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Thinking With Nature: Today's Rendezvous
with Destiny.
An article in five parts
Michael J.
Cohen, Ed.D.
Part One: A Moment of Truth
As we begin to learn about reconnecting with nature, we begin
to discover why the world works beautifully, yet often it does
not work that way in our lives.
During my 37 years living, learning and teaching in natural
areas year-round, I have identified cohesive energies in nature
that creatively hold the natural world together in balance. You
have experienced them. They touch you when you take a walk in
an attractive natural area and you feel rejuvenated by the magic
of sunshine, trees and the wind. In nature, these attraction
energies have no name, for nature has no verbal language. However,
we, and all of life, are born with the ability to feel, enjoy
and benefit from them. We sense them as natural attractions through
53 different senses we inherit from nature. Our problem is that,
unlike how nature works, our excessively indoor ways teach us
to make sense of our lives mainly using five of these natural
senses, not all of them. The disastrous personal, social and
environmental results speak for themselves. Scientifically, I
demonstrate that our problems subside as we learn to make conscious
sensory contact with nature and learn to think in multisensory
ways. That process is a practical applied ecopsychology.
Research shows that we can choose to rejuvenate and use all
our 53 natural senses and reverse our excessively destructive
ways personally and globally. However, be alarmed. I recently
watched these natural senses perform their magic before the eyes
of informed, caring people. They, like most of us, were insensitive
to the value of the performance. They chose to ignore it. Their,
and our, dismissal of it is cause for great concern.
The performance occurred at a hurried, stressful training session
for community leaders. Their differences kept them arguing amongst
themselves. In the midst of this hubbub, a young, wild bird flew
into the meeting room through the open door. It could not find
its way out. Without a word, the behind-schedule meeting screeched
to a halt. In that moment, the bird brought to people's consciousness
deep natural attractions and feelings for its life. Hope filled
each person. For ten minutes that frightened, desperate little
bird catalyzed those seventy people to harmoniously, supportively,
organize and unify with each other to help it find its way back
home unharmed. Yet when they accomplished this feat, these leaders
cheered the accomplishment and their role, not the bird's. It's
role and impact went unnoticed. They returned to the hubbub of
the meeting, as if nothing special had happened.
I wanted to point out to this group the powerful, sensitive,
unifying and mutually supportive effect the bird had upon them
individually and collectively. Experience told me they would
scoff, as they had previously. They would say what happened was
not important or useful for it was uncommon to have a wild bird
touch their lives.
Unconsciously, these leaders sensitivities allowed a touch of
nature's plight (a bird at risk) to unite them, to free them
from the stress they were feeling and catalyze community amongst
them. Although it said not a word, the bird was an educator and
counselor. It reached and ignited people's inborn nature, nurturing
senses of love, empathy, community, friendship, power, humility,
place, reasoning and a score of others. A bird brought joy, cohesiveness
and integrity to their lives. The benefits were evident. I have
found that it is the lack of such contact that creates and sustains
our runaway disorders.
The bird impacted the conference because, as part of nature,
it was part of everybody at the conference. Humanity is to nature
as our leg is to our body. We are one, an integrity that is sentiently
integrated. For example, as we breathe Earth, Earth breathes
us. One need only hold their breath to realize that our desire
to breathe is a specific natural sense, a love for air. We did
not invent that love. It is of, by and from nature. We inherit
it and many other attraction sensitivities from nature. The bird
reconnected us with nature. It sparked some of our natural sensations
and feelings into consciousness and things came out right. Anybody
can learn to create similar experiences that afford similar outcomes.
However, this seldom interests us. We have learned that to expressively
emote, enjoy and validate nature is similar to having an illicit
affair.
Our lives don't make sense and our problems flourish because
industrial society does not teach us to seek, honor and culture
nature's sensory contributions to our lives. We learn instead
to conquer nature, to separate from and deny the time tested
love, intelligence and balance enjoyed by the natural world.
Part Two: The Challenge
Select here
Thinking With Nature Article Part 1 ..Part 2
..Part
3 ..Part
4 ..Part
5
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