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Benefit
from Consciously Registering your Fifty-Four Natural Senses While They are Connected to the Unified Life of a Natural Area.
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Project NatureConnect
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Organic
Psychology and Natural Attraction Ecology
GreenWave distance learning for person/planet wellness
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PROGRAM
DESCRIPTION:
Educating
Counseling and
Healing With Nature
Supportive 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. It acts like a Rosetta
Stone of the Universe that enables you to register the same information
in
different languages, sensations and senses, a key to modern
understanding.
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 or personal
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.
- Increase
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
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About The Senses
“As
exemplified by the sensation of thirst, on cellular and molecular
levels, sensors (senses and their sensations) in an organism,
large(Earth) or small(nanobe), are receptors that are attracted to
detect stimuli.
When the information that our senses register is out of
balance, they become the main homeostatic driving force for change that
promotes life in balance. Their detection process is a fundamental
source that functions on mechanical, thermal and chemical levels as it
promotes the survival of life.
When they are not blocked or adulterated by
nature-disconnecting stories the senses can be depended on as
undeniable, self-evident, recovery and balancing tools."
"Through
your 54 natural senses, in a natural area your life is as sensed, loved and
balanced as part of the life of Earth as is the life of your fingers, heart and
toes devoted to support your personal life."
- Project NatureConnect
A link from How we can come to our senses and Educating,
Counseling and Healing With Nature.
"My
lifelong communion with trees allows me to know them without sight or
language. The beautiful elucidation of fifty-four senses, below, has
given me gorgeous language with which to tell this love story, one I
have
struggled to share my whole life. I don’t want to ever sound
mysterious, or other worldly. For me this communication has just been a
fact of life. But how to explain it to others? I still feel there is an
element of my understanding that is nameless, and so loving it needs no
words. But to have a natural sense, new brain language to describe this
experience in a way others can understand, is lovely, just lovely."
"Our senses are the only things that register life
in and around us. We build our thoughts, feelings and
relationships on what they convey. When they are limited, warped or
injured so are our lives and happiness.
- Project NatureConnect
General Instructions
When
you find a sense or sensation in a natural area, find its name and
number on the list below and identify the sense as such. This is
the strongest way to accurately connect your story way of knowing with
the non-story way Nature works in and around you.
YOUR MAVERICK GENIUS ALIVENESS: Identify and benefit from fifty-four
natural attraction senses (Webstrings) you have learned to forget to
remember.
From Reconnecting With Nature and Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature
by Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D.
Between the years
of 1961-1978, researcher Guy Murchie made an exhaustive inquiry. He
painstakingly scrutinized scientific studies about natural senses,
studies that appeared in many
hundreds of books and periodicals during those 17 years.
In 1986, after my National Audubon Society International symposium Is the Earth a Living Organism? Murchie told me
that scientific methodology and research had identified over eighty
different biological senses/sensitivities
which pervade the
natural world. He said he additionally verified this through
authorities at the Harvard Biological Laboratories. All these senses,
he said, he clumped together as 31 senses for literary convenience in
his book The Seven Mysteries of Life published by Houghton
Mifflin in 1978.
Murchie's dedicated
efforts deserve our applause, thanks and confidence.
From
Murchie's original
collection, I identified 53 (now 54) natural senses that my students and I had
experienced during my 26 years living and teaching on education expeditions outdoors year round. Recognize
that these senses are undeniable truths because we experience them,
they are self-evident, genetic properties that we hold. For this reason I warranty the
reality of their existence
and I have listed them below. Each is trustable in the moment in
concert with all of the others. They include the senses of reason,
consciousness and literacy.
Every natural sense is an alive and
distinct sensation, an inherent natural
attraction love that is conscious of what it is attracted to. Each is a strand in the web of life, a genetically rooted webstring
that helps to hold the life of the world together in balance, including people,
through
universal natural attraction communications, guidance and
motivations. They are as much a part of any time/space moment of the life of our Planet and Universe as is anything else.
Each sense is a
consciousness of our personal love for the life of our planet mother, Organism Earth, that is shared
by all. Conscious or
sub-conscious, each sense is a
variety of felt-sense actualization of the love essence that Eric Fromm
called "biophilia," the attraction to all that is alive including the Universe.
The experience of making conscious sensory contact with the Unified Field essence in a natural area blends our senses with the
area's peace and power. We heal by becoming conscious of attractions there that
recycle, transform and peacefully unite our disruptive differences.
Consciousness is but one of 54 natural attraction senses
that we share with Nature and that register it. What we sense in a
natural area is what is doing the sensing. This is a scientific
actualization of Panpsychism via self-evidence.
The story world of our Ego, and in general,
forgets that the Ego is wearing nature "glasses" that consist of 54
attraction sensitivities. Without them it could not sense anything
about the balanced and self-correcting dance of the natural world, in and around us. Any
story that omits from our relationships the existence or homeostatic
natural intelligence and consciousness of these 54 attraction sensitivity groups helps to
produce our unbalanced ways and disorders. We correctly call such stories senseless or non-sense.
If they had the ability to label, the non-story members of
the Unified Field's web of life might identify their more than 54
natural attractions, since or before the orgasmic Big Bang, as their instinct or intention to diversify in attractive loving ways, moment by moment.
Our 54 natural senses,
not our stories alone, are our way of registering the Unified Field
and being in GreenWave communication with ourselves and others including the
members of the Web of Life. The 54 are a multisensory, non-story
intelligence that flourishes now as it did before the arrival of
humanity. (See balanced sensory wisdom and community relationships in
action with the Slime Mold and its food. Learn how and why Nature works cooperatively, even mathematically, in and around us, that our prejudicial stories describe as competition and survival by conquest.)
Objective science produces our amazing
technologies and contemporary life by using only 8 natural senses. It omits our 45 other
natural attraction senses because they are "subjective" meaning that they can't be
measured. This makes Objective Science only a 15 percent accurate whole life science
and that inaccuracy produces our runaway problems.
A 54th sense, "natural attraction" has
recently been added. All of them are the diversification of the
original life attraction/intention instinct that is the source of homeostasis, the Grand Unified Field
of Higgs and Einstein that interconnects the life of the Universe.
Whenever our natural
attractions
in natural areas genuinely connect our psyche with the web of life, it
restores our natural senses and they, in turn,
transform our disorders into unified healthy relationships. The latter
contain the balance, cooperation and unconditional love that the life of nature's
spirit shares with us to sustain life in peace. This
is universal intelligence because whatever any of our 54 senses find
attractive in a nature is what is doing the finding.
"Our leaders
seldom teach us that, scientifically, Natural Attraction is the
essence of the Unified Field of our Big Bang Universe
as well as the essence of life,
love
and unity. The six are
fundamentally identical and interchangeable
synonyms. This suggests that God is the love of all things everywhere."
- Michael J. Cohen
There
are, of course, many more that 54 additional natural sensitivities
found in the life of nature
that humans do not naturally need to register for survival. Ultra
violet light and high frequency sounds are prime
examples.
Most
misunderstood are the naturally attractive contributions of the
discomforting senses like pain, distress and fear. We often
forget that we might seriously burn our hand on a hot stove if pain did
not lovingly signal and motivate
us to
immediately find some other attractive place to place our hand.
Each of these senses (25-27) serves as an attractive and welcome intelligence, a motivating signal from nature to find additional webstring attractions
to support our lives (See Chapter 13 in Reconnecting With
Nature).
Although Ames, Gesell,
Pearce, Rivlin, Gravelle, Samuels, Sheppard, Sheldrake, Spelke,
LePoncin, Wynn and many scores of other researchers
have, since Murchie, further validated our multisensory nature, the full significance of it
has yet to be recognized by contemporary society. Our prejudicial
addiction to our nature-separated lives and thinking keeps webstring natural attraction senses and
their value hidden from our immediate awareness. For this reason they
and we are frustrated by great dissatisfactions and very challenging
problems.
Our economy fuels
itself by keeping the life of our 54 webstring senses discontent, further irritating them
through advertising and then selling us products that satisfy our
irritation. However,
when unadulterated, our natural attraction webstrings are an
essence of nature in action. Each of them attracts our consciousness to
the whole life of the natural webstring world and its self-correcting ways,
and this includes the natural systems in ourselves and other people.
Each natural attraction sense is an intelligence
that helps us sense and feel the life of Planet Earth as
our other body and mother.
As our
good experiences in natural areas demonstrate, our natural senses when
connected to nature's homeostatic intelligence, produce fulfillments. They are sensory
satisfactions that
reduce stress
and its related disorders. In addition, the connection's "side effects" increase
social and environmental well-being rather than deteriorating it.
Any individual who invented a pill that produced these life-unifying results would be
a billionaire. However, the pill can't be created as there is no known
substitute for the life of Nature's Dance of the eons, in and around us. Albert Einstein and I have, however, discovered an Equation for it that some folks find useful once they understand and apply it.
Whenever our society
encourages our new brain story to conquer the life of nature and the natural, we learn to
conquer and subdue our 54 natural senses and their expression of our
genetic makeup.
Our 5-leg,
abstracting, nature disconnected, objective sense of reason, exalts the few
senses that our materialistic stories use to take over our 47 other natural senses and the life of the Nature.
We exploit and demean the remaining 47 natural senses as "subjective," not-scientific. However their 4-leg, sensing/feeling
ways
tell us about how the life of the natural world works its perfection and enables us
to participate in the process. This absurd disconnection makes us only 15 percent whole life
intelligent. It explains why we can identify but seldom solve problems
in a balanced way.
Overwhelmed and numbed,
our webstring senses are a vast missing part of a responsible story
about the life of Earth, ourselves and community, about how and when to act where.
Without the aliveness of webstrings registering in consciousness we are "half vast."
As
Carl Jung and others have noted, our abstract thinking is no more
reasonable or discriminating, logical and consistent than are our
feelings.
Nature has taught me
that our abstract "5-leg" thinking in conjunction with conscious sensory
"4-leg" contact with attractions in natural areas can be the "9-leg" way we
learn to put our natural senses into culturally reasonable words.
Our
challenge is to recognize that the excessively nature separated parts of
ourselves and our culture are unreasonable.
We desperately need to
think with nature's wise ability to maintain and restore life, without
producing our problems. Applying that 54 sense homeostatic wisdom prevents and stops our society's
destructive actions against ourselves others and the environment.
"So I asked him 'What
is Gravity?' and he explained it as a physical force that Isaac Newton
discovered. He disbelieved when I told him it was a sense, so I asked
him to pay no attention to his sense of Gravity (#12) and he soon ended
up lying flat on the ground. You try it with yourself or others. We are
in trouble because we also learn to ignore the truths and sensibility of our 45 other senses.
This new frontier of mine is so hidden that it is seldom even recognized as a frontier."
- Michael J. Cohen
The absence of more
than 45 sensory webstrings from the life of our conscious thinking is the mother of our
collective madness, of our runaway wars, pollution, dysfunction,
disease, mental illness, apathy, abusiveness and violence. Without experiencing
these unifying webstrings, our consciousness abandons our natural
sensory "inner child," and the inner child in other people and species.
It hurts and disintegrates the creative
sensory passions that normally bring about community, balance and positive
change peacefully.
Anybody can choose to
help reverse this destructive situation by choosing to learn and teach
how, via the Web of Life Imperative, to
reconnect with webstrings and nature.
Our 54
natural senses in the congress of homeostasis are our Rosetta
Stone of Universe, a pilot wave that enables us to register the same information
in
different languages, sensations and senses, a key to modern
understanding, unification and conflict resolution.
I offer the following list of 54 natural senses with this important
reminder: Each sense is a distinct, alive 4-leg
webstring attraction that in nature has no name for itself,
for nature does not use stories or have names.
Each webstring can energize the life of many natural
parts of us when we use it to connect with the natural world in the
environment and people. That touchy-feely, hands-on, 54 sense connecting
experience, not this list of senses, catalyzes personal wisdom, growth
and balance.
This list only provides information in 5-leg story language. It
brings it on our screen of consciousness and feeds and guides our
senses of reason and language, our story way of knowing. However,
without passion (apathy), 5-leg reason and language are ineffective
when it comes to disengaging our habitual and destructive bonds so we
may enjoy responsible behavior, growth and change.
For example, even though cigarette labels and research show
cigarettes to be harmful, many people continue to smoke them. Reason
and language are only 4% of our inherent means to know and love nature's
life and each other. Our 52 other 4-leg sense groups complete the
process. Without them awake and well in our consciousness, we
experience apathy and hurt, we don't participate and our problems
continue.
Nature centered 9-leg thinking uses the list of senses, below, in
conjunction with visiting natural areas and creating safe moments and space for our indoor
conditioning to learn and relate through 54 natural senses in us that we may awaken in
nature. To do this is reasonable, for after we experience a natural
sensory attraction, knowing and speaking its right name places that sensation in our new brain
consciousness. There we can think with it and be motivated by it. This
process non-verbally connects, rejuvenates and educates us. It extends
us to safely reach into the natural world in order to more fully sense
and make sense of our lives and all of life. It works because once we
experience the balanced life of nature's restorative process and wisdom,
we own it. We never fully return to our former way of knowing.
Our
nature-disconnected stories isolate us from the whole of life and its
self-correcting ways. These 54 natural sense groups reconnect your life
with the balanced and beautiful whole life of our planet.
The Fifty Four Natural Webstring Self-Evident Senses and
Sensitivities
The Radiation Senses
1. Sense of light and
sight, including polarized light.
2. Sense of seeing without eyes such as heliotropism or the sun sense
of plants.
3. Sense of color.
4. Sense of moods and identities attached to colors.
5. Sense of awareness of one's own visibility or invisibility and
consequent camouflaging.
6. Sensitivity to radiation other than visible light including radio
waves, X rays, etc.
7. Sense of Temperature and temperature change.
8. Sense of season including ability to insulate, hibernate and winter
sleep.
9. Electromagnetic sense and polarity which includes the ability to
generate current (as in the nervous system and brain waves) or other
energies.
The Feeling Senses
10. Hearing including
resonance, vibrations, sonar and ultrasonic frequencies.
11. Awareness of pressure, particularly underground, underwater, and to
wind and air.
12. Sensitivity to gravity.
13. The sense of excretion for waste elimination and protection from
enemies.
14. Feel, particularly touch on the skin.
15. Sense of weight, gravity and balance.
16. Space or proximity sense.
17. Coriolus sense or awareness of effects of the rotation of the Earth.
18. Sense of motion. Body movement sensations and sense of mobility.
The Chemical Senses
19. Smell with and
beyond the nose.
20. Taste with and beyond the tongue.
21. Appetite or hunger for food, water and air.
22. Hunting, killing or food obtaining urges.
23. Humidity sense including thirst, evaporation control and the acumen
to find water or evade a flood.
24. Hormonal sense, as to pheromones and other chemical stimuli.
The Mental Senses
25. Pain, external and internal.
26. Mental or
spiritual distress.
27. Sense of fear,
dread of injury, death or attack.
(25-27
are attractions to seek additional
natural attractions in order to support and strengthen
well-being, attractions to run for your life.
They are part of Nature's attractive dance, not "repulsions" )
28. Procreative urges including
sex awareness, courting, love, mating, maternity, paternity and raising young.
29. Sense of play, sport, humor, pleasure and laughter.
30. Sense of physical place, navigation senses including detailed
awareness of land and seascapes, of the positions of the sun, moon and
stars.
31. Sense of time and rhythm.
32. Sense of electromagnetic fields.
33. Sense of weather changes.
34. Sense of emotional place, of community, belonging, support, trust
and thankfulness.
35. Sense of self including friendship, companionship, and power.
36. Domineering and territorial sense.
37. Colonizing sense including compassion and receptive awareness of
one's fellow creatures, sometimes to the degree of being absorbed into
a superorganism.
38. Horticultural sense and the ability to cultivate crops, as is done
by ants that grow fungus, by fungus who farm algae, or birds that leave
food to attract their prey.
39. Language sense, used to express feelings and
convey information in every medium from the bees' dance to uniquely human
articulation, stories and literature.
40. Sense of humility, appreciation, ethics.
41. Senses of form and design.
42. Sense of reason, including memory and the capacity for logic and
science.
43. Sense of mind and consciousness.
44. Intuition or subconscious deduction.
45. Aesthetic sense, including creativity and appreciation of beauty,
music, literature, form, design and drama.
46. Psychic capacity such as foreknowledge, clairvoyance,
clairaudience, psychokinesis, astral projection and possibly certain
animal instincts and plant sensitivities.
47. Sense of biological and astral time, awareness of past, present and
future events.
48. The capacity to hypnotize other creatures.
49. Relaxation and sleep including dreaming, meditation, brain wave
awareness.
50. Sense of pupation including cocoon building and metamorphosis.
51. Sense of excessive stress and capitulation.
52. Sense of survival by joining a more established organism.
53. Spiritual sense, including conscience, capacity for sublime love,
ecstasy, a sense of sin, profound sorrow and sacrifice.
54. Sense of homeostatic unity, of instinctive natural attraction aliveness to be
the singular essence-diversity attraction dance mother of all our other senses (NNIAAL) and the orgasmic Big Bang of the moment. (See NNIAAL equation and its operation in microorganisms.)
The core principle is simply that whatever any of our 54 senses find attractive in nature is what is doing the finding.
This list explains how,
sense by sense, nature 9-leg connects with itself in us, through us and
to people and places around us. It suggests that we can consciously
engage in this process. It validates Dr. David Viscott's proposal that
feelings are the truth, that we don't live in the real world when we
ignore what we are feeling. Our nature-separated lives disengage and
de-energize these senses. Applying the organic psychology of the
Natural Systems Thinking Process allows nature, the mother of these
senses and feelings, to nurture and strengthen them, to rejuvenate them
to normal. The process gives them enough energy to appear on
our nature desensitized screen of consciousness and green our
thinking.
"Feelings are a bodily thing, and respecting them is called, and is, kindness."
- A. S. Byatt
By not incorporating our 54 natural
attraction senses in his
deliberations, Albert
Einstein was limited and unable to "prove" or demonstrate his Grand
Unifiied Field Theory with Physics and mathematical equations. He
seemed unaware that his
heroic desire, self-defense and attempts to do this was the orgasmic "Grand Unified Field" expressing
itself in and through him, moment by moment.
Our challenge, as was Einstein's,
is to let our senses help us act based on
their self-evident, unifying properties to
contradicting and limited stories along with their
detrimental results."
Individuals trained in ECHN will enable the
world
to build peaceful, green, relationships and economies because our
natural senses have unifying powers. If you want to best register and
know what they
and you are, if your are attracted to reading to the end of this sentence, this
attraction that your now experience is them in action.
The Senses at Home in Nature:
"The
experience I’m recalling is a trip I took with a friend to Mt Lemmon in
Tucson. After a half mile hike back into the forest at the 9,000 foot
in elevation level we found a mammoth rock. It was the size of a house
and half buried in the earth. We both laid on our brother rock for
about 20 minutes. It was a cool sunny (one cloud) day and we were
surrounded by a forest of massively beautiful pine trees.
The
rock was oh so warm and comforting to embrace as the sun shone on my
body.The contrast of the warm rock and the cool breeze was so
wonderful. Wind softly blowing in my ears. The ultimate reward was
loosing all my stress and anxiety from my entire body. A physical
therapist would have charged me $150 to do what nature did for zip.
My
senses registered colors, sounds, feelings, aromas, sensations, moods,
contracts, textures, sizes, distance. I stopped controlling the
world and let mother earth breath for me. I felt the texture of the
rock and the sensation of holding up the world on my back. It was
weightless and comforting to support. The sounds of the nearby creek
and the many bustling creatures were a symphony of natures’ voices all
welcoming me to stay as long as wanted. The smell of pine was in the
air. All senses were on maximum open channel and I melted into moment
with ease.
It was only my natural sensory attraction
connections to the natural area that provided these rewards. I have
never, in all my years of public or higher education been taught
anything about what I just experienced.
AN ACTIVITY FOR
SENSING THE SENSES
"With
20 years experience with outdoor education and adventure based
learning, I have facilitated "willow in the wind" activities many
times. A person stands stiff in the center of a circle of people, close
their eyes and leans over as if to fall down. The people in the circle
prop up the middle person to prevent falling and state the name of the
natural sense they are attracted to and represent that is supporting the person.
Unfortunately, I could not form a group at this time so I decided to
improvise as follows:
There
is a long circular trail that runs through thickly forested high ground
overlooking the Chattahoochee River. I used this trail to replace the
circle of humans called for in the classic "willow in the wind"
activity, and used natural attractions as the "pushers" and my sensory
responses as the "catchers". I respectfully sought permission to
do the activity and began walking along a narrow dirt and gravel road
toward the trail-head a short distance away. As I walked along
the road, slowly cleansing my lens of perception by turning my
attention from things artificial to the vast natural area surrounding
me, something in my peripheral vision compelled me to stop and look. I
saw a large, beautifully formed, yellow and brown acorn, and as I
continued to scan the ground , I saw many more. Senses
that responded: sense of color; sense of moods and identities attached
to colors; sense of season; senses of form and design.
Reaching the trail-head, I turned off the road and continued
my slow walk sense of motion with senses now more attuned sense of consciousness to the purpose. I had not
gone far when once again my peripheral vision alerted me to stop and
connect with a small bush growing along side the trail. A single,
dime-sized, brilliant red fruit attached to the bush stood out from the
muted colors of its background. The fruit's red, thick skin
stood open and appeared as a five
petaled flower with a shiny red seed attached to the base of each
petal. Senses
that responded: sense of color; sense of season; sense of moods and
identities attached to colors; senses of form and
design; sense of emotional place, of community, belonging, support,
trust and thankfulness; aesthetic sense; sense of humility,
appreciation, ethics; sense of self. Continuing on the trail, I
came to a huge, recently fallen, oak tree that lay across the trail and
blocked it. Always interested in such scenes, I stopped and started my
analysis of the visible evidence when suddenly a close by and
unexpected sound of rustling leaves startled me. Looking around
for the source, I saw nothing, and turned my attention back to the tree
only to be startled again by the same sound followed by another and
another. Finally, I had the answer: large acorns sporadically dropping
from tall oak trees crashed into the thick layer of dry leaves that
covered the ground surrounding me. Senses
that responded: sense of hearing; sense of fear; sense of physical
place; sense of humor.
From this point, the traile climbed steeply to the high ridge top and
a view of the river flowing swiftly far below. As I slowly made my way
up the steep trail, I realized the activation of yet another sense. Sense that responded: sense of weight,
gravity and balance.
After reaching the top, I paused to spend a few minutes admiring
the view, but before I could focus on the river, a slight motion on the
ground near my feet grabbed my attention sense of reason. I stared down at the tiniest
snake I have ever seen. Because of its small size, it took awhile to
identify it as a snake sense of reason and literacy. Its amazingly tiny forked tongue and lack
of legs finally convinced me. Keenly interested in this fellow
being, I admired its beautiful color: dark blue with a thin bright
yellow line encircling the body just behind the head. Senses
that responded: Sense of light and sight; sense of color; sense of
moods and identities attached to color; sense of emotional place, of
community, belonging, support, trust and thankfulness; senses of form
and design. As I looked down at the ancient river below, these
same senses remained engaged. From this point, I continued on the trail
back toward the road near my starting point.
I
discovered that properly functioning senses are essential for a
meaningful and appropriately balanced life and require maintenance
through frequent and experiential interaction with the natural world. The
characteristics of western culture tend to diminish and distort the
proper functioning of our 54 natural senses, which in turn distorts the
accuracy of our perception and limits our whole life intelligence.
My
experience with nature shows me that I am a person who gets good
feelings from being outdoors in a natural area and who enjoys
exercising my senses by interacting and connecting with natural objects
in a natural area. I get pleasure from seeing a tiny snake using
its tiny tongue to sense the area around it. I would be deeply
distressed to lose my ability to experience being in tune with nature."
Anonymous Field Study Report
"To
experience the 54 senses, I hung out with the clouds today.
It
began this morning when Dave came back from his run saying that it was
going to be a pretty sunrise. Sure enough, he was right. We could not
stay content to view it from the inside of the house. So, we bundled up
and went out on the deck (sense of season).
The
sky was filled with pink multi-dimensional clouds that seemed to
radiate out from the mountain tops toward us, above us and all around
us (sense of light and moods attached to colors, space/proximity sense,
sense of form and design). Absolutely incredible!
"Wow!" I said
to Dave.
"It seems to be radiating right toward us."(language and articulation
sense & sense of self including friendship, companionship, &
power)
I
couldn't contain myself on the deck and found myself running through
the crisp morning air (sense of temperature,) to the top of the
ball field behind our house to get a clear view (sense of motion and
space and awareness of ones own visibility).
I
sang out my thanks and called out my request for permission to do the
nature-connecting activity (sense of emotional support, belonging,
support, trust,
thankfulness). As I twirled on the ball field, arms outstretched, the
sky turned from pink to gold (sense of motion, play, pleasure,
laughter, place, coriolus sense or awareness of effects of the rotation
of the Earth). The rising light danced off the expanding shapes.
I
called out loud, "Thank you dear clouds for helping us to feel our
connection to all things and to all living beings!!!!"(sense of
appreciation, humility, and ethics)
Dave called back from the deck his
expressions of appreciation as well.(aesthetic sense, appreciation of
beauty)
I
felt as if we were being sent a message that we were being watched over
and supported. (sense of intuition, deduction, sense of mind and
consciousness)
Quote:
"Yahweh not only was, or expressed the original desire to be, Yahweh
may also be the source of the exclamation 'Yahoo!' We consider
God to
be the essence of love and life and the word essence can mean 'to be more fully."
When I experience these
53 senses and I write about my experience and share my
writing I
know I am being supported by nature.
This enhances my self-esteem and trustfulness
of nature. It
re-educates me to the fact that the power that flows through nature,
including me, cares....it cares about me. In turn I care about it and act accordingly.
I awoke next
morning feeling a greater trust in life.
In the trustable space in my mind, I
will put an image of me twirling under an
expanding pink and gold sky- to remind me of the sense of freedom and
awareness of support that comes from dancing in the 53 senses.
Love you guys so
dearly. Thanks for giving me your ears and hearts to share with."
* * *
A
scientist put a frog on the ground and said "Jump frog jump". The frog
jumped four feet. The scientist wrote in his notebook, "Frog with four
feet, jumps four feet."
The scientist cut off one of one of the frog's legs and said "Jump frog jump". The Frog jumped three feet. The scientist wrote in his note book, "Frog with three feet, jumps three feet."
So the scientist cut of another leg and said "Jump frog jump". The scientist wrote in his notebook "Frog with two feet, jumps two feet."
The scientist cut off one more leg and said "Jump frog jump". The Frog jumped one foot. The scientist wrote in his notebook, "Frog with one foot, jumps one foot."
The scientist cut off the frog's last leg and said "Jump frog jump". The frog did not jump so the scientist said
"Frog jump. Frog jump. FROG JUMP!" Nothing happened. The
scientist wrote in his notebook, "A frog with no feet, goes deaf."
This story is no laughing matter when you recognize that we are born with 54 natural senses
and our scientific objectivity cuts us off from the natural world's subjectivity so
our intelligence habitually thinks and relates with the nonsense of only eight of the 54.
Planet Earth is alive. It and we are in trouble because our
sensitivities to its life in and around us has been removed from our
awareness by ECH without Nature. Fortunately, the whole-life art and
science of ECHN makes time and space for sensory contact with natural
areas to regenerate our deadened senses back into our thoughts and
relationships.
Experiential and Literature Observations
by Project NatureConnect graduate students, for each of the 53 natural
senses, validate the senses, as exemplified in the descriptions of the
three, below, none of which is one of the "five senses."
REFERENCES:
Takemura, S. (n.d.). A
sense for reading the atmosphere, Retrieved November 8, 2006, from the
World Wide Web:
http://www.sensorium.org/linkedsense/library/air.html
Robbins,
L. (1994, April). Precipitating factors in migraine: A retrospective
review of 494 patients. Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, 34
(4), 214.
References and
Bibliography
Cohen, M. J. (1995) Why
Don't We Create Moments That Let Earth Teach Us?Cooperative Learning:
Vol. 15 No 2 Santa Cruz, CA: International Association for the Study of
Cooperation in Education.
,
Cohen, M. J. (1995). Counseling and Nature: The greening of
psychotherapy.Interpsych Newsletter,
http://www.ecopsych.com./counseling.html
,
Cohen, M.J.
(1995A). Are You Missing the Missing Link? Proceedings,
October, 1994 Conference of the Coalition for Education in the Out Of
Doors, Friday Harbor, Washington: World Peace University Press.
,
Cohen, M. J. (1994). Well Mind, Well Earth: 107 Environmentally
Sensitive Activities for Stress Management, Spirit and Self-Esteem. Friday
Harbor, Washington: World Peace University Press.
,
Cohen, M. J. (1994a). The Distinguished World Citizen Award:
Responsible fulfillment and guidance from nature connections, Taproots.
Fall 1994, Cortland NY, Coalition for Education in the Out of Doors.
,
Cohen, M. J. (1994b). Validations: The experience of connecting
with nature, (Tech. Rep. No 21). Friday Harbor WA:
World Peace University Press, Department of Integrated Ecology.
,
Cohen, M. J. (1993). Integrated Ecology: The Process of Counseling With
Nature. The Humanistic Psychologist, Vol. 21 No. 3 Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.
,
Cohen, M. J. (1993A). Green in green (Tech. Rep. No. 18) Friday
Harbor WA: World Peace University. Department of Integrated Ecology.
,
Cohen, M. J. (1993B) Counselling with Nature: Catalyzing Sensory
Moments that Let Earth nurture. Counselling Psychology Quarterly,
Vol. 6, No. 1, Abingdon Oxfordshire UK: Carfax Publishing.
,
Cohen, M. J. (1990). Connecting With Nature: Creating Moments That
Let Earth Teach. Portland, Oregon: World Peace University Press.
,
Dossey, L.(1989) Recovering the Soul, New York, New York,
Bantam Books.
,
Farb, P. (1968). Mans Rise to Civilization. New York, New York:
Dutton. and MILLENNIUM. (1992) "Mistaken Identity " and "An Ecology of
Mind" Public Broadcasting Company TV, National Public Television.
,
Glendinning, C (1994) My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery From
Western Civilization, Boston, Shambhala
,
Goldman, D. (1993) Psychology's New Interest In the World Beyond the
Self, The New York Times New York, NY.
,
Knapp, C. (1988). Creating Humane Climates Outdoors Charleston,
West Virginia: ERIC/CRESS.
,
Krutch, J. W. (1954). Voice of the Desert, New York: William
Sloane Assoc.
,
Le Poncin, M. 1990 Brain Fitness, New York, Fawcett Columbine.
,
Lovelock, J. (1988). The Ages of Gaia, England: Oxford
University Press.
.
Lipkin R, (1995), Bacterial Chatter. Science News,Vol. 147, No.
9 Washington DC, Science Service Inc.
,
Lipkin, R. (1995) Do proteins in cells make computations? Science
News,Vol. 148 July 29 95 Washington DC: Science Service Inc.,
.
Margulis, L. (1986). Microcosmos Four Billion Years of
Microbial Evolution. New York, NY Summit Books.
,
Monastersky, R. Stute and Thompson (1995). Ice Age Sent Shivers Through
the Tropics. Science News, Vol. 148 July 29, 1995 Washington
DC: Science Service Inc.
,
Murchie, G. (1978). Seven Mysteries of Life, Boston,
Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin.
,
Pearce, J. (1980). Magical Child, New York, New York: Bantam.
,
Rivlin R., & Gravelle, K. (1984). Deciphering the Senses,
New York, New York: Simon and Schuster.
,
Roszak, T., Gomes M., Kanner A., (1995) Ecopsychology, San
Francisco, CA, Sierra Club Books
,
Rovee-Collier C. (1992). Infant Memory Shows The Power of Place. Developmental
Psychology, March. Quoted in Science News, vol. 141 No. 16
p.244, Washington DC.: Science Service.
,
Samples, B. (1976). The Metaphoric Mind. Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.
Sheppard, Paul (1984). Nature
and Madness, San Francisco, CA: Sierra Publications.
,
Spelke, E. (1992).
Infants Signal the Birth of Knowledge. Psychological Review,
October, 1992 as quoted in Science News, November 14, 1992,
Vol. 142 p. 325, Washington DC: Science Service.
,
Stevens, W. (1993). Want
a Room With a View? The New York Times, November 30, New York,
NY.
,
Viscott, D. (1976) The
Language of Feelings, New York, New York: Arbor House.
,
Watson, L. (1988) The
Water Planet,New York, New York: Crown Publishers.
,
Wynne-Edwards (1991).
Ecology Denies Darwinism. The Ecologist, May -June, Cornwall,
England.
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The Nature Of Nine Leg Knowing. How Do We
Belong and Heal?
|
"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,
|
Because we live in a
nature-separated society, we seldom learn that it is the personal and
collective relationship of our mind with nature that determines our
sanity, our future and the future of the earth. Much has been written
about how we need to help the planet regenerate itself. Too often we
overlook that restoring it is the lasting means to improve the
environment of our mind, our wellness and our destiny.
How conscious are we about the
interactions of our mentality with the natural world? How do we
passionately incorporate nature's intrinsic health and recuperative
powers into our sense of self, other and livelihood? Do we acknowledge
this deep and penetrating partnership in a renewable path to
sustainability that serves people, the environment and peace?
These are compelling questions
for us as our society is in denial of our mentality's relationship with
nature and we face a most precarious future.
We Lose What We Most Love
As nature's resources are diminished so is the quality of our lives as
part of nature. As the quality of our lives diminish, we become
desensitized and fearful. We further lose touch with our natural
ability to connect to the web of life within which we are so
intricately bound. It becomes a cycle of loss. The nurturing link
between our human lives and our earthly home gets broken. We are driven
to seek more and more satisfaction in the material world, which means
we consume more and more of the resources we need to sustain natural
world and our inborn love of it. We get further and further away from
our innate sense of meaning and being. We lose what we most love-about
ourselves, the world to which we belong and our sense of the sacred in
everyday life.
Nature's Saving Grace
In these difficult times, we are virtually on the edge of losing our
ability to save both ourselves-and our earthly home. Yet the saving
grace is simple: We will save what we love. And when we learn how to
stop long enough to genuinely reconnect to the nurturing sustenance of
nature, we emotionally reconnect to what is most deeply satisfying in
our human experience-belonging. We re-learn to love the very essence of
who we are as living breathing perfect beings on a living breathing
perfect planet. It is a generative partnership that happens when we
reawaken and enliven all our senses with the awareness of nature's
grace, intelligence and sustenance. We find and feel that we, too, are
part of the very grace and intelligence we celebrate in nature. We
belong. Because this reconnecting process is often foreign to
contemporary life, an enabling tool has been devised to help us engage
in the process.
Restoring Our Sensory
Connections To Nature's Renewing Powers.
Project NatureConnect, a pioneering process in environmental psychology
and education, has developed an ecopsychology program that is first of
all committed to helping us-as individuals-restore our connection to
our place in nature's transcending grace. Then, through its sensory
nature-connecting, ecotherapy activities, we learn how to genuinely
unite our thinking to the web of life that is always around us, always
nurturing us, always waiting to help us wake up. We help ourselves bond
to living in awareness and equilibrium with nature, in hope and in
love. Living in that organic awareness we create a lasting future for
our loved ones and for our extended human and ecological family.
The Organic Science of Nature's
Regenerative Ways.
Backyard or back country, the idea and goal of Project NatureConnect is
special because it is doable by choice. It offers a web of
possibilities-for everything from personal growth, stress management
and depression recovery to professional gain. It is based on the
NatureConnect work developed by Michael J. Cohen over a span of 50
years of studying, teaching, writing about and experiencing the
regenerative power of our natural experience in the natural world. His
work is a science and an art, the result of decades of practice working
with communities of people in natural areas, all culminating in a
process that helps us recover what it is we have forgotten, what it is
we love, what it is we can save. (www.ecopsych.com)
Healing Our Relationships
It is time for us to come out from behind the addictive socializing and
economic forces that keep the environment of our mind disconnected from
the Earth and each other. It is time to re-learn how to let the wisdom
and renewing energies of nature transform our destructive patterns into
balanced and loving relationships that can help restore both personal
worth and global harmony.
|
"The
indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature-of sun and wind and
rain, of summer and winter-such health, such cheer, they afford
forever!"
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden |
- from Janet Thomas Author, The Battle in
Seattle
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery coaching
The Essence of the Nine-Leg
Equation
This tool offers a powerful
process that deals with the problems of inspiration hope and integrity
through books degrees and courses online
It is a health improvement
formula that strengthens your vote, conflict resolution and nature
healing as well as restores balanced relationships free of stress and
dysfunction to earth, peace and environment workers.
This power equation contains
the genius and support of Albert Einstein and Henry David Thoreau for
use in self-help and supporting hope, cooperation, research
psychologists, naturalists and good government,
It acts as a health and life
experience intelligence that increases resilience, friendships, love
wellness ethics education awareness counseling citizenship
transformation and constructive bonding.
It rejuvenates anxiety burnout
suffering disorder abnormalities that deteriorate mental health social
justice peace community trust economics and cooperation.
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery self-help
How does the Nine-Leg
Balance of Life Equation help you improve the quality of your life and
all life?
-Enjoy 53 sensory parts of
nature, like thirst, each a distinct way of knowing and relating that,
when intact, helps us sustain the wellness, balance and resilience of
natural systems in us and the environment.
-Transform the abnormal, desensitized corporation economics and other
omissions in the way our nature-disconnected society teaches us to
think.
-Rejuvenate natural life sensitivities and Earth-integrated, whole ways
of knowing
-Master how to reconnect your mentality to its nurturing origins, to
the regenerative vigor, sustainability and integrity of nature.
-Help yourself, and those close to you, benefit from the renewal that
lies in the magnificence of a beautiful day, the wisdom of an ancient
tree and the fortitude of a weed.
-Through life experience discover how to let the "higher power" in
nature's healing energies help your thinking transform your stress,
disorders, suffering and harmful bonds into constructive personal,
social and environmental rewards.
Strengthen your inborn natural genius.
-Use powerful tool and process books, degrees and courses to tap into
potent self-help healing and conflict resolution powers of nature.
-Research and restore forty-eight inherent sensory intelligences into
your awareness that we normally learn to deny and subdue so they
deteriorate.
-Enjoy community ways of knowing and relating that, when intact,
sustain the wellness, peace, balance. health and resilience of natural
systems within and around us.
-Quadruple the power of your vote.
-Realize more completely your hopes and values.
Increase your resilience, support, social justice and friendships.
-Reduce stress, anxiety, burnout, dysfunction and loneliness.
-Improve your ability to think clearly and implement the power of love.
-Strengthen personal, environmental, coaching and government wellness.
-Produce cooperation and responsible professional opportunities and
ethics.
-Discover environmentally sound directions goals and satisfactions
-Enjoy nature-connected education, psychology and healing courses and
degree programs
-Increase personal and global peace and inspiration while reducing
dysfunction.
Add important new self-improvement dimensions to counseling, healing
and citizenship relationships.
Act now: courses, degrees, grants,
recovery coaching
Open Articles and Letters
Nature's Grace: A Nine-Leg
Equation Provides an Answer to Hopes, Prayers and Dreams.
Dear Editor
The lack of finding inner
peace, sustainable economics, trust, social justice and personal and
environmental wellness had alarmed me. I sought and finally found a
tool that transformed my depressing stress and anxiety into responsible
stability. I thought I was stressed because the more I became aware of
the destructive things happening to Earth and to people and places I
loved, including myself, the greater became my lack of hope and feeling
either mad, sad or depression. This divorced me from both my spirit and
partner. I felt anger with God and beauty, a fear and disrespect of God
for letting so much war, suffering and environmental deterioration
occur that I was powerless to change. In time, I became aware that I
was in denial. I denied that I, like many others, had an addiction to
immediate rewards from my dysfunctions. They robbed me of the
resilience to tolerate what I could not change. In fear, I came upon
the description, on this page, of an amazing equation that combines the
genius of Albert Einstein and Henry David Thoreau. Lost in depression,
I only paid attention to it because it received super positive reviews
from many conferences, spiritualities and publications that I
respected, especially Psychology Today, Humanistic Psychology and the
Journal of Environmental Education. In retrospect, it was a love answer
from nature's grace and beauty to my hopes, prayers and dreams.
Mr. Editor, Does writing about
this make sense to you? Isn't it something your readers can benefit
from?
Charles Drew, Acton
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery self-help
The Equation for Personal Growth and
Self-Improvement
A Sensory Education and
Counseling Tool Strengthens Holistic Health, Inner Peace and
Sustainability
Although we are part of nature,
we are normally educated to spend, on average, over 95 percent of our
time and 99 percent of our lives thinking and feeling while separated
from nature's grace, beauty, and restorative powers. Our mentality's
profound loss of nature divorces us into apathy through denial. We deny
that we are rewarded for fearing and exploiting, rather than embracing,
the supportive ways of our planetary mother and her kingdoms. We deny
that we are psychologically addicted to nature-disconnected thinking
that creates our personal, social and environmental dysfunctions.
Contemporary society has taught
us to be experts in conquering nature, including the balanced ways of
our natural self and its love of nature. The result: because we don't
protect what we don't love, nature, our collective sustainability and
our personal wellness suffer. To stop this insanity the
Einstein-Thoreau Equation makes readily available the means to
genuinely connect our thinking and feeling to Mother Nature's
recuperative powers, perfection and love of us as her children. Using
the Internet as a learning tool, we tap our psyche into nature's
beautiful sane and balanced web of life that produces an optimum of
diversity and benefits without producing garbage, a web some people
call God (www.ecopsych.com).
Through easily learned,
nature-connected Organic Psychology methods and materials, the Internet
makes it possible for any individual, or 600 million people, to think
in ways that invigorate resiliency and spirit and that reduce our
addictive trespasses, denial and apathy. By genuinely reconnecting our
thinking to natural systems we restore and trust more than forty-five
natural senses that have been numbed out of our consciousness by our
extreme disconnection from nature. The self-improvement renewal of
these senses increases our sensitivity, sensibility and love energies.
This ecopsychology helps unbalanced parts of our minds and hearts
benefit from nature's ability to rejuvenate and balance itself,
including us, for we are part of nature. We reduce our stress,
depression and abusiveness. We transform our apathy into constructive
participation. Backyard to back country,-we strengthen our life, our
organizations and global society.
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery coaching
An Equation Helps Us Meet Our Great
Challenge
"Our body, mind, spirit and
ability to love come into the world through nature. They are part of
nature's beautiful perfection, wisdom and restorative powers. However,
the extreme disconnection of our thinking from nature injures these
attributes. Like tearing a leg from a live rabbit, we wound and damage
our ability to think clearly. Its dysfunction deteriorates our
wellness, our inner peace and the environment.
Our bonding and denial present
us with great challenges. To replace our lost gratifications from
nature, our socialization rewards our disturbed psyche to attach or
addict to contemporary ways along with their destructive side effects.
Our greatest challenge is that we learn to deny that the
self-improvement means is available to reconnect our thinking with
nature's regenerative powers and thereby co-create ourselves and the
world in a peaceful balance that eliminates these side effects."
- Michael J. Cohen
Mood Disorders: Are You Suffering from
Denial of Your Separation from Nature?
|
Excessive
separation from nature produces the discomforts of fatigue, apathy,
stress, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, anger, mood swings,
mistrust, loneliness, broken relationships, destructive dependencies
and sleep, eating, learning and attention disorders |
1. Contemporary society and its
citizens are in denial. We are aware that we are part of nature and
that although we are disconnected from nature, we deny that this
separation bears ill effects upon our physical or mental health and
inner peace. We are also in denial if we know our separation from
nature is producing destructive personal, social and environmental
disorders but we don't use readily available nature-reconnecting tools
to help us treat these disorders.
2. Because we are members of a
nature-disconnected society in denial, we are psychologically bonded to
our society's ways and we each suffer from and perpetuate the
dysfunctions, insanity and discontents of our society.
3. Many people display mood
disorder symptoms or other discontents that are not normally found in
nature-connected people. These individuals are usually in denial that
they suffer because they are, or have been, excessively separated from
nature and its regenerative healing and restorative powers. The
symptoms these individuals endure include the discomforts of fatigue,
apathy, stress, anxiety, depression, hopelessness, anger, mood swings,
mistrust, loneliness, broken relationships, destructive dependencies
and sleep, eating, learning and attention disorders.
4. Contemporary society
consciously and subconsciously socializes us to believe that nature is
an enemy to overcome, conquer or develop.
|
- We are in
denial that we mistakenly consider it progress and economically sound
to subdue natural systems within and around us and thereby lose the
resilience and immunity provided by the recuperative powers of these
systems.
- We deny that if disconnection from nature produces discontents, that
authentic reconnecting with nature enables nature's renewing powers to
help us transform our discontents into happier, more reasonable, ways
of being and relating.
- We deny that nature-reconnecting tools are readily available to us
and that we that can use them to help ourselves reverse our disorders. |
.
5. An individual that only addresses their personal dysfunctions
without addressing the nature-disconnected roots of these dysfunctions
too often furthers their and our problems as time passes.
Act
now: courses, degrees, grants, recovery self-help
|
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............................................................................
Although each of us is part of
nature, our socialization erodes our personal, social, spiritual and
environmental relationships because it excessively separates us from
the recuperative qualities of nature. This disconnection causes us to
lose the benefit of the purifying powers in nature that would
ordinarily help us rejuvenate and regenerate our presently
deteriorating thinking. Our relationships with ourselves, others and
the environment would improve.
We live over 95 percent of our
lives indoors, separated from nature; over 99 percent of our thinking
is disconnected from how nature works to produce its non-polluting
perfection. To our great cost, we omit nature's grace from our
personal, social, spiritual and environmental lives.
At www.ninelegs.com a
spectacular nature-reconnecting tool gives us the nine leg ability to
tap into the unifying recuperative aspects of nature that sustain its
balance and beauty.
Nine leg thinking and relating
restores our power to co-create and sustain ourselves in balance with
all of life.
The nine leg tool helps us
reconnect ourselves to the nurturing biological and psychological
origins of our mind over the eons. This improves our ability to think
sustainably and improve our health and integrity. We raise our
consciousness and can produce more rewarding, cooperative
life-supportive relationships.
In as little as fourteen days
most people can learn how to enjoy the benefits of thinking like nature
works. Surely, this is as important and revolutionary as Einstein's
e=mc2 or the discovery by Copernicus that Earth and we are neither the
center nor most important thing in the Solar System.
"Even though I'm a nincompoop,
I'm not very special at all. Any dumbell can see the reason our major
problems don't subside. It's because our leaders don't resolve
conflicts or issues by using the extraordinary unifying and
strengthening powers of nine-leg thinking and relating. I don't use
them because I'm an idiot. But, what's their excuse, or, dare I ask,
what's yours?"
- Alfred E. Newman.
over
OTHER SIDE
"I find that being stupid makes
me really feel left out and different all the time. I just can't
register all the wonderful things that technology and the media provide
for the normal person. For example, I'm so retarded that I couldn't
even understand that E.T. was an extraterrestrial like Spielberg and
the movie and the stories said. To me, the powers E.T. had were the
same as those of Earth, he was just like the plant animal and mineral
community. Llike them, he was very vulnerable to technology. But I'm so
dumb that I thought then, and I still think today, that E.T. was a
terrestrial; he was Planet Earth. He was in no way so special as to
become a movie star. After all, doesn't Earth all the time do what he
did if we let it? Nine leg thinking lets us do that, too.
- Alfred E. Newman.
QUESTION: What is so important
about nine-leg thinking?
ANSWER: Nine-leg thinking is a
supportive, therapeutic key to creating personal happiness through a
rewarding and sustainable future for all people and the planet.
To understand the momentous
significance of nine-leg thinking, consider this intelligence test
question regarding mathematical aptitude:
"If you count a normal dog's
tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog have?"
"Five," of course, is the
correct answer.
Intelligent people answer
"five" because it is valid in mathematical and scientific reasoning.
Society applauds and economically rewards us for giving correct
mathematical or technological answers. But something is radically wrong
with this answer; something is missing. Because, somehow, even a dog
knows that a dog has four legs.
Our sense of reason recognizes
five as correct only until we are greeted by our friendly family dog,
or the mean mutt down the street. Five legs only works in theory. When
we experience a real dog, or a wolf, or a centipede, or any other
natural being, many of our inherent natural senses come into play: our
senses of sight, touch, motion, color, texture, language, sound, smell,
fear, consciousness, community, trust, contrast, love, reason and
recognition. Are you aware we have 53 natural senses?
No matter how conceptually
clever we are with our five-legged thinking, it is our four-legged
sensory awareness that grounds our experience in the true nature of
reality. That reality knows any normal dog has no more than four legs
and no matter how you look at it, a tail is not one of them.
When it comes to supportively
relating in balance to nature and its systems around and within us, we
rarely think in 9-leg (4-leg plus 5-leg) ways. We can kill or
hurtfully stress a dog if we make it run too fast or too far because we
think that it has five legs. Isn't that what we are doing to ourselves
and the environment?
Nine-leg thinking and relating
helps us come back into personal and environmental balance by
revitalizing our multitude of natural senses through genuine contact
with authentic nature.
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