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Living More
Naturally
Is It Time for a
Change?
| Also
In
This Issue: |
Are You Ready for a
New
Way of Life? |
What's Most Comfortable
for You? |
Two
Off-the-Grid Ways
to Live and Work More
Naturally |
How
Do You View Your
Relationship with Nature? |
A
Very Brief History of
Our Idea Wilderness |
Nature
Activity:
A Personal Reflection |
Their Way Profiles:
A Modern Day Thoreau
An Urban Eco-Community |
|
Closing Thought |
by
Sarah Anne Edwards
”Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what
makes you come alive,
and then go do that. Because what
the world needs is
people who have come alive."
- Walt Whitman
Are
You Feeling the Time Crunch?
We have so much
We should be living in constant
bliss. But we know we’re not. Only the lucky few enjoy
the one freedom we cherish
most – the freedom to
choose what we do with each
precious moment and
each precious hour of our lives.
Most of us
are time indentured. We work for someone
else most of each day on a more or less fixed schedule
they define. We complain about how we never have
enough
time, but generally we’re resigned to living in a
time crunch where what
we might want to do is usually what gets crunched. Our days are pre-packed
to the brim and our blood pressure is rising. All in the name of supporting
ourselves.
In the back of our minds awaits the
hope that we will save enough money that someday we can “retire.”
But that dream is fading for many who look ahead to a world of
shrinking pensions and diminishing prospects for Social Security. As we
peer into the future, we can foresee that if we’re going to continue
living as we are living now, we have many time-scarce, work-dominated years
ahead. For some of us who are ill and need ongoing health care or
medication the picture looks even bleaker.
The more
time pressed we become and the more uncertain the promise of any eventual
relief, the more we’re beginning to wonder -
isn’t there some other way? Personally the more I learn about
nature’s ways, the more I am convinced that, as I described in our Spring
2004 newsletter, our current way of life is not natural to us
biologically or psychologically and therefore there must indeed be another
way.
I watch the sapling in the forest snap under the
pressure of a violent mountain wind. I see the foundation beneath a rocky
cliff wash away in the rain, crumble and fall into the ravine below. I see
a squirrel run out on the far branch of a tall pine and watch her jump to
another limb when it can no longer hold her weight. Are we so different?
Won’t we snap? Won’t we tumble if we don’t heed the yearning in our
hearts to find another way? Isn’t that what’s already happening?
Can’t we feel the pressure? Can’t we feel the cracks in our very lives?
Isn’t it time to jump? But where to? What would a new way of life look
like?
Are
You Ready for Another Way of Life?
As
with any major life change, we usually don’t know just what our lives
would look if we could flow through them more naturally. That’s a big
part of why we cling to the way things are. But chances are you have some
inkling of what might feel more natural for you, more like how things
should be, or would be, if you could just _____________. Fill in the blank
and that inkling can lead you onto a path to a more natural way of living
and working.
For most of us there will be definite signs that it’s time to make a
change, not just a little adjustment, but a major change in the way we’re
living. They probably won’t be as obvious as road signs though. They
won’t be written out and may not even come in verbal form. They’ll more
likely be nonverbal messages that come as feelings and body sensations.
Below is a list of common signs that tell us we need to find a more natural
way to live. Many of these signs are so prevalent that it’s easy to
dismiss them as a normal part of life. It’s easy to simply ignore them or
perhaps take a pill and hope they’ll go away. But if you really need to
live more naturally, they won’t go away, at least not for long. They’ll
be back and their message will be clear if you listen.
Check any of the following reoccurring signs that apply
to you:
___
Fantasizing about places you’d
___ Wishing things were
different.
rather be.
___ Wondering why
you’re not happier
___ Not wanting to get out of
bed ___ Feeling mildly depressed for days
in
the morning.
on end.
___ Difficulty motivating yourself
___ Overeating, using alcohol and
to
do routine tasks
drugs to feel better or
escape.
___ Losing interest in things that
___ Feeling chronically
tired, de-
once
engaged you.
energized, and listless.
___ Nagging doubts about yourself
___ Losing a sense of
enthusiasm
and
the course of your life.
for life.
___ Feeling less
self-confidence
___ Getting a mild or serious illness.
___ Worrying about how you’ll keep
___ Getting frequent headaches,
things
together.
stomach upset, backaches and
___ Feeling bored and restless. other
aches and pains
___ Wishing you were someone else. ___ Difficulty
sleeping or oversleeping.
___ Frequent bad dreams and night-
___ Complaining, nagging, bitching
mares.
and feeling irritable.
___ Increasing strife at home you
___ Feeling unfulfilled in your life –
that
might
be contributing to
you’re not making a difference
to.
or doing what’s important to you.
___
Feeling bored and disinterested.
___ Feeling angry, resentful,
blaming.
People of all ages and backgrounds from across the country are heeding
signs like these and making the leap to more supportive ways to live.
They’re making imaginative and innovation new choices that enable them to
fix the parts of their lives that aren’t working.
These changes nearly
always involve finding more economical and natural ways to live so that
money and working to earn more and more of it no longer need be the
dominant focus of their lives. For some financial pressures are the primary
motivation. They’re in debt and falling deeper in debt. Their making
trade-offs between health care and other essentials. Or they’re working
so hard to stay financially above water that they have little life of their
own.
Others are motivated by wanting more time for family and children, or to
find an affordable home where they can start and grow a family. Some are
motivated by concerns about retirement plans that aren’t meeting their
expectations or rising costs their fixed incomes just don’t cover.
Still others hunger for the opportunity to pursue the work they’d really
like to do, perhaps as artists or writers, or to have a business of their
own or to take on a cause they believe in passionately but can’t afford
to pursue.
Whatever the personal motivation, the bottom line is more people are
finding more natural ways to live and work. Sometimes the changes they’re
making quite radical and sometimes they’re not.
l
What
Would Be Most Comfortable for You?
How far a leap we want to made to
a more supportive and natural way of living is a very personal matter. The
amount of change we’re each comfortable with varies widely. But we
don’t need to head for a remote island to live more naturally, unless of
course that’s what you want to do. Nor do we need to give up anything
that is truly important to us.
We can find ways of living more naturally that
fit with what’s comfortable for each of us, everything from simply
downsizing the life we’re already living to creating a whole new way of
life. What would suit you best?
Two
Off-the-Grid Paths for Living and Working More Naturally
Back to Walden Pond
One way to live
more naturally is to live closer to nature. As we surround ourselves with
nature, its natural rhythms seep into ours. We slow down and breathe
easier. Our senses expand and we feel restored and renewed throughout the
day. The need for such healing surroundings are drawing many people back to
nature. For example:
·Sandra’s
adobe home is surrounded by chaparral 25 miles
outside Santa Fe where she keeps a small office.
·
Jan lives on a 5-acre
ranch in a golden valley one and a
half hours outside LA where he teaches at a state
university.
·
Bruce and Anita run a
publishing company from their home
office overlooking the Hawaiian surf outside of Paia, Maui.
·
Urban
city planners Joel and Marie took early retirement from their jobs in
engineering and moved to rural southwest
Arkansas where they raise alpacas.
· Internet
educator Michael Cohen runs his business from home on San Juan
Island where he can sleep outdoors beneath the stars. (Read
More in
“Their Way” Profile
below)
For many, a nearby, faraway place offers a
lower cost of living, the appeal of a remote cabin, ranch or homestead and
a chance to return to the woods, the sea, the desert, river or lake without
disconnecting from the rest of modern life.
Creating New
Communities
Our competitive 24/7 lives can be isolating, demanding and
exhausting, especially when we must confront it alone. Another way we can
live more naturally is to realize we’re not alone and create new ways we
can live together and support one another. For example:
·
Single best friends
Callie, a teacher, and Dot, a chemical worker, didn’t look
forward to living alone on their fixed
incomes, so they sold their homes and
combined
their resources so they could build their dream home and retire
together. 
·
Lynn and William are building a life-
life-support community in a renovated
hacienda in Taos, New Mexico.
·
Susan and her mother have
purchased
a house in rural Idaho with a life-long
friend.
· David and Allison are
creating a
nature-based eco-village in the midst of
downtown Bellingham, WA.
(Read more
in “Their Way” Profile
below)
The
Full Circle Center in Taos
Like many others, these people are responding to a need for
community and connectedness that’s so much a part of our human nature.
From single women sharing a large home, to elder parents and adult children
making new households together or like-minded people forming intentional
and egalitarian communities,
we’re discovering how to live more naturally by coming together.
How
Do You View Your Relationship with
Nature?
What is your view of
nature? How does the
wilderness relate to our lives? What is its
role in
your life? Check off as many of the following that
reflect your views:
___ An endless resource for us to
use
___
A dangerous force to be tamed and
managed
___ A source of wisdom
___
A gift to us from God
___
Something for us to enjoy
___ A pesky
irritant that is irrelevant to
most aspects of our daily life
___ A playground
where we can relax, recreate and
entertain ourselves
___ Less advanced and evolved than human
culture
___ A friend
___ A community of which we are a part
___ God’s handiwork, a reflection of the
Divine Plan
___ Precious resources upon which all life depend that must be
carefully
preserved and conserved
___ The embodiment of God which is in everything and everyone
___ A
vast clock-like machine composed of many working parts
___ A
living, creative, self-generating organism
___ Home
___ Other:
________________________________________
This list reflects a few of the ways humans have viewed nature over the
past 20,000 years. We don’t spend much time personally reflecting on our
relationship to nature, but when we do, it’s apparent some of these views
are conflicting or incompatible, yet all are present today in how our
society thinks about nature.
A Very Brief History of the Idea of Wilderness
Prior to 10,000 B.C. E.,
when we were hunters and gatherers living in small communities of 25-50
people, nature was our home. Very little of anything was manmade and we
turned to nature to fulfill all our needs. After the agricultural
revolution around 10,000, B.C.E., we settled in villages and later cities
and our relationship to nature changed dramatically. Nature became an
undependable and often dangerous force we must somehow manage, placate, and
tame.
Egyptian, Greek
and Roman thought continued in this vein but during that time we also began
to see ourselves as separate from and superior to nature because it is not
moral or reasoned. With the advent of Christianity, nature was thought also
to have be created by God as a gift to us, the pinnacle of His creations
who He made in His image.
With the first scientific revolution, scientists like
Copernicus, Galileo , Bacon and Descartes began studying and quantifying
the forces of nature. They considered their findings to be evidence of a
Divine Plan, operating in a predictable machine-like fashion that we could
learn to master and draw upon as an endless resource to create a better
life, even a Heaven on Earth, through technology.
The second scientific
revolution spurred by Darwin’s theory of evolution shook the intellectual
foundation of both science and religion. It set forth the concept that
nature is itself a living, creative, evolving self-generating organism, an
all encompassing community of life of which we are not the pinnacle, but
only one interdependent
part.
This line of
thought led to the view that our natural resources are precious treasures
upon which the very survival of life as we know it depends; thus we must be
respectful and careful to preserve and conserve our natural resources.
Tracing
as far back as prehistoric times, there have always been those who saw
nature as a source of wisdom and “spirit.” During the Enlightenment
this line of thought was embraced by philosophers like Rousseau and
Schopenhauer and later transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau who
rebelled against the mechanistic, impersonal views of mainstream scientific
thought.
This
line of thinking has contributed to the belief that nature is spiritually
and psychically life-giving and must be preserved in its natural state for
our enjoyment and as a source of pleasure, renewal and recreation. Late 20th
century evolutionary biologists like E.O. Wilson came to believe that we
have an innate physiological need to interact with and relate to pristine
nature.
Throughout
history some western religious philosophers like St. Francis of Assisi,
Spinoza, Kant and Teilhard de Chardin saw nature not only as a refection of
God (panentheistism) but actually as the embodiment of God (pantheism.)
Their philosophical views, although never mainstream, are closely akin to
more recent discoveries by scientists like Heisenberg (quantum physics),
Ehrenfelds (gestalt psychology), Bertalanffy (general systems theory),
Prigogine (dissipative structures) and Weiner (cybernetics).
The latest thinking that grows from this line of thought
is referred to as deep ecology. It suggests nature is not just a separate,
endless resource for us to use or enjoy, but an interdependent innately
intelligent web of life through which all things are connected, a community
which has value independent of our existence from which we can learn a
great deal about how to live healthier more harmonious lives.
Philosophical,
religious and scientific thought notwithstanding, since we spend more than
90% of our time indoors today, it’s easy to think of nature as an
inconvenience that musses our hair, gets us wet and clogs our streets, but
otherwise has little to do with the things that are most important to our
day-to-say lives. But is this actually the case?
Nature
Activity: A Personal Reflection
As you
review the list of your own beliefs about nature, reflect
on how you came to develop these views. Did you learn them from personal
experiences in nature? Or from others like parents, ministers, teachers,
books, TV or movies? When did you learn them? As a child? During your
formal education? Later as an adult? How has your relationship with nature
changed over your lifetime?
How
might your views of nature have affected and continue to affect who you
are? How you live? Where you live? Your views of yourself? For example, if
you think of nature as a dangerous or unfriendly force to be dominated,
what does that mean about how you view your own inner nature? Or, if you
believe all of Nature is a reflection God, what does that mean for how we
treat other living and non-living creatures on the Earth?
If
you’d like, go to a natural outdoor area you find attractive. Spend 15
minutes there. Be sure you move to another area any time you no longer find
it attractive. Take note of how you feel while you are in this attractive
natural area. Notice how the various elements of this environment, organic
and inorganic, relate to each other. What is the role of each? What do they
contribute to each other and to the countryside around them? What do they
contribute to you? What do you contribute to them? How do you fit in?
Resources
For
more information about our relationship with nature and to find the
references from which this brief history was drawn, see:
In
the core of New York City’s noise, crowds and fumes, Michael Cohen sat at
his desk, bathed in the light of a florescent lamp. “Is this it?” he
wondered as he stared at the plaster walls of the windowless basement
office where it was hour number six, minute number 27 of day number 562 in
his job as director of outdoor education for a well-known and revered
institution.
Could this be the intended result of all the years of
doctoral studies in biology, education, and counseling? It must be, he
assured himself. The pay was excellent. The work was challenging. But,
something was amiss. Inside his head a voice was shouting, “How come it
doesn’t feel good here? How come these piles of paperwork don’t excite
me? You can do something better than this for others and yourself. Pull
yourself together and get on with it.”
That voice reverberated in Cohen’s head
for sometime. “My body and psyche were staging a revolt,” he explains
and he realized he had to trust the wisdom of that inner voice. He chose to
pursue a new direction based solely by validating and trusting in what was
most attractive to him, being outdoors in nature.
Cohen loved natural areas, camping, hiking,
wildlife, cycling, skiing , canoeing, natural history, recreation,
counseling and deep worthwhile teaching. He’d always known these things
made him feel good. So he decided to design and center both his personal
and professional live around them.
For the
past 37 years Cohen has lived almost continuously in the wilds of nature 24
hours a day. As he says, “The wonders of nature became my home, billowing
clouds my ceiling and the landscape my pillow. I slept by the lullaby of
the wind under the blanket of the weather’s fickle temperament.”
Over most of that time he conducted Outdoor Travel Camps, taking groups of 15 people on extended nature
expeditions. He and his groups camped and studied nature for periods of
several days to six months in National Parks and eighty-four different
ecosystems. Along the way, he and his fellow nature trekers also lived and
learned from many different human communities as well, including the Amish,
outdoorsmen, ecologists and indigenous peoples.
When Cohen turned 55, the roadside “Speed Limit
55” signs began to take on a new significance. “I started to
realize,” he recalls, “that I wasn’t going to be able to do this
forever.” Even organizing several camps at a time, he could only reach a
few hundred people each year. He
wanted to share the lessons and experiences of nature with larger numbers
of people no matter where they lived.
While
the Internet might seem an unlikely place to discover nature, Cohen thought
it would be an ideal means for people from around the world to come
together to study nature. So at 55, he set out to create Project Nature
Connect, an online educational, counseling and healing program in organic
psychology. Project Nature Connect offers over three year’s of courses
and classes along with accompanying textbooks filled with the nature
activities from Cohen’s travel camps.
At 73,
Cohen continues to oversee the online coursework from his home on San Juan
Island, Washington, where like a modern-day Thoreau he still sleeps
outdoors. Read
more about Cohen and Project Nature Connect.
 Allison
Weeks and
Dave Paulson
An Urban Eco-Community
On
a lovely autumn day teacher Allison Weeks was sitting in her product-laden
dream home on Camano Island, Washington, with her dream car in the
driveway. Suddenly she came face-to-face with the horrifying awareness that
her 'dream come true’ was contributing to the death of our
planet.
Worse yet, she realized that as telecommunications spread our materialistic
values around the globe, growing masses of humanity are also beginning to
seek the gratifications of our consumer-driven lives, further perpetuating
a world view that favors Newer, Bigger, Better, and More.
"That
afternoon I began to wonder about a lot of things about The American
Dream,” Allison remembers. "I started questioning whether our
material pleasures and comforts are actually giving us the ‘good life’
they promise. And if so, then why are our children, including many from
affluent neighborhoods, killing one another in our schools? Why in spite of
modern technology and medical advances are anxiety, asthma, environmental
illness, obesity, cancer, and life-threatening stress-related conditions
like hypertension, stroke, and heart disease on the rise?"
Allison
had been studying ecopsychology, which includes examining the psychological
roots of our current environmental problems, and from that autumn day on
she began imagining a simpler life in which we would live more respectfully
of the Earth’s natural resources. She wanted to create an alternative for
herself and others. After long conversations with her partner Dave Paulson,
the couple
began
planning a retreat community in a remote rustic locale.
They soon
realized, though, that attracting a few people  to an
idyllic country setting wouldn’t really change our society as a whole,
but demonstrating how people can live in harmony with nature in the heart
of the city just might. So that became their goal. She sold her dream home
and tapped into her retirement funds so they could purchase property in
Bellingham and launch the EcoIntegrity Center of Bellingham, or ECO Bell
for short, a sustainable urban intentional community.
While
Allison continued a part-time teaching job and Dave pursued a private
counseling practice, they started a permaculture-based organic community
garden and a research center. They recruited initial residents for their
budding eco-centered community and through classes, workshops, and other
offerings, Eco Bell is on its way to being financially as well as
environmentally self-sustaining. Read more
about Eco Bell.
Look
for more Off the Grid Ways to Live and Work and
More “Their Way” Profiles in upcoming issues.
A
Closing Thought:
"You
didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the
ocean. You are not a stranger here." - Alan Watts
Blessings
of Summer,
Sarah Edwards, Editor
©
Pine Mountain Institute, 2004
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