The Article suggests that we profit from an addiction to excessively exploiting the ways of our living planet instead of gaining responsible rewards and benefits by learning how to think like nature's purity, beauty and cooperation work.
Cohen observes that we suffer from a disturbance in our psyche caused by our mental disconnection from the life support offered by our living Mother, Earth. He says, "This mental disturbance is the underlying source of most of our recent extinctions, forest depletion, pollution, abusiveness, greed, social injustice, violence, oil spills and mental disorders. They will continue because we don't address their source in our 'dead earth thinking,' even though, Applied Ecopsychology, an enabling remedy for it, is readily available.
The Article is available for publication by media that want to help people recognize our greatest problem. It is that we see and label our destructive addiction for money and materials as progress, as economic growth and normalcy. Cohen says, "We don't see this addiction as an unreasonable bias that we hold against the way that our living planet works to balance, nurture and heal all of life, including its life and ours."
The pioneering mission of Project NatureConnect (PNC) at the Institute of Global Education is to help our thinking tap into the renewing intelligence and love of nature's ways, in and around us. The online program's subsidized, UNESCO approved, training courses and degrees enable us to make conscious sensory contact with the life-nurturing energy of the eons that flows through natural areas, backyard or backcountry. It teaches us how to strengthen this purifying and healing power in ourselves and others while visiting a natural area. It is well known that a good experience in nature rewardingly uplifts our spirit. It unites our thoughts and feelings with all members of the natural world.
A PNC particpant wrote: "What I'm attracted to is that the earth is alive, a living, breathing, vibrating, conscious organism. Many times when I think of the earth like this, I sense that the earthquakes and volcanos we have had recently are birthing pains as the earth changes within. I've also been thinking of the earth as a body and myself as a cell within that body. It's been a powerful image and I plan to create a meditation based on it. This connection with nature creates a vibrancy in the moment that ingrains itself deeper in my mind allowing it to be preserved."
For further information contact Mike Cohen at 360-378-6313, email nature@interisland.net
http://www.ecopsych.com
Article reference source: http://www.ecopsych.com/hallucinatearticle.html
Program Founder and Director:
Recipient of the 1994 Distinguished World Citizen Award, Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen, Ph.D., is a Program Director of the Institute of Global Education, where he coordinates its Integrated Ecology Department and Project NatureConnect. He also serves on the Ecopsychology faculty of Portland State University and Akamai University. Dr. Cohen has founded sensory environmental education outdoor programs independently and for the National Audubon Society and Lesley University (AEI). He conceived the 1985 National Audubon Conference "Is the Earth a Living Organism," and is an award winning author of "Educating, Counseling and Healing With Nature," "The Web Of Life Imperative"and "Reconnecting With Nature." A video about his lifework may be viewed at http://www.imdb.comtitle/tt1357054/
"We cannot win the battle to increase the well-being of the web of life, that includes our life, without strengthening our natural senses, our emotional bonds with nature - for we will not fight to save what we do not love."
- Michael J. Cohen
http://www.ecopsych.com/mjcohen.html
Email: nature@interisland.net
360-378-6313, Pacific Time Zone