Natural Attraction Ecology (NAE)
Developed by Michael J. Cohen, founder of Project NatureConnect. Project NatureConnect is An accredited online distance learning program in the field of Ecopsychology.
The Natural Attraction Ecology (NAE) encompasses axioms that help us understand how the social, health and environmental problems of modern times have arisen as we have broken direct sensory communication (and communion) with the web of life. The tenets also explain how we can systematically restore our natural intelligence, health, and integrity as global citizens by reconnecting our senses with the self-sustaining flow of sensory communication in nature.
THE 20 AXIOMS OF NATURAL ATTRACTION ECOLOGY
1. Nature is a non-literate dance.
Across the eons and excluding humanity, nature has known and organized itself through a non-literate, non-verbalized, unwritten attraction message and communication process.
2. To be part of a system anything, or anyone, must somehow be in communication with that system, so that the system and the individual, or thing, can relate to each other sensibly and without trespassing.
Since humanity is part of the global ecosystem and the ecosystem is non-literate, we must somehow be in non-literate contact with the system, and vice versa.
3. We know, learn and relate to nature, in and around us, through 53 natural attraction senses that we inherit and that, when reasonably fulfilled, produce good feelings.
We only fully know facts and truths when they register and make sense through our 53 or more inherent natural attraction senses. These senses include our unique literacy, consisting of our combined senses of consciousness, reason and language. We are attracted to make sense because this gratifies our sense of reason and because our natural senses are attractive. Their fulfillment releases Endorphins, Dopamine and other neurotransmitters or hormones that produce good feelings. They are natural, loving rewards for us making good sensory connections and for being supportive participants in the global life community .
In Industrial Society we normally learn to believe and act-out imaginary “non-sense” stories and the information that their words convey. However, that is not how nature works its perfection.
4. Nature, including our 53 natural senses, only exists in the present, in the “now” of life. Our senses are not in stories about the past or future for real nature is not a story, it is an ongoing, immediate, attraction relationship process.
For example, “The sun will rise tomorrow,” is not necessarily a true statement in NAE, for although the statement is based on our natural senses of reason, literacy, deduction and past experiences, it does not contain immediate sensible input from most of our other natural senses. Since tomorrow’s sun has not yet risen, our other natural senses can’t register or relate to the event.
When only our abstract-story type of “sun-absent” knowing occurs, we often learn to think and believe non-sense. We suffer, and Earth suffers accordingly.
This is a key axiom because change can only occur in the immediate moment. What we sense in the “now” is also the greatest trustable truth that we can experience. Only in the now is nature available and are our natural senses active, including our senses of reason and consciousness. In addition, only in the now can we make changes.
5. Natural senses are nameless, intelligent, motivating attractions that we experience in the moment as forms of love or spirit.
Even if it had no given name, our natural sense/sensation of thirst, in the “now,” intelligently “turns on” to attract us to drink water. This attracts the global water cycle and its ways to flow through us and sustain us. In addition, when we have had enough water, thirst reasonably and intelligently “turns-off” and, in balanced natural ways, attracts us to stop drinking.
In conjunction with each other, each of our additional 52 natural senses is a similar, naturally nameless, life-guiding, natural attraction intelligence love (NNIAL) that we feel. In congress, they support us as well as the global ecosystem. For example, our sense of thirst brings us to water for our health. And, for our health, our sense of excretion attracts us to remove water in us that “miraculously” contains appropriate edible waste, and feeds that “waste” to the ecosystem’s plant, animal and mineral community.
Besides our sense of thirst, our love for water, our other natural senses include our love of, or for, community, reason and trust; aroma, place and consciousness; color, taste and motion; language, belonging, beauty, music and gravity along with 39 additional natural sensory attractions and their spirit.
Many of our dysfunctions are simply symptoms of our sensory separation and deprivation from nature. This blocks its vital flow.
6. Nature’s web-of-life, including all materials and humanity, consists of natural attractions.
What are we and the world made of? Factually, we consist of atoms; and they are 99.999999999 percent “space.” However, neither we nor atoms are empty space. All that “space” consists of, or contains, attraction, the energies and forces that draw, tug and hold the atom’s electrons to its nucleus. These and other attractions also attract and attach one atom to another as well as hold all materials, the Earth and the solar system together.
We can empirically observe, experience and sense that things are attracted to stay together by sensitively trying to move or part them. Their attraction to be in relationship and belong in the moment, offers resistance. We register it by sensing and feeling it.
Even an atom’s nucleus and electrons are subatomic packets of attraction energy, as demonstrated by the explosive power of a nuclear bomb when that energy is released.
That all things are connected through attraction is also recognized by Newton’s Laws of Dynamics and by the Buddhist Law of Karma that indicates all acts have consequences. It could truly be said, “We are treated by the plant animal and mineral community, including people, as we have learned to treat them.”
Until proven otherwise, all nouns and pronouns refer to things that are held together by natural attraction and attachments; and all verbs and adverbs refer to natural attraction energy in action, culturally harnessed or as wilderness and its value.
Think about it. Do you know any exceptions to the above?
7. Planet Earth acts like, or is, a living organism.
Our sensing and feeling about various attraction connections between ourselves and our planet can make us aware that there is nothing that we do with respect to being alive, that Earth does not also do.
Our pulsating natural senses help us discover that we and our planet survive identically, that we are a seamless continuum of each other. This gives our senses of reason, logic and deduction (#42) the opportunity to conclude that since people are living organisms and, with respect to life processes, we and Earth are identical, Earth is also a living organism (Gaia), or at least it acts like one. This is no surprise when we recognize that natural attraction contains, and is, an essence of aliveness.
8. Humanity lives in the Earth, not on the Earth.
In a natural area, our multitude of natural senses register clouds, birds, weather conditions and the air many miles above our head. This helps our sense of reason recognize and validate that we live in, not on, Planet Earth. We live deep within its atmosphere and biosphere. They flow through and around us.
The truth, above, often feels uncomfortable because our story-world depicts us as living on the surface of the Earth. This distortion conflicts us. It separates our psyche from the truth conveyed by our “touchy-feely” relationship with the web of life and each other. The conflict stresses and weakens our senses of self, trust, place, belonging, peace and community. We don’t feel comfortable stating the truth, “I live in the Earth.” “I am an Earthling.”
It is irrational and stressful to think, feel and know the world in this inaccurate and separative way. The direct sensory experiences we enjoy when visit to a natural area help us feel better because they help us register the truth of our relationship with Earth. This reduces our stress, and, in turn, many disorders. 9. Together, nature and humanity are flowing, pulsating river of natural attraction growing more attractive and mutually supportive.
It is reasonable to respect that we and nature consist of, and cooperatively share, natural attractions. For example,
We are attracted/motivated to breathe in oxygen for our life and attracted to exhale carbon dioxide as food for plant life.
We are attracted/motivated to eat food to support our life and attracted to excrete our waste, and it is food that supports the web-of-life.
We are attracted/motivated to be more attractive and to seek and enjoy more attractions, as does the natural environment.
Scientists find, by using radioactive tagged atoms, that atoms from the environment are attracted to replace 98 percent of the atoms of our body and mind every year. Every seven years or so, every atom in our body returns to the environment and is replaced by a new atom from the environment. We continually become the environment and it becomes us.
Our body and mind consist of ten times more “foreign” cells than human cells.
Some of our human DNA is the DNA of plants and animals. DNA consists of mineral molecules and elements held together by natural attraction.
The human embryo goes through growth stages that include it having gills and a tail.
The words “humus” and “human” and “humility” have the same origin.
Biologically we and nature are one. We are a prime flowing, pulsating and pristine river of natural attraction life that manifests itself as us and the rest of nature.
The river consists of a ceaseless, satisfying dance of resonating attraction relationships within and between all of its currents, including us as one of these currents. The acronym “NNIAL” helps us remember, identify and connect with this massive relationship flow. Remember, however, that “NNIAL” is not its name for the river and its eons are/were nameless.
With respect to the flow of natural attraction being the essence of all things, each of us is kin to all members of the web of life. The web of life is a kinship, not just a source of raw materials.
10. Nature has a perfection of its own.
It makes sense to recognize that nature’s perfection consists of the ability of its natural attractions to: correct, organize, renew, regenerate, recycle, transform, compost, perpetuate, purify and preserve nature, in and around us.
Natural attractions achieve the above in balanced ways that produce nature’s optimums of grace, life, diversity, cooperation and beauty. In addition natural attractions create optimums of balance, purity, community, wellness, sensitivity, renewal, spirit, self-organization, restoration, unification and love.
Nature achieves its valuable optimums without producing garbage or pollution or our excessive destruction, abusiveness, disorders, stress, isolation and insanity.
Our natural senses of reason, consciousness, community, emotional place, trust, companionship, appreciation, survival and sublime love, along with other natural senses, help us recognize that it is sensible to acknowledge that the above-mentioned qualities of the natural world make nature perfect in its own way.
Our natural sense of deduction informs us that since we are biologically, psychologically and spiritually a seamless continuum of nature, our natural self is as perfect as is nature.
We don’t need to learn how to be perfect. Education means “To bring out from within.” What we need to do is apply NAE because it enables us, through hands-on, sensory education activities, to respectfully bring out, think, feel and relate with, as well as support, celebrate, love and relate to the unifying natural attraction perfection of our natural self in ourselves, in others and in the web-of-life.
11. Natural Attraction Ecology motivates us to unify with, rather than conquer and exploit human life and the web-of-life.
As a natural area brings our psyche into contact with nature’s wholeness, our natural reasoning, senses and sensitivities convey that the fittest survive in nature, but not because they are the best competitors. Rather, it is because they are the best builders of cooperative, mutually beneficial natural attraction relationships with their environment.
The fittest are those “things” that are the best in attracting support from their surroundings. The fittest accomplish this by attractively supporting their surroundings locally and globally. The “fittest” are fit because they are the most cooperatively attractive.
12. The purpose of life is to support life; life consists of nature’s attraction to support it.
Humanity consciously experiences the natural attraction of life to support life. We call that motivation our felt sense love of life, our instinct for survival, or our desire to be, that our senses feel, that we experience and enjoy.
13. A Naturation Attraction Ecology Vehicle: The Webstring Natural Attraction Model.
Our experiences with Natural Attraction Ecology show us that when the web-of-life is represented by an accurate web of life model of how nature’s perfection works, we can choose to use the model and have the model’s activities help us balance our thinking and increase our well being.
The activities accomplish this by enabling us to interlace our consciousness, intelligence and senses with the flow of web-of-life attraction connections (webstrings) in a natural area, backyard or backcountry.
The webstring model helps us update our scientific reasoning and technology since they are often excessively disconnected from how nature works via natural attraction relationships.
Because nature consists of ever-changing dancing and resonating natural attraction relationships within and between all of its elements, including us, our static scientific facts are usually warped.
Scientific facts are usually based on standard conditions of light, motion, temperature, sound and pressure while in nature there are few, if any, standard conditions of anything.
In the natural world, the major standard condition is the constant change and flow of its natural attraction river. For this reason, the webstring model’s 53 sense activities help us connect with the restorative power of authentic nature in the moment it is happening, flowing and changing in, around and to the benefit of all things.
14. Our basic relationship with nature and each other is cooperative, not competitive
We have the felt-sense ability to know that our attractions to things and relationships in a genuine natural area are not learned. Rather, they are our psyche inherently and cooperatively connecting to its nurturing source in nature. There is no story present in nature that tells our psyche to refrain from connecting. To the contrary, nature attracts us, and rewards us, to connect.
Our unadulterated attractions to natural areas enable us to become aware of nature’s perfection and integrate with it. This cooperation helps us think like nature works; it benefits us and the environment.
When we respectfully visit a natural area, our 53 natural senses safely make contact with the self-correcting balance and purifying power of their origins in nature. Because this energizes and restores them, our natural senses help us think more sensibly.
15. Members of industrial society suffer because it is unduly prejudiced against nature.
Natural Attraction Ecology identifies prejudice as an unreasonable pre-judging attitude or story that is, due to bonding, unusually resistant to rational influence.
Industrial Society is prejudiced against nature due to our unfounded “tropicmaker” belief and fear, from nature-disconnecting stories, that nature is hostile to us and that nature is not conscious or intelligent.
Natural Attraction Ecology recognizes that most nature-centered societies neither cause nor display our excessive and detrimental ways.
Our Ego’s misguided and fear-inducing prejudice against nature story has us habitually learn to believe that it and we are superior to nature, that, for our survival and profit, we must take dominion over, exploit and improve nature, in and around us.
We are not born to be excessively separated from, suspicious and fearful of nature. Rather, Industrial Society educates us to this condition. It is so successful that we spend, on average less than 12 hours of our total lifetime thinking, feeling or building relationships while we are in tune with nature.
We seldom change the way we think because we are bonded to it by the age of seven. Society pays us, and in other ways rewards us, to not understand things that we need to know in order to live in balance.
16. How we think and feel shapes our destiny.
Natural Attraction Ecology enables us to register natural attraction callings so we may think and feel think like nature’s perfection works. Its 150 ECHN nature-contact activities enable us to safely un-closet and heal the hurting senses in our subconscious. The enjoyment and benefits that result connect us to the whole of Earth and help us reverse our prejudice against nature.
The thousands of favorable results from engaging in NAE courses and activities demonstrate that the wisdom and joy of genuinely connecting ourselves with nature helps us increase personal, social and environmental well-being.
As the quotes on this page disclose, the observations of many individuals over past millenna show that we have long been aware of our attractive attachments to nature. It is Industrial Society’s prejudice against nature that causes us to ignore these observations and suffer accordingly.
Again, nature-connected people(s) seldom cause or display our problems and madness.
17. Our excessive disconnection from nature deprives us from knowing the fundamental reason that each of us deserves to have good feelings.
“Do you deserve to have good feelings? Why?” Most of us do not answer this question correctly. Too often it triggers hurtful feelings of guilt, conflict or shame for things we’ve done “wrong.”
We often learn to think that we deserve to have good feelings because we have thought or acted in a socially acceptable way. Many parent-like authorities reward us for this with love, with their attraction to us “being good.”
Many of us were taught that we do not inherently deserve to have good feelings; but we do. In fact, having them is our natural state. As indicated in Axiom 3A, they are naturally attractive, chemically triggered (endorphin-dopamine-oxytocin) rewards from Mother Earth and the universe for us fulfilling three or more our natural attraction senses, including our senses of consciousness and reason. They are rewards for, by this means, making contact with the web of life “NNIAL” so we can participate in it a good way.
As an example, when we drink water to fulfill our sense of thirst, we not only feel satisfied, quenched and happier. We also can become aware that we feel this and that it makes sense, it rewards us for participating in and contributing to the nurturing water cycle of the web-of-life.
Again, in the final analysis, no matter what they be, the needs, goals and wants that we experience or construct are a means to satisfy one or more of our natural senses. Fulfilling them directly through sensory connections to natural attractions located in people and natural places produces the most balanced, organic and inexpensive fulfillments. Fulfilling them with artificialities usually produces questionable side effects.
18. Death does not exist in nature, there is only the transformation of natural attractions and their effects, into other natural attractions and their effects.
Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. I am a thousand winds that blow. I am the diamond glints on snow. I am the sunlight on ripend grain. I am the gentle autumn’s rain. When you awaken to the morning’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush Of quiet birds in circled flight. I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there. I did not die. Mary Elizabeth Frye, 1932
19. The Natural Attraction Ecology Whole-Life Iceberg Analogy
An iceberg simulates our contemporary mind in that
10 percent of it, its tip, floats in the air above sea (“see”) level and 90 percent of its great mass lies below sea level, out of sight.
Similarly, in humanity:
10 percent of our mentality, our “new brain,” knows and communicates by “floating” as our story world. It is our mediated conscious “light” and reason that is conveyed by our abstract, literate words, symbols and stories, verbally and via books, films and other media.
90 percent bulk of our mentality, our “old brain” is a seamless, multiple-sensory connection to and registration of the world, including natural attraction and its eons. Our nature-conquering new brain story, however, buries most of our senses “out of sight” in our subconscious (below “see” level).
The Analogy:
Two floating icebergs that broke away from a glacier could see each other and were attracted to the reasonable idea that, to best survive the sun’s heat, they would join together, as of old, and help each other stay cold, as well as heal their glacier-separated disconnection, frailty and loneliness. But, try as they might, they could not join together. They could not understand why because their intentions made so much sense to them.
What the Bergs could not see was that their huge, unseen, underwater bulks bumped into each other. This collision prevented the tops from connecting.
To accomplish their goal, the tops would have to help the underwater parts of them find a way to interlace or meld together in mutually supportive “NNIAL” ways, as they were when part of the glacier. Helpless to make this happen or to even be aware of what had to be done, (because it was below “see” level), nature’s flow took its course. Over time, the Bergs were naturally attracted to the warmth of the sun and sea as it transformed them into water.
As water, the Bergs became part of the water cycle and supported all other forms of life including the glaciers and the birth of new icebergs.
The Moral
For our conscious thinking and its intelligence to actualize our reasonable intentions, our thoughts and feelings must include the unifying wisdom of our “below sea level” natural attraction senses and their eons.
When we help our sensory self connect with natural areas via “NNIAL activities,” the under-see ways of these areas register in us. Then, our thinking and sensibilities are connected to nature’s powers to transform and this helps us make things happen to the benefit of all.
We are similar to the icebergs and their separation from a glacier because, from womb to tomb Industrial Society excessively separates our psyche from nature’s flow. However, we are part of nature. As a photograph of us at the top of this page portrays, our natural selves and origins are beautifully unified.
Our challenge is for each of us to make conscious sensory contact with authentic nature (NNIAL,) the source of the picture, above. Only then can its powers help us heal and release from the jail in our subconscious mind, the pure sensory congress of intelligent delight and spirit that we really are. That is when we consciously have available to us the resources that our thinking needs to transform and reverse our dilemmas. 20. Where Are You Now?
Natural Attraction Ecology helps us recognize Earth and the universe to be similar to large circulating and growing web-of-life pond. Since it’s beginning, the pond and its life have consisted of eons of non-literate natural attraction relationships that grow and increase the integrity of themselves and the pond.
Contemporary-thinking humanity is like a single drop of water just introduced into to the pond. This drop, unlike the rest of the pond, has the added ability to communicate and relate through the literacy of stories consisting of word symbols and images about the pond. However, being non-literate, the pond seldom understands them. Too often, these are stories that we create from our imagination, stories that emanate from our indoor world, not from direct sensory contact with the pond and its balanced ways.
Since our stories are not the real thing, they go on forever with respect to us unifying with nature through them. Genuine sensory contact vs the abstraction of it often produces duality and its discontents, in and around us. NAE remedies this breach by giving us stories that help us make genuine connections with natural attractions and report directly from the connection experience.
In our indoor-oriented society, a bias in our stories indoctrinates and rewards us for excessively separating from, conquering and exploiting the ways of the pond. Although we can profitably think and feel with our stories, we can also see their unreasonable and destructive results.
The remedy for our habitual, yet detrimental nature-disconnected way of thinking and feeling is to offer us activities that help us engage in nature-connecting “NNIAL” contact, backyard or backcountry. Because the activities are informative and rewarding, engaging in this unification process becomes a reasonable and constructive habit. It enables us to create moments that let earth and nature teach us what we need to know to come into balance with them, each other and ourselves.
For each individual the choice is clear. We can choose to operate in ways that produce, and make us suffer, the consequences of Industrial Society’s nature-disconnected stories, thoughts and feelings. Or we, instead, can decide to learn how to be in mutually beneficial connection with the self-correcting ways of natural attraction. We accomplish the latter by experientially engaging in the sensory nature-contact ECHN activity process, backyard or backcountry.
Moment by moment each of us can choose to create and live in the beneficial effects of nature-connected unity and healing with nameless, intelligent attraction-loves (NIAL). Our other choice is to continue engage in and produce the consequences of disconnected duality and the consequent biases that cause the deterioration of whole-life relationships.
Before we understood how nature works via Natural Attraction Ecology, there was little choice. We saw the problems but we had no process or tool that enabled us to address them. Through Natural Attraction Ecology, that tool is now readily available. Empowered by the tool, today, the way each of us chooses to think and feel, with or without it, produces our destiny along with that of Earth and humanity.
Summary
Certain shades of the color violet can appear to be blue against a red background, and appear to be red against a blue one. However, each shade of violet also has its own integrity.
Similarly, with the conquer-nature bias of Industrial Society’s story as our “background,” our thinking sees nature as a resource that we must increasingly exploit/consume” for profit and economic growth if we are to survive.
Natural Attraction Ecology helps us sense and reason based on a different background. That background is nature’s sensory callings. It demonstrates and certifies that for our survival and balance, the integrity of “NIAL” nature is a powerful and supportive friend.
Our survival benefits from it’s nurturing of natural attraction relationships as they create their own self-correcting perfection around and within us.
We learn to see and relate to the world through the color or warp of the nature-disconnected glasses Industrial Society trains us to wear. This makes us create and be responsible for most of the disorders that we suffer. The glasses also warp the wisdom of the inherent natural attraction sensory powers that nature gives us to remedy our problems and to strengthen individual and global wellness
To survive in a balanced and ethical way with the whole of life, it is rational for us to learn how to use and teach NAE activities. They help us think and feel while in conscious sensory contact with NNIAL, the eons of power and integrity of our natural attractions in natural areas. This organic process lets nature help us compost, recycle and correct the warp in our glasses. The effectiveness of this process is documented by personal experiences, results of studies, and professionally reviewed research. Conclusion
We, along with all other people, places and things, are equally born as an expression and manifestation of natural attraction. We are it, it is us. However, the unwarranted prejudice against nature in tropicmaker thinking motivates us to conquer that expression.
We are normally born with naturally-satisfied minds and hearts. Industrial Society educates/socializes us through desensitizing processes that irritate our psyche. Our dissatisfaction motivates us to excessively purchase artificial, less adequate than nature products to meet our discontents. Desensitized, we often ignore the detrimental effects of the artificial on nature’s renewing flow in and around us.
Most therapies help us deal with the stress and disorders that result from our destructive socialization. However, they are usually indoor oriented, not organic and unaware of our indoctrinated prejudiced against nature origins or how to remedy them.
We can no longer afford to endure the consequences of being habitually bonded and shaped into consumers who are excessively sliced away from the balanced-life authenticity and satisfactions of our planetary home.
To counteract the prejudice of our unbalanced bonding, each of us needs, or may learn, to shamelessly feel and declare anywhere, “I love nature,” or “I love Planet Earth,” and, in this glow, be motivated to design and build naturally attractive and sustainable relationships with humanity, the environment and creation. NAE courses, books and degrees are offered that help any individual or institution achieve this goal.
Project NatureConnect supports individuals whose consciousness appreciates the contribution of NAE. Any interested person can be funded to help increase well-being by using NAE to beneficially green their psyche, life and profession while helping others do the same.
There is a heartfelt essence that helps us achieve peaceful balance with Earth and each other. It is to use NAE to register, trust and consciously think with our natural senses and the wisdom they, in congress, convey to us while we are in contact with nature, in and around us.
Natural Attraction Ecology enables us to gain a recuperative, stress releasing fulfillment of our 53 senses by enabling us to freely interlace our psyche with nature instead of, to this end, purchasing and bonding to excessive and often destructive technologies.
Perhaps the most practical and applicable conclusion about NAE has been stated above, including in Axiom 16, and bears repeating here:
In the final analysis, no matter what they be, the needs, goals and wants that we feel or that we design, are always signals to satisfy one or more of our natural senses.
Fulfilling these senses through direct sensory contact with nature, in people and/or places:
is most direct. is the least expensive. is organic. produces the lowest negative environmental and social impact. is a choice that provides sustainable nurturing rewards to the benefit of all.