Institute of Global Education PROJECT NATURECONNECT The Natural Systems Thinking Process     Complimentary Discovery Course Exploring Psychological Connections With Nature     How can we come to our senses? Questions to ask yourself. (In this article I quote noted leaders to show that the information being presented is not new but it has been ignored due to our cultural prejudice against nature.)   "I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order." - John Burroughs A responsible society acknowledges its destructive effects and acts to eliminate them. The destructive effects of industrial civilization are undeniable with respect to its impact on the web of life. The web is nature itself, a biological, connective, balancing process that the natural world and the inner nature (inner child) of people hold in common. Our basic tenet has been to conquer nature in the name of progress and survival. We have done this so successfully that we are in denial that we have psychologically addicted to destructive ways of thinking and relating. For this reason, our personal, social and environmental problems have become runaway. We no longer know how to stop although we know we should. With respect to our relationship with the web of life, we must go back to basics. We must learn how to be part of the web in a good way. Question: What process can I use that will enable me to benefit from being a cooperating member of the web of life? * * *   Experts often depict 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 that member who represents a person. Dramatically, people pull back slightly and sense how the string peacefully unites, supports and interconnects them and of all 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 it reflects the reality of our lives, this has brought some participants in the activity to feelings of hurt, despair and sadness. Earth and its people increasingly suffer from "cut string" disintegration, yet we continue to cut the strings. Question: To my loss, do I unknowingly cut or injure strands of the web of life within or around me? Do I know how to stop myself from doing this? * * *   Every part of the global life community, from sub-atomic particles to weather systems, is part of the web of life. The intelligent process by which they interact produces nature's harmonious, supportive ways and prevents our runaway disorders in nature. The process nature uses consists of interacting while in contact with the whole of the web through its strings. As part of the Web we, along with everything else, are born with this ability. Our troubles begin when we don't recognize or use it, deny its existence or hurt it. It usually remains alive in us but it becomes subconscious to protect us from constantly feeling its frustration or hurt. Question: Am I aware of the strands of the web of life that I was born with and still contain? Do I use them and their ways to build responsible relationships with people and places? Have I been taught to render them subconscious? * * *   Recently, I asked this activity's participants if they ever went into a natural area and actually saw strings holding things together 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?" It was very, very quiet. Too quiet. Would you be quiet, too? 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. This places 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. Question: Am I aware of the strands of the Web that lie within and around me? Is it important to me to stop thinking in nature disconnected ways that place Earth and its people at risk? * * *   Source Of The Strings 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 nurture them and relate harmoniously to them through a nature centered self-improvement process. They disbelieved this because we are taught to conquer, not respect, nature. We have also learned that the strings, our inner nature (inner child, inner self ), are taboo, flaky, subjective, spiritual, unscientific, bad, wrong etc. They have some hurt attached to them and that blocks them from freely entering our consciousness, values and thinking. They are often as alien to us as were the "Indians" to many frontiersmen. Often, out of hurt and frustration, the strings attack rather than support us. Question: Is my thinking prejudiced against nature's ways to the point that it influences my relationships? * * *   "We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along along these sympathetic fibers our actions run as causes and return to us as results." - Herman Melville Scientifically, it is clear that natural systems organize themselves with the string. Moment by moment systems are attracted to create additional string and connections that increasingly weave, balance and repair the web of life. This is not done haphazardly, rather it forms an attraction intelligence that produces nature's optimum of life, diversity, cooperation, balance and beauty. It is worth remembering that the process is inclusive and caring enough to globally produce and sustain the web of life without creating garbage. Nothing is left out, unattached or unwanted, a way to define unconditional love. Question: Can I allow myself to believe that natural relationships contain, or are, a form of unconditional love? * * *   Natural systems and nature centered people don't display the runaway war, abusiveness, pollution, mental and environmental disorders that plague our lives. These problems arise because our estrangement from nature prejudiciously and addictively deprives our thinking from conscious contact with webstrings, their intelligence, nurturance and energies (If you don't believe this is a psychological addiction, just try and change it.) We spend, on average, less than 12 hours per lifetime in conscious sensory contact with nature. How well could you read, write or think if you only spent 12 hours of your total life learning to do it? Without ongoing sensory contact with our sensory origins, for example, our thinking still foolishly lets us sell and smoke cigarettes while fully knowledgeable that they contain poisons. In addition, our "stringless" solutions for runaway personal and global problems are as ineffective as the warning labels on cigarette packages. Question: Does my life lose its potential due to problems that eminate from my disconnection from nature's balancing intelligence within and around me? * * *   There must be the generating force of Love behind every effort that is to be successful - Henry David Thoreau An essence of separation: 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 "illiterate" experience consisting of direct attraction relationships, not words, stories, videos or images. No plant, animal or mineral string of nature's ancient web consists of literary communication or attachments. Language is a great asset to human survival when we use it to help make and sustain sensory contact with the the web and its intelligent ways. However, verbal language becomes a source of our problems when it, through nature disconnecting stories, excessively removes our thinking from our sensory origins in the web and its wisdom. For example, sensory discontents initiated by our separation from nature psychologically addict us to the story that we must conquer nature to fulfill our natural senses: hunger, thirst, taste, love etc. Since we are nature, we addict to conquering ourselves and each other, thereby producing mental anguish and war. To find lasting peace we must heed a new story: "Learn how to reconnect and nurture your ruptured sensory strings with their brilliant, fulfilling origins in the lifeweb." Question: Am I a victim of thinking in verbal language and stories that isolate me from the unifying web process that peacefully holds the global life communty and people in balance? Do I have symptoms of this void such as undue lonliness, sadness, stress, excessive wants, depression, lack of attention, underlying anger? * * *   In contemporary society, 99.99% of our feeling and thinking being separated from nature painfully dismembers our psyche from its origins. Part of our psyche and spirit hides and silently suffers a profound loss of contact with its nurturing sensory and sensibility roots in nature's webstring ways and intelligence. However, any word or incident that reminds us of our psychological dismemberment breaks the silence. It triggers the emotional pain of our dismemberment into our consciousness and we feel it. As reflected by the state of the world, indoors or outdoors, our mentality is often guarded, stressed, ill, wanting and destructive in response to our painful deficiency of nature's peace, wisdom, and beauty Question: How much of the stress and hurt I experience is due to my environment not supporting me and how much is pain subconsciously triggered by memories of my dismemberment from nature? * * *   "I believe in God, only I spell it Nature." - Frank Lloyd Wright A new science, a Natural Systems Thinking Process, enables us to reverse many of our troubles because it effectively addresses their source. The process starts by having us learn how to consciously make enjoyable, non-verbal, sensory contacts directly with Nature's lifeweb and its members, not with substitutes for them. Genuine contact is made with authentic nature because with respect to the perfection of Nature's eons of experience for, in this regard, there is no substitute for the real thing. These sensory contacts enable us to consciously, sentiently, reattach the strings within us to their origins, the strings in the web. We can feel and enjoy the connection, it is an attractive experience in nature. NSTP then helps us safely translate these sensory attraction feelings into verbal language and share them. This lets us help our sensory connections with the web feelingly validate themselves in words within our psyche, thinking and reasoning. By using NSTP, we help nature guide our thinking to work like nature works. We sensuously enjoy nature's harmonious wisdom and support as it enters our relationships. In this nature reconnecting process, the natural world, be it potted plant or wilderness, becomes our classroom, mentor and library. It helps us peacefully co-create a sustainable future with the global life community. Question: Does it make sense for me to want to learn through contact with natural systems? Have I prejudicely learned that doing this is "flaky" or "fuzzy thinking" and may make me look foolish like a "hippy," "tree hugger," or "earth muffin" so I won't do it? * * *   "Nothing is more indisputable than our senses." - Jean Le Rond d'Alembert   Sensing the Strings The Natural Systems Thinking Process helps us recognize that the strings are actually natural attractions. Every atom and its nucleus consists of, expresses and relates through natural attractions. All of nature, including us, contains these attractions. "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. Sarkar. Webstring 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 reason and contact with nature, for wholeness. Senses of place, gravity, pain, motion, temperature, and trust, are each webstring attractions that, when energized, register and help guide our conscious thought. Question: Wouldn't my relationships be more rewarding if I could learn to increase my sensitivity to the nature of people and places around me? * * *   "The senses, being the explorers of the world, open the way to knowledge." - Maria Montessori Natural people and things think and love through at least 53 different sensory attraction webstrings, 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 53 sensitivities in concert. To our loss, our excessive separation from nature addicts us to think and relate with less than six of them.The loss of our sensory wisdom unbalances our thinking. "The moment my inner attraction string for color touched the color string of this woodland, I experienced a special joy." - Raymond Sierra A metaphor about seven blind wise men touching and arguing about an elephant conveys the dilemmas of our blindness to nature 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 demoralization, hate and war because we psychologically bond to, and fight for, stories 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 unifying, diverse integrity of the animal, each other and themselves. Question: Has my extensive disconnection from nature unknowingly blinded me to the existence and value of my sensory attraction strings? * * *   "It is difficult to get people to understand something when their salary (or other reward ) depends upon them not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair  Our troubles remain because our society is fighting an undeclared war with nature. At basic training, our thinking is indoctrinated and gets paid to conquer nature. Our civilization's story considers conscious multisensory contact with nature's web of life to be controversial or even taboo. The process is seldom part of our education. There's nothing either good or bad...but thinking makes it so! - William Shakespeare Our thinking blindly 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 best learn the natural systems thinking process by doing it. Doing it lets your 53 natural senses plug directly into their attraction origins in nature and energize. This recharge brings the web's supportive string signals further into your consciousness, thinking and being. It helps you let contact with nature increase your sensibility, balance and wellness. You feel better and your outlooks and relationships improve. Anybody who has had a good experience in nature has momentarily enjoyed this phenomenon. Through the Natural Systems Thinking Process these moments and their benefits become available at will. "One touch of Nature makes the whole world kin." - William Shakespeare Question: Am I missing contributions that my natural self can make to my relationships? Have I been trained to deny my natural self ? * * *   "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name" - Confucious Through the Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) each our natural senses is identified by their right name, "Webstring:" 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. No offense intended, but 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 and its ability to establish balance. In our nature-separated society, we are bonded to think and know through words that produce separation. That disconnection is the psychological heart of our insurmountable personal and global problems. The success of NSTP and the webstring model is its accuracy. It helps us recognize a secret aspect of how nature works, a secret we too often learn to ignore or conquer. The secret is that webstrings are attractions; nature primarily works by attractions. This means that each webstring we experience as a non-attraction (for example, fear, pain, spiritual distress or excessive thirst, hunger, temperature, motion etc) is actually also an attraction, a natural love. It attracts us to find more rewarding natural attractions when danger lurks. For example: we become aware of attractions to coolness when a fire becomes too hot, or to less painful areas when thorns are sharp etc. These warning messages are attractive attractions. We would not survive, nor want to be without them. It is only when we don't, or can't, heed them that trouble arises. Question: Do I negate or demean the contributions that some webstrings make because they interfere with my immediate plans, wishes or enjoyment? Have I been trained to see them or nature as negative, or overcome them and thereby upset a natural balance? * * *   "The laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive." - Henry David Thoreau 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. The web of life only exists today because, yesterday, through attraction contacts, every component of the web consensually "educated" its immediate environment about how it supported its immediate environment. This basic consciousness process occurs moment by moment in nature; it is an essence of all life relationships and survival. As part of nature, it is true in humans, too. Cultures that exist today only exist because they are successful in educating their members about how the culture works and its value; they, in turn, carry on the culture. Today, globally, the internet empowers people to engage in this webstring education process by enjoying and teaching webstring connected consciousness through distance learning activities, courses and communication (3). In local communities, physical, person to person webstring activity education occurs as well. Considering the vital natural and cultural survival value of webstring education, it is no surprise that, genetically, our mind and bodies, our inner nature, learns 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, continuing, consensually shared, sensory reconnecting activity attractions in natural areas bring into our consciousness the webstring connections with Earth that help us build balanced relationships. The sensory webstring of reason demands that we engage in the activities. To this end internships are available. Question: Am I willing to learn, day by day, the art and science of NSTP by engaging in it and teaching it? Do I feel comfortable helping others learn about webstring attractions at home and on the internet.? "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)" - Peter Sams Earth and its people are at risk. Isn't it time that we come to our senses by letting the attraction strings bring us to them through enjoyable nature reconnecting activities? The strings can do this because they are natural sensory loves, an essence of life itself. D. H. Lawrence beautifully validated this when he said: "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 As the examples below demonstrate (1), readably available sensory activities that produce conscious connections with Earth make a difference. The sensory webstring* of reason demands that we use them. "By thoughtfully learning how to become conscious of webstrings and teach this awareness, we reattach our ability to love to its roots in nature. This restores love to its fullness and heals our bleeding." - Michael J. Cohen   Question: Do I want to professionally and personally further my life and all of life by learning to let contact with Earth itself nurture my inner nature's isolation, hurt and fear of additional rejection? Can I really get to know who I am and help people and Mother Earth if the thinking part of me seldom registers, validates or reconnects my inner nature and the web of life? * * *   CONFUCIOUS SAY: if you call each of your senses and feelings a "webstring attraction" or "weblove* you will help your life and all of life improve. (The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name.- Confucious) Question: Do my addictions to calling my sensuous experiences "senses' and "feelings" prevent me from consciously enjoying and teaching the wisdom of knowing them feelingly as attraction strands of the web of life?   * * * * *     (1) WEBSTRING CONNECTION EXAMPLES: RE: Stress: "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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"   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 RWN 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."     * Can you come up with better name(s) to capture and convey the true nature of the strings? On the courses we've been calling the attractions webstrings, webloves or NIAL strings meaning Nameless, Intelligent, Attraction, Loves. People who can't make sense of some situations are often found to be in DeNIAL.   To return to your course pages use BACK or GO or BOOKMARK Return to Course Index Page Institute of Global Education PROJECT NATURECONNECT The Natural Systems Thinking Process P.O. Box 1605 Friday Harbor, WA 98250 360-378-6313 www.ecopsych.com www.webstrings.org Dr. Micheal J. Cohen, Director send e-mail .