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 When I ask people to describe their fondest
hopes, they always include sanity: peace and balance within themselves,
with their neighbors, and on Earth. By touching our soul, Nature knows how
to accomplish sanity and, as if to advertise its ability, demonstrates it
with spectacular sunsets, wondrous skies and mountain grandeur. We know
they bring peace to our soul because we feel it. We are part of and the
same as nature. However Biological scientists tell me the demonstrations
don't mean that our soul is part of nature nor that Earth may be alive and
therefore may have a soul. They say feelings are not valid evidence.
Fortunately, Biology is but one of many disciplines, the science of
Applied Ecopsychology tells quite another story.
As if Planet Earth has a soul that savors peace, in 1989 two whales
trapped in the arctic winter ice bridged the Iron Curtain hostility
between Communism and Capitalism. To save the whales, opposing nations
united. So did labor and industry, corporations and environmentalists,
spiritualists and scientists, technologists, peacemakers and the media.
People felt better about themselves and each other. Close to a billion
dollars was cooperatively spent to save two whales by cutting them a path
to freedom through the arctic ice. The incident suggests that the
attractions to nature that touch our soul are but the tip of an iceberg.
The hidden portion of the iceberg consists of chains of additional
attractions that reach every element of our planet including the mineral
kingdom and other people. This seamless continuum hints that we don't
really own our soul, rather, we share it with Earth.
The absence of the global soul and its attractions in our thinking denies
us the peace we seek. Experts often demonstrate how nature's attractions
and the web of life work 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 somebody representing a person.
Dramatically, people lean back, sense, and enjoy how the string peacefully
unites, supports and interconnects them and all of life. It feels as if we
have a soul in common. 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 this
reflects the reality of our lives, it triggers feelings of hurt, despair
and sadness in the activity participants. Earth and its people
increasingly suffer from "cut string" disintegration, yet we
continue to cut the strings. Very few people dispute this model.
Every part of the global life community, from sub-atomic particles to
weather systems, is part of the web of life and held together by webstring
attractions. The intelligent webstring process by which they interact
produces nature's peace, wellness and purity. Significantly, our
unresolvable violence, chemical abuse, physical abuse, destructive
dependencies, pollution and mental health troubles are not found there. To
be part of a system one must in some way be in communication with the
system. As part of nature, we are born with this attribute. Our troubles
result when we disconnect it, deny its existence or injure it.
Recently, I asked web activity participants if they ever went into a
natural area and actually saw strings interconnecting things 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 became very, very quiet.
Too quiet.
Are you quiet, too?
Warning. That silence flags a significant missing link in our thinking,
consciousness and relationships. Without knowing, sensing or respecting
the attraction strings that make up nature and our inner nature, we break,
injure and ignore them. That is the core of our most tenacious disorders
and the despair our soul too often feels. We hold an addictive,
destructive prejudice against the strings that only subsides when
psychologically treated as such Most of us have no idea what the strings
are. Do you? When I ask, people say: "They are hereditary. They don't
really exist." "They are a metaphors or instincts."
"That's a metaphysical or spiritual question." "We don't
study them in my field." "They are the light of enlightenment or
God." "Divas." "Angels." "Christ
consciousness." "Spirit Lines."
Notice that each thing mentioned need not be directly connected to nature
to be experienced. Note, too, that people never call the strings
"Intelligences," "Sensations,"
"Attractions," or "Loves." Nobody says they are part
of our soul.
Once I demonstrate what the strings are, people not only acknowledge the
nature of webstrings, they also acknowledge their awareness of them since
childhood and how their soul has experienced them many times. They also
recognize how our nature separated ways remove the strings from our
awareness. We learn to spend less than twelve hours of our total lifetime
with our soul in conscious sensory contact with nature and the strings.
Like a little red wagon painted blue, people suddenly recognize that the
nature disconnected way we learn to think hides the strings and their
attributes from our thinking.
Webstrings are wordless attractions in nature. The web is a non-verbal,
illiterate, experience consisting of webstring attractions, not words. A
bird's love for food (hunger) is a webstring. So is the tree's attraction
to grow away from gravity and its root's attraction toward it. The fawn's
loving desire for its mother and vice-versa are webstrings. All of nature,
including us, contains these attractions. People inherently experience
them as 53 or more natural senses, loves that we often learn to injure or
ignore. They end up frustrated or hurt in our subconscious until
associated experiences trigger our pain back into awareness and disturb
us.
Webstrings 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 contact
with nature, for wholeness. By these webstrings some of us know our soul.
To our loss, our separation from nature brainwashes us to think and relate
with less than eight webstring senses. This produces our major
environmental and social problems. They are not found in intact natural
systems because they "think" with at least 53 webstrings.
A new science, the Natural Systems Thinking Process, reverses many of our
personal, social and environmental troubles because it addresses their
source, our disconnection from nature. The process starts by validating
webstrings and engaging in sensory nature reconnecting webstring
activities. The activities enable us to safely, non-invasively, make
enjoyable, non-verbal, sensory contacts directly with webstrings and
lifeweb members. It helps our souls rejoin.
Webstring attractions in natural areas reattach the strings within us to
their nurturing origins in nature, the strings in the web of life. We
sense, enjoy and trust the connection, it feels real, because it is. The
Process then helps us safely translate these sensory attraction feelings
into verbal language, share them with other people, and grow from what we
learn in the process. We learn how to let webstring connections feelingly
validate themselves in intelligent words that illuminate our soul,
reasoning and relationships. Restored webstring energies enable us to
think and relate like nature works. They have shown to reduce stress and
its many related disorders.. We enjoy good feelings and greater sense of
self. Supportive grounding in nature replaces destructive competition,
dependencies and greed.
In the Natural Systems Thinking Process, nature, backyard or backcountry,
becomes a classroom, therapist and cathedral. There, webstrings help us
peacefully co-create a sustainable future with the global life community
and each other.
Confucius and many others observe that "The beginning of wisdom is
calling things by their right name." Each of us can easily begin to
contribute to personal and global sanity. From this moment on, whenever
you are in a natural area, backyard to backcountry, thoughtfully call each
attraction sensation and feeling you or others experience a "webstring,"
a manifest of the soul we share with Earth. Note how this begins to
stretch your thinking into a global frame of reference and beneficially
reattaches you to the web of life. It enables you to continue what the
trapped whales started: you improve your personal and environmental
relationships and help others do the same.
The following ecopsychology activity will help you make further contact
with the soul that we and Earth hold in common:
1. Go to the most attractive natural area that is accessible to you and
find something natural there that you find especially attractive, a
flower, rock, scene, sensation or animal.
2. Wait ten seconds and see
if the attraction remains attractive. If it doesn't, or another attraction
interrupts, stay with the new one or find another natural attraction that
remains for ten seconds.
3. If it seems reasonable to you, somehow thank that webstring attraction
for being attractive and giving you some joy.
4. Wait and see what thoughts and feelings come to mind immediately, and
after a good night's sleep.
5. Share with a friend what happened, what you think and feel about your
experience. 
 Applied
Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ed.D. founded and coordinates Project
NatureConnect and the Natural Systems Thinking Process. They are
accredited, online distance learning activities, courses and degree
programs of Greenwich University and the Institute of Global Education, a
special consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Dr.
Cohen is the author of the self-guiding book Reconnecting With Nature and
the recipient of the Distinguished World Citizen Award. He may be reached
at:www.ecopsych.com
email : nature@pacificrim.net
Natural Systems Thinking
P.O. Box 1605
Friday Harbor, WA 98250
360-378-6313
Reprinted by Permission.
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