Sensory
Ecology
SECTION 1B Orientation Course
Trusting How Your Nature
Works
TOPIC: Exploring the effects of disconnecting your webstring
attractions from their origins in nature
Instructions:
Do the following sequence of activities while you have immediate contact with a natural area, a park, potted plant, aquarium or backyard so you can also experience them in conjunction with nature. Space out the activities if possible, do three of four per day or session between Posting days 1 and 1A (4 days in the default schedule)
Please identify one or two attractive things that you find most significant in each of the following ten sections.
(Course members have the option to on their own time, take a day for each of these sections, or find a partner or two who want to do a section a day and post to each other. Please invite the facilitators to participate or react to the postings. Do not let this disrupt the course schedule, however, during this period continue on to Part 2, 3, 4 etc as per the index schedule.)
Section One:
"I sense, therefore I am."
Would you place your name here............................. as a person who believes the statement in quotes above?
Please note this factual truth: 2 + 2 = 4 .. ( X.) True (.. ).False ..
Mathematics is considered to be the purist of sciences and fact. However, the fact that we each sense and feel webstrings is as true, if not more true than mathematics. We are not born knowing mathematics, we must learn it. However, we are born with the inherited ability from nature to sense, feel, think and learn through webstrings.
Do you trust your inborn senses and feelings as much as you trust mathematics or definitions? For example:
Pinch yourself gently. Do you trust that you felt something?
Now, pinch yourself too hard. Do you trust that a webstring sense (pain, reason or both) calls to you to stop pinching yourself that hard?
Who are you? We largely build our lives and our knowledge of who we are around the intellectual truth of mathematics, science and technological artifacts. Through this process we come to know ourselves as "cultural objects" (a teacher, mechanic, actor, name etc). We are often taught to do so without abiding by learning from experiences in nature, the webstring attraction truths of what we naturally sense and feel. We often know ourselves better by our name than by how and what we sense and feel. For example, with respect to living in balance with Earth, each other and ourselves, most people sense that we have gone too far, we are too abusive and destructively out of control. Although we strongly sense it, we are presently unable to stop yet we don't call ourselves senseless, out of balance, disconnected from Earth, stupid, insane etc.
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Section Two:
Very little, if anything, is out of balance in healthy ecosystems.
Do you have the ability to trust the sensory webstring truths ecosystems convey to you? For example, if you go to a natural area and love a sunset there, do you believe that your love for that sunset is as true or more true than 2 + 2 = 4 ?
If you do believe this, you have great potential to help yourself and others learn to think in globally balanced ways, to live in greater peace and responsibly with yourself, society and nature.
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
The influence of stories on sensitivities
The influence of a story on natural sensitivities can be seen in the night sky star picture that surrounds this page. Go to the full screen of the sky at the end of this page and follow the instructions there. Then return here.
Look at the the colored insignia at the top of this page. If you apply a story that the colors are more important than the black and white portion, or the colors are in the foreground, doesn't the picture take on a three dimensional quality that it did not have before?
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Section Four:
Below is an color design of purple and yellow colors and shapes. If you apply a label to it and call it faces, you will see faces, if you label it a vase you will see a vase.*
A critical observation; the effects of the stories we hear. If we tell you the story here to think that the color yellow is important or closer to you, you see a vase and the faces disappear. This also happens with the color maroon and the faces, the vase disappears. In other words, the authorities that give you instructions that you heed can determine how and what you perceive. They can engage you in making parts of the world disappear. For example, during the war, when Vietnamese people were labeled "gooks" it became easier to kill them.
A crucial question: Does
identifying Earth as a "dead natural resource" or a
"wisely balanced living organism" make a difference
in
-what you think?
-what you feel?
-how you act/relate?
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Section Five
Is this following design an Old Woman? or a Young Woman's Cheek?
An unusual observation: As in the vase-faces image, if the picture above is labeled "Old Woman," people will see an old woman. Similarly, if it is labeled "Young Woman's Cheek," a young woman's cheek is perceived.
Labels determine perceptions: If instructions for the above image label the center feature below the hair as an eye, you perceive an old woman. If instructions label the center feature as an ear, you see the young woman's cheek. Again, the authority that gives you instructions you heed can determine how you know the world.
Implications: Do we learn to know and relate to nature from our direct sensory experiences with it or from our culture's nature conquering stories and labels about it?
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Section Six:*
Bonding to the Familiar
Picture below (sometimes unavailable) shows 2 chinese figures like * #
....
A group of subjects was shown 15 meaningless Chinese-type figures of calligraphy similar to the above, (but the above have meaning). Some figures were shown only once, others as many as 25 times. The subjects were then shown all 15 figures and asked which ones they liked. They consistently liked the figures to which they'd had the most exposure. The figures that had the least exposure were least appreciated.
Your Thoughts: What significance does this study have with respect to the fact that, on average, we spend 99.9% of our lives in our indoor, artificially built surroundings and stories, separated from nature on a conscious sensory level?
Consider an example of this phenomenon in action. I keep getting letters from folks saying how much they like what they call the ying-yang graphic (Figure A ) that we use on some of our web pages. However, it is actually a Mimbres Indian pottery design from 900AD and is quite a bit different that the ying-yang symbol (Figure B) that we have become accustomed to. Aren't the two figures different? Are they sending the same message?
........................
................Figure A............................. .................. ...Figure BCREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Section Seven:*
Effects of Rewards
...................................
......../////..Figure 1 ..............................................Figure 2
In an experiment, people played a card game in which they randomly selected cards.
They were payed a dollar reward whenever they received a card with the Figure 1 image above.
They forfeited a dollar whenever they received the Figure 2 image-card above.
After an extended period, the players were shown Figure 3 below. Most of them easily recognized Figure 1, the money winning figure but Figure 2 was often very difficult for them to perceive.
...................................Figure 3:
...............((Fig.1.
....Fig. 2
What implications does this demonstration have with respect to our relationship with Nature and our economy? Can you see a relationship between it and Upton Sinclair's observation: "It is difficult to get people to understand something when their salary depends upon them not understanding it."
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Section Eight:
The Nature of Subconscious Relationships:
Sharon, an adult woman, had an adverse reaction to a blue block of wood she had selected, sight unseen, from a bag of wooden objects. She blindly selected the block because she was attracted to its shape and smoothness when she groped and explored it by the webstring of touch. At first she did not know why she didn't like it when she saw it. In time, she realized it was a subconscious reaction. The block was same shade of blue as the walls of her room where, as a child, she had been molested.
The existence of subconscious memories and their effect on our daily relationships has long been established. Although these memories seldom enter our rational thinking, to protect us, the hurt webstring feelings attached to them often come into play as a natural warning device when an experience or story presents similar attributes to the original hurt.
Without awareness of the suppressed webstring subconscious source of our discontents, we have no choice but to relate in hurt ways to ourselves, each other and the environment. Oblivious to the reconciling knowledge held in our subconscious webstrings, even in safe settings, like watching a scary movie, we often feel vulnerable, frightened or angry. This produces the stress, depression. and addictivness to destructive gratifications all too common in our lives.
........1 + 1 = 5 ..is an untrue, wrong, statement if you can't see the number 3 + that appears in the space that precedes the statement. That number 3 is like webstrings and nature in a nature disconnected culture. It is seldom recognized or appreciated because it is absent in our environment and in our consciousness and thinking (it has become subconscious). When we go into a natural area and know it by its names: "tree," " cloud," " genus," "animal," etc, webstrings and nature remains a number 3 because nature is preliterate, (sic, not illiterate,) it has no name by which it knows itself or its elements. In nature, the word or number 3 is like the blank space that precedes the numerical statement.
You are part of nature and nature is part of you. Can you think of ways that you know yourself as 1 + 1 = 5 and therefore think you are wrong, bad, asocial etc?
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Section Nine:*
We Are What We Label
3 x 5 cards were distributed to a group of people in a classroom. At the bottom of 50% of the cards distributed appeared the word BARBELL. At the bottom of the remaining cards appeared the word GLASSES.
Figure 3 below, was shown to the study participants for 10 seconds and then removed from sight
Picture below (sometimes unavailable) is similar to .........O-O
The participants were then asked to draw the above image on the card they had.
People who had the word GLASSES written on their card often curved the line connecting the circles to accommodate the shape of the nose. Some drew earhooks on the glasses.
People who had the word BARBELLS written on their card often thickened the size of the bar. Some wrote the weight of the bells or the # sign by the circles.
Implications:
The labels, values, and processes we place on the world influence webstrings subconsciously and shape the way we know the world to be and how we describe it. For example:
When you ask an adult to pick any number from one to twelve, except five, most people will pick seven, or it will have been their first thought. Subconsiously, the request to remove five from twelve hooks our webstring of reason into its conditioning to subtract the numbers and the result appears automatically. Similarly, houses come with lawns, not matter that lawn care products are one of our greatest water pollutants and wildlife habitat is disappearing continuously.
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Section Ten:
The Rewards of Sensory Connections
Each of the phenomena that occur in Sections 1-9 arises from an aspect of life that we learn to overlook in our disconnection from nature. Moment by moment, life is rewarding. In each moment, one or more of our many webstring senses experiences a degree of gratification as it is fulfilled by contact with the environment, be it our built indoor story world or the natural world.
Once a sense is rewarded, it tends to seek that reward again for further gratification. The reward feels good; connecting with it produces endorphin and dopamine neurotransmitters that produce good feelings. The sense begins to bond to that reward. The reward is psychologically/emotionally gratifying and important so our webstring perceptions of ourselves and our relationships tend to warp based on how we are rewarded.
Good grades, approval, status, money and connectedness with people reward us for being literate, there is value and gratification in knowing something by its name, label or story.
Revisit Sections 1-9 and locate the rewards of sensory connections and their effects in each section.
What value or reward can/did you find in making space in your life for enjoying sensory connections directly from and in natural areas?
Are you aware of an overlooked secret of nature, that enjoying sensory connections in natural areas is rewarding in and of itself?
CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH: Go to a natural area - potted plant, aquarium, backyard or backcountry, the more natural the better- and let a webstring attraction there grab you and enter your awareness so that you recognize it: a flower, sound, breeze, warmth, motion, color, shape, texture, smell etc. Trust this attraction as a sensory truth that is as real and true as any other fact. What happens through its and your webstrings? What does it offer, add or say with respect to the point being made in this section? How does it feel?
Your Thoughts:
Do you think that the natural attractions you found in the CREATE A MOMENT THAT LETS EARTH TEACH parts of each section were purely accidental or do you think that perhaps they may have been attractive to you because the webstrings in your subconscious naturally sought gratifications by recognizing and connecting with their origins in nature. They knew they could help answer some question you had with respect to the material in the section, or some other question/conflict. This is similar to when you are thirsty, water is attractive.
Do you think the following descriptions apply to how we learn to know nature within and around us in our nature estranged society?
brainwashing: A body of knowledge that centers on changing people without their knowledge. No exchange occurs, communication is one-sided. Organization remains fairly rigid; change occurs primarily to improve thought reform effectiveness. Uses an instructional mode to persuade. Takes authoritarian & hierarchical stance; no full awareness on the part of the learner. Is deceptive. Uses improper and unethical techniques.
brainwashing: Keep the person unaware of what is going on and the changes taking place. Control the person's time and, if possible, physical environment. Create a sense of powerlessness, covert fear,and dependency. Suppresss much of the person's old behavior and attitudes. Instills new behavior and attitudes. Mystical manipulation. Doctrine over person. Put forth a closed system of logic; allow no real input or criticism.
A Conclusion:
"Every part of the global life community, from sub-atomic particles to weather systems, is part of the web of life. Their webstring attraction interconnectedness produces nature's balanced integrity and prevents runaway disorders. In the web of life demonstration model, dramatically, people pull back, sense, and enjoy how the web of life string peacefully unites, supports and interconnects them and all of life."
The web of life is an attraction string that forms itself and each web member. Through webstrings, it interconnects all members of the web including people.
One webstring is that of verbal language, a recently evolved attractive survival tool that, through stories, uniquely brings the web and its parts into human consciousness. Our stories, however, are foreign to the plant, animal and mineral community, for they are illiterate. They communicate with webstrings that do not include written or spoken words, they non-verbally organize themselves to produce the balanced perfection found in nature.
As demonstrated in examples 1-9 above, when we attach the energies of our webstrings to any one story, our other webstrings and stories tend to have less energy and drop out of our consciousness and thinking. In addition, we can be conditioned/brainwashed to be in certain stories. This includes a story that applauds the verbal webstring and demeans following our other webstring attractions to nature, calling them childish, flaky, tree hugging, fuzzy thinking, wrong, etc.
When we focus either on one object in the web of life circle or on a web-disconnected story, we often lose our awareness of the interconnective webstrings that produce balance and unity. When this occurs, we become isolated in our story (paradigm) and have few connectors to reach others who have different stories. We become separated from wholeness, argumentative, and more comfortable with people who hold similar attachments.
In order to enjoy how webstrings have over the eons peacefully united, supported and interconnected all of life, including people, it is wise to learn a process that enables us to genuinely reconnect with webstrings in natural areas and keep them alive in our thinking.
The Challenge of the Unknown
As the reading in Part 1A describes, spending 99.9% of our sensory lives consciously disconnected from the web of life leaves a blank area, a wanting blind spot of deadened webstrings in our thinking and knowing. This is blatently seen when you ask even environmental specialists, "What are the strings?" and nobody says anything. This blind spot is like one step beyond, a venture into the unknown. As "sensations and feelings" you probably realize, when the psyche hits this blindspont point it fills it in with what it does know, usually the same nature disconnected way of thinking and perceiving that has brought us to today's dilemmas. Select here to see an interesting demonstration of this phenomenon.
"Most people don't become involved in the Natural Systems thinking process. They are too fearful to break free of what they know. I just heard of a very disturbing experiment that was done on cats that were put in a cage and shocked. It was all they knew. The "scientists" opened the door to the cage, giving the cat an out, but the cat just stayed in it being shocked to it's death. This is a strong statement as to how being in the familiar, as painful as it is, can override our ability to find freedom. Very cruel experiment. Very strong statement."
- Course Participant
Two Significant Psychological Questions:
Does identifying the thoughts, sensations and feelings that register in your consciousness as being "webstrings" make a difference in
-your connectedness to the web of life?
-what you think?
-what you feel?
-how you act/relate?Is there a value in recognizing that psychologically you may be conscious of the world either through contemporary humanity's verbal label/story webstring or through 52 other webstring attractions in addition?
ASSIGNMENT
1. Share with your interact group the one or two significant attractions that you found in each to the ten sections above
2. In a single paragraph that incorporates the material presented on this page, write a short statement about how your destiny may be influenced by how we have learned to separate from and think about nature and its values. Share this statement by email with your interact group.
In a single short paragraph describe, if you can, how the information on this page affects your answer to the question "Who are you?" Share this statement by email with your interact group.
Please return to the main course pages "1B."
*Images borrowed from http://www.sit.wisc.edu/~amhadjin/idiot.html
*For these and other similar studies see Vernon, M.P. The Psychology of Perception, Gretna Louisiana: Pelican, 1971