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The Hidden Voice in Natural Systems: Why Counseling, Learning and Relationships Work Better In Nature Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D. Institute of Global Education March 15, 2002 "Nurture your felt love for Nature. Never deny it. That love is the eons, the purifying intelligence, beauty and diversity of Nature sustaining us in its perfection. Our disconnection from this love produces our hurt, greed and destructiveness. We must reconnect and restore its peaceful voice in our thoughts, soul and surroundings." - Michael J. Cohen Significantly, in the past decade the often opposing physical (7), biological and social sciences have discovered a body of evidence upon which they agree. In addition, this evidence also agrees with findings in ethics(10), philosophy and spirituality (9). During this same period, the fields of education and psychology produced a learning process that enables any individual to access this validated knowledge and use it to build relationships that improve self, society and the environment (3). The evidence mentioned above authenticates what outdoor researchers like myself sense in natural areas. A fundamental, binding, energy underlies every aspect of the world we know. Be it a form of Love or the Unified Field sought in physics, sub-atomic, human, and global relationships, form, hold together, and "communicate" via a cohesive natural attraction energy (8, 6). Natural attraction connects everything into a system. It connects everything into a system, to supportively belong rather than be isolated.. Natural attraction roots Nature grows from its roots. The existence of a root natural attraction throughout Nature is consistent with how Nature works. It makes sense. If the world was not held together by natural attraction, it would fall apart, which it doesn't in Nature. Rather, natural systems are attracted to increase in growth, diversity, resilience and their ability to support life in a balance. We are attractive All material or non-material "things" in Nature including people, consist of natural attraction relationships. Thus, as natural attraction produces us it manifests itself as us, as our molecules, body, mind, sensations and feelings. Significantly, our senses are not sterile. Like everything else they, too, are natural attraction expressing itself. For our survival our senses intelligently help us consciously, feelingly, register nature's ways as they seek fulfillment from their attraction to their origins in nature. For example, the sensation of thirst "knows" when to attract us to water. Effects of disconnection Biologically, humanity is a seamless continuum of Nature and natural attraction. However, a contemporary person daily lives and thinks over 99% of the time while disconnected from natural attractions in natural areas. This corrupts us to the point that we consider this dismemberment normal. We applaud it even as we suffer its abnormal effects upon our selves and the environment. The missing attraction rewards in our Nature-disconnected emotionality produces our wants and greed. They arise from our severed and frustrated natural attractions. This stressful void makes contemporary people the only organisms on Earth whose mentality destructively produces garbage, pollution, war, mental illness, loneliness, excessive stress and abusive relationships. These maladies, with rare exception, are absent in Nature or people in tune with Nature. Scientific shortcomings The objectivity and science of disconnected contemporary thinking dismisses as subjective most of the natural attraction sensitivities that Nature and people hold in common. For example, sensory attractions to water (thirst), life (survival), appetite for air (to breathe), and belonging (community) are not even included in the five senses that we say we learn and know from. Satisfactions from our natural attraction to pets, friends, family, Nature, peace, justice and community seldom shape our self-esteem, economics, and technology. In our nature-isolated thinking, we learn to view our natural attraction senses and feelings as unimportant, as non-measurable, childish or unreasonable loves (12). We condition ourselves to become sensuously sterile and oblivious to them. To our loss, we omit them from many equations. This corrupts us. We lose nature's essential, unifying energy, a natural attraction way of knowing and relating that peacefully holds the natural world in a mutually supportive, cooperative, equilibrium. Disconnected, we and Earth are becoming increasingly dysfunctional (4) (11). Life's hidden purpose The absence of natural attractions from our thinking leaves us to conclude that life systems, including ourselves, operate by the laws of chance and are without purpose. However, any thoughtful person may observe that, locally or globally, a life system does have a purpose. It is to survive, to follow its natural attraction to grow in support of life. Throughout nature, minerals, plants and animals achieve this purpose and perfection by fulfilling a multiplicity of natural attractions that resonate and beneficially modify each other. Things in Nature thereby intelligently, by "consensus" (many sensitivities together), unite as global citizens to their mutual benefit As part of Nature, when our senses and feelings are not thwarted by nature conquering stories, artificial substitutes or social pressures, they attract us to responsibly support life. They then reward us with joy to keep us on this path. Restoring disconnection Most therapies, healing and learning work better and produce greater responsibility when connected to natural attractions in nature. It is no longer heresy to say that the greater a person's natural attraction desensitization or disconnection, the greater are the problems that person suffers and causes. Conversely, sensuously reconnecting with attractions in nature may be our salvation for it enables us to transform our disorders into unifying, constructive relationships (5A-E). To repair our mentality's destructive disconnection from Nature, at the Institute of Global Education a newly researched Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) provides a missing link that does the seemingly impossible. It enables anybody to safely make thoughtful, conscious, sensory contact with natural attractions in Nature, backyard or back country. People thereby reduce their dismemberment stress and improve their thinking and ways of relating. This authentic reconnection with our natural attraction origins rejuvenates at least 53 inherent natural attraction sensitivities in us. It energizes them to register in our consciousness as attractive felt senses and logic (3). The presence of these additional senses in our normal awareness enables us to enjoyably think and speak with them, to make more sense and thereby improve our relationships with our selves, each other and the natural systems within and around us. This becomes very attractive, therefore repeated, and thereby lasting (2). NSTP helps anybody restore the inherent joy of their culturally suppressed natural attractions: senses of community, trust, place, compassion, reason, belonging, consciousness, global citizenship, empathy, literacy, humor, spirit, relaxation, and sustainability along with our forty-one additional natural senses. It enables us to come into balance as our thinking rationally taps into Nature's natural attraction to reason, peace, spirit, community and Higher Power. Conclusion It is neither sensible nor attractive for us to remain sensuously disconnected from Nature and continue to produce the destructive effects we and Earth presently suffer. To help us end this deterioration NSTP is readily available through online scholarships, courses, degree programs and training for nature-connected education, counseling and leadership. NSTP empowers caring individuals to help people, nations and religions share with each other their conscious sensory contact with natural attractions in natural areas backyard or back country This unification improves personal, social and environmental relationships and restores peace. Further information about NSTP is available at http://www.ecopsych.com and in the book Reconnecting With Nature (Ecopress). References: 1. Bloom, Howard. (2000.) Global Brain. New York. John Wiley and Sons. 2. Cohen, Michael (1996) A Survey of Participants: Reactions to NSTP and Studies of Effects, Friday Harbor, WA, Institute of Global Education 3. Cohen, Michael (1997) Reconnecting With Nature: Finding Wellness Through Restoring Your Bond with the Earth, Eugene, OR, Ecopress 4. Cohen, Michael, Editor (2001) The State of Planet Earth: Results of Ecozombie Thinking (http://www.ecospsych.com/zombie2.html (5A-E.) Chard, Philip Sutton. (1994.) The Healing Earth: Nature's medicine for the troubled soul. Minnetonka MN. NorthWord Press. (5B). Kahn, Peter H. (1999). The Human Relationship with Nature: Development and Culture. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. ((5C). Frumkin, Howard (2001). Beyond toxicity: Human health and the natural environment. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 20(3): 234-240 (March) (5D). Wilson, Edward O. (2001). Nature matters. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 20(3): 241-242 (5E). Stilgoe, John R. (2001). Gone barefoot lately? Nature matters. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 20(3): 243-244 6. Einstein, Albert et al (1952) Science and Philosophy http://www.aip.org/history/einstein/philos1.htm 7. Laszlo, Ervin. (1995.) The Interconnected Universe. London. World Scientific. 8. Laszlo, Ervin. (1996.) The Whispering Pond: A Personal Guide to the Emerging Vision of Science. Rockport, MA. Element. 9,Newberg, Andrew. (2001.) Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. New York. Ballantine Books. 10. Pojman, Louis P. (2001.) Environmental Ethics, 3rd Ed. Belmont, CA. Wadsworth. 11. Roszak, Theodore, Mary E. Gomes & Allen D. Kanner. (1995.) Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. San Francisco. Sierra Club Books. 12. Shepard, Paul. (1982.) Nature and Madness. San Francisco. Sierra Club Books. Reviewed material Other material that appears in this article is drawn from Michael J. Cohen's professionally reviewed publications in The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Journal of Environmental Education, Interpsych Journal of Mental Health, Greenwich University Journal of Science and Technology, Councelling Psychology Quarterly, Proceedings of the North American Association for Environmental Education, Journal of the Oregon Counseling Association, The Trumpeter, U.S. Department of Education Educational Resources Information Center, Outdoor Communicator, Clearing Magazine, Nature Study, Between the Species, Cooperative Learning, International Journal of Humanities and Peace (for additional references, see the author's personal page at http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html and http://www.ecopsych.com/references.html ) Scientific validation For further information about natural attraction see Nature Connected Psychology in the Greenwich University Journal of Science and Technology http://www.ecopsych.com/natpsych.html For references to frequently asked questions, visit http://www.ecopsych.com/references.html About the Author Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D., is a director of the Institute of Global Education, a special NGO consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, where he directs the Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves on the faculty of Greenwich University, International University of Professional Studies and Portland State University. Dr. Cohen has founded several sensory environmental education programs, conceived the 1985 National Audubon Society Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," and is the award winning author of Reconnecting With Nature (Ecopress, 1997), and Einstein's World (Institute Of Global Education Technical Bulletin 2000) ________________________________ __________________________ "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 ________________________ Click HERE for Natural Organic Products! Want to see more articles?
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