsion can just as easily be recognized as attraction to something
more immediate and important. For example, when in a dangerous
situation do we run away in fear (repulsion) or run for (in attraction
to) our life? Both
are survival attractions. Was
the "big bang" a profound explosion or a profound attraction to growth?
Isn't the burning pain from a hot object an attraction to find a cooler
environment?
"From
atoms and molecules to human beings with developed consciousness, all
entities feel attraction for one another. . . . attraction is the law
of nature."
.....- P.R. Sarkar
Elements
of Regeneration
Pulsating webstring
attractions in nature are the heart of its recycling and purification
process. These unifying forces are the power in natural systems that
reconnect detached natural relationships and thereby eradicate
contamination and pollution. This helps the dance of Nature sustain its wellness,
balance and beauty. For example, nature purifies the contamination of
air and people through attraction energies that beckon air to flow
through people and natural areas. In so doing, air nourishes people and
nature with each other's "waste" products. In the process, air also
recycles its own purity as well as strengthens the diverse integrity of
the plant, animal and mineral kingdoms. This same restoration process is
also true in nature's other cycles such as water, carbon and life
cycles. Satisfying natural attractions in congress is a source of
nature's perfection.
It is most significant that on atomic as well as
global levels nature's recycling of air is fueled by attraction
energies, a fundamental binding force, a form of love that some might
consider highly intelligent or spiritual.
"Nature
is the unseen intelligence that loved us into being."
.....- Elbert Hubbard
Something to think about:
11.
Can I believe that nature is a perfection of its own, that it nurtures
person and planet and does not produce any garbage/pollution because it
consists mostly, if not only, of attraction relationships?
Whenever
we safely make contact with attractions in nature, they naturally
trigger our
brain to release Dopamine and Oxytocin, neurotransmitters that produce good
feelings that we constantly seek. These good
feelings are a vital natural gratification reward. They help
our thinking become aware that a beneficial survival connection to
natural attraction energies has been made, a connection that
contributes to replenishing, regenerating and sustaining all of life.
Thus, each attraction sensation, feeling or emotion in nature is a
rational, sensory, rewarding way of knowing and relating that we
biologically inherit from and hold in common with nature.
Neuroscientists
identify attractions as Freud's "drives" that they call "seeking
urges." Each encourages and shapes good citizenship and recycling in
the global life community. Sensing and appreciating the role these
attraction energy webstrings play is abstract thinking at its finest.
Reasoning that includes them is whole life thinking.
"This
world - the shadow of the soul, or 'other' me - lies wide around. Its
attractions are the keys which unlock my thought and make me acquainted
with myself."
.....- R. W. Emerson, circa 1860
Human behavior is rooted most deeply in nature's
intentions and desire. The rhythms of nature underlie all of human
interaction: religious traditions, economic systems, cultural and
political organization. When these human forms betray the natural
psychic pulse, people and societies get sick, nature is exploited and
entire species are threatened.
.
...-Stephen Aizenstat
Something to think about:
12.
Do I believe that nature's Oxytocin encouragement of my natural
attractions in natural areas is an origin of happiness, of my ability
to feel good?
Properly
designed nature-connecting activities help us create moments
that let
genuine contact with natural attraction webstring energies realign and
recycle the misguided story attachments in our human nature that draw
us into destructive relationships and dependencies.
At
night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face
against mine, breathe into me.
Close the language door and open the love window.
The moon won't use the door, only the window.
.....-
Jedaluddin
Rumi,
1207-1273
A
major solution to many problems is to genuinely enable our thinking to
return, backyard or backcountry, to the "Garden of Eden," and use its
natural attraction powers to help us recycle our destructive stories.
thoughts It helps us co-create a brighter whole-life future for the
Garden and ourselves.
"Life
is a finely woven net in which all worlds are joined - ancestors,
spirits, humans, animals and the natural universe - bonded by the
timeless eternal spirit of that which has always been and is."
.....- T. C. McLuhan
Apply Now: online courses, jobs,
degrees and ecopsychology scholarships.
Our need for connection
If we slice off part of a ball, we make the ball
and the slice dysfunctional. Neither will roll with the same perfection
as when the ball was whole. Similarly, we are born as part of nature
and its globe, Planet Earth, but our story world slices us from genuine
sensory natural attraction contact with the balanced, life-enhancing
ways of Nature and
Earth. Our disconnectedness excludes something very valuable from our human nature and being.
Slicing our mentality from nature distorts our
thinking and produces NSD. For example, we learn to think that we
"tame" the pets we love, to fit into our way of life. But, in
actuality, what we really do is restructure our pets to be trusting
enough to invite us into their lives. When we become part of our pet's
nature-connected attraction way of knowing and being we enjoy a glimpse
of life in nature's love. Sadly, this is a life that we have lost via
our disconnection.
The slicing away of our psyche from the rewards
and beauty of Mother Nature's grace, perfection and renewing powers
leaves us feeling empty due to NSD. Our self-worth declines while our
needs for fulfillment entice or bully us into entering relationships
that are unreasonable and result in destructive activities, greed and
disorders. We are bewildered (wilderness separated) and as such:
We are prejudiced against the dance of nature because we
recognize nature is not as "abstract thinking intelligent" as we have
become accustomed to define as intelligence. As a disconnected slice of
life, we have lost the ability to relate fairly or favorably to the
whole of life. Nature-disconnected stories separate our thinking from
the life-supportive wisdom of natural systems.
Our womb-to-tomb suppression of our inherent human nature ability
to make conscious contact with the rest of nature makes us think that
we are unable to make this contact. Good evidence to the contrary, our
bigotry disputes sciences and people that
make thoughtful sensory connections with nature's dance.
Each time we build relationships without obtaining
consent from nature for them (because we have never learned how or why
to obtain that consent), we further denigrate nature and reinforce our
our separation from our planet mother.
We don't believe that embracing, rather than
conquering, nature increases a wholeness that improves the well-being
of person and planet.
We deny that the rewards we receive for supporting
the destructive thinking and ways of our sliced-off world
psychologically addict us to detrimental technologies, stories and
relationships. We deny that nature-connected satisfactions can help us
overcome these addictions.
By omitting nature's knowledge and restorative
powers, the disconnected way we think is polluted and produces NSD
behavior that pollutes natural and social systems. Our society has
become an unseen war that exploits the dance of nature within and around us. Its
violence and competition attracts us because it helps us deny our NSD
and explain to ourselves why we hurt.
"A
drunk one night lost his watch in the middle of a city block; he never
found it because he searched for it at the street corner where the
light was much brighter."
In
industrial society, isn't the light we see misleading us? Do
we even know what we are really looking for?
Most
of our populace and all of our leaders ARE PARTICIPATING IN A MASS,
HALLUCINATORY, ANTI-NATURE FANTASY in which:
* the megatons of waste we dump in our rivers and bays are not
poisoning the water, our body or our spirit.
* the hydrocarbons we pump into the air are not changing the climate of
the world or deteriorating our health.
* over-fishing is not depleting the oceans, over-consumption does not
hurt the environment.
* living estranged from the perfection of nature's grace and
self-correcting powers does not reduce our resilience or result in
dysfunctions
* fossil fuels will never run out and our fossilized thinking about
nature's value does not produce our excessiveness, abusiveness and
greed.
* our senses are not part of the way natural systems work and
disconnecting them from nature does not make us want so that we feel we
never have, or are, enough.
* wars that kill masses of civilians are an appropriate way to keep our
hands on what's left and the economy rolling.
* we are not desperately overdrawn at the environmental or emotional
bank, we are not prejudiced against nature,
* sensory activities that connect our thinking to nature's healing ways
don't help us increase our well being,
* and really, although by the age of seven our kids bond to this mass
hallucination, addict to technologies and need to be drugged, they are
all right.
- Barbara Kingsolver (extended)
If
you have every had a good experience in nature, think about it for a
while now, then note, as you read, whether that experience tends to
confirm the points that this article brings to attention. What
webstrings in nature's dance (sensations, feelings, attractions, values, reasoning,
attachments, loves, enchantment) come into your awareness?
We seldom recognize that we need our human nature thinking
to be genuinely connected with webstrings so our mind can heal, purify
and contribute to life's welfare as part of nature's restorative
processes. We fail to recognize that we don't own our webstring senses
and feelings, rather, as with our material selves, we share them with
nature. We are the only dancers in nature's dance that are literate. The omission of webstrings in our reasoning disables our
ability to think with attractions, like nature's dance works.
This is why I say love is a flowing, because it's
not "My" Love it is God's/Creation's/Nature's and it flows to
me and through me. When I hold it and claim it to be mine it stops
flowing and suffering happens.
.....- Vincent Brown
As caring people, we deserve the use of a powerful
recuperation tool that is readily available, a tool that
helps our human
nature
overcome disorders by reconnecting our polluted thinking with nature's
balancing and renewing ways.
"Nature is doing her best each moment to make us
well.
.....-
Henry David Thoreau
"We are not ourselves when nature, being
oppressed, commands the mind to suffer with the body.
.....-William
Shakespeare
Something to think about:
13. If the dance of nature is guided to its balanced ways and
well being by natural attraction webstrings, am I, while sliced from
nature's wholeness, willing to make more sense of my life and let
webstrings in nature influence me?
Apply Now: ecopsychology online
degrees, jobs, courses and scholarships.
Because we are so disconnected from nature, our
leaders seldom recognize that our sensory appetite for air (our
desire/attraction to breathe) is a webstring
sensation and wisdom we can respect and learn
from. Neither do they recognize that we need webstrings to help us
purify faulty thought processes, heal ourselves, and thereby contribute
to life's welfare as part of the natural recycling process. Conflict
and suffering result from this omission in our leadership.
"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
Something to think about:
14.
Do some of my problems stem from a hurtful sensory survival omission in
my reasoning that has led me to enter destructive relationships?
.
The
attractiveness of God
Reasoning about attraction energies recognizes
that many issues and differences between various beliefs regarding God
are today, as through the ages, a major source of human conflict, death
and suffering as well as joy. Each person or group is so strongly
attracted to his or her God that they are at times willing to argue,
fight, shed their life or take the lives of others to honor their
love-of-God relationship. This, along with the passionate forms of
worship people practice, strongly suggests that one of God's major
qualities is attractiveness. God is naturally very attractive to human nature. We
are even attracted to allow ourselves to fear disobeying God's
commandments.
Natural attractions are an observed essence of the materials and
energies in the dance of nature of our universe, Earth and
ourselves. This suggests that God created this universe from His/Her
attractiveness. He/She may have made other universes from His/Her vast
knowledge, power or size. If, however, we are to be true to ourselves
and trust our senses, rationality and experiences, it becomes
reasonable to consider that nature's dance community of our universe
has grown from the original Big Bang seed that consisted of God's
attraction energies. For us to know God while
ignoring his will for the Big Bang to be and grow nature's attraction
dance as our
universe is devisive; a duality that subconsciously divides our spirit and
creates the conflicts and disorders that we suffer.
"I
believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
.....- Frank Lloyd Wright
"Although
each particular thing be conditioned by another particular thing to
exist in a given way, yet the force whereby each particular thing
perseveres in existing follows from the eternal necessity of God's
nature."
.....- Spinoza (1632-1637)
"I thank God for originating the world with natural attraction and the wonderful life gifts that it provides."
- Project NatureConnect Student
Something to think about:
15.
Is there room in my thinking to know, or accept that some people know,
natural attractions as an expression or essence of the Divine and
Creation that we hold in common with the natural world?
16.
Do I see a difference between natural attractions and pure love?
Apply Now: online scholarships, jobs,
courses, degrees
The dance of natural systems and nature-centered people does not
display the runaway war, abusiveness, pollution and mental and
environmental disorders that plague our lives. These problems arise
because our estrangement from nature prejudiciously and additively
deprives our thinking from sensory contact with webstrings, their
intelligence, nurturance and energies. (If you don't believe this is a
psychological addiction, just try to get a group of people to make
genuine contact with webstrings part of their daily lives.)
Our
human nature spends, on average, less than 12 hours per lifetime in
whole-life, conscious, sensory contact with the dance of nature. How well could we
read, write or think if we only spent 12 hours of our total life
learning to do it? Without ongoing conscious sensory contact with and
satisfactions from our sensory origins, for example, our thinking still
foolishly lets us sell and smoke cigarettes while fully knowledgeable
that they contain poisons. In addition, our "stringless" abstract story
solutions for runaway personal and global problems are as ineffective
as the warning labels on cigarette packages. Information alone is not
enough to change addiction.
"There
must be the generating force of love behind every effort that is to be
successful."
.....- Henry David Thoreau
An
essence of separation:
It
is common knowledge that, with the exception of humanity, no member of
the web of life relates, interacts or thinks through words. The web is
a non-verbal "illiterate" dance experience consisting of in-the-moment direct
webstring attraction relationships, not words, stories, videos or
images. Few, if indeed any, plant, animal or mineral string of nature's
ancient web consists of literary communication or attachments to it.
Language is a great asset to
human survival when we use it to help make and sustain sensory contact
with the web and its intelligent ways. Language, however, is usually a
shortcut consisting of abstractions of real relationships. It becomes a
source of our problems when, through nature-disconnecting stories, it
excessively removes our thinking from our sensory origins in the web
and its balanced wisdom. For example, sensory discontents initiated by
our separation from nature's dance psychologically addict us to the story that
we must conquer nature in order to to fulfill our natural senses:
hunger, thirst, taste, love etc. Since we are dancers in nature's dance, we addict to
conquering the webstrings of each other and ourselves thereby producing
mental anguish and war. To find more lasting peace, we must heed a new
story: "Learn how to reconnect your ruptured sensory webstrings with
their brilliant, fulfilling, restorative origins in the lifeweb. Find peace by
freeing them from their fear and imprisonment in your subconscious."
Something to think about:
17.
Am I a victim of thinking in 5-leg language and stories that isolate me
from the unifying web process that peacefully holds the global life
community and people in balance?
18.
Do I have symptoms of this, such as undue loneliness, sadness, stress,
excessive wants, depression, lack of attention, insensitivity,
frustration, abusiveness or underlying anger?
Apply Now: online degrees,
scholarships, jobs, courses
In
contemporary society, our feeling and thinking being extremely
separated from nature painfully dismembers our psyche from its origins.
Our psyche silently suffers a profound loss of contact with its
nurturing sensory and sensibility roots in nature's webstring ways and
intelligence. We contain this bag of hurt. Any word or incident that
reminds us of our psychological dismemberment, of our abandonment,
breaks the silence. It releases the emotional pain of dismemberment
into consciousness and we feel and react to it. How we feel colors how
we perceive and think about our relationships.
As
reflected by the state of the world, indoors or outdoors, our mentality
is often guarded, stressed, ill, wanting and destructive in response to
our disconnection pain. Our human nature suffers from a deficiency of
nature's attractive perfection. a deficiency of the liferaft of peace
wisdom, and restorative powers inherent in the natural world. We become
"ecozombies;" our thinking is deadened to the ways and values of
natural systems within and around us.
Something to think about
19.
Do I experience hurt due to the natural environment actually not
supporting me?
20.
Do I experience pain subconsciously triggered by memories of my
dismemberment from nature?
Restoration
through reconnection
NSTP
enables us to reverse many of our nature vs. nurture troubles because
it effectively addresses their source. The process starts by having us
learn how to consciously make enjoyable, non-verbal, sensory contacts
directly with the authentic life web and its members, backyard or
backcountry, not with substitutes for them. This makes sense because,
with respect to the perfection of nature's eons of experience, there is
no known substitute for nature, the real thing. Nature is the
fountainhead of authority about how it works to produce its special
perfection. Our sensory contacts in natural areas
enable us to thoughtfully obtain
nature's consent and assistance to consciously, sentiently
reattach the strings within us to their nurturing origins, the strings
in the web. We can feel and enjoy the connection; it is an attractive
experience in nature.
NSTP
then helps us safely translate our sensory attraction feelings
into verbal language and share them. This lets our sensory connections
with the web feelingly validate themselves in whole life words and
stories that register in the thinking and reasoning part of our psyche.
It is important to recognize that without this verbalization and
sharing, NSTP is like an engine without gasoline; it can but doesn't
produce the results we seek.
"Nothing
is more indisputable than our senses."
.....- Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
By
using NSTP as a tool, we help nature guide our thinking to work like
nature works. We sensuously enjoy nature's harmonious wisdom and
support as it enters our relationships. In this nature-reconnecting
process, the natural world, be it potted plant or wilderness, becomes
our classroom, mentor and library. It helps us peacefully co-create a sustainable future
with the global life community.
Something to think about:
21.
Does it make sense for me to want to learn through contact with natural
systems?
22.
Have I prejudicially learned that doing this is "flaky" or "fuzzy
thinking" and may make me look foolish like a "hippy" or "Earth Muffin"
so I won't do it?
NSTP
helps us recognize that the web strings are actually natural
attractions. Every space, every atom and its nucleus, every "nothing"
consists of, expresses and relates through natural attractions. All of
nature, including us, contains these attractions. When we attach them
only to people we may form caring, socially healthy relationships and
communities. However, these relationships are often excessively
exploitive of nature since, without recognizing webstrings, nature is
left out of the equation and our awareness. Nature bats last. Sooner or
later our omission of supporting nature catches up with us.
As
mentioned earlier, webstring attractions feelingly register in our
consciousness as sensations we call senses.
For example: as natural loves for being conscious, for sight, touch,
and sound; as our attractions to water (including thirst); color and
community; as attachments for nurturing, belonging and trust; as
affinities for reason and contact with nature; for wholeness. Senses of
place, gravity, pain, motion, spirit, temperature, fear and trust, are
each attractions that, when energized, register and help guide our
conscious thoughts. We seldom want to give up our potential to register
them.
Something to think about:
23.
Would my relationships be more rewarding if I could learn to increase
my sensitivity to natural attraction energies in people and places
around me?
Apply Now: online scholarships, jobs,
courses, degrees
People
and things think and love through at least 53 different sensory
attraction strings, not just five as we are usually taught. Each string
is an intelligent way of knowing that inherently attracts to and blends
with other strings to build and be guided by the common good.
"The
senses, being the explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge."
.....- Maria Montessori
Nature
helps create, sustain and balance life through these powerful 53
sensitivities in concert. To our loss, our excessive nature vs. nurture
separation from nature addicts us to 5-leg think and relate with only
three of our many natural senses, the three senses of reason, language
and consciousness. They make up the new-brain and that is about 10
percent of our full capacity to be aware of the world and how it works.
The loss to our consciousness of our the world's full sensory wisdom
unbalances our thinking.
"The
moment my inner attraction string for color touched the color string of
this woodland, I experienced a special joy of enlightenment."
.....- Raymond Sierra
A
metaphor concerning seven blind wise men touching and arguing about an
elephant conveys the dilemmas of our blindness to nature and our
natural senses. In the story, each blind man argues his experience
story based upon what part of the elephant he is touching. While one
calls the elephant a pipe (the tusk), another says the elephant is a
snake (trunk) or like a rope (tail).
Such
differences often lead to demoralization hate and war because we
psychologically bond to, and fight for, stories we know to be "the
truth." We seldom reconcile our story differences by making further
common contact with the sensory integrity of the whole elephant or
whole of the web of life. Satisfying many of their additional natural
attraction senses would have led each wise man to further explore the
elephant and further discover the diverse integrity of the animal, each
other and themselves that they held in common.
"It
is difficult to get people to understand something when their salary
(or other reward) depends upon them not understanding it."
.....- Upton Sinclair
Something to think about:
24.
Has my salary and other rewards during my extensive disconnection from
nature unknowingly blinded me to the existence and value of my sensory
attraction strings?
Once
disconnected from nature, our thinking blindly loses contact with the
truths that it needs to recover from the absence of these truths. That
is why, in our nature-estranged society, it is best to learn NSTP by
doing it. The Process helps us let
our 53 natural webstring senses plug
directly into their attraction origins in nature and energize. This
recharge brings the web's supportive string signals further into our
consciousness, thinking and being. This helps us let contact with
nature and its restorative powers increase our whole life sensibility,
balance and wellness. In addition, we give natural attraction energies
a chance to recycle and purify on their own as only they can do. This
renewing power in nature helps us feel better and our outlooks and
relationships improve. Anybody who has had a good experience
in nature has enjoyed this phenomenon, yet they are often unaware of
its significance. Through NSTP, these moments and their
benefits become available at will.
Too
often we forget that we are addicted to being conscious of the limited
movies that run in our mind, not conscious of the real world around and
within us. Even when immersed in the wild beauty of a natural area, our
mind most often is thinking in words about our problems, relationships
and rewards elsewhere. As we learn NSTP it enables us to break this
nature vs. nurture story world addiction and choose to bring webstrings
to our thinking no matter where we are.
"I
believe that the universe is the manifestation of its attraction to be
and to grow, that all its parts are different growths and expressions
of the same original attraction. They are all in attractive
communication with each other and, thereby, parts of one organic
whole. The whole has designed itself in humanity to register in
at least fifty-four natural attraction senses. All parts of the whole
are so beautiful, and are felt by me so intensely, that I am compelled
to love it and to think of it as divine."- Robinson Jeffers edited into NSTP by Michael J. Cohen
Something to think about:
25.
Have I taken for granted that it is normal for my awareness to be out
of contact with the immediate moments of my life rather than recognize
that this phenomenon is a rewarded addiction to limited stories of the
past or future?
Apply Now: online jobs, ecopsychology
scholarships, courses, degrees
Verbal
reconnection
"The
beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name."
.....- Confucius
Through NSTP, each of our natural senses is
identified by their whole life right name, "Webstring: A seamless
sensory natural attraction string of the global web of life community
within
and around us." Webstrings feelingly help us bring nature into our human nature awareness
and thinking at will. No offense intended, but to call the webstrings
anything else, as we are often trained to do, (senses, feelings, God,
instincts, needs, drives, spirit, desires, blessings, beliefs,
subjective, bias, angels, attractions, energies) tends to keep our
thinking disconnected from the wholeness of the web of life and its
ability to establish and restore balance. This leads us to trespass
ecosystems and produce environmental deterioration.
In
our nature-separated society, we are bonded to think and know through
5-leg words that produce separation. That disconnection is the
psychological heart of many insurmountable personal and global problems.
"There's
nothing either good or bad...but thinking makes it so!"
.....- William Shakespeare
Something to think about:
26.
Am I missing contributions that my natural self can make to my
relationships?
27.
Was I trained to 5-leg deny my natural self?
Guidance from Attractions
The
success of NSTP and the webstring model is its accuracy. It helps us
recognize a secret aspect of how nature works, a secret we too often
learn to ignore or conquer. The secret is that nature is an attractive dance. Webstrings are
attractions; nature primarily works by attractions. This means that
each webstring we experience as a non-attraction (for example, fear,
pain, spiritual distress, or excessive thirst, hunger, temperature,
motion etc) is part of nature's living "strong-weak, strong-weak"
attraction pulse, the sway and gyration of the dance. It is actually also an attraction, a natural love for
the
survival of life. It is worth repeating that each of these
discomforts attracts us to find
more rewarding natural attractions when danger lurks, to seek safety.
For example: we become aware of attractions to coolness when a fire
becomes too hot, or to less painful areas when thorns are sharp. These
4-leg warning messages are attractive. We would not survive without
them. It is when we don't, or can't 9-leg heed them that trouble
arises. We don't run away from danger, we run for
our lives.
"The
laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side
of the most sensitive."
.....- Henry David Thoreau
Something to think about:
28.
Do I negate or demean the contributions that some webstrings make
because they interfere with my immediate plans, wishes or enjoyment?
29.
Have I been trained to see some webstrings as negative?
30.
Do I overcome negative webstrings and thereby upset a natural balance?
Apply Now: online courses,
scholarships, jobs, degrees
Sensible
education
Making
space in our lives to do activities that genuinely reconnect us with
nature has proven to produce responsible relationships. Once you learn
how to do a reconnecting activity, you we own it and can teach it to
others.
The
web of life only exists today because yesterday, through attraction
contacts, every component of the web consensually "educated" its
neighbors about how its attractions to them supports them and vice
versa. This basic consciousness process occurs moment by moment in
nature; it is an essence of all life relationships and survival. People
are part of nature, it is true in humans, too. To our loss, our
nature-separated lives remove this knowledge from our thinking.
Cultures that exist today only exist because they are successful in
educating their members about how the culture works and its value; the
members, in turn, carry on the culture. Today, globally, the Internet
empowers people to engage in the webstring education process by
enjoying and teaching webstring connected consciousness through
distance learning activities, courses and communication. In local
communities, person-to-person webstring activity education occurs as
well.
"One
touch of Nature makes the whole world kin."
.....- William Shakespeare
Considering
the vital natural and cultural survival value of webstring education,
it is no surprise that, genetically, our mind and bodies, our human
nature, learns only 15% of what we read but 90% of what we teach. If
you want to personally and globally come into balance, teach what you
have read here:
"Thoughtful,
continuing, consensually shared, sensory reconnecting activity
attractions in natural areas bring into our consciousness the webstring
connections with Earth that help our heart and mind build balanced
relationships within and around us."
.....- The Web of Life Imperative
Our
sensory webstring of reason demands that we engage in webstring
activities. We shape our destiny by choosing, or not choosing, to do
what our sense of reason demands.
Earth and its people are at risk. Isn't it time that we come to our
senses by letting 4-leg attraction strings bring us to them through
enjoyable nature reconnecting activities? The strings can do this
because they are natural sensory loves, an essence of life itself. D.
H. Lawrence validated this when he said:
"Oh,
what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal,
merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are
bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the Earth and sun and
stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we
plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on
blooming in our civilized vase on the table."
.....- D. H. Lawrence
By
thoughtfully learning how to become conscious of webstrings and teach this awareness, we
reattach our ability to love to its roots in nature. This restores love
to its fullness and heals our nature vs. nurture bleeding. It is
important because we do not fight to save what we don't love.
Something to think about:
31.
Do I want to professionally and personally further my life and all of
life by learning to let contact with Earth itself nurture my inner
nature's isolation, hurt and fear of additional rejection?
32.
Can I really get to know who I am and help people and Mother Earth if
the thinking part of me seldom consciously registers, validates or
reconnects my inner nature and the web of life?
Confucius might
say: "In the web of life model, if you 9-leg call each of your senses
and feelings a "webstring attraction" you will help your life and all
of life improve because the word webstring signals "a guiding web of
life attraction" rather than "an isolated sensation or abstract.' In
the web of life model, webstrings are as real and true as 2 + 2 =4, and you learn to think and feel with 53 of them in concert."
"It
is absurd to think that because modern people
are part of nature, our destructive ways are natural instincts. That is
the same as incorrectly thinking that a normal dog has five legs. We
differ from nature in that our thinking is addicted to abstract
stories that separate us from nature's
perfection and create problems, while nature functions via empirical
webstring attractions that register, support and restore natural
systems, including our senses, within and about us."
.....- Michael J. Cohen
The
Web of Life
Imperative book identifies natural attractions or
webstrings or webloves as NNIAL strings meaning Now,
Nameless, Intelligent,
Attraction, Loves. People who can't make sense of some situations are
often found to be in DeNNIAL (of their addictions to destructive
substitutes for webstrings).
Something to think about:
33.
Does my 5-leg tendency to simply call my sensuous experiences "senses'
and "feelings" deprive me from consciously knowing and enjoying the
9-leg wisdom of respecting them as attraction energy strands of the web
of life and thereby beneficially connecting my thinking with the Web and its rewarding wisdom?
As
the examples below demonstrate, readably available sensory activities
that produce conscious connections with Earth make a nature vs. nurture
difference. The sense (webstring) of reason signals that it is rational
for us to engage in these activities and reverse NSD. They help us
enjoy and promote nineleg
thinking.
Something to think about:
34.
Nine-leg thinking has demonstrably helped people strengthen
economically and environmentally sound personal growth and social
justice. Am I tapping into the the benefits and powers of webstrings to
help me bring them into my community and nation?
35.
Do I want to help our leaders use and promote nine-leg thinking?
Apply Now: online degrees,
scholarships, jobs, courses,
Connecting with nature,
9-leg webstring examples:
(1)
RE: Stress:
"This morning I was battling the remnants of some
depression I had been feeling about my family and life "stuff". I was
doing the sensory attraction activity, looking around enjoying the day,
the breeze, the sun, the beautiful trees and the sounds of singing
birds. In a flash of good feeling, I realized that these feelings are
what is so good about living on earth at this time. It was enough, if
for no other reason, to be here, to experience the beauty of this
planet. This was a major breakthrough for me, because I battle the
reason for being here quite a bit in my recovery work. This happened
before noon, and it is now 6 pm, and I still feel
great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to share this because I am so
happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
RE: Materialism and
environmental deterioration:
Participant A: "As I
continued this special forest activity, I found myself attracted to the
various songs of the birds and then gradually to the various stones and
nuts and shells in the path. I would stop in the path, pick up the
stone, admire its beauty and then feel clearly called to return it to
its appropriate place. So often other times I have felt I needed to put
it in my pocket and carry it home. Now, through the activity, I had a
real sense of appreciating each rock, each shell, each leaf in its
place for the time I was there. I felt suddenly freed from the need to
possess something. I had a growing sense of letting things be and to
just be still and glory in the fullness of the moment. As I allowed
myself to connect, appreciate, thank and move on with so much of what
surrounded me, I felt a letting go into being present. In this
transformation, I began to feel I was part of the scene more, not my
other self that needed to possess. I learned that I do not need to
possess something to have the joy of it."
Participant B: Your
earlier questioning of the work place sounds so familiar but we have
our cultural story that it needs to maintain in our society. I find
daily that I am changing things and getting back to more basic life
choices. I think each little one counts. These changes feel so good. I
find that I want less material things these days.
RE: Peace and Support
"I
was never taught to ask permission to relate to people or the
environment. I just take that for granted, as we all do. However, this
activity required my senses to learn how to ask an attractive tree
covered area for its consent for me to walk through it. The area
continued to feel attractive, but something changed. It was the first
time in my life that I totally felt safe. It felt like Earth's energies
were in charge of my life, not me. It gave me a wonderful feeling of
having more power to be myself. I felt in balance with nature and the
people here because I could distinctly feel their energies consenting
to support me. I never experienced nature and people that way before.
It was like a powerful law protected not only my life, but all of life.
I felt very secure and nurtured as I walked under those trees, my
depression had transformed into an all-encompassing love. I learned
that when I seek permission from the environment and people I gain
energy and unity, I belong."
RE: Chemical Dependencies
"I want to share with the group that I feel
different from when I started this course. I have always struggled with
chemical addictions, and these last few weeks, I find I hardly have
cravings at all anymore. At times I do, but then I can go into nature,
right outside my back door, and feel a connection that is real. I have
been through therapy as well as currently working a twelve step
program, and I feel these nature activities have really helped me, more
than I have words for. This is definitely an attraction, I cannot label
it, I do not have words for it, yet I know in my heart something has
changed."
RE: Global intelligence
"My how my mind does chatter with words that can
mislead me. When I make contact with nature and think with nature's
intelligence, it guides me with a wisdom that helps me keep in balance.
The contact is non-verbal because nature does not communicate with
words. As I worked through the Introductory Course, I began to use the
RWN book's methodology to quiet my mind. As I went through the
activities I began to sense a subtle, but perceptible, shift in my
ability to attain a non-verbal awareness. Then one day, as I was doing
one of the activities that asks us to "jam" the verbal mind with a word
("unity" in my case) I suddenly connected, WHAM, there it was -
non-verbal awareness. No naming, no concepts, just being. What a
relief! It didn't last long but it did change my life. Since then I
have extended my abilities to just be. Now my "mind chatter" is only a
murmur when I ask it to be. This has opened up experiences so far
beyond anything I even dreamed of a few years ago."
RE: Healing and Wellness
"The activity helped me become aware of my
attraction to the crescent moon as it hung over two hills near my home.
Soon, its mellow glow, framed by peaks and trees, embraced me in a
wordless, ancient primordial scene. Timeless power, peace and unity
swept me up. I just wanted to stay in that state of awe, I felt in
balance with all of reality. I was simply "BEING." No tension, no
pressing goal, just truly belonging to the global community. This
natural energy captured my stress laden pulse and seduced it to the
rhythms of Earth. The sleeping disorder I have battled all my adult
life dissolved in this power. For the first time in decades, I gently
fell asleep after dark and arose shortly after dawn. I celebrated the
breakthrough and I thanked nature. I thanked the activity, too, for it
lets me reconnect whenever I choose."
RE: Truth and Nature
"I
feel better about myself and my relationships because nine-leg thinking
lets nature help me recognize these common falsehoods that formerly
lead me astray:
With
the exception of 5-leg stories and thinking, people and nature are
identical in that both consist of webstring attractions and natural
systems. What we do to nature, we do to ourselves and vice versa.
In
nature, survival of the fittest only occurs because the fittest
establish the greatest number of mutually supportive webstring
attraction relationships with their environment. The fittest are the
best cooperators, not the best competitors.
There
is no such thing as nothing in nature. Places where we think there is
nothing are actually filled with webstring attractions that naturally
help hold that place and the world together in mutually supportive
relationships.
There
is no such constant as "one" in nature because what we identify as
"one" is something different in the next moment due to new webstring
attraction relationships it has made. By the time we register and think
"one" in nature, one has changed into something different.
There
are no words in nature so statements that I think are true may not
accurately connect me with the way the world works in healing balance
and beauty.
Facts
are not accurate that are established in laboratories under standard
conditions of temperature and pressure because webstring attractions in
nature are constantly changing; there are few if any standard
conditions in natural systems.
I
encourage 5-leg stories to hurtfully conquer and exploit natural
systems in myself, others and the environment if I don't obtain consent
to make time and space in nature to enjoy 4-leg webstring experiences.
These experiences with people and places help me think in naturally
accurate 9-leg ways.
Everything
in nature, including natural systems in me, obtains attraction consent
to exist and enjoy relationships so there is no garbage produced in
nature, nothing is left out, including me.
As
I have enjoyed being rewarded for exploiting nature, I have learned to
enjoy exploiting natural parts of myself. This hurts or injures me over
time."
Something to think about:
36.
Would my health and happiness improve if my resilience, psyche and
relationships felt like I feel when I'm having a good experience in
nature?
SUGGESTION:
If you want to reach this goal, you may start by remembering good
experiences you have had in nature. Then thoughtfully apply the
information in this essay to each of those experiences. Please remember
this: you are reading on this page a 5-leg essay. It needs to be
combined with 4-leg webstring attraction connections in authentic
nature and shared with other people in order for you to benefit from
9-leg thinking and relating.
If
you are not sure the webstring model has value for you, try this nine-leg activity from our
Orientation Course
The
most practical and powerful way to strengthen your ability to apply and
benefit from nine-leg thinking is to call Dr.
Cohen and take the online Orientation
Course using the books the Web
of Life Imperative and Reconnecting
With Nature It leads to the many opportunities noted in the side panel
"I
am currently into the course and love it. This is the best education
I've seen---with great depth to the courses and process of
learning---far better than any college course I ever took and the
people are very professional and kind. "
-Dan Shelton
"The Web
of Life Imperative. offers more tools,
knowledge and personal power for good than most therapies and
spiritualities. It enables us to reverse our destructive relationships
by empowering us to make thoughtful sensory connections with genuine
nature. This connection responsibly satisfies the aching, ever-wanting
hole in our psyche that has been produced by our excessive separation
from nature, a hole that leads us astray"
-
Susan Chernak McElroy,
Award winning, N. Y. Times best selling
author of Animals as Teachers and Healers and Heart
in the Wild.
"We dramatically increased our program's
effectiveness by adding the Natural Systems Thinking Process to it. It
enables our participants to connect with their sensory origins in
nature and use that peaceful power to improve their disorders and their
relationships with self, society and the environment."
- James Rowe, Ph.D.
Director of the Outward Bound School in
Costa Rica
"Dr. Cohen's compelling application of
ecopsychology connects us with the often ignored source of spirit and
wellness found in nature. His deeply felt chapters catalyze conscious
sensory contacts with the natural world and bind us to energies that
heal our deeper being."
Dr. Larry Dossey, M.D.
Researcher and bestselling author of Recovering The Soul: A
Scientific and Spiritual Search Visit the Project NatureConnect.
For
further information about subjects in this treatise, vist the Project
NatureConnect Homepage
Benefit
from empowering your livelihood and prior experience to be more
validated, green, holistic, environmental, sustainable, natural,
nature-connected, healthy, alternative, spiritual, organic and
peaceful.
Achieve
a degree or certification that strengthens your contributions as a
counselor, healer, teacher, environmentalist, coach, therapist,
spiritualist, leader or health and wellness mentor.
You may obtain a
nature-connected Applied Ecopsychology degree or certificate in
conjunction with:
.