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Benefit from Green-Friendly
Knowledge and Training: Green
Spirituality and Outdoor Leadership
Health and Wellness Online Degrees
and Courses: for stress relief, self-confidence, Reiki
climate change answers
and global warming remedies.
SPONSOR:
 Project NatureConnect
Institute of Global Education
Special
NGO Consultant, United Nations Economic and Social Council
Green Mental Health,
Social Work and Stress Management.
Outdoor work, environmental education and green counseling
changes to enhance self-worth, earth wisdom and alternative
naturopathic medicine.
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The Origins of Project
NatureConnect and Natural Attraction Ecology
....In
1959, Dr. Michael J. Cohen founded an extraordinary expedition school.
Eminating in 1946 from Progressive
Camping and Josh Lieberman's Creative Camping
programs, it was based on learning how to genuinely connect with nature
as community, with the
flow of our living Earth, in and around us.
....Through
natural attraction
sensations and feelings that were energized into consciousness through
sensory contacts in natural areas, young or old, students and staff
alike learned to respect the
web-of-life community and themselves. Nature taught them to enjoy,
validate and
incorporate the self-correcting
wisdom of the web in their
thinking and feeling.
....The
National Audubon Society identified this program as the
most revolutionary school in America. In it:
....Chemical dependencies, including
alcohol and tobacco, disappeared as did destructive social relationships.
....Personality
and eating disorders subsided; violence, crime and prejudice were
unknown.
....Academics
improved because they were applicable, hands-on and fun.
....Loneliness,
hostility and depression subsided. Group interactions encouraged stress
release and management; each day was fulfilling and relatively peaceful.
....Participants
using meditation found they could enhance it, or not need it, as they
helped build their nature-connected community.
....Participants
knew each other better than they knew their families or best friends.
They felt safe and developed the resilience to express and act from
their deeper
thoughts and feelings. A profound sense of social and environmental
responsibility guided their decisions.
....When
vacation periods arrived, neither staff nor student wanted to go home.
Each person had enjoyably worked to build this supportive, balanced
living
and learning group. They were home.
.
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Greetings
Honored Guest,
We Welcome Your Inquiring Mind and Heart.
Thank you
for your interest in visiting this website.
Your attraction to this page
suggests that you have a rare, but extraordinary, natural
consciousness. It is
a consciousness that refuses to be overwhelmed by the shortcomings in
Industrial Society and
that also refuses to give up your attraction to live in, and contribute to,
a healthier
world in peace.
Natural Attraction Ecology (NAE) is dedicated to helping you empower
your whole-life way of thinking so that
you may further increase personal, social
and environmental well being.
You,
no doubt, recognize that most people are not born with the outrageous
problems that we in Industrial Society produce, that, instead, we are
educated to
produce them. In addition, you are probably aware that our social and
environmental troubles are continuing to grow in unison because they
hold a destructive source in
common. The source is a prejudicial
disconnection from nature that we
seldom identify or address.
Project NatureConnect's accredited NAE courses, degrees and
results offer you a therapeutic
preventative and remedy for many problems that we suffer. It
will help you increase well-being and reduce these problems by helping
you correct their
source. You may add it to any
relationship or livelihood.
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Connecting With Nature
"My daily
walks take my dog Petey and me through some old Pennsylvania
woods. Not
too long ago, it was easy for me to have had so much going on
in my
mind that I hardly even noticed, much
less appreciated, everything that
was going on in nature around me. Other times, having felt no
connection to the natural world, I'd come
home thinking maybe I
needed to find a more stimulating walking route.
Sound
familiar?
Lately,
however, my walks have taken on a whole
new dimension. I feel like
a little kid in a candy shop when I venture outside
in the morning,
thanks to some activities I learned from Michael J.
Cohen, EdD, when
he recently met with several Prevention
Magazine staff members.
Dr.
Cohen practices and teaches Applied Ecopsychology, a new area of psychology
that views people as profoundly affected by the natural world. Dr.
Cohen is also the author of Reconnecting
With Nature (Ecopress, 1997).
He
taught us some activities that felt so relaxing and inspiring that we
asked him to help us design some for you to try while walking in your
neck of the woods.
These
exercises are designed
to help awaken or sharpen senses you probably haven't paid much
attention to. The activities help you recognize more strongly, through
direct experience, that you're a part of nature, not apart from it.
Dr.
Cohen feels that this recognition helps people "learn to make healthier
decisions for themselves and their environments."
In other words, he
hopes people can make a profound connection between their psychological
health, their sense of well-being and the health of the environment
around them by becoming aware of--without talking--all the
sensory
experiences nature offers.
The value
of
these exercises lies solely in what you experience when you do them. If
you just read them, they may seem, quite simply, silly. But if you do
them and have fun, as we did, you may find a whole new pleasure and
energy in taking your daily walks outdoors.
As
I did these exercises, I found at times that I didn't trust my own
reactions. That's when sharing your feelings or insights with a friend
or a group really helps. If you don't have a partner, share your
experiences with me or on an online
nature-connection course."
- Maggie Spillner,
Editor
Walker's World, Prevention Magazine (1997)
.
.
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SYNOPSIS
THE POWER OF PURE SCIENCE
Attraction
is universal and natural. We observe that it pulls or holds things
together, be they the nucleus of an atom, our body, our mind, any "thing," or the
solar system
and far beyond.
That
the galaxies increase their speed outward, along with other evidence,
suggests that an attractive
force, perhaps at the boundary of the universe, or from
the inflationary
big-bang, is a primary source of the energy in the Universe.
Even an athiest might agree that in our universe, something like "God"
actualizes
himself or herself as natural attraction that is found everywhere.
The
natural world neither produces our garbage and pollution nor the many
other
problems that result from our excessiveness. This is because nature's
purifying attraction powers are self-correcting. They
organize,
sustain and
grow the natural world,
including us, in a healthy attractive balance. In it, things are
unified. They belong and depend upon each others attractive
contribution to the
whole.
As
part of nature, humanity
inherits nature's attraction to, in peace, support and restore optimal
life
relationships.
However, a warped prejudice
against nature story in contemporary
thinking unbalances us. It makes our consciousness reject and lose
contact with the therapeutic and renewing attraction ways of natural systems, in
and around us.
Due
to our disrespectful bias against nature's embrace, our loss of sensory
fulfillment from
nature's renewing ways produces a hole in our psyche. This void leaves
us
wanting and greedy. In turn,
we become excessive and insensitive. Out of control, we
invade
and deteriorate personal, social and environmental
well-being.
The pure, empirical science
of Natural Attraction Ecology (NAE) helps us address our detrimental
prejudice
against nature.
It empowers us to beneficially reduce our greed and our excessive
stress and abusiveness by
genuinely connecting our psyche, including our 53
natural senses, to
our ever-purifying origins in nature, backyard or
backcountry.
The process of our NAE re-connection to the natural world enables the
attractive grace of nature's renewing
ways to help us reduce our bias against them and relate more
sensibly. It
empowers us to think
and feel like nature's balance works to sustain well-being.
A
short walk in the park is a temporary "fix" that demonstrates the
beneficial effects of nature on our psyche. We seldom
recognize
that this contact with a natural area is not simply getting away from
our problems. What we
actually do is temporarily connect the nature of our psyche to its
self-correcting origins in nature's balance and beauty.
The attitude and process of Natural
Attraction Ecology provides us with a fully objective science. It
benefits our
lives by enabling our thinking to
habitually make nature-connection a permanent and therapeutic way of
thinking and
feeling. It teaches us how to continually connect our psyche to
nature's healing ways
and strengthen both in the process.
INTRODUCTION
Although
we
live in a tecnologically successful human society, we suffer because
its undue
disdain for nature and the natural excessively
exploits the whole of life.
Like a cancer, our distortion of, and assault on, nature produces a
wide range of
life-problems and
disorders, in and around us. This is because we are part of nature.
Nature flows
through us.
For example:
1.Under
optimum conditions, a ball, in its balanced perfection, will roll true
on its
course.
2.
If we take an excessive slice out of the ball, neither the slice nor
the ball will roll true. Neither will
function properly (dysfunction) because they will have been separated
and lost their
integrity. Fulfillments they may have enjoyed from their
mutually beneficial attraction and support for each other will have
disappeared.
3.
The excessive slice will cause things that are connected to either the
injured
ball or to the slice, to
suffer the disorders that develop.
Natural Attraction
Ecology helps us recognize that natural attractions hold together
the life and spirit of a very special
ball, the planetary
globe that
we call Earth. It has, and has enjoyed through the eons,
its own balanced perfection, beauty and integrity (Axiom 9, below).
NAE also helps us recognize that
we are part of our living planet's very nature. For this
reason, when we think poorly about, or act adversely to,
the
workings of Earth and its systems, we separate ourselves from
the
whole-earth community. With the loss of its integrity and nurturing, we
become "excessive slices."
We cause hurtful problems
for the natural world
and for ourselves.
Our
misguided thinking and relationships with Earth have,
by
using incomplete and faulty science, increasingly socialized
us to
live as excessive slices from our planetary
ball.
Our faulted science motivates us to
slice through the self-correcting attractions that flow through and
unify our planetary home. This separation produces injurious
personal, social and
environmental
disorders.
It erodes our mental health. It goads us into paving over paradise for
a profit.
With respect to
living in balance with Earth, our thinking is bewildered (meaning
separated
from
naturally attractive wilderness values and ways).
It does not know how
to reconnect the separated slice we have made of ourselves and our
society.
Like a short circuit,
because our disorders try to
protect us from further harm, we seldom acknowledge that we are
excessive slices
and that we sustain our disorders by remaing excessive. Those
of us who do
recognize this phenomenon and respond to it by reconnecting our psyche
to the web-of-life,
benefit accordingly and help others and Earth benefit through the
reconnecting process. However, society often looks askance at us.
To
help us deal with the distortion in our science and technology, as well
as in our thoughts, feelings and acts, Natural
Attraction Ecology
provides us with momentous truths and restorative activities.
They root our psyche back in the
balancing, self-correcting ways of our planet and nature.
The NAE process gives us the means to reunite the slice and the ball.
NAE is a unique, organic science
because it is
entrenched in how natural systems work. It helps us overcome the
prejudice in
Industrial Society's
limited thinking, a
bias that separates long-established and vital natural attraction
relationships. Again, it is this separation that produces
our society's
unbalanced imitations of, and harmful substitutes for, nature's
renewing grace.
NAE
is sometimes controversial. It disturbs our
ego, our self-image, simply because it reflects that we
habitually perpetrate a
destructive distortion that we know is unreasonable, yet we can't stop.
The
lie that we practice is for our thinking and ego to deny that all of
nature is attraction-based and vital, and that this
attraction includes our natural attraction senses and
feelings. For
example, our
sense or sensation of thirst is an observable and felt attraction fact.
It attracts us to water. It just as
real, true and important as is water itself. Both are essential parts
of nature
in balance. Both make sense and are part of life's survival. Yet we
learn to believe we only have five senses and thirst is not
one of the five.
The sense/sensation of thirst is seldom included as part of our
planet's global water cycle, yet it is.
In addition to thirst,
our reasoning omits another 47
natural attraction senses. We say that they undermine scientific
objectivity, that they are subjective, flakey or granola.
Is it any wonder that by omitting the value of our natural attraction
senses, with
respect to living in balance with nature in and around us, our lives
are non-sense?
"Scientific
research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is
determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action
of people."
-
Albert Einstein
It
is a central concept in science and the scientific method that all
evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, in other words, not simply theoretical,
spiritual or "as if" conclusions.
Valid scientific data is derived
from our experiences or observations. It
is dependent on evidence or consequences that
are observable by the senses.
- Wikipedia
Encyclopedia
History
Originally,
in the 1940's, and at
that time very controversial, the
science of Ecology discovered
life relationships to
be built largely on
food chains. This, over time, grew into Ecology becoming the study of
local and global natural
systems and their flow.
Today, researchers additionally observe that, from atoms to
materials to
solar systems, everything
is
held together in a balanced ecological unity by many kinds of natural
attractions, attractions such as gravity, magnetism, valence bonds,
strong forces and
desires.
Many
of these
natural attractions register
in human consciousness as at least 53 natural senses. They can be our
senses and sensations of thirst, of community or of place and many
more.
These natural senses,
individually and in congress, help our thinking be aware of,
and appropriately
relate
to, the natural
world. For example,
if we don't relate appropriately to our natural
attraction sense of gravity, we end up collapsing to the ground and we
are
unable to get up. The attraction sense of gravity is
obviously
real and important, yet we do not include it as one of the five senses
by which we say we know and relate to the world.
Again, the way we learn
to think and feel also omits signals from 47 additional natural senses.
We lose much of the sense, sensitivity and sensations we
need to solve our senseless problems.
Contribution
Experts
in most fields often identify the many problems our society suffers,
but
they seldom offer effective solutions that help us deal with these
problems
effectively. For this reason, we continue to suffer them.
The genius
of NAE is that it, via our natural attraction senses, accurately
identifies the
misguided
source of our
unbalance and
disorders. It also provides us with a readily available process that
helps us
deal with that source.
NAE
is a scientific methodology, an
enabling tool
that empowers us to experience and explore our natural
senses
and their contributions to living in balance. It helps
us think, feel and relate sensitively and sensibly because it includes
the self-correcting powers
of
earth
and nature, in their natural
perfection, described below.
Using the proven methods and materials
developed, since 1959, by Dr.
Michael J. Cohen
and his students at Project NatureConnect, NAE helps
us increase
well-being at every level. It accomplishes this by
helping our reasoning, thoughts and feelings genuinely tap into the
balancing attraction ways and spirit of authentic nature and its
systems,
backyard or backcountry.
As we think and learn
in natural areas from real-life,
sensory biofeedback
experiences, the organic process of NAE empowers us
to beneficially
recycle
and transform the garbage and contaminates that seep into our psyche
from
Industrial Society. This gives our thinking the ability
to reasonably guide
all our
relationships for it then includes the sensory and restorative wisdom
of natural
systems and their
flow, in
and
around us.
The crucial
contribution of NAE is
that, unlike most disciplines, it is whole and true because it is based
on empirical observations and attraction evidence
that we
directly experience in natural areas, backyard or backcountry. It helps us learn to adequately
understand and deal with our problems, in and from direct connections
to
nature and its balanced intelligence. (see examples,
below)
In summary, the NAE process helps us
increase well-being by
validating unadulterated factual input from our 53 inborn natural senses.
These senses are self-organized, self-balancing (homeostatic), sensory
attraction
ways of knowing that we register and share with the web-of-life. They
connect our
thinking with nature's wise integrity. This provides us
with authentic, critically important
facts of life that closeted "objective" science and academics usually
reject as the "dazed" or "fuzzy thinking" of "Earth Muffins."
"Truth
is what stands the test of experience."
- Albert
Einstein
How NAE Works
By energizing
our 53 natural
senses while we are in natural areas, NAE helps our thinking make
genuine conscious
sensory contact with the attraction essence that we hold in common with
the global
life
community. It enables us to tap into the ways and wisdom of authentic
nature so that we can
make greater sense of our
lives and reverse
our unbalanced nonsense.
Consider this example
concerning our natural sense of trust:
if you are reading this information on or from a computer, your natural
attraction sense of trust
is in play. You are attracted
to trust that the words on this screen
can give you information. You may not trust what the words here say,
but
you trust that they can provide important knowledge. Otherwise why
would you be paying attention to them here?
What
you really are attracted to trust here is the logic and value of the
scientific method.
You trust the intelligence of the reasonable thinking and technology
that
discovered the power of a computer and the use of electronic
communication to convey information. It works. It contributes and has
value if it is applied in a way that is fair and benefits all. That is
attractive
and it makes sense
so it naturally releases Dopamine and feels good. That is
how nature works with all our natural senses, singly or in congress.
In NAE,
the application of this
same trustable scientific thinking process, has helped us discover how
and why
Industrial Society is excessively destructive. In addition, it provides
us with
a powerful thought and action process that enables us to reverse our
detrimental ways and the damage they inflict. For this
reason, it makes sense to pay
attention to NAE, to respect and benefit from
the holism of its
scientific
methodology.
NAE is a true root and basis for what theoreticians or spiritualists
sometimes call "ecopsychology" or "ecotherapy."
Natural Attraction
Ecology is effective because:
-
it sees that contemporary people seldom realize they are citizens of
two different civilzations:
1.
The non-literate
global web-of-life community of "nature," that consists of the plant, animal and
mineral biological kingdoms, including humanity.
2. The literate, human
life community of Industrial Society
-
it recognizes that nature alone, not the theoretician or professor, is
the fountainhead of authority about
how nature
works to produce its balance and beauty.
- it
notes
that we suffer our great
problems because we spend over
98 percent of our time, thinking and
feeling
while separated from nature's self-correcting grace and
its feel-good, regenerative, attraction ways.
- it observes that over
18,000 hours of our impressionable childhood years are spent indoors in school,
disconnected from nature's wisdom.
- it
makes
us aware that when our 53 natural senses are inadequately fulfilled, we
lose natural joy and we experience natural attraction deprivation. We
want, and when we want there is never enough. This
unfulfilled need
spawns our stress, greed, anxiety, depression and
self-esteem disorders. It goads us to become excessive and trespass
natural
boundaries. Being out of natural sensory balance, our thinking and
feeling create the nonsense that causes most personal
social and environmental problems.
- it
enables
us to identify and correct the heart of
our problems, our unwarranted demeaning of nature. This
destructive bias in our thinking makes
us disconnect ourselves
from the healing
and recuperative
benefits of nature's purifying flow, in and around us
"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
Website Contents
This website presents an outline of the ways
and means of Natural
Attraction Ecology
along with links to additional information
about NAE that is found in
the books, courses and websites of Dr.
Michael Cohen and Project
NatureConnect at the Institute of Global Education.
This
information has been published, peer reviewed, accredited and verified
by
professionals and cooperating universities. Its confirming research is
the core of several
graduate and undergraduate degree programs. Its sixty years of
experience is described, referenced and
defended by Dr. Cohen in his trade published Ph.D. dissertation Educating Counseling and Healing
With Nature (Illumina).
Consider Dr. Cohen's
description of
NAE
that he contributed to the transition team of Barack Obama:
Ideally, what we should do.
How to Create Sensible Change and
Responsible
Economics.
OUR CHALLENGE: 150
million people x $20,000 per person equals
$3,000,000,000,000, (three trillion dollars). That amount,
and
more, is what the "bailout" for the "recession" is going to cost in the
USA. However, that money is mostly being given to Wall
Street, to banks and
industry and systems where its contribution disappears as it feeds our
nature-biased thinking and economics, where it is gobbled
up by the greed and the nature-conquering Ego of our society's
leadership.
Think
about what life would be like if, instead, twenty thousand dollars was
paid to each of 150 million individuals (half the USA population) once
they
passed our short, free, Natural
Attraction Ecology online course Educating, Counseling and
Healing With Nature.
The NAE balancing process that the course
teaches scientifically
removes our detrimental bonds to nature-exploitive relationships
with people and places. It accomplishes this by helping the psyche and
thinking of an
individual become
healthier,
naturally fulfilled and less
wanting, hurt, and greedy.
With nature's self-correcting assistance:
We
would reduce disorders and addictions along
with health costs and asocial behavior.
We
would increase
mental health
and cooperation locally and globally.
Each individual would
learn how to gain
deep satisfactions by wisely spending that
three trillion dollars in self-supporting, balanced ways, ways
that strengthened
our economy by increasing personal, social and environmental
well-being.
Each
individual could easily achieve and, as well, teach
and strengthen this great
turning process because they owned the free NAE tools that
enabled
them
to do so.
Isn't this a worthwhile goal for our
personal
lives and society? Isn't this the education and change that
we
want? Isn't it attractive?
By learning and teaching NAE, any of
us can begin to make it happen.
Students of Natural
Attraction Ecology have added its process to, and enhanced, most professions and disciplines (listed below).
This is especially true for students who have used it in conjunction
with: natural history, ecopsychology, ecotherapy, biology, creative
writing,
hypnotherapy,
Native American studies, art therapy, energy medicine, Reiki, love of
nature,
shaminism, Yoga, parenting, spirituality, relaxation, mid life crisis,
increasing
hope, conversation strategies and finding higher power.
The attraction these individuals hold
in common is that they are, or have learned to become, enlightened
appreciators of nature and its attractiveness.
They deeply love, respect and benefit from the self-correcting ways of
natural systems
and our planetary home, Earth.
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Significant Properties
of Natural
Attraction Ecology (NAE)
The
Axioms of NAE
Nature-connected axioms are
an essence of NAE that are rooted in the fundamental that humanity is
part of nature. They are empirical statements that arise
from us considering our felt sense
experiences with nature in and around us. "I can see
that
the sun is
shining" or "I enjoyed feeling the tree vibrate in the wind" or "The
fields are green and beautiful," or "I love my dog and I see and feel
he loves me,"
are
examples of NAE
axioms.
Because
NAE axioms come into language directly through the truth conveyed and
registered through two or more of our
53 natural senses together, the axioms are pure and
self-evident. For this reason they significantly add to scientific
thinking and they are universally
factual, as is life itself.
Felt
sense axioms help our
thinking reverse the distortions that mislead us into becoming
destructively sliced away from our living planet and its attraction for
unity and wellness.
.
*see ECHN Page 28
"The senses, being the explorers
of the world, open the way to knowledge."
-
Maria Montessori.
"Feelings are the truth, we don't live in the real
world when we ignore what we are feeling."
-
David Viscott
NAE axioms are as accurate
as the fact that you
can see this page and are reading these words
right now. This fact is true because the page purely
connects and
registers directly in your
psyche via many natural senses and feelings. These include
your/our
senses of color, of contrast, of sight, shape,
consciousness, trust, place, reason, language, distance, motion,
curiosity, beauty and space.
"Our abstract thinking is no
more reasonable or discriminating, logical and consistent than are our
feelings."
-
Carl Jung
Trusting
Experience
THE
CRITICAL QUESTION: If
the most intelligent person in the Industrial World proved
mathematically that you are not
reading these words right now, would you believe that expert and
his or her proof, or would
you believe your sensory
reading experience, here, in this moment?
Be
alarmed. With respect to nature, most of us in Industrial Society
are socialized to believe and trust the "expertise"
of Industrial
Society and its nature-disconnected leaders rather that truths we
personally sense and
experience in nature and in our relationships with the natural in each
other
and ourselves.
As
part of society's excessive conquest of nature, our leaders, including
scientists, teach us to
demean
and mistrust the fulfilling natural attraction senses and sensations of
our sensory contacts with nature's flow, in and
around us.
The world and we are in trouble because
most of
us are trained to think or feel that expertly
knowing "2 + 2 = 4" is more
valuable and rewarding than respecting the integrity of a sunset,
celebrating a
forest or treasuring the validity of our natural senses.
The
socializing bias of Industrial Society is so powerful that it misguides
our reasoning
to trust information that is based on a falsehood such as "A
dog's tail is one of its legs."
Misguided Socialization
We
and Earth endure many disorders because, from early on, our prejudiced
against nature society socializes us to applaud
the "advanced intelligence" of industrialization and to deny the value
of, and our satisfactions from, our natural attraction
experiences. This loss of the natural unbalances us. We become sliced
from "the ball" and we endure the
injurious effects of the loss of attractions to it and
ourselves.
When a vast majority of us
temporarily "vacate" our
industrial lives and our habitual thinking, we go on vacation. For
re-creation, (sic) we often fulfill our natural attractions to
nature
and visit a natural area. For example, annually, over nine million of
us, alone, visit Smoky Mountain National Park.
Most
of us have had at least one attractive experience in nature that was
organic and spontaneous, a memorable and valuable happening that was
not prescribed,
taught or structured. This has occurred because
natural
attraction is
neither foreign nor abnormal. Rather it is a fundamental part of being
human, alive and an element in the whole
of the global ecosystem.
Half-Truth Stories
NAE recognizes that many of Industrial Society's stories about life are
detrimental and inaccurate simply because nature and life are not a story.
Rather, they are a phenomenon, an immediate-experience
attraction
dance
that our
natural senses register and bring into our
consciousness. The
dance
consists of
ever changing, mutually supportive, self-balancing and correcting attraction
relationships between all
parts of the web of life, including us.
We inherit the attraction and
the ability to consciously register
and enjoy
what our natural senses
experience in natural
areas. This free gift from nature enables us to reasonably think in
conjunction with
nature's balanced ways in order to make sense of life and our
lives.
NAE and some of its major
axioms are
offered, below, to encourage us to make scientific sensory
contact with nature, backyard or backcountry. Our
troubles arise when we don't make this contact with nature in and
around us. It is as if our leaders say:
"Let me drive you across this
dangerous road to where it is best for you to be."
"Are
you an expert? Do you even know how to drive or what is best?"
"No,
but I read a book about it."
As
shown by some of the quotations on this page, ancient and modern
people who have had good natural attraction experiences in natural
areas have
recognized that
neither a book, teacher nor parent made the experiences happen. Sensitively being in a natural
area made them happen.
NAE activities help you
make their experiential education benefits happen for yourself.
"I
do not wish to hear about the moon from someone who has not been there"
- Mark Twain
Ancients and moderns have used
the first-hand information, thoughts and feelings from their empirical,
natural
sensory attraction contacts in natural areas to construct undeniable
axioms about how nature
works:
Axioms
NAE
Axiom 1
Nature
is a non-literate dance.
No
sane human being has ever reported hearing or seeing real plants,
animal or minerals
speak or write or read to each other with words. It is reasonable to
conclude that Nature, across the eons and
excluding humanity, has known
and organized itself through a non-literate, non-verbalized,
unwritten
attraction message
and
communication process.
"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
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NAE Axiom 2
To be
part of a system anything, or anyone, must somehow be in
communication with that system, so that the system and the individual,
or thing, can supportively relate to the other.
Since humanity is part of the global
ecosystem and the ecosystem is non-literate,
we must somehow be in non-literate contact
with the system, and vice versa.
"Wind
over the lake: the
image of inner truth."
.
- I Ching circa 1200
B.C.
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NAE
Axiom 3A
We know, learn and relate to
nature, in and around us, through 53 natural attraction senses that we
inherit and that, when fulfilled, produce good feelings.
We
only fully know facts and truths when they register and make sense
through
our 53 or more inherent natural attraction senses.
These senses
include our unique literacy, consisting of our combined senses
of consciousness, reason and language.
We are attracted to make
sense because this gratifies our sense of reason and because our
natural senses are attractive. Their fulfillment releases
Endorphins, Dopamine and other neurotransmitters that produce
good feelings as natural rewards for making good connections.
"I
feel so much better since I have been freed of the guilt, shame and
crazyness I've felt about myself since childhood. I discovered that I
have simply been experiencing and wisely holding on to the truth of my
inherent 53 natural attraction senses that our nature-conquering
Society tries to demean and control. I thought I only had
five
senses and the rest of what I experienced was something wrong that I
must control or hide."
-
Anonymous NAE Participant
"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
In Industrial Society we normally
learn to believe and
act-out
imaginary "non-sense" stories and the information that their
words convey. However, that is not
how nature works its perfection.
^^^
NAE
Axiom 3B
Nature,
including our 53 natural senses, only exist in the
present, in the "now" of life. They are not in stories about the
past or future for real nature
is
not a story,
it is an ongoing attraction relationship process.
"An actually existing fly is
more important than a possibly existing angel."
-
Ralph Waldo Emerson
For
example, "The sun will rise tomorrow," is not necessarily a true
statement in NAE,
for although the statement is based on our natural senses of reason,
literacy, deduction and past experiences, it does not contain
immediate sensible input from most of our other natural senses. Since
tomorrow's sun
has
not yet risen, our other natural senses can't register or relate to the
event.
When only our abstract-story type of "sun-absent" knowing occurs, we
often learn to
think and believe non-sense.
We and Earth
suffer accordingly.
This is a key axiom for change can only occur in the immediate moment.
What we sense in the "now" is also the greatest trustable truth that we
can experience. Only in the now is nature available and are our natural
senses active, including our senses of
reason and consciousness.
*see
ECHN page 33
http://www.ecopsych.com/nineleg.html
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NAE Axiom 4
Natural
senses are nameless, intelligent attractions that we
experience in the moment as forms of love or spirit.
Even
if it had no given name, our natural sense/sensation of thirst, in the
"now,"
intelligently
"turns on" to attract us to drink water. This attracts the global water
cycle
and its ways to flow through us and sustain us. In addition,
when we have
had enough water, thirst reasonably and intelligently "turns-off" and,
in balanced natural ways, attracts us to stop drinking.
In conjunction with each other, each
of our additional 52 natural senses
is a similar, naturally nameless, life-guiding, natural attraction
intelligence that we feel. In congress, they support us as well as the
global
ecosystem. For example,
our sense of thirst brings us to water for our
health. And, for our health, our sense of excretion
has us remove water in us that "miraculously" contains
appropriate edible waste, and feeds that "waste" to the ecosystem's
plant, animal and mineral community.
Besides
our sense of thirst, our love for water, our other natural senses
include our
love
of, or for, community, reason and trust; aroma, place and
consciousness;
color,
taste and motion; language, belonging, beauty, music and gravity along
with 39
additional natural sensory attractions and their spirit.
Many of our
dysfunctions are simply symptoms of our sensory separation and
deprivation from
nature.
"I believe in God, only I spell
it Nature."
- Frank
Lloyd Wright
NAE
Axiom 5
Nature's web-of-life, including
all materials and humanity,
consists of natural attractions.
What
are we and the world made of? Factually, we consist of atoms
and
they are 99.999999999 percent "space." However, neither we nor atoms
are empty
space. All that "space" consists of, or contains, attraction,
the
energies and forces that draw, tug and hold the atom's electrons to its
nucleus. These and other attractions also attract and attach one atom
to
another as well as hold all materials, the Earth and the solar system
together.
We can empirically
observe,
experience and sense that things
are attracted to stay together by sensitively trying to move or part
them. Their
attraction to be in relationship and belong in the moment, offers
resistance.
Even an atom's nucleus and electrons are subatomic
packets of attraction energy, as demonstrated by the explosive power of
a nuclear bomb when that energy is released.
That
all things are connected through attraction is also recognized by
Newton's Laws of
Dynamics
and by the Buddhist Law of Karma that indicates all acts have
consequences.
When we try to pick out anything
by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the
universe.
-John
Muir
http://www.ecopsych.com/thesisquote6.html
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NAE
Axiom 6
Planet Earth acts like, or is, a living organism.
Our
sensing and feeling about various attraction connections
between ourselves and our planet can make us aware
that there is
nothing that we
do
with respect to being alive, that Earth does not also do.
Our
natural senses help us discover that we and our
planet survive identically, that we are a seamless continuum of each
other. This gives our senses of reason and deduction the opportunity to
conclude that since people are living
organisms and, with respect to life processes, we and Earth are
identical, Earth is also a living organism (Gaia), or at least it acts
like
one.
"The
Earth is a functionally integrated system -as much an organic being as
you and I- that exists not simply for man's benefit but for it's own.
- David Laing, The Earth System
Life
has not adapted to an inert world determined by the dead hand of
chemistry and physics. We live in a world that has been built by our
biological ancestors, ancient and modern, and which is continuously
maintained by all things alive today.
- James Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia
*see ECHN Page 135
http://www.ecopsych.com/livingplanetearthkey.html
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NAE Axiom 7
Humanity lives in the Earth, not
on the Earth.
In
a natural area, our multitude of natural senses register clouds, birds,
weather
conditions and the air
many miles above our head. This helps our sense of reason recognize
and
validate
that we live in, not on, Planet Earth. We live deep within its
atmosphere and
biosphere. They flow through and around us.
The
truth, above, often feels uncomfortable because our story-world depicts
us as
living on the surface of the Earth. This distortion conflicts us. It
separates our psyche from the truth conveyed by our "touchy-feely"
relationship
with the web of
life and each other. The conflict stresses and weakens our
senses of self, trust, place, belonging, peace and community. We don't
feel comfortable stating the truth, "I live in the Earth."
It
is irrational and stressful to think, feel and know the world in this
inaccurate and separative way. The direct sensory experiences
we enjoy when vist to a natural area often
help us feel better, for they help us register the truth of our
relationship with Earth and reduce our stress.
"One
touch of Nature makes the whole world
kin."
-
William Shakespeare
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NAE
Axiom 8
Together, nature and humanity are natural attraction growing more
attractive and mutually supportive.
It is reasonable to respect
that we
and nature consist of, and cooperatively share, natural attractions.
For
example,
We are attracted to breathe in
oxygen for our life and
attracted to
exhale carbon dioxide as food for plant life.
We are attracted to eat
food to support our life and attracted to excrete our waste, and it is
food that supports the web-of-life.
We are attracted to be more
attractive and to seek and enjoy more attractions, as does the natural
environment.
Scientists find, by
using radioactive
tagged atoms, that atoms
from the environment are attracted to replace
98 percent of the atoms of our body and mind every year. Every seven
years or
so, every atom in our body returns to the environment
and is replaced by a new atom from the environment. We continually
become the environment and it becomes us.
Our body and mind consist of ten times more "foreign" cells than human
cells.
Some of our human
DNA is the DNA of plants and animals. DNA consists of mineral molecules
and elements.
The words "humus" and "human" and "humility" have the same origin.
Biologically we
and nature are one, a flowing,
pristine river of life that consists of ceasless dancing and resonating
attraction
relationships within and between all of its currents, including us as
one of these currents.
"There is one common flow, one
common breathing, all things are in sympathy."
- Hippocrates, circa
450 B.C.
NAE Axiom 9
Nature has a perfection of its own.
It
makes sense to recognize that nature's
perfection consists of the ability of its natural attractions to:
correct,
organize, renew,
regenerate,
recycle,
transform,
compost, perpetuate,
purify and preserve nature.
Natural
attractions achieve the above in balanced ways that produce
nature's optimums of grace, life,
diversity,
cooperation and
beauty.
Nature
achieves its valuable optimums without producing garbage,
pollution or our
excessive abusiveness, disorders,
stress, isolation
and
insanity.
Our
natural senses of reason, consciousness,
community, emotional
place,
trust, companionship,
appreciation, survival
and sublime love, along
with other natural senses, help us recognize that
it is sensible to acknowledge that the above-mentioned
qualities of the natural world make nature perfect in its own way.
Our
natural sense of deduction informs us that since we are
biologically, psychologically and spiritually a seamless
continuum of nature, our
natural self is as
perfect as is nature.
We
don't need to learn how to be perfect. Education means "To
bring out from
within." What we need to do is
apply NAE because it
enables us, through hands-on, sensory education, to respectfully bring
out, as
well as
support, celebrate, love and relate to the unifying perfection of our natural
self in
ourselves, in others and
in the web-of-life.
"I go to nature to be soothed
and healed, and to have my senses put in order."
-
John Burroughs
"What we are looking for is what is doing the looking"
-St.
Francis of Assisi
*see
ECHN Page 26
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NAE Axiom 10
NAE attracts us to unify with, rather than conquer and exploit, human
life and the web-of-life.
As
a natural area brings our psyche into contact with nature's wholeness,
our natural reasoning, senses and sensitivities convey that the fittest
survive in
nature, but not
because they
are the best competitors. Rather, it is because they are the best
builders of
cooperative
natural attraction relationships with their environment.
The
fittest are
those "things"
that are the best in attracting support from their surroundings.
The fittest accomplish this by
attractively supporting their surroundings locally and globally. The
"fittest" are fit
because they are the most cooperatively attractive.
"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
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NAE Axiom 11
The purpose of life is to support life; life consists
of nature's attraction to support it.
Humanity
consciously experiences the natural attraction of life to support life.
We call that attraction our
felt sense love
of
life, our instinct for survival,
or our desire
to
be, that our senses feel, that we experience and
enjoy.
"The purpose of life is to live
in agreement with nature."
- Zeno,
circa 520 BC
*
see ECHN Page 27
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NAE Axiom 12
An NAE Vehicle: The Webstring Natural Attraction Model.
Our
experiences with NAE show us that when
the web-of-life is represented by an accurate web of life model
of how nature's
perfection works, we can choose to use the model and have the model's
activities
help us balance our thinking and increase our well being.
The activities accomplish this by enabling us to interlace our
intelligence and senses with the flow of web-of-life attraction
connections (webstrings) in a natural area, backyard or backcountry.
"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
The
webstring model helps us update our scientific reasoning and technology
since they are often excessively disconnected from how nature works.
Because
nature consists of ever-changing dancing and resonating
natural attraction
relationships within and between all of its elements, including us, our
scientific facts are warped.
Scientific facts are usually based on standard
conditions of light, motion, temperature, sound and pressure while in
nature there are few, if any, standard conditions of
anything.
In
the natural world, the major standard condition is constant change and
flow. For
this reason, the webstring model's 53 sense activities help us connect
with authentic nature as
it is happening, flowing and changing in and for all
things.
*see
ECHN
Page 12Apply now. Learn and teach Natural
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NAE Axiom 13
Our basic relationship with nature and each other is cooperative, not
competitive
We have the felt-sense ability to
know that our attractions to things and relationships in a genuine
natural
area are not learned. Rather, they are our psyche inherently
and cooperatively connecting to its nurturing
source in
nature. There is no story present in nature that tells our
psyche to refrain from connecting. To the contrary, nature attracts us
to connect.
Our unadulterated attractions to
natural areas enable us to become
aware of nature's perfection. This cooperation helps us think
like nature
works; it benefits us and the environment.
When
we respectfully visit a natural area, our 53 natural senses safely make
contact
with the self-correcting balance
and purifying power
of their origins in nature. Because this energizes
and
restores them, our natural senses help us think more sensibly.
"Nothing
is more indisputable than our senses."
-
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert
*see
ECHN Page 13
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NAE Axiom 14
Members of Industrial Society suffer because it is
unduly prejudiced against nature.
NAE
identifies prejudice as
"An unreasonable pre-judging
attitude that is, due to
bonding, unusually resistant to rational influence."
Industrial Society is prejudiced against nature due to our
unfounded "tropicmaker"
belief that nature is hostile to us and that nature is not intelligent.
NAE recognizes that most nature-centered societies neither cause or
display our excessive and detrimental ways.
Our Ego's misguided prejudice against nature has us
habitually learn to believe that it is superior to nature, that, for
our
survival and profit, we must take dominion over, exploit and improve
nature, in and around us.
We are not born to
be excessively
separated from, suspicious and fearful of nature. Rather,
Industrial Society educates us to this condition.
We seldom change the way we think because we are bonded to it by the
age of seven. Society pays us, and in other ways
rewards us, to not understand things that we need to know
in order to live in balance.
"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
*see
ECHN Page 24
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NAE Axiom 15
How
we think and feel shapes our destiny.
NAE
helps us
register natural attraction callings so we may think and feel think
like nature's perfection works. The enjoyment and
benefits that result from these
connections help us unleash our unreasonable bonds, re-connect to the
whole of Earth and reverse our prejudice against nature.
"A thing
is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty
of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends to do otherwise."
- Aldo Leopold, 1948
"This
is how a human being can change: there's a worm addicted to
eating
grape leaves. Suddenly, he wakes up, call it grace, whatever, something
wakes him, and he's no longer a worm. He's the entire vineyard, and
the
orchard too, the fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy that
doesn't need to devour."
- Jedaluddin Rumi,
1207-1273
The
thousands of favorable results
from engaging in NAE courses and activities demonstrate that the wisdom
and joy of genuinely connecting ourselves with nature helps
us increase personal, social and environmental well-being.
As
the quotes on this page disclose, the observations of many individuals
over
past millenna show that we have long been aware of our attractive
attachments to nature. It is Industrial Society's prejudice against
nature that causes us to ignore these observations and suffer
accordingly.
Again, nature-connected people(s) seldom cause or display our problems
and madness.
*see
ECHN Page 108, 115, 132, 141
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Summary
A
Lilac can appear to be blue against a red background, and appear to be
red
against a
blue one. However, the color of a Lilac also has its own
integrity.
Similarly, with the conquer-nature bias
of Industrial
Society as our "background," our thinking
sees nature as a resource that we must increasingly exploit/consume"
for
profit if we are
to
survive.
NAE helps us sense and reason based on
a different
background. That background demonstrates and certifies that
for our
survival and balance, the integrity of nature is a powerful and
supportive
friend. Our survival benefits from it's nurturing of natural attraction
relationships as they create their
own self-correcting perfection around and within us.
To survive in a
balanced and ethical way with the whole of life, it is rational for us
to learn how
to let NAE activities help us think and
feel while in conscious sensory contact
with the integrity of our
natural attractions in natural areas.
"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
"We
cannot win the battle to increase the well-being of the web of life,
that includes our life, without strengthening our natural senses, our
emotional bonds with nature - for we will not fight to save
what
we do not love."
-
Michael J. Cohen's blend of statements by Stephen Jay Gould and
Jalaluddin Rumi
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Conclusion
We, along with all other people, places
and things, are equally born as an expression and
manifestation of natural
attraction. We are it, it is us. However, the unwarranted prejudice
against nature
in tropicmaker
thinking socializes us to conquer that expression.
We
are normally born with naturally-satisfied minds and hearts.
Industrial Society educates/socializes us through
desensitizing
processes that irritate our psyche. Our dissatisfaction motivates us
to excessively purchase artificial products to meet our
discontents. Desensitized, we often ignore the detrimental effects of
the artificial
on nature's renewing flow in and around us.
Most therapies help
us deal with the stress and disorders that result from our destructive
socialization. However, they are usually unaware of its prejudiced
against nature origins or how to remedy them.
We
can no longer afford to endure the consequences of being habitually
bonded and shaped into consumers who are excessively
sliced away from the balanced-life authenticity of our
planetary
home.
To
counteract the prejudice of our unbalanced bonding, each of us
needs, or may learn,
to
shamelessly feel and declare anywhere, "I
love nature," or "I love Earth,"
and, in this glow, design and build
naturally attractive and sustainable relationships with humanity, the
environment and
creation. NAE courses, books and
degrees are offered
that help any individual or institution achieve this goal.
Project NatureConnect
supports individuals whose consciousness appreciates the contribution
of NAE. Any interested person can be funded
to
help increase well-being by
using NAE to beneficially green their psyche, life and profession while
helping
others do the same.
There
is a heartfelt essence that helps us achieve peaceful balance with
Earth and each other. It is to use NAE to
register,
trust and consciously think with our natural senses and the wisdom
they, in congress, convey to us while we are in contact with nature, in
and around us.
NAE
helps us gain a recuperative, stress releasing fulfillment of our 53
senses by enabling us to freely interlace
our psyche with nature instead of purchasing excessive and often
destructive
technologies.
"The
Smokies always reminds me of coming home. From the top of the
hills you look down into a slow meandering stream that loops all
through the mountains. I was attracted to become the
interconnecting flow of this
stream, thinking how strange and wonderful is our home and Mother
Earth's natural attraction to produce its swirling vaporous
atmosphere, its flowing frozen liquids, its
plants, its creeping, crawling, climbing creatures, the croaking things
with wings, the rocks, the grasses. As I sensed an attractive
connection to these
things I became one of the grains of sand that helped
form these mountains. This strengthened my senses and I
enjoyed
an intense, fulfilling awareness of the rocks and all things around me.
I thought, 'This must be the high that people get from drugs' "
-
Anonymous NAE Participant
As these
words attract you, you are engaged in part of the NAE process.
The goal is to engage yourself and your community in all of it, in the
joy of supporting authentic nature in a natural area, as it is
attracted to supporting you.
"Nature is the unseen
intelligence that loved us into being."
-
Elbert Hubbard
"Our
troubles begin when we bond to sensory fulfillments obtained from
flawed substitutes for nature. Our remedy is to reason in ways that
include the "now" and the intelligence of our natural attractions while
they are genuinely connected to their source in the web of life,
backyard or backcountry."
-
Michael J. Cohen
Online, learn and teach NAE
nature-connection activities to yourself
and your community. Apply now. The benefits
speak for themselves. Call
360-378-6313 to implement your participation or a degree
program.
* * *
The Source of the NAE
Axioms
Below
are field
reports taken from the journals of anonymous Project NatureConnect
participants who used Natural Attraction Ecology activities to
respectfully make 53-sense contact with nature in themselves, others
and the environment.
Additional
reports are available via the survey
of participants
and its links
My Authentic Voice
Slatic’s Lake is a
very special place to me. When
I got there I was already on a high from life. I have had a
good
last couple days and am just feeling healthy and alive. While
asking
permission to be at this place, the seagull flying above seemed to say
to me, “Yes, you are one of us.” Almost as if I was supposed
to
know that already.
Immediately some geese
soared by and I rejoiced in the sound they made. I wanted to
skip
or do a dance because I was feeling so alive! Things just
seem to
be coming together in my life, I am feeling the flow of life, not even
so much feeling as I AM the flow of life. I’m
flowin’…….
“I
am
attracted to this
flock of geese because they make a beautiful sound as they whoosh by in
flight and show me life. I like this sound because it fills
me
with happiness. I feel alive! I feel vibrant life!”
The
NAE course helps me recognize that, like the geese, I am part of nature
and that I can honestly say I am naturally attracted to myself in
exactly the same way that I am naturally attracted to the wild geese.
Things
that don’t feel right, relationships that don’t feel right, I am moving
away from. I feel now as if I am attracting the stuff in my
life
that is supposed to be there because I am open and trusting, because I
am being authentic, because I am being true to myself, because I LOVE
myself. Yay! I dance and giggle at that!
The geese have taught me that I love myself because I have a vibrant,
happy life that flows
and that I make a beautiful sound!
On
my walk around the lake I watched the community of birds around the
lone open spot of water…ravens, mallards, geese, seagulls….living in
harmony. Absolutely gorgeous…why are we humans not living
like
that???????
I learned that I
am a vibrant, flowing, life-being and I am welcome and loved in nature
I
choose to keep trusting and believing in NAE nature connections because
things are a coming
together…there is
balance on the horizon. I would be sad to have the web-of-life
attraction strands taken away from me
that I am experiencing every day of my life. Definitely this
activity
enhanced my sense of self-worth and my
trustfulness of nature. It help me identify that it's OK to
be happy,
to trust in each moment, in what is happening in your life, and to
listen
to your authentic voice.
Reducing inaccuracy:
"Although the air was cool, the sun was shining so I experienced the
chill
of air passing into my nose while feeling the warmth of the sun on my
cheeks. I sensed the damp earth soft for sitting, the earthy, pleasing,
surprisingly aromatic and green smells of the abundant
surrounding plants, the warmth of the sun, the grounding energy of the
oaks and madrones and the view to the hills across a narrow valley. I
felt welcome, nurtured, at peace and one with my
surroundings. I also felt grateful, a wonderful, too often absent, way
to feel. This was such a welcome experience.
It was extremely
enjoyable and even instructive to pay attention to
everything I was experiencing. Paying more attention increased
the enjoyment, increased my appreciation and happiness, partly by
moving into the background the thoughts and concerns that occupied my
day before I got there but mostly from connecting to the softness and
widespread beauty. It was a warm experience, perfectly
balanced. It was also extremely enjoyable to replace the bird
in the drawing with different elements of my environment and
this felt
very true and beautiful as I sensed into each one: large oak, soft
green plants, blue sky, sun, gentle breeze, damp earth.
It
was very grounding and affirming to do this exercise...I felt so happy
to bring the awareness of all these things into my sensory fields. It
was like an exchange of love and I felt completely transformed compared
to my state of mind and being before I started it.
Spending enough time in nature so that
significant impressions,
insights, comforts, peace, etc. can occur is extremely important,
otherwise those things and their connection will barely register, if at
all. And the more
time that is spent in nature, the less likely an inaccurate or
superficial story about
it will be formed."
The
love of trees
It is
raining and windy, which made me want to stay indoors where it was snug
and cozy rather than brave the elements. However, when I bundled up and
went outside I was reminded once again about how invigorating and
uplifting it is to go outdoors even when (and perhaps especially when)
the elements are heightened. My nose was cold and my cheeks stung with
the chill of the rain and the wind blew against me. I leaned against
the tree and was filled with gratitude over its shelter and protection.
I imagined its strength being draw from its roots in the earth surging
upward and was also strengthened.
I love the trees because they are deeply rooted and filled with
strength.
I
love myself because I am deeply rooted and filled with
strength.
Classmate:
This is a
really great sensory image and easy for me to accept from what you
have shared about yourself in this class.
Writer:
It does
describe me: I draw my strength from my natural attractions of my
family, my
dear friends and my connections to the earth, all of which sustain me.
Like the trees who sheltered me from the elements, I also
shelter
and protect my family, my friends, my community and give them my
strength in return.
Classmate:
No wonder you love trees! I did the activity and was attracted to a
little flower growing under a bush. I discovered "I like
this small flowering plant because it is in constant upward
motion and means no harm. This translated into: "I like myself because
i am in constant upward motion, and mean no harm," and that felt right
to me. I recognized that I have more in
common
with nature than I previously noticed and that ways of life that are
not in
accordance with nature have desensitizing effects.
Unification
I
walked out with permission into the nature of a cloudy day.
The
feeling was damp and cold feeling more like a New England morning than
Arizona. The feeling of moisture driving the cold deep into
my
being felt different than the crisp dry Arizona cold of most days
here. As I walked along, I began to say unity --unity-- I noticed the
extreme peaceful feeling of no movement, no wind, the feeling as if
time itself stood still.
The
human community, not yet awakened, usually consists of the bustle and
movement of vehicles and sounds of a
town waking. Instead
a feeling of peace, absence of noise and wind
presides.
The
ravens
with
their winter calls then started up-I was just thinking the day
prior that I had not heard them this year. Perhaps it was due
to
my business responsibilities and the disconnect they bring about.
I
sensed total peace as I walked along-
with the awareness of unity and support. It was as if the ravens were
ushering me to work. As I approached a large tree there were a flock of
birds roosting at the top of its twisted, mature branches. I felt a
oneness as the solstice light began warming the day. I entered the
building and as I sat at my desk I saw that the flock of birds, now
visible, were taking off from the tree top, also starting their day.
What
a profound sense of belonging I was at in that moment in time.
Addendum:
At the end of the day as the nurse and I sit by my desk recounting the
day
and sharing support and healing for ourselves, the birds
returned to the tree top. What a sense of unity this day.
Belonging
in Christmas
I
did not grow up in a family that celebrated Christmas or Hanukah (by
birth I am Jewish, and was raised Christian) and the holidays are
painful for me. Although I’m not consciously reflecting on negative
memories, the past insidiously creeps in and puts a pall on what should
be a joy-filled time for me and my family. I formally coped with this
by feverishly throwing myself holiday preparations and rituals to the
extreme. The house was bursting with homemade gifts, we participated in
every holiday activity imaginable and there wasn’t a spare moment to
even sit down. People would delight in my gifts, charmed by my
professional looking holiday newsletter of our family complete with
humorous and touching stories and photos and make references to Martha
Stewart. But year after year, after our children would unwrap their
gifts from under our perfectly decorated tree I would crash in absolute
exhaustion and/or would be physically ill. The last couple of years
have increasingly been more challenging due to life circumstances added
with a string of devastating events. I’ve barely been able to
muster the energy to even acknowledge the holidays, much less truly
celebrate them. I’ve felt guilty and conflicted about this, unable to
overcome my inner turmoil to try to find a middle ground.
Early
Christmas Eve I chose to do my assignment and seek Nature’s wisdom. The
weather has been intermittently stormy, snowy, wet, sleeting and so
forth, not just on any given day but at any moment it could shift
without warning. Around the time I stepped outdoors the sky had
cleared. I stopped and simply let myself breathe, in and out, in and
out. I let my mind go free and think of anything for awhile. My anxiety
rose up and unexpectedly so did my tears. Although I did not cry hard,
it seemed to have risen up from a low deep place within me. I felt the
air chill my hot tears as they sprang from my eyes. I stayed in that
feeling for awhile and then as my heart, mind and emotions quieted down
in the calm of nature I began to think of my assignment. I followed my
attraction and was drawn by the deep emerald green of the fields that
spread out in every direction. I began to free-form hum, then little
phrases of music began to creep up and spill from my mouth. The green
was like balm to my eyes and the music soothed the jangled cords and
began to form into song. Perhaps cliché, I began to sing the Christmas
songs my little girl had been singing earlier while playing quietly by
herself. I felt a strong sense of harmony with what I saw in nature and
what I felt inside, as the two were intertwined. Singing required a
different kind of breathing and this action regulated it. I suddenly
trailed off no longer feeling like singing. I simply listened to the
wind in the tall grasses and blowing the branches, to the creeping
crackle of a cat walking across the fallen leaves and to the sound of
our two ducks swishing their bills around in the water to drink. It was
a perfect disjointed and yet perfectly harmonious symphony of it’s own
kind and I felt myself a part of it. I thought about how I was a part
of it, it was a part of me, a whole community resonating together
consciously and unconsciously. I felt calm, quiet and at peace.
I
didn’t want to interrupt this feeling to go through the natural senses
in the book, so I tried to simply sort of generalize from memory what
they were. I thought of sense of community (all around me), the sense
of feel (the air touching my skin), sight/color (the soothing green
fields), but what most stuck out to me was that the longer I stood
there, the more I felt like I was part of a larger whole—a community. I
felt that as nature resonated with me and me with it that there was no
“me” or “it”. I felt accepted, as though I belonged.
I
carried this feeling of belonging and calm with me into the house as I
interacted with my family. I found myself humming and filled with the
holiday spirit as I prepared our Christmas meal of fondue. We literally
sat and broke bread together, I
laughed with them and we enjoyed ourselves.
My
husband
prefers chilly sleeping so he’s been happily
enjoying the solitude of sleeping alone. However, this night,
apparently drawn by my
quiet contemplative calm spirit, he came out and “spooned” me, sort of
cocooning me as I nestled against him. We didn’t speak. We merely lay
quietly breathing together, completely filled with peace as we gazed
with love at our sleeping little children who appeared to be angelic
while they slumbered. I felt nature’s gifts to me, which I carried
indoors and into my family. It is the best Christmas present I could
receive.
A
good place to be
Well,
as usual this was a pleasantly surprising activity. With a
perceived lack of time, I was a bit disgruntled about doing it and
wondered what I could do quickly and not have to put too much of myself
into it. Funny, huh? Short story even shorter, I
walked
into the yard, obtained permission, mustered up some gratitude, scooped
up a bit of snow onto my finger and felt it -- deeply. I felt
the
sting
of cold, the contrast of temperature with other fingers. I observed the
response of cold snow on warm finger, the sensation of water dripping
down the finger and onto the back of my hand. I even let out
a
spontaneous musical sigh as it dripped. The water all around
and
inside of me and evaporating off of my index finger and frozen in tiny
ice designs and somehow making its way through cold air to make water
clouds was all at once very much in my awareness. The sense
of
feeling was amplified. My body heat and the cold snow
resonated.
Later,
I played a game of scrabble with Marty. He set me off once or
twice by waiting what seemed an inordinate amount of time to take his
turn, making high scoring plays, and otherwise being a true
opponent. Each time these feelings arose, I put my hand on
him --
touched his arm, rested my hand on his knee. This immediately
settled me and I didn't feel the distance between us any longer.
I
was so happy to have done this activity, and learned that the sense of
feeling and touch was a way to resonate with and to create a
non-language way of feeling within me, not just on my finger!
By
connecting with the cold snow through the sense of touch, I got outside
of my head which was a good place to be since it hadn't been working
too well all day!
Discovering
Community
As
usual, I went to the two small parks two blocks from where I live. The
Stuyvesant Parks have been my "saving grace" in maintaining a sense of
balance and getting in touch with my feelings. When I come home after
one of my walks I always feel good. I am filled with a
renewed
sense of hope and have a deeper connection with myself and with others.
As
I began my walk around the park, I noticed the stark bare tree branches
of elm and oak, the color of dark gray, of diverse width, shape and
length spread sideways and up to the sky, inspiring the image of a
Japanese painting. This image brought up a melancholy feeling
so
I asked the question, "What webstrings do I most desire to surface from
my subconscious to conscious that would make me feel good Was
it
validation? Recognition? I heard a voice say, "dig a little
deeper." Belonging? "Community," that felt right.
As
soon as the word community came into my head I saw a flock of pigeons
flying overhead, then a gathering of squirrels eating from the same
patch of land, then sparrows sharing the same rose bush. I
was
witnessing a good feeling of connection from the trees, pigeons,
squirrels and sparrows.
Then I saw 2 squirrels
playing together, chasing each other up and down trees and on the
benches -- they made me laugh out loud.
Several
park employees were cleaning up the leaves and I had a deep desire to
tell them how grateful I was. So I went
over to one
of the men and one of the women, and I thanked them for keeping the
parks so clean. I let them know how much they are appreciated
and
how good it feels to come here. One man said he doesn't hear
that
very often and it felt good to see his smile of pride.
A
few minutes later I felt something hit my shoulder and at first I
thought, "Oh no, it's pigeon s--t." No, it was a
snowflake.
The most extraordinary thing happened, millions of snowflakes as big as
cotton balls fell from the sky. The color of the sky was an
off
white and it made the park translucent. A few people walked
along
with their tongues out trying to catch a snowflake, so I started to do
this too and we all laughed.
Suddenly adults
were transformed into children. People began to smile at each
other and laugh at the magic that was happening. A man
stopped,
put his briefcase on the ground and started doing tai chi.
For
the next 10 minutes I happily stood smiling as I watched him and the
snow falling in the park. We were by then the only 2 left in
the
park, except for 2 park employees who kept looking up at the sky in
disbelief.
There is something about snow in the
city that brings everyone together --for me it brings out the
natural attractions of community. The snow that
fell from
the
sky
today wasn't your typical snow, it was a phenomenon in its size, shape,
the way it fell from the sky and it lasted a good half-hour. I thanked
the snow for being there.
The whole
experience was breathtaking. Good feelings of being
childlike,
playful, connected, and loved filled my heart. It felt so good to be
there. There are no words to express the joy I felt.
My experience in nature shows me that I
am a person who gets good
feelings when I am in the moment, being still and
silent, outside connecting to natural attractions of
life, for being grateful and giving heartfelt thanks to the trees,
wildlife
and the people who take care of the park
-- for creating
the opportunity of making possible a connection
to the natural attractions that bind community.
I discovered that connecting with
strangers through laughter caused by the unexpected
phenomena of millions of snowflakes, the size of large cotton balls,
rapidly falling from the sky--transformed adults into playful children
sticking their tongues out trying to catch a snowflake.
Awakening
Love
Oh
beautiful sentient being Mother Nature, I have just begun to appreciate
your presence, beauty and love… How did I live all these
years
without this connection is beyond my comprehension. I am so
glad
I have arrived!
The Self, Meet Yourself activity was so
beautiful and eye opening that I had to re-do it and be in it till each
aspect of my being felt like a part of Mother Earth and her
atmosphere… I must say it was an awakening experience… Such
profound love which I always thought is rare and felt occasionally when
meditating, is actually present in every ounce of Nature and can be
accessed by simply allowing and following Nature’s attractions…
As
I walked in Nature away from my backyard to an open space…
allowing spontaneous attractions to call me… I was mesmerized by a
loving embrace of two trees with branches running through the other
tree… Love is not just between two people it is present in
Nature
everywhere.
What I learned from this activity is the
abundance of love and that Nature nurtures through natural Love
ever present supporting all of existence.
LOVE
is natural attraction, it cannot be taken away as that is our true
Nature… We sustain
and
create through LOVE… we even die through love merging back into what we
were born from…
Interacting
Responsibly
The seed of my interest in Natural
Attraction
Ecology and Ecopsychology based on it, was sown with my gradual
awareness of the unsustainability, destructiveness, and unhealthiness
of our way of life. By "our," I mean several institutions whose shared
values have changed this planet in unprecedented ways: Western
civilization, America's (and many other like-minded countries)
death-culture, the objectification of nature as "resources" to be
exploited, cheap oil, etc. Through this series of realizations, I
decided that I wanted to find a way to become a more responsible being
on this planet -- more profoundly than buying organic/free trade food.
By "responsible being," I mean I want to find my place in the Natural
World and help others do the same. With my educational background and
interests, ecopsychology made the most sense. What I like about this
program in particular is that it's got a grass-roots (organic!) drive
behind it. Even though it's Internet- and email-based, students get an
experiential education. The activities I've done so far -- and their
lasting effects -- have confirmed for me that this program resonates
with ideas I hold dear and sacred, and simply just makes sense for me.
My background is in psychology, child development, and family support.
My realizations about the direction that civilization is headed have
also influenced the way I look at my "career field." So many of the
systems I've worked in and with, while they are counter-cultural in
some ways, are still grounded in and dependent upon the injustices and
destruction and separation-from-nature that inform so much of our
existence. Put bluntly, I began to get the feeling that I was
empowering and supporting these people only to feed them back into the
Machine Culture. Through this course/program and the supportive
nature-connected relationships it reinforces, I intend to forge a more
sustainable and proactive career in light of the current state of our
society and environment.
Professionally, I want to find a way to do good, sustainable,
productive work that truly empowers and supports people by connecting
them with their real Natural Selves. Personally, I anticipate going
through deep realizations about some of the nature-disconnected stories
that are
still operating in my life, and opening up to all the other ways I have
available of interacting responsibly with myself, this world, and its
inhabitants.
Waking
up
It is a blustery day. The wind and snow
are swirling around outside my window.
And the temperatures are cold. Feels like a day to enjoy the day- but
from inside looking out.
I went to my family room window where
Don recently hung a bird feeder. And, there they were out in the storm
a several junkos and a finch. How do they do it? I found myself
asking.
And, so I asked them. First for
permission to ask them and then by expressing my
gratitude for whatever they were about to teach me.
I
called to mind some of my stressed thoughts and feeling. "I don't know
how to do
the financial world. There is too much to learn, that I can't
understand. I won't have the opportunity to retire if I don't make the
right decisions, now. I may not survive today, if I don't do it right.
But, I don't know how to make the right decisions!" Stress-out! Life
feels like one big never ending anxiety trip- when I approach
it
with these thoughts.
So, I matched my body with the bird's
movements as the activity suggests.
The finch sat munching the seeds from the bird feeder. I chomped and
moved my neck in swallowing motions. He seemed unfazed by thoughts of
the future. He just seemed grateful and content to be eating now. I
noticed as I matched his movements that I somehow began to feel more
grateful and content. Wow!
I began to sense a
message."Opportunities have been and always will be available. No need
to stress. There is no such thing as a missed opportunity. When one
disappears another arises." There was no bird feeder there last week-
but this week there is.
Don came in the room singing a happy
holiday song. The finch sensed that it was time to move on. He simply
flew off the bird feeder and away. Non-attachment was his message as it
was attracted to a safer setting. Be
grateful for what you are receiving now and trust that what you need
will be provided. The next opportunity awaits. And, the next.
Feels like a much lovelier way to live.
I would be so devastated if
the finch and my experience with
him were taken away from me.
I wrote: "I
like the finch because it weathers the storms of life with its
contentment and gratitude. It trusts this moment and gives its focus
and love to it. Its life matters to it. It gives itself to what it
senses that it needs. It is willing to look for opportunities and trust
that when that opportunity has passed that another one will present
itself in perfect time. He knows and trusts his place in the moment and
in all of nature."
Then I wrote the same thing about nature
in me:
"I like myself
because, I weather the storms of life with my contentment and
gratitude. I trust this moment and give my focus and love to it. My
life matters to me. I give myself to what I sense that my spirit needs.
I am willing to look for opportunities and trust that when that
opportunity has passed that another one will present itself in perfect
time. I know and trust my place in this moment and in all of nature."
My self esteem and trustfulness of
nature were very much enhanced
through doing this activity. Thank you little finch.
I did this same activity with
a person to note the effects.
When I asked Don for permission to match
his movements. He said, "Sure!
Match this!" and gave me a big smooch!
I did this, this morning, so I haven't
slept on it, yet. But, I do
notice I am facing the day with a sense of calm- as if I had just woken
up from a good nights sleep.
A
tree-dance response
I ran in from the
cold approaching storm with groceries in hand, shook off the chill and
moved the mouse around to see if I had any new mail. There
you
were, reminding me that Friday did come. And so after reading
your wonderful post -- so full of life and connection and essential
learning from Finch the Teacher -- I sat at the front window and asked
the pine if we could play. Bobbing and reaching in the cold
wind,
I reached my limbs outward and did the dance of the tree.
Energy
coursed through me and the connecting tingle was thick and
pure.
A cloud bank in the west moved like a
wall, unflinching
in
it's form except for the steady movement north and east. So I
moved, solid, slow, with snow filled density. A
darker
cloud moved in the opposite direction and so did I. I loved
it! In my wildest dream of what today would hold, I didn't
imagine I would take the time to dance with a tree! No one
was
home to match movements with, but Maggie is always willing to wag when
I talk to her, so I matched her, I wagged my tail and twitched my eyes
without moving
my head, lifted my ears in anticipation and giggled at the sight of
me!
What I learned is that a mere waltz with
a tree or cloud
can
push aside the clutter of a to do list, the worries of the day, the
undone housework, the anticipation of any event --and bring me
powerfully to the NOW of what is beautiful, what is deeply and
profoundly HERE as teacher, as dance partner. I like myself
because I bend with the wind and move solidly through the atmosphere of
life. Both of these are qualities are powerful ways to manage
the
unpredictable weather I encounter.
Thanks to all of you who
support me on this shared email
list. Thanks to Dr. Cohen for bringing this work to
us. Thanks to the wind and the trees and the clouds and the
birds
who hang in the wind until it shifts.
Making
the connection
I
find hope in people like my sister
who went on a walk with me one day and I asked her to tell me what she
was attracted to. At first she told me that she wasn’t
finding
herself attracted to anything….that really she is just attracted to
people. I asked her to think of something in nature that she
was
attracted to, even if she was not seeing it on our walk. She
told
me she loves a beautiful sunset. I asked her what she would
feel
like if that sunset was taken away from her. She told me that
it
would not affect her life, she would still be able to
survive. I
asked her if her life would be as fulfilling without the sunset, would
she enjoy her life as much? The wheels began turning….she was
able to tell me some things she was attracted to on the second half of
the walk.
About a week later I asked my
sister to read my posting
from
Chapter 6. After reading it she asked me if this course was
supposed to help strengthen our relationships with people. It
was
like a light bulb went on in her head when I answered yes, and she
responded, "Well, I can see us working together someday." My
sister
is in school to be a counselor and she loves helping people with their
problems. She made the connection!
No prescription needed
I
am enjoying everyone's introduction and their feelings and thoughts
about this course. I already "feel" different since I
started. I feel so lucky to be taking this online
class. I
have
been a nurse for many years and get to see on a daily basis what being
disconnected from nature can do to a person. I have taken
many
classes on holistic nursing and studied vibrational medicine, healing
touch, for many years. It seems more and more of society is
numbed, overwhelmed, helpless, desensitized, and in pain. I
feel
this is the class for everyone. I have always been attracted
to
nature, rivers, rocks, trees, etc.I find myself
growing vegetables
and making compost and love every minute of
it.
I
have a small place on the lake in the woods and it seems when I am
there it is the only time I feel truly happy and content. As
I
watch my grandchildren sit in the house and play video games
sun up till sundown I am concerned. I have seen how
this
class will
help me to help them and others to understand just how disconnected we
have become and that we can be healed!! A walk in the wood fights
depression and is better than anything that does not require a
prescription!!
Enhanced
self-worth
For
this exercise, I sat outside and watched the snow fall for this first
time this year. While doing so, I came to the awareness that,
"I
am attracted to this snowfall because it reminds me of how pure,
all-knowing, and beautiful nature truly is."
Substituting
"myself" in this statement was a little awkward, took some time for me
to contemplate, but ultimately agreed with the intentions of nature: "I
like myself because I remind me of how pure, all-knowing, and
beautiful I truly am."
I
am not going to lie.
When my
second statement didn't sound perfectly flowing in grammatical
correctness to me, I was tempted to cheat a bit and go back and change
my first statement. Rather, I chose to ponder why I thought
of
myself so separately from nature, considering that is from where I was
biologically created. I am definitely not "all-knowing," but
nature sure
is.
It was in its all-knowing ability that nature created me.
I
never really thought to think of myself in the sense of purity, but
when nature created me, I was as pure as possible. So I modified and
improved the statement about myself. This whole
process, to me, is beautiful...and amazing.
I learned that:
It
is the parts of ourselves that are most similar, and thus connected, to
nature that find different natural elements so attractive.
We are psychological indoor addicts because of our excessive
indoor-oriented upbringings.
Though
it is often difficult to do so, we must acknowledge that we are
creations of nature, and in this creation we inherit nature's great
qualities.
Now
that I am aware of these natural attraction qualities within
myself, I would not want them taken away. However, I can now
acknowledge how many times I allowed societal influences to rob me of
my natural attractions.
This activity absolutely
enhanced my
self-worth. It forced me to recognize that I must question the
times when I disrespect nature by not trusting in its
"all-knowingness." While
participating in this activity, I was able to identify myself as more a
part of nature, rather than simply an organism living within nature.
Thought
stories
I
remembered the time I spent living in London, England.
I
was out one day, and a squirrel that was walking on the ground suddenly
ran over, up my leg, further up my torso and arm, and then sat on my
shoulder. It all happened so quickly, and caught me
completely by
surprise. I did not respond favorably to the squirrel.
I
began to shake myself, trying to get him off of me. Everybody
was
looking at me like I was crazy. Then an old man who worked
nearby
came over, yelled at me for treating the squirrel poorly, and handed me
a peanut. He actually wanted me to feed the squirrel while it
was
relaxing on my shoulder! He put his arm out, and allowed the
squirrel to run up it. Once the initial shock and trauma wore
off, I laughed at the societal differences. I would never
think
to feed a squirrel. I thought he, a fraction of my size, was
going to eat me! It shows the way we frequently respond to
nature
based on our thought-stories, rather than our natural attractions.
Living
with all beings
As
I read the questions I started thinking and feeling things that I could
not verbalize. This also gave me hope for the future that I did
not
have before. We are all a part of the earth community,
interconnected with trees, rocks, birds, animals and other
beings. Many mystics, world views, and modern forms of
science
have realized that there are actually no points where one being ends
and another begins, but a "flow" of life. PNC strives to help people to
feel this connection.
PNC is a path of healing, one that can
bring a great sense of purpose and place in modern day lives.
There are many, many, values to PNC. Stress release,
anxieties,
addictions. It is a personal and professional tool.
Another
reason I am taking this advanced class is to help myself and others
feel this
connection with the rest of life and live with the interconnectedness
with all beings and the earth.
Relationships
between things
During a beautiful snow,
I went out to refill the bird feeder. I was then attracted to stand a
few feet away and watch the feeder while reciting the word, "unity."
While
concentrating on this word, like a koan in a meditation, I became aware
of unified themes all around me. It began with the attraction of the
chickadees flying back and forth from the feeder. I connected their
paths with invisible lines, making a diagram in my imagination of all
the strings that the chickadees were tying together. The trees, shrubs,
and ground became tied to the feeder.
I then began to think of
the chickadees as a whole due to their similarities, then birds as a
category adding in the tufted titmouses, mourning doves, and cardinals
also visiting the feeder, then animals as a category, now including the
squirrels and myself, then biosphere, then planet, cosmos.
I
also became attracted to the snow. It indiscriminately covered
everything, regardless of category, trees, grass, rocks, me, all were
subjected to the same conditions. This brought me to thought of global
situations such as climate change, that also affect everything.
When
I didn't concentrate on unity, I noticed that my mind was more occupied
with individual thoughts, not necessary related to anything else. When
thinking of "unity" I was thinking of relationships between things.
Natural
Attraction Resonation
I was in for some surprises while doing
the resonating activity.
We
had just received one of the biggest snowfalls that I have seen since
living in this valley. It was pretty magical and pretty wild. And, it
made for
wonderful natural attraction resonating connections.
First, I looked at the
snow crystals that frosted my window pane. Thanking them and asking
permission I began to feel my resonance with them by singing a tone
that I felt represented them. They were so glorious especially as the
evening light peeked out from a cloud illuminating their facets. I felt
grateful for this program, without which I wouldn't have bothered to
notice
them, perhaps at all, that day.
Then, I walked across the street
to return the snow shovels that I had borrowed from my neighbor. The
sunset was bouncing light from pink cloud to blue shadow against a
crystal clear blue sky. The light shown off the freshly fallen snow.
Needless to say, I did not find this difficult to resonate with. My
heart was full of gratitude for the moment.
As I walked back
into the house I thought of the part of the assignment that asks us to
resonate with a person that we like and a person that we don't. I
noticed that I thought myself, "I don't know how I am going to do that
part of the assignment because, I can't think of anyone I don't like!"
The
moment I thought that I think I genuinely felt it, but I also sensed a
little bit of superiority on my part in thinking it. I was in for a
little humbling almost immediately.
When I got back in the
house, I asked my son to take a break from his computer and then went
to get changed. About a half hour later, my daughter came in to tell me
that my son was still on the computer and then she proceeded to lecture
me on my parenting skills. Hmmm? It seemed I had found someone not to
like. I wasn't sure if it was my son for not respecting and obeying me,
or if it was my daughter for trying to manipulate me by pushing my
inadequate parenting buttons so that she could get on the computer, or
if it was me for my lousy parenting.
I breathed and remembered
that I told you all yesterday that I would do my resonating activity
with my kids. O.K. well this was a little different than what I had
imagined- but the ice crystals and sunset were still resonating in my
body strengthening me. So, I imagined my children in my mind and
breathing said "resonate" in a low tone to myself.
Something
hard to describe began to happen. My feelings of hurt and anger were
still there- but less painful. I think my ego was loosing its grip
slightly. "Resonate, resonate," I repeated. Carlie's words drifted into
my consciousness, "If I didn't have to judge this- could I love it?"
"If I didn't have to judge them or myself, could I love them and
myself." "If I didn't have to l prove myself as a worthy parent- could
I be at peace....and could simply respond to what I felt love prompting
me to do."
A quiet settled over me. I realized I
had entered
into unexplored territory. I scarcely knew what to do, or how to be
without my judgments of them or myself. My ego asserted a few more
attempts to win my peace. "How dare he disobey you! How dare she
lecture you! You need to tell them off! How dare you try to be a
parent!"
"Resonate....Resonate...Resonate." The
natural attractions within me
repeated.
"There is nothing to do." Carlie's words
came again. "What is the truth
about this?"
The truth is, "I am the power and
presence of God in this
world....and..."
Resonate... Resonate....Resonate... "So
are they."
"Appreciate
yourself for creating this situation. It is the perfect situation for
you to discover who you are." the natural attractions whispered.
"Appreciate
yourself....Appreciate yourself....Appreciate yourself....and be Gentle
with yourself"
A guitar string was struck in
my heart
space. Its resonance reverberated into my body.
Res......o........nance..........................
How can I describe this. Somehow, I felt
strangely at peace with no
need to fix anyone or even fix myself. Bizarre.
What came out of my mouth next surprised
me.
"It's time for dinner,
everybody! Come join me."
The course guidebook notes that each
time we resonate with a natural attraction through a different
sense, we get to know the attraction and ourselves in a new, more
fulfilling and holistic way.
I learned that my judgments about
myself and others are one and the same thing. When I appreciate myself
and am willing to be gentle with myself I can respond with a clearer
mind. I also learned that resonating with someone else helps me to see
them anew and helps me to see myself anew as well. This new perspective
helps to free myself of my old pattern of self hatred and victim, and
my ego's need to be right about them. It helps me to appreciate myself
and them again.
I realize that this situation would
probably
have gone a whole different direction without my awareness of my
natural attractions and the
resonance activity. And not such a good direction. I am thankful that I
had to do the assignment before this happened.
My self esteem was strengthened as I
resonated with my natural attractions and as I
appreciated myself. I discovered that when I resonate with someone, I
can't dislike them.
When I awoke today, I felt at peace with
myself and looked forward to
being with my kids.
I
will place in my consciousness an image of a guitar string sounding
in my heart, its vibrations resonating out to fill my body and
extending out to those I am with.
I found that am a person who enjoys
resonating with snow crystals and who feels alive when I resonate with
the sunset.
I let go of judgments of myself when I
resonate with
others.
Rainbow
tranquility
I was attracted to the rainbow, the kids
counted its colors loudly. I looked at it as the bridge I
could walk across to search my inner nature.
This was not the first
time I saw the rainbow. In Portland, it's easier to see one.
I felt so content to watch into the sky, the soft
white
clouds covered the sunlight of the sun, the rainbow had so many
colors, the colors of life.
I raised my arms upwards, as if I was
touching the rainbow, seeing its
beauty and integrity through myself. How much I desired to find that
pure soul inside me. I looked at the kids, they all looked up
and
smiled, enjoyed what the rainbow brought to them. I then felt very
proud of myself, I had the feeling that I wanted to be the rainbow, I
wanted be the bridge connecting the kids with their inner nature,
though I knew the inner child inside the kids have already been
wakened. The joy of the kids was so impressive, I really felt
content by just standing there, watching the rainbow, sharing that
moment, that peace and tranquility with the kids.
When
I looked at the rainbow, I believed there was a rainbow inside me. I
felt its gentle and colorful spirit, that cheerful spirit, encouraged
me to stick to my belief...
Yes, I
believe as a teacher, I have more power than I can see. I
gain
this power from my connection with the kids, nature and all the species
in nature
Nature
love
Given the extreme cold
temps (way below zero even without the wind chill) and the blizzard
conditions this past week, I went to the local pet store hoping to find
something creaturely and nature-filled to connect with. From the moment
I walked through the door, I was acutely aware that it was clearly
nothing like being immersed in nature. However, I enjoyed the fish,
rabbits and assorted rodents, but was most attracted to the birds,
particularly the canaries. I enjoyed watching the two little birds
interact and listening to their sweet song. I felt a twinge of sadness
- knowing that these little birds were taken from their natural home to
be held captive for the pleasure of us, human-beings. I admire their
adaptability.
I
love these little birds because they are is playful, curious, tender,
resilient.
I love myself because I am playful, curious, tender, resilient.
Initially,
I hesitate as I read the statement and wondered if this really
describes some aspect of me (now). For the most part I know that I am
resilient and adaptable. Although I truly believe that it is
my
nature to be playful, curious, and tender, (and is how I would have
described myself a few years ago), I think that adjusting to the losses
and life challenges presented by Parkinson’s disease, has caused me to
be more serious, less inquisitive and maybe a little dispassionate in
some ways. It makes me wonder if the natural systems within us shift,
adjust or adapt in someway, too, when we experience chronic illness,
trauma, etc. or if those attractions/characteristics just get buried
underneath the stuff we have to do to cope/survive.
An
Email group member's response to the above:
(Before
I begin, note that I am writing this because I know Debby, and
meet with her,
usually once a week, in a professional and friendship
manner).
I found this so interesting, Debby, that
you see
yourself
as less playful, tender, and curious (and ones you wouldn't normally
associate with yourself now after the Parkinson) because those would
be words you think would not describe you now.
As I was reading this I
thought, wow if she thinks she isn't like this anymore what WAS she
like??? She must have been through the roof!!!
Playful? The woman who is
cutting up in class and gives her
buddy a bad time?
Tender? The woman who came to
me in prayer when I was feeling
the weight of the world?.
Curious?
The woman that researches everything on the Internet and comes with arm
loads of info. about grants? What about you starting an art
therapy
program?
Dispassionate? The woman who
took a canoe trip this
last summer who wasn't sure her physical body could withstand it but
did it to
support Parkinson's research and our program???
I think
the natural attractions are more accurate than perhaps you want to
believe. They celebrate your innateness---your inner
beauty. This is what I see Debby, just what you saw in the
birds!
Perhaps
the disease makes you focus on different ways to use your playfulness,
or curiosity or passion or the energy level you would give to it, but
all those senses that you picked up on in the birds are vividly
displayed! In friendship, June
Deeper
sensitivity message
I
decided to make a walk bare footed so that I could feel the earth! I
slowly followed a path in undeveloped piece of land in the outskirts
of the City of Kampala. I moved while observing different plants and
insects. When I asked for permission to be connected the natural
attractions of
this environment, I was quickly attracted to a small plant (whose name
I don't know). I was attracted to it because it folded its leaves when
I accidentally rubbed against it with my leg. The leaves
moved
upwards and folded like the hands of a human being raised upwards. The
plant I am talking about is about 20 centimeters tall and the trunk is
about the size of a needle of a sewing machine and purplish in color. I
watched it closely and realized that after about 15 minutes, it started
putting its leaves back to their original posture. But this was very
difficult to notice. I could tell by seeing that the gap between the
leaves was widening till all leaves lay almost in a straight line but
opposite of one another. I almost uprooted to take it to the "botanist"
for identification, but then quickly realized, I was going to harm a
friendly plant that had revealed a lot about itself and I left it. May
be I will carry a camera next time I visit this place so that friends
can help me to get its botanical identification.
I
was attracted to this small plant because it had a deeper message to
me! I was able to learn that very often, we look at plants and think
they are insensitive to things like touch stimulus! But this plant
disapproved it. It quickly showed to me that they too, have senses and
they respond to disturbances as a way of protection. I thanked this
part of nature to have revealed more to me about itself. And I have a
feeling that, this small plant could have represented other higher
plants which may have low levels of responses to stimuli that are
ignored by human beings and therefore, have continued to be destroyed
since their tears can never be noticed!
I am happy to see that every time I
visit nature, there is something new to learn about.
I am sad to notice that very few people
appreciate nature.
A
sustainable relationship
I
was slowly walking through the snow. I became immediately
attracted to the ice frozen to the branches of a nearby leafy bush tree
(of which I don?t know the name of). As I was walking closer
to
it, the ice on top of the snow began to crack and my feet sunk in about
10 inches. I proceeded to get close enough to the bush to
touch
it.
With my gloved hand I caressed a few of
the leaves
and stroked the stems. I could hear the ice begin to crack
and
the branches and leaves seemed so fragile between my fingers I knew if
I kept touching them my desire to caress them would break off their
natural attraction and I would have hurt the
bush. I stopped immediately and instead bent down to examine
the
bush from a different angle, from underneath.
As I lay there in the
snow I gazed up at the wonderful oval shaped leaves. No longer did the
bush appear white and lifeless, but instead I was greeted with its
calming color green with only a small layer of ice over its surface,
and the white outline of ice a fourth of an inch around each
leaf. As I looked up the snow was falling gently on my face
melting as it made contact and all around I could hear the snow falling
to the ground. It was so peaceful and quiet, the movement of
the
snow towards me was so relaxing, my whole body felt numb and it was as
if I could not move.
With a smile on my face I closed my eyes
and took in all that was around me. The soft touch of the
snow on
my face melting upon contact, seeping into my skin and into the many
other objects around, the continual sound of the snow making contact,
the smell of burning firewood, the cracking of ice from the trees and
plants all around, and the fragile ground beneath me as I lay on top of
the ice and snow. It was breathless, especially the hidden
beauty of this
plant that was revealed simply from the shift in the angle at which it
was
seen.
I, perhaps, was the only one to have
taken the time to
appreciate the plants beauty. Although a part of me wishes for it to
stay that way, so as for the plant not to be disturbed by too many
people and their carelessness, the other part of me hopes someone saw
me and has now discovered the amazing beauty of this plant, that would
have otherwise gone unnoticed if it had not been for my
attraction to nature.
In this activity I replaced the bird in
the Mimbres design button first with
an ice covered leaf, then with a snow
covered tree, then with a snowflake. In all three occasions,
the
sensory attraction of water and its life sustaining qualities along
with the cycle at which it accomplishes such a task was alive and well
in my senses and thoughts. After wearing this pin for a few
days
the number one comment I received was, "What is this?" A
perfect
way, as The Web of Life Imperative
book describes, to begin a
conversation about our need to connect with nature. More
specifically it usually began a brief discussion of the importance of
recognizing and honoring Mother Nature and our connection to her, to
recognize our self-destructive habits brought on by our dominate ways
of thinking and being, and to find ways to reconnect with and relate to
nature that
do not strive to dominate and control, but rather to sustainably
cooperate and coexist interdependently with her.
NOTE: You
may read
or download this source book online, or obtain a complementary copy of
it, at http://www.ecopsych.com/ksanity.html
Education,
Counseling and Healing
With Nature
by
Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D
The
Sensory Science of Natural Attraction Ecology: Creating Web of Life
Moments, Backyard or Back Country, That Help Us Increase Personal,
Social and Environmental Well Being.
We hold
these
truths to be self-evident:
Think of at least one good experience
that you have had in nature:
backyard or backcountry; mountain, forest or field; brook, ocean or
shoreline; pet, garden or aquarium.
-Try
to remember colors, sounds, aromas, textures or flavors that might have
been part of the experience.
-Did your contact with nature contain
comforting motions or attractive feelings of community, trust or
place?
-Did you feel this visit was enchanting,
self-enhancing or spiritually pleasing?
-Was it supportive, peaceful or
both? Did it help you clear your mind?
-Did
you feel renewed or purified, or that you were part of a greater whole
or being. Did you feel you belonged?
These
are some of the results that many
individuals have reported from remembering
valuable experiences in
nature, experiences they would welcome repeating. Many have
conveyed that they did not need a teacher, class or book to teach them
to have an attractive nature experience; its qualities seemed to be
innate, some could remember wonderful experiences from early childhood.
We hold the truths in these experiences
to be
self-evident axioms.
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Act
now.
Master
Organic Psychology by doing it.
Explore it from our homepage
Contact us at
360-378-6313 <nature@interisland.net>
Achieve
a Degree or
Certificate to
strengthen your professional interests, or your hobbies or pastimes, by
connecting them with nature. Implement your strongest hopes as you
increase personal and global well being.
Topics,
subjects or leisure pursuits can include those listed below or other
areas of interest:
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"Human
behavior is rooted most deeply in nature's intentions and desire. The
rhythms of nature underlie all of human interaction: religious
traditions, economic systems, cultural and political organization. When
these human forms betray the natural psychic pulse, people and
societies get sick, nature is exploited and entire species are
threatened."
-Stephen
Aizenstat
In
industrial society our excessively nature-separated lives mold us to
betray the natural psychic pulse. We learn to block from our thinking
over 98 percent of the wise sensory callings and fulfillments we
normally share with natural systems and their eons of experience. Our
subconscious hurt and frustration from the severed disconnection of
these senses underlies our greatest troubles.
-Michael
J. Cohen
..................................
Benefit
from learning to enhance the natural psychic pulse within and around
us. Add the sensory ecoscience of Organic Psychology to
your life and livelihood.
|
.
"Scientific
research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is
determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the action
of people."
.
"Truth
is what stands the
test of experience."
-
Albert Einstein
.......................................
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