Integrity 101:
The Remarkable Benefits of Thinking and Learning with Nature
(return
to start of course)
SECTION SEVEN
Learn from experience
To better understand
the Section 6 ABC lesson when it is applied to Nature you might
do what Dancing Coyote, a Native American told Dr. Cohen to do.
He said:
"Mike, my
people had no word for 'environment.' Living in Nature we only
had the Great Spirit, what you are calling 'natural attractions,'
no such thing as indoors. Why don't you try this? Think for two
minutes now about an attractive experience you've had in a natural
area, an experience that might attract you to want to have it
again. What made it worthwhile? How did it feel? What was attractive
about it? What were you sensing?"......................"Now,
after these two minutes, notice how you feel: more content, peaceful,
more self satisfied and alive? Doctors say lower blood pressure and less stress,
that it strengthens the immune system, too. And that's just from
bringing memories of attraction energies into your thinking.
The real experience in Nature was far more powerful, that's what
made it memorable.
But what you
ordinarily learn to do is disconnect from Nature and find a substitute
product instead. You bottle and sell something that produces
similar results. Soon you are psychologically addicted to the
bottled stuff and its profits. In the process you produce the
bottle's destructive environmental side effects rather than returning
to, and giving added value to, the real thing, Nature."
Mmmmm. You know,
me telling you this this makes my chest tight. I still feel the
stress from sixty years ago being dragged from my desert family
to the government indoor school (Cohen
2002 y).
Makes me think you and I must be brainwashed to spend most of
our life indoors. But, then again, your thinking was born and
raised indoors. Maybe you just don't know any better because
that is normal (Cohen 2002
o). You were
so young you can't remember the pain. But, it shows up in your
stress, and in your fear of Nature, and in your bigotry against
us 'Indians' too. Unlike us, you applaud this normal crazy way
of thinking."
As I get older, I burrow more
and more into the hills. The Great Spirit made them for us, for
me. I want to blend with them, shrink into them, and finally
disappear in them. ...All of nature is in us, all of us is in
nature. That is as it should be."
...........- Pete Catches, Sioux medicine man
Take this opportunity
to experience NSTP, the real thing. If you are so attracted,
here is an NSTP activity you can do now. (Cohen 2002 w):
A. Go to an attractive, convenient, real natural
area or thing, a park, backyard, potted plant, pet etc, the more
natural the better. Find a natural attraction there that you
like or love. (wind, moon, tree, flower, sound, color, scent,
fun etc.)
B. Decide what is that you like about this attraction
and then complete this sentence:
I like or love this:....... (name the attraction) .......
because: ......(write why you like or love the attraction)
..........
For example, if you find a rock
that attracts you, write
I like/love this... (rock)....
because......( it is strong and feels warm).....
C. Be sure to write down your "because"
sentence.
Then visit http://www.san-juan.net/natureconnect/
and follow the instructions there. Be sure to bookmark or
note via "GO" on your browser, how to return to this
page and complete it.
"A man who is in love declares
that I and you are one and is prepared to behave as if it were
a fact."
...........- Sigmund Freud