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Part 7 Orientation Course Instructions |
PROJECT NATURECONNECTWho teaches the course?
Although I and others help instruct/facilitate this course, Nature/Earth teaches it. I instruct by involving you in my nature connecting activities and discoveries that enable you to let Earth connections register their intelligent ways in your awareness and thinking. This is accomplished by you doing the activities that are described on the internet (taken from my self- guiding books,) participating in an interact group that usually includes past students with course experience, learning from my and other participant's response to questions you ask, and from participants' emails and my occasional email postings.
What is the course purpose?
The goal is to learn how to locally sustain a life-long relationship
with the intelligence and joy of the web of life and Earth, both
of which are alive in your neighborhood, your neighbors and yourself.
How does the course reward its members? Through grades?
"If the day and the night are such that you greet them
with joy, and life emits a fragrance, like flowers and sweet-scented
herbs-and is more elastic, starry, and immortal-that is your
success."
-Henry David Thoreau
The rewards and education you get from the course mostly do not come not from the staff or your grades, but from relating through natural attractions to your interact group and to attraction gifts in the natural world within and around you. I try to read all the postings and try to participate as much as possible. I make myself as available as time permits and enjoy telephone conversations initiated by students. 1-360-378-6313
SECTION 5: POSTING EXPERIENCES
Isn't having a good experience enough? Why verbalize it
and post it by email?
In order for participants to get the full benefit of the email
portion of the course, members of each interact group share their
attraction thoughts and feelings from doing the activities and
readings with other group members. They learn from them as well
as read and react to attractions in other interact postings.
This helps 4-leg knowledge integrate with 5-leg thinking.
Again please recognize that each course member's education here
partially depends on email correspondence from and to other participants.
Since the course is not as effective if we don't share and learn
from our global attraction experiences, sharing them and acknowledging
what has been shared is as vital as any other part of the course.
Also, some people are using the course as part of a degree program
and need to learn from you and your experiences on the course.
Do course participants ever get together?
The interact groups attempt to emulate nature ways by offering
as much diversity and consensus as possible within their members.
If you are interested in personally getting together with one
of your or other course members who live in your area, work it
out and/or let us know if we can help.
SECTION 6: WE ARE THE TEXTBOOK
How does the course include and integrate participants past
experiences?
Rather than learn from the deeply conditioned, nature-conquest,
thinking and history of Western Civilization, this course recognizes
that we are it, that we carry, think and relate with and through
it. We each have been and become what we call civilized. (It
is worth noting here that Thoreau called Nature "A civilization
other than our own.") For this reason, on the course we
learn from our past experiences in the civilizing process in
conjunction with unadulterated contact with unadulterated nature
in the environment, others and ourselves today. To accomplish
this, try to share the "now" of your life, your immediate
experiences, thoughts and feelings while on the course because
now is not fantasy. The immediate moment is a 4-leg way of knowing,
one where we and Earth exist and relate equally.
Why does the course focus on immediate experiences?
We best know, trust and learn from our own experiences, they
are essential truths of our lives. The immediate moment is the
only time we can gather 4-leg self-evidence and the course attempts
to make its participants aware of this by practicing it. Make
efforts to consciously respect, validate and be thankful for
your experiences, your thoughts and feelings while involved with
this course and nature. If you can't trust them, what can you
trust?
Why do you say the course is a science?
Because it uses critical thinking and empirical logic applied
to evidence. It is unique, however, in that much of the evidence
it collects is obvious and easily obtainable. In its quest to
conquer and manage Nature, most 5-leg sciences overlook the
4-leg obvious or demean it as being subjective, touchy-feely
, fuzzy thinking. However, this "evidence" holds
natural systems locally and globally in balance and is an essence
of Nature's perfection.
How does the course focus on immediate experiences?
With commitment to supporting the interact group through the
gaining permission attraction process, the interact groups enjoyably
organize and maintain themselves and grow . We accomplish this
by staying in the immediate natural attractions of each moment
and sharing what's happening in the activities, chapters and
email. Experiences in the moment tend to produce 4-leg knowledge,
not inaccurate 5-leg stories.
Seek immediate natural attractions. Try to refrain from bringing
in stories or references outside of your immediate personal experiences
as they tend to take you out of the moment and into cultural
cubbyholes that, as in our history, may trigger arguments and
disunity. If these stories are part of you, own them, they are
there as you in the immediate moment along with nature and your
interact group. If, for example, some author or institution's
dogma has made a statement somewhere and you feel and believe
it, share that part of you as you, not as "Dr. Archibald
says" or "Calmocrucians believe" etc. Stories
that share thoughts and feelings about, or from moments connected
with, nature hold something special in common. They unify rather
than disconnect relationships because that's how nature works.
Please keep in mind that many of the stories and beliefs we are
attached to come from a different knowledge base, time, place,
way of life, technological power, ecological and social literacy
and old problems that contribute to today's troubles. Try to
be open-minded. Try to discover if what seemed appropriate then
is appropriate now.
What is the significance of immediate experiences with Nature?
Being born into a nature disconnected culture is like any animal,
plant or mineral growing in a barrel full of disconnect pollutant.
The pollutant attaches, coats and sticks to everything and contaminates
it. We often addict to knowing nature in and around us through
polluted glasses and stories that we cherish or addict to, yet
they block us from nature and its intelligence. When we put energies
into knowing and teaching through such stories, we too often
pass up opportunities to let nature teach us about itself in
its non-verbal, sensuous, 4-leg, ways. They only exist in the
immediate moment and often tell a different story since nature
is not nature disconnected.
You can always change and grow from the present, especially if
you know who and where you are in the present. Stories that share
thoughts and feelings about your nature connected moments hold
something very special in common with other people and other
life forms. They are best found in present moment experiences
in nature rather than stories about them alone..
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Please proceed to Part Eight
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