The Web-of-Life secret to creating balanced relationships. Healing, Counseling and Education

Most of us are deluded. We believe that because our thinking can identify life in balance, it can produce it. Such thinking has thrown the world and us out of balance. Isn't it time to think again?

Our destructive personal and environmental imbalance uncontrollably produces war, abusiveness and dependencies. Although we despise them, they don't readily change for, subconsciously, we have psychologically bonded to the ideas, materials and values that produce them. We each hold psychological addictions that our thinking neither recognizes nor treats as such. Without appropriate treatment for them, we and consequently Earth, remain unbalanced.

The good news is that our addiction to imbalance responds to proper treatment. The bad news is that, like any addict, we deny we are addicted or need treatment. Chances are your psyche is caught in this dilemma, you think others, not you, need help.

Biologically and psychologically we are part of nature and nature is part of us. Survival demands that we and Mother Nature mutually fulfill each other's needs. However, we live in extreme separation from nature and its balanced ways.

The severance of our natural emotional fulfillments in nature produces addictive cravings that we must gratify elsewhere, no matter their ruinous effects. They distort our thinking. For example, although there is good evidence to the contrary, very few of us think that we can fulfill our cravings and restore balance by feelingly reconnecting to nature. This type of denial is typical of addicts.

We have become so bewildered (wilderness separated) that we try to resolve our problems by using the same nature disconnected thinking that produces them. Many have recognized this:

Today, most experts accurately portray nature and the web of life

by gathering a group of people in a circle. 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.

Dramatically, people pull back, sense, and enjoy how the string peacefully unites, supports and interconnects them and all of life. 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. 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 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.

Every part of the global life community, from sub-atomic particles to weather systems, is part of the lifeweb. The intelligent, globally conscious process by which they interact produces nature's unified balance and prevents runaway disorders.

Natural beings relate while in attraction contact with the whole of the web through its strings. As part of nature, we are born with this ability. Our troubles result when we disconnect it, deny its existence or hurt it. Pulitzer-Prize winning sociobiologist Dr. Edward O. Wilson, of Harvard, affirms that people have an inherent biological need to be in contact with nature. He says Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive, and even spiritual satisfaction.

Recently, I asked web activity participants if they ever went into a natural area and actually saw strings interconnecting things there. They said no, that would be crazy. I responded, "If there are no strings there, what then are the actual strands that hold the natural community together in balance and diversity?"

Warning! Pay close attention to this silence. It flags the missing link in our thinking, perception and relationships that produces many troubles. The web strings are a vital part of survival, just as real and important as the plants, animal and minerals that they interconnect, including ourselves. The strings are as true as 2 + 2 = 4, facts as genuine as us. As part of nature we are born with the natural ability to know them but we learn to neither recognize nor exercise this ability. Without seeing, sensing or respecting the strings in nature and our inner nature, we break, injure and ignore them. Their disappearance produces a void, an uncomfortable psychological emptyness in our lives that we constantly try to fill. We want emotionally and materially, and when we want there is never enough. We become greedy, stressed and reckless while trying to gain webstring fulfillment, placing ourselves, others and Earth at risk.

Today, newly researched nature reconnecting activities enable us to bring webstrings back into our lives. Their presence helps reinstate balanced personal and environmental relationships.

The strings are biologically of, by and from nature. Profound disbelief registered on many faces when I told the participants that since they were part of nature, the strings were in them and they could learn to relate harmoniously to them through a nature connecting self-improvement process (3). Addictively, they disbelieved this because we are conditioned to conquer, not connect with, nature. We have learned that the strings in us, our inner nature (inner child, inner self ), are taboo, flaky, subjective, spiritual, unscientific, bad, wrong, impulsive, unthoughtful etc. They have hurt and fear attached to them. That blocks them from freely entering our consciousness, communication and thinking. They are probably as alien to you as were the "Indians" to many frontiersmen. (4)

Scientifically, it is clear that natural systems communicate and organize themselves with the string. Moment by moment they create additional string and connections that increasingly weave, balance and repair the web of life. This is not done haphazardly, rather it forms an intelligence that produces nature's optimums of life, diversity, cooperation, balance and beauty. The process is inclusive and caring enough to globally produce and sustain the web of life without creating garbage or pollution. Nothing is left out, unattached or unwanted, a way to define unconditional love (2).

Natural systems and nature centered people don't display the disorders that plague our lives. Our problems arise because our estrangement from nature prejudiciously, addictively, deprives our thinking from making conscious connections with the string, its intelligence, nurturance and energies. We spend, on average, less than .000022% of our lives in conscious sensory contact with nature. Our "stringless" solutions for our runaway personal and global problems are as ineffective as the warning labels on cigarette packages.

It is common knowledge that, with the exception of humanity, no member of the web of life relates, interacts or thinks through words. The web is a non-verbal, preliterate experience consisting of sensitivity attraction relationships, of loves, not words. Like our own sense of hunger, a bird's love for food (hunger) is a webstring. So is the tree's attraction to grow away from gravity and its roots attraction toward it. The fawn's desire for its mother and vice-versa are webstrings.

The webstrings are actually communication and relationship building through natural attraction sensitivities. Every atom and its nucleus consists of, expresses and relates through natural attractions. All of nature, including us, contains these attractions including Einstein's Unified Field. People have the ability to sense and feel many of them.

Verbal communication is a new string of the web used only by humanity. It is a great asset to human survival when we use it to help our thinking sustain sensory contact with the web and its intelligent ways. However, our literacy becomes a source of our problems when through nature disconnecting stories, it removes us from our origins in the web and its wisdom.

A new revolutionary wisdom science, the Natural Systems Thinking Process, reverses many of our personal, social and environmental troubles. It expertly addresses our addictive disconnectedness by tangibly reconnecting our psyche to nature in a natural area, backyard or back country, pet or potted plant.

Because we mostly think in words, the string reconnections enable us to think like nature works. We enjoy nature's harmonious wisdom as it enters our relationships. Support replaces destructive competition and greed (7). The natural world, backyard or backcountry, becomes our classroom, teacher and library (8). It helps us peacefully co-create a sustainable future with the global life community (12).

Attractions feelingly register in our consciousness as sensations we call senses. For example: as natural loves for sight, touch, and sound ; as our attractions to water (including thirst), color and community; as attachments for nurturing, belonging and trust, as affinities for contact with nature, for wholeness. Senses of place, gravity, pain, motion, temperature, and trust, are each attractions that, when energized, register and play in our conscious thought.

Natural people and things think and love through at least 54 different sensory attraction strings, not just five as we are taught (2). Each string is an intelligent way of knowing that inherently attracts to and blends with other strings to build and be guided by the common good. Nature helps create, sustain and balance life through these powerful 54 sensitivities in concert. To our loss, our excessive separation from nature addicts us to think and relate with less than six of them.

A metaphor about seven blind wise men touching and arguing about an elephant conveys the dilemmas of our blindness to lifeweb attraction strings and our natural senses. In the story, each blind man argues their case based upon what part of the elephant they are touching. While one is conscious of the elephant as a pipe (the tusk) others say it is a snake (trunk) or like a rope (tail). Such differences often lead to disconnection, hate and war because we psychologically bond to, and fight for, what we know to be "the truth." We seldom reconcile our differences by making further common contact with the integrity of the whole elephant or whole of the web of life. Satisfying many of their natural attraction senses would have led each wise man to further explore the elephant and further discover the diverse integrity of the animal, each other and themselves.

"It is difficult to get people to understand something when their salary (or other rewards) depends upon them not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair

Our troubles remain because our society rewards us for fighting an undeclared war on nature. Our thinking gets paid, and otherwise rewarded, to conquer ecosystems and webstrings for profit and approval. Conscious multisensory contact with nature's lifeweb is not practiced so our thinking loses contact with the truths that it needs to recover from the absence of these truths. That is why, in our nature estranged society, you learn the Natural Systems Thinking Process by doing its reconnecting activities (6).

The activities enable us to plug our 54 natural senses directly into their attractions in nature and energize. This recharge nurtures the web's supportive string signals further into our consciousness, thinking and being. As we learn to feel and trust our senses, we increase our sensibility, balance and wellness. We feel better and our outlooks and relationships improve (7). Anybody who has had a good experience in nature has momentarily enjoyed this phenomenon.

Through the Natural Systems Thinking Process each our natural senses is identified by their right name, "Webstring." Definition: "A seamless sensory attraction string of the global web of life community within and around us." Webstrings feelingly help us bring nature into our awareness and thinking at will. To call the webstrings anything else, as we are trained to do, (senses, feelings, God, instincts, needs, drives, spirit, desires, blessings, beliefs, subjective, bias, angels, etc.,) often disconnects our thinking from the web of life. That disconnection is the psychological heart of our insurmountable personal and global problems.

Making space in our lives to do activities that reconnect us with nature has proven to produce responsible relationships (7, 10). Once you learn how to do a reconnecting activity you own it and can teach it. Today, globally, the internet empowers people to enjoy webstring connected consciousness through distance learning activities, courses and communication (3) .

Earth and its people are at risk because our excessive stress fuels greed, illness and disorders. Conscious webstring attraction connections reduce our destructive stress. They bring us to our senses. Along with empirical studies, thousands of email journal entries, such as the following, validate the process (see some others below):

"This morning I was battling the remnants of some depression I had been feeling about my family and life "stuff". I was doing the sensory 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 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 pm, and I still feel great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wanted to share this because I am so happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (10)

We learn only 15% of what we read but 90% of what we teach. If you want to personally and globally come into balance, teach what you have read here. Thoughtful, shared sensory reconnecting activities produce conscious connections with Earth that help us build balanced relationships. The sensory webstring of reason demands that we engage in the activities. (3, 5).

"I know what I read here holds benefits for me and makes perfect sense. I also know my history, I'll not become involved in it until I'm forced to. What has so stupidly addicted me to my apathy and its discontents? (11)"

ADDITIONAL EXAMPLES OF SENSORY RECONNECTING THROUGH THE NATURAL SYSTEMS THINKING PROCESS (10):

RE: Materialism and environmental deterioration:
Participant A: "As I continued this special forest activity, I found myself attracted to the various songs of the birds and then gradually to the various stones and nuts and shells in the path. I would stop in the path, pick up the stone, admire its beauty and then feel clearly called to return it to its appropriate place. So often other times I have felt I needed to put it in my pocket and carry it home. Now, through the activity, I had a real sense of appreciating each rock, each shell, each leaf in its place for the time I was there. I felt suddenly freed from the need to possess something. I had a growing sense of letting things be and to just be still and glory in the fullness of the moment. As I allowed myself to connect, appreciate, thank and move on with so much of what surrounded me, I felt a letting go into being present. In this transformation, I began to feel I was part of the scene more, not my other self that needed to possess. I learned that I do not need to possess something to have the joy of it."

Participant B: Your earlier questioning of the work place sounds so familiar but we have our cultural story that needs to maintain in our society. I find daily that I am changing things and getting back to more basic life choices. I think each little one counts. These changes feel so good. I find that I want less material things these days.

RE: Peace and Support
"I was never taught to ask permission to relate to people or the environment. I just take that for granted, as we all do. However, this activity required my senses to learn how to ask an attractive tree covered area for its consent for me to walk through it. The area continued to feel attractive, but something changed. It was the first time in my life that I totally felt safe. It felt like Earth's energies were in charge of my life, not me. It gave me a wonderful feeling of having more power to be myself. I felt in balance with nature and the people here because I could distinctly feel their energies consenting to support me. I never experienced nature and people that way before. It was like a powerful law protected not only my life, but all of life. I felt very secure and nurtured as I walked under those trees. I learned that when I seek permission from the environment and people I gain energy and unity, I belong."

RE: Chemical Dependencies
"I want to share with the group that I feel different from when I started this course. I have always struggled with chemical addictions, and these last few weeks, I find I hardly have cravings at all anymore. At times I do, but then I can go into nature, right outside my backdoor, and feel a connection that is real. I have been through therapy as well as currently working a twelve step program, and I feel these nature activities have really helped me, more than I have words for. This is definitely an attraction, I cannot label it, I do not have words for it, yet I know in my heart something has changed."

RE: Global intelligence
"My how my mind does chatter with words that can mislead me. When I make contact with nature and think with nature's intelligence, it guides me with a wisdom that helps me keep in balance. The contact is non-verbal because nature does not communicate with words. As I worked through the Introductory Course, I began to use the Reconnecting With Nature book's methodology to quiet my mind. As I went through the activities I began to sense a subtle, but perceptible, shift in my ability to attain a non-verbal awareness. Then one day, as I was doing one of the activities that asks us to "jam" the verbal mind with a word ("unity" in my case) I suddenly connected, WHAM, there it was - non-verbal awareness. No naming, no concepts, just being. What a relief! It didn't last long but it did change my life. Since then I have extended my abilities to just be. Now my "mind chatter" is only a murmur when I ask it to be. This has opened up experiences so far beyond anything I even dreamed of a few years ago."

RE: Healing and Wellness
"The activity helped me become aware of my attraction to the crescent moon as it hung over two hills near my home. Soon, its mellow glow, framed by peaks and trees, embraced me in a wordless, ancient primordial scene. Timeless power, peace and unity swept me up. I just wanted to stay in that state of awe, I felt in balance with all of reality. I was simply "BEING." No tension, no pressing goal, just truly belonging to the global community. This natural energy captured my stress laden pulse and seduced it to the rhythms of Earth. The sleeping disorder I have battled all my adult life dissolved in this power. For the first time in decades, I gently fell asleep after dark and arose shortly after dawn. I celebrated the breakthrough and I thanked nature. I thanked the activity, too, for it lets me reconnect whenever I choose."

The best way to experience webstring connections and their benefits along with other natural systems thinking process activities is to explore the short, online, Orientation Course

DOES THIS MAKE SENSE TO YOU? When you call each of your senses and feelings an attraction strand* or webstring love* you help your life and all of life improve. Remember:

Question: Does your habit of calling your sensuous experiences "senses" and "feelings" deny you the privilege of enjoying and teaching the wisdom of knowing them as natural sensory attraction strings of the web of life?

Project NatureConnect
P.O. Box 1605
Friday Harbor WA 98250
360-378-6313
nature@interisland.net
Contact: M.J.Cohen

1. Cohen, 2000, Nature Connected Psychology: creating moments that let Earth teach http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html

2. Cohen, 1997, Reconnecting With Nature: Finding Wellness through restoring your bond with the Earth, Ecopress, Corvallis, Oregon. http://www.ecopsych.com/newbook2007.html

3. Cohen, 2007, The Webstring Natural Attraction Model
http://www.ecopsych.com/ksanity.html

4. Cohen 1995, Counseling and Educating With Nature http://www.ecopsych.com/counseling.html

5. Cohen 1993, Well Mind, Well Earth, Roche Harbor, WA, World Peace University Press
http://www.ecopsych.com/books.html

6. Kofalk, 1994 The Distinguished World Citizen Award
http://www.ecopsych.com/overview.html

7. Cohen, 1996, Study and Survey of Participants and Outcomes
http://www.ecopsych.com/survey.html

8. Logan, 1995 Nature Psychology Courses and Degrees http://www.ecopsych.com/theory.html

9. Cohen, 1996 Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship
http://www.ecopsych.com/orient.html

10. Storer, J, 1953 The Web of Life, New York, New American Library

11. Beyond Addicted Thinking: do this activity. http://www.ecopsych.com/trailattract.html

12. Cohen, 1995, The Global Wellness and Unity Activity
http://www.ecopsych.com/amental.html

13. The Eco-Sensory Intelligence Test
http://www.ecopsych.com/iq.html

14. Cohen, 1998 The Hidden, Unified-Field Voice in Natural Systems
http://www.ecopsych.com/attractionlink.html

15. Natural System Dysfunction (NSD): the disorder, its origins and remedy
http://www.ecopsych.com/nsd.html