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Got Nature?
How to Address the
Underlying Source of Your Personal and Global Discontents.
-Michael J.
Cohen
..
When I was a child living in
New York City, as I returned home from school one day, some bullies
in the schoolyard roughed me up saying, "Kike!* You jewboy, you killed Christ." In tears,
as I continued home I was drawn to an alternative path through
a wooded park by the railroad. Things were peaceful in that little
grove and by the time I emerged from it, I felt much better.
Next day, when I asked my teacher
why the park made me feel better, she said it was, "Because
it took you away from your problems." But, significantly, like most other people I
have ever known, my teacher never told me just what it was that
little natural area took me to. This is because most of
us don't know what "to" is. In our nature-separated
society that important piece of information has been omitted
from our awareness, socialization and education. This is a huge,
critical omission.
What we seldom learn about
parks and other natural areas is that visiting them is more than
just an escape from reality. Our nature-separated society leaves
us unaware that natural areas also revive us because, to sustain
its perfection, nature continually balances and restores itself.
We are part of nature. In an attractive natural setting we connect
with nurturance from our sensory origins in the regenerative,
non-polluting way nature works. Often this happens subconsciously
but the important thing is that it happens and we benefit.
Elements of nature make us
feel good and revive us in attractive natural areas because nature's
air, water, soil, sunlight, species, community, beauty, grace
and renewing powers are nurturing essences of our physical, emotional
and spiritual self. We learn to take for granted that in nature,
the vibrancy of natural systems brings into our mind and heart
their recuperative ways and intelligence within and around us.
This helps us enjoy and think with the means nature uses to produce
its optimums of life, diversity, cooperation and purification.
Nature produces these optimums without producing garbage or our
insanity because in unadulterated nature everything belongs.
Nothing is left out. No 'kikes' there; things are neither labeled
nor abandoned.
Transformation, not rejection
is how nature works. That's a way to describe unconditional love;
that's how and why nature supports us when we visit attractive
natural areas. It makes us think and feel better because our
psyche and spirit are more natural and whole there and they have
the natural support to transform into healthier relationships.
It is urgent that we recognize
our great personal and global problems result from our thinking
not consciously recognizing that supportive respect for nature
is a restorative and active part of life. To improve the quality
of our lives we must learn how to genuinely reconnect our mind
with nature so that, like organic composting, we can let nature
transform and recycle our mental garbage into greater well being
for the whole of life. That's the rest of the story about visiting
a natural area, the organic part of it. To our loss, very few
of us know it.
We omit nature from our thinking
because our society not only prides itself on its conquest of
nature but our socialization/education teaches us the false prejudice,
"For survival we must dominate and subdue nature."
We learn to exploit rather than cooperate with and embrace nature's
ways around and within us. That prejudice explains why openly
enjoying or revering natural systems, including our natural senses
often earns us the name of "escapist, flaky, tree hugging,
hippy environmentalist."
"From the masses to the
'masses,'
The most Revolutionary consciousness is to be found,
Among the most ruthlessly exploited classes:
Animals, trees, water, air, grasses."
- Gary Snyder
As I worked my way through
elementary school I watched that little woodland park by the
railroad disappear. Progress "improved" it by converting
it into a shopping center and apartment house. What I didn't
see was that my natural way of thinking and feeling was part
of nature and that it was being similarly converted during this
period. I unknowingly learned to overlook that I was being programmed
to a way of thinking that destroyed natural systems because conquering
nature is 'normal' and applauded in our civilization. It's the
"in" thing to do to improve ourselves and the world.
And, it's excessively rewarded to help us overcome our sadness
over our loss of nature.
Our society teaches us to spend,
on average, over 99 percent of our thinking and 95 percent of
our time indoors, separated from authentic nature's balanced
ways and guiding signals. This results in us losing consciousness
of ourselves and the natural world as intercommunicating, seamless
natural systems. The separation stressfully rips our thinking
from nature's recuperative and aesthetic benefits while we are
at home, work and school. We learn, instead, to destructively
relate to nature as a "resource." Many financial and
social rewards goad and psychologically addict us to keep doing
this. We feel we can't stop, even when we know we should, even
when we want to because we know it's stupid not to.
Although the disconnection
of our mind from nature's balanced ways underlies our disorders
and discontents, we are conditioned to crave, rather than correct,
this separation. As we purchase things that help us overcome
the discomfort produced by our disconnection, we fuel our economy
and we depend upon the shallow happiness of status and false
security. A vast majority of us do not recognize that our nature-disconnection
is a major source of our dilemmas. Short circuited, we remain
disconnected, we think those who do connect are eccentric, and
the world increasingly goes around in crazy untrustable circles.
"The definition of insanity
is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different
results. "
- Benjamin Franklin
Accompanied by others at Project
NatureConnect, and the program I founded at the National Audubon
Society Expedition Institute, since 1952, I have focused a major
part of my life researching and developing an organic sensory
science, a Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) that enables
us to genuinely reconnect our mind with how nature works in natural
areas as well as in people. Readily available, NSTP helps us
tap our thinking into authentic nature and thereby tenfold strengthen
nature's balance and healing powers in ourselves, others and
the environment. It enables us to let nature's recovery energies
help us deal with our addictive dysfunctions and our emotional
bonds to detrimental ways of thinking and acting.
Today, funds developed by NSTP
economics make it possible for anybody who appreciates nature
to learn and teach NSTP and enjoy its organic benefits to themselves,
to others and the to environment. And today, the value of teaching
this science is increasingly recognized and supported through
many universities, most recently West Coast University in the
Republic of Panama, accredited by ICDE, the global accrediting
agency recognized by UNESCO & UNO.
Maybe there is hope. After
all, anyone who has enjoyed a good experience with nature -backcountry,
backyard or with their pet, or with the wind, sea or stars- knows
nature's potential for increasing our peace of mind and our reverence
for all of life. All we need to do is trust our good experiences
in nature and learn to use NSTP to help us incorporate them in
our daily life.
Isn't now the time to produce
and enjoy the organic rewards of greater personal, professional
and environmental sanity rather than continue to suffer our dysfunctions
and discontents?
- Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D.
Faculty, West Coast
University
*Leo Rosten says, "The word
kike was born on Ellis Island, when Jewish immigrants who
were illiterate (or could not use Roman-English letters), when
asked to sign the entry-forms with the customary 'X,' refused
-- and instead made a circle. For the Jewish immigrants, an 'X'
was an evil sign, representing both the horrors of crucifixion
and the sign of their (Christian) oppressors. The Yiddish word
for 'circle' is kikel (pronounced KY - kel), and
for 'little circle,' kikeleh. Before long the immigration
inspectors were calling anyone who signed with an 'O' instead
of an 'X' a kikel or kikeleh or kikee or,
finally and succinctly, kike."
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KEY:
Online Information Guide
for Application and Admission
New Grants, Loans and Scholarships Support
Environmentalists and Nature Lovers
Nature-Connected Counseling, Education
and Self-Help Programs Improve Personal and Environmental Sanity
Balanced Learning that Embraces Natural
Systems Offers Internationally Accredited Online Training, Courses
and Degrees.
For immediate release.
February28, 2005
Contact
M. J. Cohen
360-378-6313, nature@interisland.net, http://www.ecopsych.com/
FROM: Susan Chernak McElroy,
NY Times best selling
author of Animals as
Teachers and Healers
Feb 28, 2005
Dear Editor or Administrator,
Please read and distribute
this important announcement about funding and education from
Project NatureConnect that is available this year to help produce
ecologically sound well-being.
You may co-sponsor this grant
program as a fund raising function for yourself, or link to this
release at http://www.ecopsych.com/insightrelease.html
If you cannot use the release,
would you kindly post this short announcement? Thank you:
Grants, Loans and Scholarships
for Nature-Connected, Counseling, Education and Self-Help: Increase personal and professional
well being through an organic psychology that helps us genuinely
tap into the balance, grace and restorative powers of nature.
See http://www.organicpsychology.com
For Peace,
Susan Chernak McElroy
www.susanchernakmcelroy.com
PRESS RELEASE:
New Grants, Loans and Scholarships
Support Environmentalists and Nature Lovers
Nature-Connected Counseling,
Education and Self-Help Programs Improve Personal and Environmental
Sanity
Balanced Learning that Embraces
Natural Systems Offers Internationally Accredited Online Training,
Courses and Degrees.
Friday Harbor, WA 3/1/05
In a timely and passionate
article entitled How You Can Come to Your Senses: What They
Don't Teach You at Harvard or Yale (1), Ecological Psychologist
Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D, (2), describes a new grant, loan and
scholarship program now available for restoring personal and
global balance. The program funds the application of a proven
personal and environmentally rewarding nature-connecting tool
called the Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP).
NSTP is an easily learned,
on-line organic psychology (6) that is guaranteed to help us
overcome troubles and dysfunctions by revitalizing more than
fifty natural senses that our indoor lives ordinarily subdue
(3). It teaches us how to save our sanity and health and reduce
budgets by genuinely tapping our senses and thinking into the
balance, grace and regenerative powers of authentic nature.
NSTP takes us on extraordinary
treks through the nature of our mind and of Earth, offering astonishing
revelations about how to overcome the estrangement of our mentality
from nature's balancing recuperative influence. The cutting edge
nature-connecting tool Cohen describes enables us to think and
relate like nature's peace, cooperation and renewal energies
work (4). The tool and financial aid program (5) help us increase
our security by binding our mind with the way nature provides
love, joy and well being for people and ecosystems.
Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished
World Citizen Award, Ecological Psychologist Michael J. Cohen,
Ed.D. is a Director of the Institute of Global Education where
he coordinates its Integrated Ecology Department and Project
NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of West Coast University,
Portland State University and Akamai University.
For more information on how to acquire grant funds, visit http://www.ecopsych.com/2005grantapplic.html
or contact Michael Cohen, nature@interisland.net
360-378-6313
* * *
Act
now: grants, loans scholarships
Additional Information:
NSTP solves the underlying
mystery of our tragic relationship disorders. Cohen explains,
"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. In this regard, we are born as part
of nature and its globe, Planet Earth, but, on average, 95 percent
of our time and 99 percent of our thinking is separated from
genuine contact with the balanced life-enhancing ways of Nature
and Earth."
Cohen says, "Because we
strip our mentality and psyche from the rewards and beauty of
nature's grace, perfection and renewing powers, we want, and
when we want there is never enough. Our wants entice or bully
us into relationships that are unreasonable and result in destructive
activities, greed and disorders. We learn to conquer rather than
embrace nature and lose the wholeness that supports personal
and environmental well being. This loss reduces our self-worth."
"As caring people,"
Cohen notes, "We deserve the use of a powerful recuperation
tool that is readily available, a tool that helps us overcome
disorders by reconnecting our thinking with nature's extraordinary
attributes. NSTP enables us to satisfy our natural desire to
live in the safety and comfort of simpler peaceful relationships,
preserve nature's living systems and return to a happier, less
stressful and consumptive ways of life. It gives us a potent
antidote for the detrimental ways our separation from nature
has goaded us to think and relate."
Cohen, a maverick genius who
has created many effective, nature-centered books and programs
(2), believes our extreme separation from nature has brainwashed
us to think we can survive independent of nature's ways. He says,
"Even when we visit a natural area, our thinking and psyche
are not in tune with nature. While we are in nature, our mind
often isn't. Addictively, it thinks about experiences, problems
and stories from other times and places. This addiction separates
us from vital information and energies that we would otherwise
register through our more than forty-five natural senses and
inherent loves (3) while they are connected to their nurturing
origins in the natural world. As the state of the world demonstrates,
without knowing it our mind is taught a disconnected way of thinking
that fights an undeclared war against natural systems around
and within us."
Cohen finds that any person
who has had a good experience in nature, backyard, park or backcountry,
enjoys activating their suppressed natural senses and appreciates
the resulting tenfold increase in benefits from their nature
experiences (4). With reference to "God's Love," and
quoting D. H. Lawrence, Cohen argues that it is essential to
fund the use of NSTP because truly nature-connected people seldom
display the dysfunctions we suffer:
"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
KEY:
Online Information Guide
for Application and Admission
REFERENCES:
1. Article:
http://www.ecopsych.com/insightgrant.html
2. Cohen:
http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html
3. Senses:
http://www.ecopsych.com/insight53senses.html
4. Outcomes:
http://www.ecopsych.com/survey.html
5. Grants:
http://www.ecopsych.com/2005grantapplication.html
6. Organic
Learning:
http://www.organicpsychology.com/
Act
now: loans scholarships grants,
Contact person:
Michael
J. Cohen
Director,
Project NatureConnect
360-378-6313
nature@interisland.net
http://www.ecopsych.com/
A
About the Author
Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished
World Citizen Award, Ecological Psychologist Michael J. Cohen,
Ed.D. is a Director of the Institute of Global Education where
he coordinates its Integrated Ecology Department and Project
NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of Portland State
University and Akamai University. Dr. Cohen has founded sensory
environmental education programs independently and for the National
Audubon Society and Lesley University (AEI), conceived the National
Audubon Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism,"
and is the award winning author of the Web of Life Imperative,
Reconnecting With Nature and Einstein's World. He
is an accomplished folk song artist and contra dancer who presents
traditional music and ecology programs for the U.S. National
Park Service and Elderhostel on San Juan Island, Washington.
Act
now: college grants, scholarships loans for students
KEY:
Online Information Guide
for Application and Admission
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