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Psychological Elements of
Global Citizenship:
The Science of Connecting
With the Web of Life
The Art of Thinking With Nature
ORIENTATION COURSE PARTICIPATION INSTRUCTIONS
AND
TABLE OF INSTRUCTION CONTENTS
Parts 1-9 on a single page that Course participants may
use to print out hard copy.
Dear Applicant,
Welcome, and thanks for participating in our online Orientation
Course, Psychological Elements of Global Citizenship:
You have connected to this Instruction Page because you received
a letter or invitation from the Institute of Global Education
to visit here with respect to the Orientation Course you have
signed up for. You may already received the tentative starting
date and the names and addresses of some or all of the participants
in your section of the course. If not, you will receive them
when they are complee.
If you will not be participating on the section of the course
you are assigned please let the staff know immediately so we
can make arrangements for the course to continue without you.
Another section of this course may start in about two weeks,
perhaps you can join it or others that follow. Again, be sure
to contact the staff
if you will not be participating in this section of the course
and tell us what you would like to do.
You will be given 4-6 days to familiarize yourself with the instructions
below, more when possible.
Please recognize that each of us and the experiences we share
become an important "real life textbook" for this course.
To be sure you can participate, be sure you have submitted your
application and made payment arrangements, sent for books, buttons,
etc. where applicable as described below, and have your email
and web contact program in good working order.
The information and instructions below are based on you being
familiar with the contents of a short article The
Natural Systems Thinking Process: how restoring our inherent
53 sense way of knowing corrects destructive personal and environmental
relationships. You may skip parts ot the instructions that
you may have already read on our web pages as long as you know
how to apply them.
NOTE:To obtain a helpful whole overview
of the course please read entirely through the nine short pages
of instructions that follow starting with Part
One
Please proceed to Part One
Later you can use the Table of Instuction
Contents below to review topics you have already visited..
TABLE OF COURSE INSTRUCTION CONTENTS
(for later use only)
Part One
- What is the general course topic?
- How is the course taught?
- How many hours of work does the course entail?
- What is the best way to learn the course material?
- Do I have to take the course before I can facilitate it or
intern in it?
- Who are the course participants?
Part Two
- Preparation and Overview
- Attitude:
- Schedule:
- Role of attractions
- Written material
- Guidelines and process
- Unity
- Value and self-empowerment
- Why the process works.
- What guidelines help the course organize itself?
Part Three
- What is the major task on the course?
- What challenges does the course present
- How have past participants met the course challenges?
- Is the course always successful?
- If questions arise, who do I contact?:
- What and why are there two course starting dates?
Part Four
- Where can I find a course application form
- Do I need to buy extra course credit if I am in an IGE Degree
or Certificate Program?
- How do I sign up for course credit from Portland State University?
- What aspects of the course are covered in the Course Organization
Letter I will receive?
- How do I contact the other course members to share activities
and results with them?
- Can I let other people know who is taking the course with
me in my study group?
- How do the course participants help organize and lead the
course?
- How does the course organize itself?
- Do the course guides need special skills?
- How is self-governance achieved?
Part Five
- How do I find out if I have a guide role offered to me?
- What are the four main guide roles?
- A: Group Consciousness and Communication Supporter:
- B. Participation Supporter:
- C. Agenda Supporter:
- D. Coordination Supporter:
- How long does the course take?
- Why is so short a course so long?
- Can the duration of the course be adjusted?
- Is it easy to modify the course duration?
Part Six
- Is the course based on day by day as well as long term commitments?
- How do course participants actually study themselves and
each other?
- Why does the course insist that participants learn to make
conscious sensory contact with and in natural areas?
- Does the course support all kinds of learning and ways of
knowing?
- Why is nature connected learning the course focus?
- How does the course help us undo our destructive relationshps?
- Aren't many of our 5-leg stories deeply ingrained and unchangeable?
- Is the course atmosphere safe?
Part Seven
- Who teaches the course?
- What is the course purpose?
- How does the course reward its members? Through grades?
- Isn't having a good experience enough? Why verbalize it and
post it by email?
- Do course participants ever get together?
- How does the course include and integrate participants past
experiences?
- Why does the course focus on immediate experiences?
- How does the course focus on immediate experiences?
- What makes immediate experiences so important?
- What is the significance of immediate experiences with Nature?
Part Eight
- If the course is largely self-organizing, what holds it together?
- Since Nature is uneducated and non-literate why should I
trust what I learn from it on the course?
- How can I help the course be trustable?
- Does the course produce unsafe dependencies upon its members?
- Are their any special "best ways" to exchange email
information amongst course members?
Part Nine
- How would you summarize the intent of the Orientation Course?
Please proceed to Part One
What is the general course topic?
The Course topic is Educating and Counseling with Nature:
Nature connecting activities for wellness, spirit and deeper
learning.
How is the course taught?
The course is taught via
-readings in books(optional,) and on the internet,
-activities you do in local natural areas,
-email that is used to receive and send instructions, share experience
and respond to emails received.
How many hours of work does the course entail?
The Orientation Course is based on 8-10 hours minimum of participation
in
Email/coursework and reading and an additional 20-30 hours of
activities, email corresponding and organization.
What is the best way to learn the course material?
Retention and application of the course material may be as
high as 85% or more by "teaching" the course (Co-Facilitating
it) after completing it. That opportunity is usually available
and it is a requirement of the Introductory Course (ECO 501)
if you are in the IGE Cooperative Degree
or Certificate program.
Do I have to take the course before I can facilitate it
or intern in it?
This is highly recommended and a responsible thing to do,
but it is not always required because some people have had previous
training that gives them the expertise to facilitate/intern on
the course. Their expertise is determined by their passing with
honors a short 25 question Leadership Compatability Examination
designed by previous course students and guides.
Who are the course participants?
They are usually people who have strong interests in improving
personal and environmental relationships and making them sustainable.
They often have had many years of experience in their professions
or social roles and know they must help solve our "unsolveable"
problems because they can feel help is needed. They want to learn
how they can best contribute. Many desire to support and nurture
the natural spirit or other aspects of themselves that have survived
society's conquest of nature, nature connected parts of their
integrity that refuse to be disrespectful of Earth's ecosystems,
locally and globally.
Please proceed to Part Two
What is it like being on the course once it has started?
Below is an example of what the course looks like when it
is running smoothly. Our challenge here is to make this description
a reality by painstakingly following the guidelines and instructions
on these web pages.
Preparation:
"Carol, an online course member has done her preparatory
"homework. She read through the introductory course and
website material, submitted her application to the course and
received a course participation confirmation. She ordered her
optional Reconnecting With Nature book, completed the required
prerequisite activities and her self-introduction, and set up
a group mailing list from the addresses sent to her by the course
organizer.
The specific dates for the course have been made for the convenience
of all and email send and receive dates have been set. Group
guidance roles have been offered to participants, the co-facilitator
as been identified, and the email addresses checked to assure
that they work properly.
Attitude:
"Enthusiastic" is the way Carol feels about the
course. She knows what is important in it to her because in the
prerequisite material she identified areas of interest and results
that others found important for themselves. She also tried some
of the activities with friends and knows they work well for her.
They help her thinking reasonably co-create with nature's intelligence,
balance and beauty by safely connecting with it. She recognizes
that with respect to Nature's eons of balanced relationship building
experience, there is no known substitute for the real thing.
Substitutes often pollute or deteriorate naturally balanced relationships.
Schedule:
Carol reads her course instructions online from a "base
camp" webpage. She learns from them what activity she and
her email partners, who live in many different countries, will
to do on this scheduled day in their local park, backyard, or
even with a terrarium. In general they have been doing two activities
a week. The schedule they use is posted at their Internet Base
Camp website whose address they were given when the course began.
Role of attractions
As Carol begins this day's activity she seeks what's most
attractive to her in a local natural area at this moment. Unexpectedly,
she becomes aware that the delicate sparkle of a water droplet
on a fern attracts her. She does additional activities that reinforce
this nature-connected sensation and she becomes aware of other
things that come to mind from the total experience. They include
other times she has felt its joy and meaning as well as her past
disconnection from it, what caused it, and the effects of the
loss. She discovers the droplet being attractive to her was not
an accident. It was subconsciously attractive to parts of her
that sought the fulfillment of the balanced tenacity, brightness
and refreshment it provided. Contact with the droplet brought
these parts of her into her awareness.
Written material
Carol then reads, or has already read online, (and optionally
in her Reconnecting With Nature book,) material which helps her
understand and model various aspects of the activity she has
just done and how she might apply them to improve and further
enjoy her daily relationships with people and the environment.
Guidelines and process
Carol closely follows the seven-step guidelines that come
with the activity instructions. At some convenient time on the
due date for the completion of the activity and readings, Carol
goes on-line and shares with her 7-person interact group her
thoughts, feelings and reactions from her nature connecting experience.
She also downloads, reads, and later reacts, to the attractions
she finds and things she has learned in all the emails she receives
from the group by the due date. They become the course textbook.
They convey her group member's experiences in nature with the
same activity and readings she just did. Later she reads their
reactions to the experience description she just sent to all
of them.
Unity
Carol finds the course process is enjoyable and educational.
She feel relieved that participants hold something important
in common and are therefore supportive and not bogged down in
"flaming" arguments about differing viewpoints, ideologies,
religions, politics etc. Carol feels alive and spirited, sustained
by her email partners genuine responses and the group's rejuvenating
reconnections to nature.
Value and self-empowerment
Her day brighter and energized, Carol looks forward to applying
the activity by using it to further connect with people and natural
places that attract her. They gain new value and she becomes
aware of an often unrecognized natural self-worth in herself
and others along with additional values in natural areas. She
has new confidence for she has done the activity and known its
effects. She owns it, can teach it, and gain its rewards at will.
Why the process works.
The coursework sounds and feels simple to Carol, but explaining
to others how and why it works challenges her intellect and spirit
in fun ways. The process and its effects are so steeped in nature's
balanced ways that for most people they are, like nature's perfection,
beyond words. To be known and understood the process must be
experienced first hand. To our loss, in our nature disconnected
society that is often suspect."
What guidelines help the course organize itself?
Below are the guidelines and instructions that Carol and
her classmates followed to help them make the course operate
in ways that optimized their learning and rewards from their
participation.
Please proceed to Part Three
COURSE OPERATION AND PROCEDURES:
What is the major task on the course?
The major task in this course is to help meet the obligations
and challenges that prevent it from operating smoothly and accomplishing
its goal. The instructions on these pages help you and your course
section participants best accomplish this. The instructions have
been compiled from the questions and situations that have arisen
since the inception of this course in 1993.
What challenges does the course present
It may be helpful to know that the adverse situations below
have occurred during the seven years that the course has operated
:
-improperly completing an application http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grnchapplic.html
-electronic email failure
-not studying the instructions carefully.
-incorrect email addresses
-internet overcrowding making web or mail pages inaccessible
for a period of time.
-some member's newness to computers
-computer breakdowns
-personal life complications
-necessary schedule changes
-misunderstanding the instructions or a point made in the email.
-going off topic on an tangent that becomes controversial.
-not paying attention to the instructions and not helping others
do likewise.
-sending requests for credit to the wrong place or at the wrong
time
How have past participants met the course challenges?
The group and its members meet the challenges listed above
by
-being extra familiar with the course operating instructions
so that they can help others to be guided by them.
-being supportive and sharing their expertise
-being patient so folks have time to cope with difficulties
-seeking, obtaining and giving permission to make room for extenuating
circumstances
-being their word. Making the words they convey accurately coincide
with their actions on the course and vice versa
Is the course always successful?
The course process has always operated successfully since
its inception. However, some groups have had more challenges
to cope with than others
If questions arise, who do I contact?:
If questions arise you usually should write the whole group
for answers, not just the facilitators. That way the group may
learn from your questions and/or help answer them. Once you learn
the answers, please share them with others when appropriate.
Reminder: The mailing addresses of the group have been, or will
be, sent to you once it is established.
.
What and why are the two course starting dates?
Usually the course has the two starting dates identified
below. They are sent to you by email once the 3-6 course members
have completed their registration
1. The days you personally start complete your work on the prerequisite
activities located at http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grnchdprerqust.html
and checking your email contact list to see if its working
This period is usually a minimum of Wednesday or Thursday through
the following Sunday. Participants are encouraged to start earlier
on these activities when convenient.
2. The First Official Posting Date for the course is usually
a SUNDAY or MONDAY MORNING at which time you send your introductions
and prerequisite reactions to the whole group mailing address
list. Please do not send them before these days as they can unnecessarily
influence others without personal contacts being established
and thereby reduce your chances to get the most out of the course
for yourself.\
\
Please proceed to PartFour
SECTION 1: STARTUP GUIDELINES AND MECHANICS
Where can I find a course application form?
. APPLICATION An Application Form link is found here http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grnchapplic.html
and at the end of this notice for your convenience, if you have
not yet submitted one.
Do I need to buy extra course credit if I am in an IGE Degree
or Certificate Program?
If you are in an IGE Degree Program or Certificate Program,
credit for the completed course will automatically be provided
to you by the Institute of Global Education (IGE) Certificate
or Degree Program once you officially enroll in it.
How do I sign up for course credit from Portland State University?
Once you have completed this one credit course and received
your grade, you may arrange and pay for optional Portland State
University credit at ($43/credit extra). At that time you will
complete a hard copy of the credit application and mail it with
the appropriate credit fee via postal mail to Project NatureConnect,
P.O. Box 1605 Friday Harbor, WA 98250.
PLEASE NOTE: You do not need this credit if you are only going
to use this course with IGE as in 2 above. PSU credit is for
transferring this course to a degree program or professional
situation that is unaffiliated with IGE. or for other training
or professional credit purposes.
What aspects of the course are covered in the Course Organization
Letter I will receive?
As mentioned earlier, you will have by this time, or shortly,
receive and email with updated course information. It will cover
one of more of the following items:
1. Interact Group name ______________(you can change the unofficial
name by mutual consent after the course convenes)
How do I contact the other course members to share activities
and results with them?
2. Interact Group Participants Mailing List.
You will be asked to make a group mailing list from the names
and addresses on it, so be sure to save this email until you
do. You can put the group list together and mail it out asking
folks to respond to it and see if it is reaching all the participants
in the group.
Note that there may be additional participants and/or subtractions
from list by the Sunday starting date.
Can I let other people know who is taking the course with
me in my study group?
Very important: The course is controversial in some religious,
political and anti-environmental circles and has at times been
subject to harassment (spam, discomforting letters ) Address
lists should be held in strict confidence to avoid unpleasant
complications from "outsiders." If any question arises
about giving out email addresses to people not on the course,
check with the group before acting.
How do the course participants help organize and lead the
course?
Guide support roles in the group will be offered identified
and described. as below. If you are not comfortable with the
role you are offered, please write the course organizer and facilitator,
if there is one, to replace you in your role.
How does the course organize itself?
In nature, the purpose of life is to support life. This is
accomplished by members of the global life community following
their natural attractions .as they come into play. For this reason,
the course interact group attempts to think and be self-organized,
like nature and ecosystems work. In order for the group to function
and meet its psychological global citizenship goals this way,
the roles described below are taken on by members of the group
who feel attracted to playing their assigned role. Sometimes
the group decides to share all roles, sometimes individuals specialize
in one type of support. Often, we each learn how we can best
provide this kind of community support by providing it.
Do the course guides need special skills?
For the most part, the groups are self-sustaining as each
participant is born with all the natural attributes needed to
complete and teach the course.
How is self-governance achieved?
The group support roles make each group member be part of
a group facilitating team and eliminates the necessity for a
facilitator of co-facilitator for the group, even though one
is usually part of the group for training purposes and offering
assistance from past experiences with the course.
Upon successful completion of the course, participants are
invited to help further the program by becoming co-facilitators
for future groups and sharing the knowledge you have gained in
this course. This is part of the process of self organization
and higher learning. The most effective and potent way to learn
the material in this course is by teaching/facilitating it here
or elsewhere.
Please proceed to Part Five
How do I find out if I have a guide role assigned to me?
By Saturday morning preceding the course start date, you
will be assigned, with your consent, one of the following roles
to the group members. Please let the course organizer know if
you are not attracted to the role assigned you. You may ask the
group if someone in the group wants to swap roles with you. Note
that you may share with the organizer or the group that you have
preference for one role or another so that you may best contribute.
(You are welcome to repeat the course free, at a later date and
in a different role, or in the courses that follow. All of the
courses use the same process.) The roles and assignments are
described below:
What are the four main guide roles?
A: Group Consciousness and Communication Supporter:
This person notes if all participants are online and in communication
by
helping participants make a group address list. Using the group
address
list, one letter goes to all in the group, including me, and
all responses
to it go to all in the group, including me. The "GCC person"
also observes
during the course if the time schedule is working OK or if it
should be
modified by group consent. If you've had experience with making
group
addresses, your help with this is most welcomed by less experienced
participants.
B. Participation Supporter:
On the agreed upon due dates for sharing activity experiences,
not whether
all participants have sent their activity responses to the group
or made
other arrangements. If a participant is missing, the Participation
Role
person lets the group know this and tries to help the missing
participant
get their responses posted to the group
C. Agenda Supporter:
We all carry a tendency to get into side issues, stories
and experiences
that may take so much time and energy that they enervate or dissolve
the
group. We also have a tendency to want to teach what we think
we know. The
Agenda Role person keeps track if this is happening. He or she
helps people
get back to the interact group goal of helping each other learn
by sharing
what has been learned **doing the course activities and readings
and then
sharing what we learned and was attractive from the sharing.**
D. Coordination Supporter:
This participant observes if and when help is needed by the
other support people or special areas where she or he can be
helpful to group members or the organizer with the course. For
those who want to learn how to facilitate groups, this is an
excellent growing opportunity for one or more people. If you
let the organizer know you want to play this role they can refer
you to some articles and Chapter readings in RWN that will helpfully
provide guidelines. Sometimes a co-facilitator will be part of
the group to help with this as well. At other times the group
coordinates and learns how to facilitate by doing it.
SECTION 2: COURSE TIME SCHEDULE
How long does the course take?
The course could be completed, with pressure, in two days, however
it would have minimum effectiveness in improving personal and
environmental relationships. Many relationships are based on
conditioned thinking and relating habits that take time to change
as they give up older rewards for greater, more reasonable, satisfactions.
Why is so short a course so long?
If the group wants to the course to go into some depth and
let our experiences affect our relationships, then sleep time
is a necessary part of the course process.. An essence of NSTP
is that participant's have at least one night's sleep between
activities; two is even better. Thus the course will take a minimum
8 days or more. The course usually operates well by doing and
sharing two activities a week, taking a total of 4-5 weeks.
Can the duration of the course be adjusted?
By group consensus you can elect to make the course go faster
or slower depending upon how many days you want to leave between
assignments. We have found posting twice a week to work well,
on average, and sustain course momentum. Five days between activities
work well, too. Seven days tends to loose important course momentum
unless the group is very interactive during those days.
Is it easy to modify the course duration?
You may find it is time consuming and difficult to change
the course posting dates to the convenience of all.
Please proceed to Part Six
SECTION 3: INTERACT GROUP PROTOCOL
Is the course based on day by day as well as long term commitments?
Because course participants learn, in part, from and through
each other, an essence of this program is for each participant
to painstakingly fulfill their commitment to participate once
they make that commitment. In addition, each participant commits
to giving and seeking support to and from their interact group
members regarding their course experiences, thoughts and feelings.
How do course participants actually study themselves and
each other?
One thing we study in the course is how we and others relate
to the natural world in ourselves, others and nature. To have
this work, we ask participants to make commitments as to what
they are doing and going to do, and keep the commitments. If
a participant finds they can't keep a commitment, then they let
the group know that they have to change the commitment and, if
possible, gain consent to make the change. For example, if the
assignment says: Day 3 read Article 6 and you're going to be
away on day 3, drop a note to this effect to the interact group
and say you'll get that assignment done by day four, then be
sure and get it done on time or change it again. In this way
language promotes trust and integrity rather than misleads us.
It shows we care about our effects upon nature in people and
places. Nature does this same thing non-verbally; to our cost,
we have become insensitive to many of these attraction communications.
Why does the course insist that participants learn to make
conscious sensory contact with and in natural areas?
Let me repeat the example in the article
that is part of these instructions. Perhaps you have already
run across this type of question asked on an intelligence test
given to the candidates seeking a worthwhile job: "If you
count a wolf's tail as one of its legs, how many legs does a
wolf have?"
"Five," of course, is the answer. Intelligent people
say "five." You probably don't get the job if you don't
say "five" because the question addresses your mathematical-logic
ability. However, our sense of reason only recognizes five as
correct until we additionally validate what we know from our,
or others, contact with a real wolf. Then, many of our other
natural senses come into play: sight, touch, motion, color, texture,
language, sound, consciousness, contrast, and love. Each of these
natural senses help our sense of reason make more sense and recognize
that a tail is different than a leg, that a wolf ordinarily has
four legs, not five. Consider this:5-leg phenomenon:
"Aristotle thought there were eight legs on a fly and
wrote it down. For centuries scholars were content to quote his
authority. Apparently, not one of them was curious enough to
impale a fly and count its six legs."
- Stuart Chase
Does the course support all kinds of learning and ways
of knowing?
Although all people are biologically and psychologically
part of nature, contemporary people mostly learn and are habitually
conditioned or addicted to know nature from 5-leg, out-of-touch,
"as if," stories about nature. Often we cling to our
stories in the belief that our survival or well being now, or
in the hereafter, depend on us acting from them. The course is
psychologically unique in that it offers additional sensory experiences
with nature on a 4-leg basis.
Why is nature connected learning the course focus?
Many course members have a great deal of 5-leg. "as
if" knowledge and intelligence that has been accumulated
from and continues to mold our nature-disconnected, contemporary
world. In addition, many of us learn not to "walk our talk."
For example, we might be individualistic exceptions to the rule
and say "a wolf has four legs" but we might also have
learned to think and act based on "The only good wolf is
a dead wolf." Genuine contact with attractive things about
wolves that we observe in a real wolf pack society can help us
change that idea along with the notion that a wolf's tail counts
as one of its legs. After all, on some level every wolf is intelligent
enough to know that its tail is not one of its legs. Wolves can
be more appreciated when we see that they relate to each other
cooperatively and lovingly, like dogs are when they are part
of human families or that there is no record that a wolf has
ever attacked a person.
How does the course help us undo our destructive relationshps?
Too often without realizing it, we have been taught to dance
to the drumbeat of "as if" messages that produce destructive
thoughts and relationships and that are seldom found in natural
systems. The deteriorating state of ecosystems and people suggest
that we must improve the "as if" drumbeat of the way
we learn to think about and relate to the natural world and its
people. The course addresses this problem through developing
respect and "4-leg" contact with "genuine"
nature and with people as part of nature. We then learn to think
and relate based on our 4-leg experiences rather than misleading
5-leg stories.
Aren't many of our 5-leg stories deeply ingrained and unchangeable?
Some of us are very attached our "as if" way of
knowing the world. For this reason we are also very attached
to teaching or preaching it as well. Painstakingly try not to
influence the class with your conditioned or favorite way of
knowing (your religion, political party, vocational or academic
training, factual knowledge, race, subculture, etc.) Instead,
if it is attractive to you, help the interact group discover
if or how your and their past information gels with what you
personally have or may learn from conscious sensory contact with
natural areas through the activities and people on the course.
Is the course atmosphere safe?
Each participant's commitment to refrain from bringing the
group into their stories from elsewhere helps establish the atmosphere
of good will and trust that allows group email relationships
to form safely. If you have any questions or doubts about your
ability or desire to relate on the course this way, please explore
the self-evidence activity found at http://www.ecopsych.com/selfevidence.html.
Most people find it a useful and helpful tool here and for application
elsewhere, as well.
Please proceed to Part Seven
SECTION 4: REWARDS AND FULFILLMENT
Who teaches the course?
Although I and others help instruct/facilitate this course, Nature/Earth
teaches it. I instruct by involving you in my nature connecting
activities and discoveries that enable you to let Earth connections
register their intelligent ways in your awareness and thinking.
This is accomplished by you doing the activities that are described
on the internet (taken from my self- guiding books,) participating
in an interact group that usually includes past students with
course experience, learning from my and other participant's response
to questions you ask, and from participants' emails and my occasional
email postings.
What is the course purpose?
The goal is to learn how to locally sustain a life-long relationship
with the intelligence and joy of the web of life and Earth, both
of which are alive in your neighborhood, your neighbors and yourself.
How does the course reward its members? Through grades?
"If the day and the night are such that you greet them
with joy, and life emits a fragrance, like flowers and sweet-scented
herbs--and is more elastic, starry, and immortal--that is your
success."
--Henry David Thoreau
The rewards and education you get from the course mostly do
not come not from the staff or your grades, but from relating
through natural attractions to your interact group and to attraction
gifts in the natural world within and around you.
I try to read all the postings and try to participate as much
as possible. I make myself as available as time permits and enjoy
telephone conversations initiated by students. 1-360-378-6313
SECTION 5: POSTING YOUR EXPERIENCES
Isn't having a good experience enough? Why verbalize it and
post it by email?
In order for participants to get the full benefit of the
e-mail portion of the course, members of each interact group
share their attraction thoughts and feelings from doing the activities
and readings with other group members. They learn from them as
well as read and react to attractions in other interact postings.
This helps 4-leg knowledge integrate with 5-leg thinking.
Again please recognize that each course member's education
here partially depends on email correspondence from and to other
participants. Since the course is not as effective if we don't
share and learn from our global attraction experiences, sharing
them and acknowledging what has been shared is as vital as any
other part of the course. Also, some people are using the course
as part of a degree program and need to learn from you and your
experiences on the course.
Do course participants ever get together?
The interact groups attempt to emulate nature ways by offering
as much diversity and consensus as possible within their members.
If you are interested in personally getting together with one
of your or other course members who live in your area, work it
out and/or let us know if we can help.
SECTION 5: WE ARE THE TEXTBOOK
How does the course include and integrate participants
past experiences?
Rather than learn from the deeply conditioned, nature-conquest,
thinking and history of Western Civilization, this course recognizes
that we are it, that we carry, think and relate with and through
it. We each have been and become what we call civilized. (It
is worth noting here that Thoreau called Nature "A civilization
other than our own.") For this reason, on the course we
learn from our past experiences in the civilizing process in
conjunction with unadulterated contact with unadulterated nature
in the environment, others and ourselves today. To accomplish
this, try to share the "now" of your life, your immediate
experiences, thoughts and feelings while on the course because
now is not fantasy. The immediate moment is a 4-leg way of knowing,
one where we and Earth exist and relate equally.
Why does the course focus on immediate experiences?
We best know, trust and learn from our own experiences, they
are essential truths of our lives. The immediate moment is the
only time we can gather 4-leg self-evidence and the course attempts
to make its participants aware of this by practicing it. Make
efforts to consciously respect, validate and be thankful for
your experiences, your thoughts and feelings while involved with
this course and nature. If you can't trust them, what can you
trust?
How does the course focus on immediate experiences?
With commitment to supporting the interact group through the
gaining permission attraction process, the interact groups enjoyably
organize and maintain themselves and grow . We accomplish this
by staying in the immediate natural attractions of each moment
and sharing what's happening in the activities, chapters and
e-mail. Experiences in the moment tend to produce 4-leg knowledge,
not inaccurate 5-leg stories.
Seek immediate natural attractions. Try to refrain from bringing
in stories or references outside of your immediate personal experiences
as they tend to take you out of the moment and into cultural
cubby-holes that, as in our history, may trigger arguments and
disunity. If these stories are part of you, own them, they are
there as you in the immediate moment along with nature and your
interact group. If, for example, some author or institution's
dogma has made a statement somewhere and you feel and believe
it, share that part of you as you, not as "Dr. Archibald
says" or "Cathocrucians believe" etc. Stories
that share thoughts and feelings about, or from moments connected
with, nature hold something special in common. They unify rather
than disconnect relationships because that's how nature works.
What makes immediate experiences so important?
Please keep in mind that many of the stories and beliefs we are
attached to come from a different knowledge base, time, place,
way of life, technological power, ecological and social literacy
and old problems that contribute to today's troubles. Try to
be open-minded. Try to discover if what seemed appropriate then
is appropriate now.
What is the significance of immediate experiences with
Nature?
Being born into a nature disconnected culture is like any animal,
plant or mineral growing in a barrel full of disconnect pollutant.
The pollutant attaches, coats and sticks to everything and contaminates
it. We often addict to knowing nature in and around us through
polluted glasses and stories that we cherish or addict to, yet
they block us from nature and its intelligence. When we put energies
into knowing and teaching through such stories, we too often
pass up opportunities to let nature teach us about itself in
its non-verbal, sensuous, 4-leg, ways. They only exist in the
immediate moment and often tell a different story since nature
is not nature disconnected.
You can always change and grow from the present, especially
if you know who and where you are in the present. Stories that
share thoughts and feelings about your nature connected moments
hold something very special in common with other people and other
life forms. They are best found in present moment experiences
in nature rather than stories about them alone.
.
Please proceed to Part Eight
SECTION 6: RESPONDING TO ATTRACTIONS
If the course is largely self-organizing, what holds it
together?
Attractions. You will find it attractive and rewarding to read
all the email and respond to what in it attracts you. Because
of the number of participants, please keep your messages brief,
when
possible......a few paragraphs. Share thoughts feelings and reactions
that are important to you, especially if you want input on them
or want somebody else to know them. If you appreciate that somebody
is sharing themselves with you, somehow let them know that if
its attractive or important to you. If it feels attractive, honestly
thank them if you have learned something worthwhile from their
shared experiences and thinking.
If you want to help others by facilitating this course later,
or are in a degree program or course for credit, it is important
to save the postings of the course to use as a reference in your
future thinking, work and papers.
SECTION 7: SUSTAINING TRUST
Since Nature is uneducated and non-literate why should
I trust what I learn from it on the course?
This course is trustable because it uses words to connect the
language-reason (5-leg) part of your mentality to the non-verbal
(4-leg) rest of the web of life that is part of nature in yourself,
others and the natural world. However, the words in the email
and training manuals, along with the people who produce them,
are only trustable if the words accurately convey what is happening,
or will happen, or has happened.
How can I help the course be trustable?
In our world of words it is our responsibility to accurately
and honestly convey our actual experiences, senses and feelings,
--if we are to know the joy and rewards of trust and community.
Help build trust. Please make an effort to have the words you
share here honestly report what attractions you sense, think
and feel while doing the activities and responding to email.
In this regard, the course helps us learn to be our word.
Does the course produce unsafe dependencies upon its members?
Hopefully, people will not be dropping out of the sessions
once they start. Again note that others are depending on you
and your shared experiences in order for them to learn and to
complete the course. We are on this course because we have each
consented to be on it, and, in the process, consented to let
others on it share our experiences with us. We are each part
of nature and deserve the respect given to attraction relationships
with nature in the environment and each other.
SECTION 8 POSTING TO YOUR INTERACT GROUP
Are their any special "best ways" to exchange email
information amongst course members?
Here are some important hints:
A) Only send your postings via email, NOT by attachments to
emails as many attachments contain viruses, do not interface
with other computers, and they are quite time consuming as well.
Please use lower case when possible as UPPER CASE IS HARDER TO
READ AND IT COMES ACROSS LIKE WE ARE SHOUTING.·
B) When you post to your interact group, briefly indicate the
subject and/or person that you are responding to, For example:
UCSB OSPREY GROUP, PART 1A, Sue's response to Jan.
C) One of the purposes of this sensory connecting with nature
course is to help discover your relationship with nature based
on the truths of your own conscious, sensory contacts with the
natural world. Try and focus your email communications on:
1) sharing your personal experiences -attractive sensations,
feelings, reactions when doing the activities and;
2) parts of the readings that are attractive to your thinking
and feeling and that help validate your activity experiences.
3) Please note that as part of this course, unless otherwise
requested, we, on occasion, anonymously archive and distribute
some postings from the course to the NatureConnect List, our
newsletter, and other interested parties. This contribution helps
the course serve its purpose: to have ecopsychology experiences
help unify the natural world and people. The distributions enable
others to become familiar with the course and to people's potential
when they are connected to nature. Those who make this discovery
are thankful for your contribution to their experience.
4) You will find that each assignment on the web has further
instructions with regard to how to do it as well as helpful hints
on sharing your thoughts and feelings about it via the group
email.
D) If you are taking this course for inclusion in the IGE
Degree or Certificate Program you might want to read the syllabus
for the course located at
http://www.ecopsych.com/eco500.html
What does the base camp page
look like? How does it operate?
Visit a sample
of the base camp page index http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grnchainstructindex.html
and note how it will operate once the links are working. If
you have questions, ask the group to help you with them once
you get acquainted.
Please proceed to Part Nine
Before the course email posting begins, I would like participants
to be aware of the following letter:
June 4, 1995
Dear Mike,
Having finally completed the Reconnecting With Nature course,
I consider it very valuable to me and I'm glad I did it. As you
know, I had to do it twice because some of the eight participants
in my first interact group had little respect for each others
needs with regard to taking the course. Even though they had
good intentions, they knew that some of us were taking the course
for credit or needed it for professional or personal reasons,
yet they did not hold up to their end of the bargain very well
-some not at all. Some did not keep up with assignments, so it
became difficult to continue because I did not receive reactions
to my postings to the group, or their assignments were so late
that they made things confusing. Two people just quit the course
without saying anything, and one did not follow the guidelines
and quoted authors all the time instead of sharing what happened
when he did the activities, if he ever did them.
Isn't there some way that you can screen those who say they want
to take the course so that those that take it keep their participation
commitment to the group? I think it was right for Erica, Dan
and me to decide to start over with a new group. The second course
was terrific, we all learned a lot and had a great time. We still
write each other and Morgan actually visited me. I'm really happy
things worked out for the best. Actually, I might have had to
postpone my graduation if the course did not work out.
It seems to me that you should emphasize that on the course,
as in nature, each individual depends upon the cooperation of
the others to sustain the E-mail group community. Our lives are
usually so disconnected and out of our control that we often
lose sight of the importance of what we can contribute and how
much we gain from doing it. Also it might be better if the groups
were smaller. Our second group of six worked well.
Thanks for offering the course. I'm looking forward to helping
guide the next group and taking the second part of the program.
Perhaps I'll send the new group a copy of this letter so they
have some idea of what is needed to make the course work well.
In Friendship,
Ricki Forbes
Please note that this course is an outreach program of the Institute
of Global Education, Department of Integrated Ecology and is
subsidized by Project NatureConnect, past course participants
and myself.
We welcome your support and suggestions for making this course
available internationally.
SECTION 9: SUMMARY
How would you summarize the intent of the Orientation Course?
The object of this course is to help us let nature touch us with
its sensory ,"preliterate," 4-leg, communications.
We then translate these experiences into 5-leg stories that acurately
relate how nature works from our experiences with nature. This
beneficially influences the stories by which we now know the
natural world of which we are part and that's the point of the
course. Each time we repeat methods of relating to nature and
each other that we presently believe in, we may loose the opportunity
to discover what nature's wisdom might have to offer in the same
area.
Our greatest challenge in each immediate moment is to respect
and support nature in ourselves, others and Earth, rather than
impose our often disconnected stories on its intelligence. Global
warming suggests that the way we have learned to think is giving
Planet Earth a fever.
When you feel you trust these words and this moment, you are
ready to proceed with the Assignment schedule.
REMINDER:
As you have requested, we have saved a place for you on a
forthcoming
Orientation course section. Please be sure:
1) to confirm that you want to participate, sending your application
by e-mail. Hard copy the application and the $35.00 and other
payment combinations by mail.
2) you are ready to continue to the course Preparation and Base
Camp pages, whose addresses will be sent to you.
3) you have read the material above and are attracted to participating
in this course.
(4) you have optionally ordered the RWN book and sent a SASE
for your button if you have not elected to receive it with the
book.
You will receive the final up-to-date course members email
list a few days before the course starts. We are looking forward
to the fun and strength the forthcoming weeks will bring.
Thankful Owls and Howls,
Michael J. Cohen
Dr. Michael J. Cohen
Director
P.S. If you have time now and have completed your course prerequsite work you
will find the articles below helpful in strengthening your participation
in the course and reducing the reading time it requires. You
may have already read some of these articles as links from our
web site:
Letting Nature Teach
7 minutes
http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grnch.html
About the Natural Systems Thinking
Process
10 Minutes
http://www.rockisland.com/~process/5grnchapnc.html
What is your
Nature Sensitivity IQ? The EcoSensory Perception Intelligence
Test.
35 minutes Discover and validate your maverick genius
http://www.ecopsych.com/iq.html
Nature
Connected Psychology: creating moments that let Earth teach
25 minutes Details of natural self-evidence
http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html
End of Instructions. Please wait for further
instructions by email
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