In memory of
Dr. John Disinger
Dr. William Stapp
.
and
in response to science
writer Alan
Caruba (who, poor soul, has been socialized to think that
a dog's tail is one of its legs.)
THE NATURE
OF PSYCHOLOGY
How we come to our
senses by learning to trust the call of our human nature sensory
experiences and the call of natural systems within and around
us.
A treatise with nature quotes that
conveys practical information for personal, environmental and
global well being that we are taught to ignore because our society
denies that it is addicted to destructive artifical ways and
the conquest of nature.
Michael
J. Cohen, et al
This treatise contains excerpts
from the book The
Web of Life Imperative,
Chapter One, that are used with permission in support of a Project
NatureConnect grant application
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
our dysfunctions and discontents and our personal, social and
environmental well-being improve through sustainable organic
psychology education and counseling techniques that enable us
to thoughtfully tap into nature's balance, grace and restorative
powers."
-Michael
J. Cohen
|
Abstract:
This treatise and its nature
quotes demonstrate that we are born as part of nature and 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 attractions and sensitivity
to them. We inherit the ability to consciously experience and
register at least 53 of these natural attractions as our senses,
such as thirst, hunger, sight, reason, community, temperature,
consciousness and place. They are a unifying nature call.
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 human nature thinking is removed from how natural
systems work within and around us.
Our 53 natural senses are frustrated
and injured by their severance from their natural origins in
natural systems. For relief, our indoor thinking attaches them
to our less-than-perfect, cultural relationships and technologies.
This 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 help us transform our destructive bonding
into constructive relationships.
This nature vs. nurture treatise
helps us benefit from tool that 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
quotes it demonstrates that great thinkers throughout history
have long recognized the transformation value and restorative
powers of good experiences with nature and its call.
Authentic nature is non-literate.
Dysfunctions 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 are 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 natural
systems within us, too, 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 demeans and conquers nature,
thinking it to be "dirty, illiterate, non-intelligent, bloody
tooth and claw savagery." This fear prevents our thinking
from consciously connecting with natural systems within and around
us or even believing that this can be done. To our loss, our
mind, heart and spirit can't benefit from nature's peaceful eons
of sensitivity, wisdom and regenerative relationships because
we disconnect ourselves from it.
We feel stressed and lackluster.
We are unfulfilled and deficient due to our estrangement from
nature's vitality. This produces depression and low self-worth;
it causes our human nature to excessively crave rewarding sensations
and goads us to excessively use artificial substitutes for nature,
be they responsible or not. With nature's wisdom, beauty and
renewing powers missing from our lives, we want, and when we
want there is never enough; greed, vulnerability, frustrations
and discontents result.
A sensory nature-connecting
organic psychology tool, the Natural Systems Thinking Process
(NSTP) helps our human nature reverse the destructive 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. This
helps us thoughtfully overcome our nature-disconnection problems
and reduce our personal and environmental dysfunctions.
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|
SUGGESTION: read this article
once through for content and 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 GlobalGovernance,
"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 sprit 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 perfection of its organic balance and
beauty.
"You didn't come into
this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean."
.....- Alan Watts
However, our society is extremely
separated from nature and its call. As our socialization
disconnects our human nature and thinking from nature and re-attaches
it to our artificial ways, we produce many nature vs. nurture
troubles that neither nature nor nature-centered people display
or create. Globally this 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
the call of nature's balancing and restorative ways. If you question
that the thinking that produces our troubles is a prejudicial
addiction, just try to change it.
To more fully understand 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 53
other 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 natrue call
helps our sense of reason 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. But consider this:
"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 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
schism between their different means of registering the world
often produces destructive relationships, stress and conflict
within and around us. Human nature consists of:
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. 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 does the rest of nature's sensitivities.
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
three of our 53 natural senses: language, reason and consciousness.
They connect with each other in the newer frontal neocortex brain
that makes up 10 percent of our psyche. A 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" results not only in personal
desensitization but in the separation of our thinking from the
balanced restorative powers of Earth's natural systems within
and around us. This profound loss produces the many destructive
side effects of our artificial world that we can not readily
solve with nature-disconnected abstract thinking alone.
"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 produces a whole-life, integrated,
intelligent and balanced re-connection between our connected
natural sense and abstract thinking abilities. It also brings
to our consciousness our inherent connections with and love of
the beauty 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.
Our most challenging personal,
social and environmental problems result from us being paid,
or otherwise rewarded, to embrace abstract 5-leg thinking and
suffer its destructive disconnection 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, 2004 A.D., over 25 percent of the American public
is mentally ill, over 70 percent is in some type of counseling
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
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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.
Whole, 9-leg thinking enables
us to thoughtfully bring the call of nature's balancing and restorative
powers to our mind, reasoning and heart. 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
In 1959, Dr. Michael J. Cohen founded
a camp and 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 a nature call, as nature's
guiding voice. They replaced the 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. This
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.
.
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 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.
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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 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 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 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 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 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 lead 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
the one or two who represent people.
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. 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 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, 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 process by which they interact produces
nature's harmonious, supportive ways and prevents our runaway
disorders from occurring in nature.
The process
and call 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. 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,
the nature call that holds 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
53 webstring natural 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 (through nature-contact
thinking and awareness of nature calls) 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. We omit how we experience them so knowing
the web of life becomes complex
and mechanical.
The disappearance
of the strings in our consciousness produces a subconscious void,
an uncomfortable 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
Now, the NSTP's
nature reconnecting activities enable us to bring webstrings
natural sensory attraction relationships back into
our lives. Their nature call presence in our thinking helps reinstate
balanced 9-leg personal and environmental relationships. They
help us register that our planet is a living organism, Mother
Earth, as Dr. Cohen noted in 1965 and describes in How
Nature 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 that place Earth and
its people at risk?
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Source Of
The Strings
The strings
are biologically of, by and from nature and at some level of
sensitivity-consciousness register as nature call 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 taught/programmed to conquer, not respect, nature including
the webstrings. We have also often learned that the strings,
which manifest 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.
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 connect with nature our
thinking must include a sensory, nature call
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 natural systems organize themselves with webstrings. Moment
by moment, systems are 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 an
attraction intelligence 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?
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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. That "something" is an essence
of nature, the natural attraction energies 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
Webstring nature call attraction energies 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 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. It 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 trigger our brain to release
Dopamine, a neurotransmitter that produces 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
Something
to think about:
12. Do I believe that nature's
Dopamine 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
nature
call wisdom to help us
recycle our destructive stories and thoughts and to 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
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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
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. 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 lifes. When we become part of our pet's nature-connected
way of knowing and being we enjoy a glimpse of life in nature's
love, a life that we have lost.
The slicing
away of our psyche from the rewards and beauty of Mother Nature's
grace, perfection and renewing powers leaves us feeling empty.
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 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.
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
destrimental 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 behavior that pollutes natural
and social systems. Our society has become an unseen war that
exploits nature within and around us. Its violence and competition
attracts us because it helps us explain to ourselves why we hurt.
"Most of our populace
and all of our leaders are participating in a mass hallucinatory
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 or deteriorating
our health.
- overfishing
is not depleting the oceans,
- living separately
from nature's ways is neither stressing our psyche nor creating
anxiety.
- fossil fuels
will never run out,
- wars that
kill masses of civilians are an appropriate way to keep our hands
on what's left,
- we are not
desperately overdrawn at the environmental or emotional bank
- and really,
the kids are all right."
..........- Barbara Kingsolver.(edited)
We seldom recognize
that we need our human
nature thinking
to be genuinely connected with nature call 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. The omission
of webstrings in our reasoning disables our ability to think
with attractions, like nature 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 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?
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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
nature call 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.
Natural attractions are an observed essence of the materials
and energies in the natural systems of our universe, nature,
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 the community
of our universe and nature is constructed of God's attraction
energies. For us to know God while ignoring nature is devisive;
it 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)
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?
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Natural systems
and nature-centered people don't 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 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" 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 psychologically addict us to the
story that we must conquer nature in order to to fulfill our
nature call senses: hunger, thirst, taste, love etc. Since we
are nature, 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 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?
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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
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 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. These
sensory contacts 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?
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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."
.....- 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 nature
call webstrings to our
thinking no matter where we are.
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?
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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 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 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 actually also an attraction, a natural love for the survival
of our life. It 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.
"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?
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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.
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 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." In the web of life model,
webstrings are as real and true as 2 + 2 =4.
"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 stories that separate us from nature's perfection
and create problems,
while
nature functions via webstring attractions that support and
restore natural systems within and about us."
.....- Michael J. Cohen
The Web
of Life Imperative book identifies natural attractions
or webstrings or webloves as NIAL strings meaning Nameless, Intelligent,
Attraction, Loves. People who can't make sense of some situations
are often found to be in DeNIAL (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 connecting my thinking with the Web and its
rewards?
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. 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?
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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"
