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Project NatureConnect |
Rationale: modeling how nature works:
"I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order."
- John BurroughsFor the past forty years, I and many experts have tried to meet the challenge of reversing contemporary humanity's disorders. Our goal is to help the public understand and become involved in how unadulterated nature prevents our disorders from occurring in natural systems within and round us. This consists of sensory experiential learning, not verbal information alone, for nature knows and conveys itself non-verbally (6). The warning labels on cigarette packages exemplify the ineffectiveness of verbal information alone.
Conceptually, we depict nature's web of life by letting people model it. This evokes Self-Evidence. We gather a group of people in a circle and each person is asked to represent some part of nature, a bird, soil, water, etc. A large ball of string then demonstrates the interconnecting relationships between things in nature. For example the bird eats insects so the string is passed from the "bird person" to the "insect person." That is their connection. The insect lives in a flower, so the string is further unrolled across the circle to the "flower person." Soon a web of string is formed interconnecting all members of the group, including somebody representing a person.
Thoughtfully, people lean back, sense, and enjoy how the string peacefully unites, supports and interconnects them and all of l
ife. This evokes feelings of belonging, integrity and unity, these are valid Self-Evidence. Then one strand of the web is cut signifying the loss of a species, habitat or relationship. Sadly, the weakening effect on all is noted. People tell of environmental and social trespasses they have witnessed or know about. Another and another string is cut. Soon the web's integrity, support and power disintegrates along with its spirit. Because this reflects the reality of our lives, it triggers Self Evidence feelings of hurt, despair and sadness in the activity participants. Earth and its people increasingly suffer from "cut string" disintegration, yet we continue to cut the strings. Few dispute this model.
Every part of the global life community, from the spaces between sub-atomic particles to weather systems, is part of the web of life. Everything consists of, and is relationships held together by webstring attractions. The intelligent, globally conscious, webstring process by which webstrings interact produces nature's balanced, unified ways without our runaway disorders.
When I ask web activity participants if they ever have visited a natural area and actually seen strings interconnecting things there, they say no, that would be crazy. I respond, "If there are no strings there, what then are the actual strands that interconnect and hold the natural community together in balance?"
It becomes very, very quiet.
Too quiet.
Are you quiet, too?
That silence flags a significant missing link in our thinking, consciousness and relationships. Without knowing, sensing or respecting the strings that make up nature and our inner nature, we break, injure and ignore them. This is the core of our most tenacious troubles. It is an addictive and destructive prejudice against the strings that only subsides when psychologically treated as such.Until I identify the strings as natural attractions that people can sense, people don't recognize them and their value, they have no idea what they are. Once they experience the strings, people not only acknowledge them, they also acknowledge that since childhood they have always known them as sensations and feelings. Like a little red wagon painted blue, they suddenly recognize that the nature separated way we learn to think hides the strings and their benefits from our consciousness and reasoning.
Webstring Disappearance:
The disappearance of the strings from our awareness and relationships is exemplified by Sharon, an adult woman.
Sharon negatively reacted to a blue piece of wood she selected, sight unseen, from a bag of mixed objects. She blindly choose the wood because its shape and smoothness attracted her when she groped and explored in the bag by touch. At first she did not know why she didn't like the wood when she saw it. In time, she realized it was a subconscious reaction. The wood was painted the same shade of blue as the walls of her room where, as a child, she had been abused.
As with Sharon, in contemporary society's conquest of nat
ure, we hurt the strings as we conquer and separate them from their nurturing origins. To escape feeling the pain consciously, our inner nature reasonably places them in our pre-conscious or subconscious mind (20). Thus the strings seldom enter our thinking or restrain our destructive conquest of nature around and within us.
Webstring Attraction Loves:
Webstrings are natural attractions, forms of love. Nature consists of wordless webstring loves (7). A bird's love for food (Sense of Hunger) is a webstring. So is the tree's love to grow away from gravity and its root's attraction toward it (Sense of Gravity). The fawn's loving desire for its mother and vice-versa are webstrings (Sense of Nurturing).
"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. Tarker.Every atom and its nucleus consists of, expresses and relates through webstring attractions. People inherently experience those we need for survival as 53 or more Self-Evident natural sensations(26). In contemporary society we often learn to control, injure or ignore them. They end up frustrated or hurt in our subconscious until, as with Sharon, associated experiences trigger our hurt back into consciousness. Then we may need psychological assistance.
"Nothing is more indisputable than our senses."
- Jean Le Rond d'AlembertWebstrings feelingly register in our consciousness as senses or natural love (attraction, attachment, affinity, desire,) for being reasonable, love for sight, touch, and sound; for water, color and community; for nurturing, belonging and trust; for sex, contact with nature, and wholeness and love for 41 other attractions including consciousness and verbalization (26). When supportively, safely, connected in nature, each webstring attraction is energized and fulfillingly enters, registers and plays in our awareness (5). Each becomes Self-Evidence, a truth of ourselves and the environment. The Sense of Thirst, our love for water, is a fact as correct as 2 + 2 = 4, as real and true as water, even though it is not one of the five senses that in 1500 BC Aristotle posited during the cradle of our nature disconnected civilization.
"The senses (webstrings), being the explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge."
- Maria MontessoriEach webstring inherently attracts to and blends with other strings forming a common sense, a globally balanced consciousness and unity as depicted in the web of life model. When we don't recognize Self-Evidence, we can't recognize that what we call Nature is a process that creates, recycles and wisely guides ecosystems and their inhabitants through more than 53
attractions in concert. To our loss, our separation from nature leaves us to think and relate using less than eight webstring senses.
Verbal language communication is a webstring enjoyed by humanity alone. The stories our literacy webstring produces are a great asset to human survival when used to help sustain sensory contact with the web and its intelligent ways. However, literacy becomes a source of our problems when we psychologically bond to nature- conquering, demeaning or disconnecting stories. Whenever we are aware of nature as a non-sensory label or story, we lose contact with sensory Self-Evidence. To our loss, this disassociates us from our biological origins and attractions in the web of life, its balance, wisdom and rewards (7).
Source Of The Strings:
"There must be the generating force of Love behind every effort that is to be successful"
- Henry David ThoreauWebstrings are biologically of, by and from nature's proclivity to consummate attractions. Profound disbelief registers on many faces when I tell the web of life activity participants that since they are part of nature, the strings are in them and they can learn to relate to and with them through a psychological, nature reconnecting, self-improvement process. They disbelieve this because webstrings have prejudice, hurt and fear attached to them. They are often as alien to us as were the "Indians" to many frontiersmen and for similar reason: they are to be conquered along with the rest of nature. Indeed, if we did not conquer the strings, they would prevent us from conquering natural systems simply because it would not feel right.
"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 MelvilleSelf-Evidence suggests that natural systems organize themselves through webstring attractions. Moment by moment they create additional webstrings and connections that increasingly weave, balance and repair the web of life. This is not done haphazardly, rather it forms a intelligence that produces nature's optimum of life, diversity, cooperation, regeneration and beauty. The process is inclusive and caring enough to globally give rise to the web of life without creating garbage, death, violence and destructive dependencies as we know them. Everything transforms to the betterment of the whole. Nothing is left out, unattached or unwanted, a way to define unconditional love. Any person who could build sustainable relationships this way would be considered to be extremely intelligent. However, in many nature-disconnected New Brain circles, calling nature intelligent is considered blasphemy.
Reconnection Methodology:
The Natural Systems Thinking Process is effective because it identifies the source of our troubles to be our thinking's disconnection from Self-Evident webstrings in nature (10). The Process scientifically addresses this problem by
A. Having our New Brain reasonably engage people in sensory nature reconnecting webstring activities via the internet or in person.(6, 8, 12).
B. Thoughtfully obtaining consent in a natural area to sense and enjoy Self-Evidence webstring attractions there. This psychologically reattaches the webstrings in our Old Brain to their nurturing origins, the strings and wisdom in the web of life (7).
C. Enabling us to feel, enjoy and trust Self-Evidence. It produces joy and rewards us to continue the process.
D. Validating the connection experience by safely translating our webstring attraction feelings in nature into accurate, reasonable, verbal language, the New Brain way we culturally think and communicate.
E. Verbally sharing our webstring connection experiences with other people, and growing from what we learn in the process as they share their experiences. We are rewarded by further establishing gratifying, supportive relationships with people and the environment.
F. Thinking with Self-Evidence through the thoughtful words and feelings that illuminate our psyche.
G. Bringing our rejuvenated webstring energies safely into consciousness and thereby overcoming apathy by motivating further participation in life. We begin think and relate responsibly, like nature works.
H. Enjoying good feelings and greater sense of self that promotes mental health (11). Our grounding in nature replaces destructive competition, dependencies and greed as it rewardingly restores global consciousness.
Cultural Results:
"It is difficult to get people to understand something when their salary depends upon them not understanding it."
- Upton SinclairContemporary society teaches us to fight an undeclared war against nature. We get paid to conquer ecosystems for profit (9). For this reason, conscious multisensory contact with nature's lifeweb becomes controversial or taboo, like cavorting with the enemy. Our thinking loses contact with the webstring truths that it needs to recover from the absence of these truths (13). For this reason the Natural Systems Thinking
Process operates through activities that enable us to let nature, not culture alone, teach and reward us (7). This increases our sensibility, balance and wellness. Stress fades, we feel better, and our outlooks and relationships improve (7). Part of us reattaches to nature. We become empowered as individuals for once you learn how to do a nature reconnecting activity you own it and can teach it (4).
Bogus intelligence?
Consider the intelligence test question below regarding mathematical aptitude. It is a type of question that helps determine who is successful, who gets the greatest economic and social rewards in contemporary society:QUESTION: "If you count a dog's tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a dog have?"
"Five," of course, is the answer. Intelligent people say "five" because it is valid in mathematical systems and thinking and we are rewarded accordingly (1). However, our sense of reason only recognizes five as correct until we additionally validate what we know from our, or other people's, contact with a real dog (2). Then, many of our multitude of inborn natural senses come into play: senses of sight, touch, motion, color, texture, language, sound, smell, consciousness, community, trust, contrast, and love. Each of these senses helps our sense of reason make more sense. We sensibly recognize that a tail looks, feels and acts differently than a leg; a normal dog has four legs, not five.
OUR CHALLENGE: In contemporary society, on average, over 95% of our time and 99.9% of our thinking is sensuously disconnected from authentic nature.
The examples above suggest that we are often rewarded for thinking incorrectly. The rewards bond and attach us to inappropriate relationships so that we can't easily change. For this reason, if we want to change, to think clearly and resolve our most challenging personal or global problems, we must thoughtfully address our attachment bonds. This article helps you do that. It decribes a process, a readily accessible social tool that reverses this psychological schism and its destructive personal and environmental effects. The tool enables us to reasonably gather information from both 4-leg and 5-leg sources. This lets us enjoy a whole, healing, 9-leg thinking process.
The tool's vital secret is that by carefully following its instructions, we can enlist nature's restorative powers to overcome our bonded conditioning to destructive 5-leg thinking. In time, 9-leg thinking becomes as ordinary and healthful as brushing your teeth.
Today, globally, via the internet and local training sessions, the 9-leg Natural Systems Thinking Process enables people to enjoy and promote lifeweb connected consciousness, individually, or through distance learning activities, courses and degree programs. They have shown to improve the wellness of our mentality, being, and ecosystems (10).
"We are nature, long have we been absent, now we return."
- Walt WhitmanAlong with empirical studies, thousands of email journal entries, such as the following, validate the webstring reconnection process (11).
"This morning I was battling the remnants of some depression I had been feeling about my family and life "stuff". I was doing the webstring attraction activity, looking around enjoying the day, the breeze, the sun, the beautiful trees and the sounds of singing birds. In a flash of good feeling, I realized that these feelings are what is so good about living on earth at this time. It was enough, if for no other reason, to be here, to experience and protect the beauty of this planet. This was a major breakthrough for me, because I battle the reason for being here quite a bit in my recovery work. This happened before noon, and it is now 6 p.m., and I still feel great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to share this because I am so happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Measured Results:
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INSTITUTE OF GLOBAL EDUCATION Special NGO consultant United Nations Economic and Social Council
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
Readily available, online, natural science tools
for the health of person, planet and spiritP.O. Box 1605, Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313 <email> www.ecopsych.com
ORGANIC ADVANCED ECOPSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION
The Natural Systems Thinking Process
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Director
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All programs start with the Orientation Course contained in the book
The Web of Life Imperative.
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