Integrity 101:
The Remarkable Benefits of Thinking and Learning with Nature
(return
to start of course)
SECTION FOUR:
Recycling Mental Contamination
While extensively
living and teaching outdoors, Cohen became aware that to be connected
with nature's diversity we biologically inherit 53 diverse natural senses.
Each is an intelligent attraction energy sensitivity whose interconnectedness
allows them to operate in congress as a cohesive intelligence
(Jones,
2001
#2).
Each attraction,
sensation, feeling or emotion is a rational sensory way of knowing
and relating that we biologically inherit from, and hold in common
with, Nature. For example, the sense of thirst intelligently
signals our awareness that our body needs water or when we have
had enough water. It intelligently attracts us to drink water
and in doing so moves part of the water cycle. Like the oxygen
cycle described earlier, in the process water purifies itself
and all other parties to the cycle.
Intelligent
attraction energy senses, or sensations that our consciousness
can register also include hunger, reason, excretion, suffocation,
sight, reason, color, nurturing, community, trust, joy, taste,
place, smell, pain, consciousness, belonging and fear along with
37 others. Through
these unadulterated attraction sensitivities working in harmony,
Nature intelligently produces and sustains its balance and perfection (Jones, 2001 #6).
When we are
in a natural area, or with a cherished pet for that matter, our
natural sense of reason can notice and recognize that our rewarding
sensory-attraction experiences in Nature are not fantasies. Rather,
like our love for a pet, they are genuine, gratifying facts of life as
real and intelligent as any other scientific fact.
Our appetite
for Air is as real as the atmosphere.
The sense of
Thirst as much a fact as is water.
The feeling
of Trust is as true as a rock,
Our sensation
of Beauty is as authentic as a sunset.
Our sense of
Reason registers in our sense of Consciousness that fulfilling
these natural senses through connections to natural systems is
rewarding and rational; they are Nature's way for us to make
sense. The
rewards Nature gives our sense of reason for this contribution
psychologically help us replace our less rewarding, emotional
bonds to our destructive stories and technologies.
"We have repressed far
more than our sexuality: our very organic nature is now unconscious
to most of us, most of the time, and we have become shrunken
into two dimensional social or cultural beings, aware of only
five of the hundreds of senses that link us to the rich biological
nature that underlies and nourishes these more symbolic and recent
aspects of ourselves. "
...........- Norman 0. Brown
Cohen elaborates,
"Somewhere on humanity's road to survival, out of ignorance
the 'Watson Disappearing Tent Effect' taught 'the Boss' to forget
that our mentality mostly consists of natural senses, of attraction-energy
sensations, feelings and emotions that, like the atmosphere,
we cooperatively share with Nature. Over 85% of our mentality, the ancient mammalian
brain, biologically thinks and knows through these senses (Cohen, 2002t; Jones,
2001
#6)."
Cohen shows
that for survival in balance these beckoning natural attraction
energies provide our sense of reason with trustable information
and vitality, with empirical knowledge, with feelings about and
from our relationship with plants, animals and minerals. That
we experience these sensitivities at birth (or before) demonstrates
that we inherit from Nature, not society, the ability to enjoy
and register them.
"Except
during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man
manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
...........- George Bernard Shaw
Everything
in Nature displays these sensitivities in some form. People(s)
that culture them flourish in balance. Thus, the empirical knowledge provided by
our attraction sensitivities to natural systems is a vital essence
of rationality, wellness and NSTP science (Frumkin 2001; Jones, 2001 #9). It can teach
the Boss that we are just as much psychologically and emotionally
part of Nature's ways and wisdom as we are biologically part
of them. That wisdom can motivate us to live cooperatively and
in peace with natural systems in Nature and each other (Farb;
Jones, 2001 #20). It teaches and rewards 'the Boss' for learning
how to recycle its contaminated thinking.
It is worth
repeating here that from his own observations and studies by
others, Cohen figures that over 99.99% of our thinking is disconnected
from Nature's profound ability to create, purify, recycle, regenerate,
cleanse and heal our mind, body and spirit. We spend, on average,
95% over our time indoors. When presented with this dilemma,
however, we seldom change our ways for as Upton Sinclair noted: "It is difficult
to get people to understand something when their salary (or other
rewards) depends
upon them not understanding it (Jones, 2001 #8) ."
"If you
would learn more, ask the cattle, seek information from the birds
of the air, The creeping things of earth will give you lessons
and the fishes of the sea will tell you all. Speak to the Earth
and it will teach thee."
...........- The Bible, Job: 12,
7