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If you are not there now, to get to where your best thinking wants you to be you must make

A Critical Move:

The secret to fulfilling deeper ideals.

 

Once upon a time a cluster of frog eggs was washed into a deep well where they hatched. A small, isolated frog colony was born and survived. To its members, the sky looked like a plate, a small, round, circle above them. That reality made perfect sense from their point of view.

If we as contemporary people were similarly confined and believed the sky was a plate it would corrupt our thinking and relationships.

- Our explanation for how water and air were produced would be wrong.

- The value of the wind, land and ocean would be unknown to us.

- Thoughts of Earth and Nature's balance and beauty might be considered a form of insanity.

- The goal of our society might be to train slaves to be strong enough to throw enough garbage out of the well so the slave owners could own more toys.

This metaphor is real with respect to Nature. There are often profound effects upon organisms that live in nature-separated places. Limited sensory stimulation there de-energizes many natural growth and relationship sensitivities. Animals in caves lose the ability to produce eyes or pigment in their skin. Children brought up in a closet often die when removed from it. Healthy young people subjected to sensory deprivation develop hallucinations and delusions and lose their sense of who they are after a few hours. People living in canyons have distorted long distance perception.

Be concerned. We seldom realize that most of us spend our lives in an isolated, desensitizing psychological and spiritual hole that corrupts us. Our hole consists of ways of thinking and relating that separate us from the natural world. On average, over 95% of our time and 99.9% of our thinking is sensuously disconnected from authentic Nature. This effects our psyche, reasoning and soul. Bewildered (meaning separated from wilderness intelligence) we destructively think our way into our most difficult problems including the insanity of knowledgeably destroying our own life support system.

The sickness of the well
Because our hole provides us with the vital rewards of immediate survival, we addictively call our sensory dismemberment from Nature along with its problems and suffering "normal," "progress," and "excellence in education" rather than "desensitizing psychological and spiritual dismemberment." Very few of us hole dwellers believe we are in the hole we are in. As Upton Sinclair observed "It is difficult to get people to understand something when their salary depends upon them not understanding it."

Personally and globally, our unsolveable problems persist because our thinking is not only disconnected from what causes them but also from what can and has solved them. As may be seen by our problem's absence in natural systems and nature connected cultures, our disconnection from our sensory origins in Nature is our major problem. Genuine reconnection is its solution, not the suggestions from others who are as, or more disconnected, than us. No matter what disconnected people say, the solution we seek is readily available and has proven itself. It is only our false belief that we must stay disconnected to survive that impedes us.

Cervantes noted, "The proof is in the pudding."  Our destructive disconnection from Nature subsides when we choose to use a nature reconnecting tool. The tool enables us to to raise our awareness and thinking out of the hole we are in and take a breath of pure, fresh air in the light of the sun and rainbows. The tool helps us consciously make thoughtful, sensory contact with authentic Nature's diverse essence. We register and enjoy the peace and balanced attraction energies of Nature's eons that operate the same today as forever. As we inhale the diverse love and integrity of the wind, hills and stars, Nature's unique ability to recycle and nurture our disconnected inner nature comes into play. We become stronger, less vulnerable to the polluted hole we have dug ourselves into. We become more capable of helping others use the tool and get out of our rut.

The tool is real. It is a stairway out of our hole to authentic Nature's sanity. Anyone can learn how to climb it and reap the rewarding benefits. However, no surprise, our nature-disconnected thinking prevents us from believing that the the tool or stairway exist. To address this false belief, experience is the best teacher.

Origins and results

The best way to determine the tool's value is by noting its short and long term effects.

In 1959 Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D. founded a camp and school program based on reconnecting with Nature. The National Audubon Society and many others called it the most revolutionary school in America. They said it was on the side of the angels. School participants traveled and thrived by camping out in 83 different natural habitats throughout the seasons. They learned to cooperatively live out their commitment to establish open, honest relationships with the natural environment, each other and with indigenous people(s), researchers, ecologists, the Amish, organic farmers, anthropologists, folk musicians, naturalists, shamans, administrators, historians and many others close to the land.

The experience deeply reconnected their 53 sense inner Nature to its origins and self in the whole of Nature including people. As a result of the participants' romance with educating themselves this way, in the school community:

Chemical dependencies, including alcohol and tobacco, disappeared as did destructive social relationships.

Personality and eating disorders subsided

Violence, crime and prejudice were unknown in the group.

Academics improved because they were applicable, hands-on and fun.

Loneliness, hostility and depression subsided. Group interactions allowed for stress release and management; each day was fulfilling and relatively peaceful.

Students using meditation found they no longer needed to use it. They learned how to sustain a Nature-connected community that more effectively helped them improve their resiliency to stress and disease.

Participants knew each other better than they knew their families or best friends.

Participants felt safe. They risked expressing and acting from their deeper thoughts and feelings. A profound sense of social and environmental responsibility guided their decisions.

Participants creative thought and expression in art, music and writing improved.

When vacation periods arrived, neither staff nor student wanted to go home. Each person enjoyably worked to build this supportive, balanced living and learning utopia. They were home.

Students sought and entered right livelihood professions.

All this occurred simply because every community member made sense of their lives by sustaining supportive, multisensory relationships. These helped them restore conscious contact with the intelligence of natural systems within and around them.

From 1985-90, Dr. Cohen translated his Nature-connected, small group, expedition learning program into an easily accessable Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) for public use via the internet or locally. Backyard or back country, NSTP helps people rejuvenate their inherent 53 natural senses through unique readings, sensory Nature reconnection activities and email communication with supportive friends. Its documented effects speak for themselves in a published survey of participants.

The value of NSTP is exemplified by research regarding its application to a group of at-risk students in an alternative school. Three years of before and after testing showed lasting increases in environmental literacy, academic and social skills, psychological improvement and the elimination of chemical dependencies. Research by NSTP students increasingly reports similar results from its use in education, therapy, healing, and recreation.

As students master NSTP and add NSTP to their profession or relationships, some choose to attain an advanced degree in it. This gives visibility to their expertise so they may enjoy the many advantages of recognized accomplishment.

As one might expect, learning to use NSTP makes little sense to folks who believe the sky looks like a plate. Understandably, they are enticed to be "normal" members of our disconnected society and, to our loss, "they" are most of us.

Our consciousness is unwhole. It's stubborn omission of Nature's unifying intelligence in our lives produces our lasting conflicts, stress and destructiveness. That intelligence thrives in the natural world outside our hole, not in in our deteriorated, nature separated, ways. Our disconnected thinking and spirit is a form of pollution. It needs Nature's help to recycle and restore itself. Through NSTP that help is readily available.

Our best hope is that you are reading these words. Part of you understands and respects the tool. It makes all the difference in the world when you implement that resiliant part of you.

 

"Oh, what a catastrophe, what a maiming of love when it was made personal, merely personal feeling. This is what is the matter with us: we are bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars. Love has become a grinning mockery because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the Tree of Life and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table."

- D. H. Lawrence

"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

 

"To help restore the perfection of the Garden of Eden within and around us, reconnect with what remains of it and learn how to think in a balance."

- Michael J. Cohen

 

REFERENCES

1. The best way to learn NSTP: an online practicum in connecting with Nature..

2. Can you validate the truth of a personal nature connecting experience?...

3. An update on the state of Planet Earth ..

4. The secrets of connecting with Nature ...

5. The results of connecting with Nature...

6. Global wellness and unity: obtaining consent to belongz

7. Putting knowledge into practice...

8. Acting sensibly about a critical disconnection ...

9. Have you retained your ecosensory IQ; do you use it?...

10. The results of nature disconnected consciousness ...

11. A free introductory course you can take online...

12. Nature connected degree programs and courses...

13. Applying Ecopsychology to deal with our denial 

14. The overlooked essence of Nature's wisdom

15. Questions and responses from reviewed articles and research..

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Email for information

 

APPLIED ECOPSYCHOLOGY / INTEGRATED ECOLOGY
Department Office
Dr. Michael J. Cohen, Lead Faculty*
Post Office Box 1605,
Friday Harbor, WA 98250.
(360) 378-6313
nature@interisland.net

*Dr. Cohen is the director of
PROJECT NATURECONNECT
at the
Institute of Global Education
A special NGO Consultant to the
United Nations Economic and Social Council
He also serves as
Applied Ecopsychology Director, Akamai University
Adjunct Faculty for Portland State University School of Extended Studies

Mission: to provide an educational alternative that is mentor-based, individualized, non-resident as well as resident, and self-paced. The intention is to foster the betterment of the human condition through increased awareness states, intellectually, emotionally, physically, socially, spiritually, and environmentally.

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