Communion with Earth

Humanity's disconnection with the Spirit of the Earth has played a serious role in the rape of the planet perpetrated by polluting industrial practices and the obsession with mechanical methods. When the Earth is seen as something lifeless or as a spaceship on which we live, there is no sense of a living connection with Gaia. The outdated mechanistic model of economic development, based on technology that damages the ecological web of life, also encourages the separation from the living reality of Nature. Human beings confined in the concrete jungles of urban centres suffer severe alienation from the life-enhancing energy of Nature.

The ecopsychologist Dr. Michael J. Cohen is a pioneer who has been working to create awareness about the importance of our connection with Nature and develop practical methods to restore humanity's lost communion with Earth. According to Cohen, we and all of Nature, are built of attraction bonds that hold atoms and the world together. In us, at least 53 of these bonds register emotionally and spiritually as 'biophilia,' a binding, 53-sense love of Nature.

Our Nature-disconnected ways de-energize biophilia out of our awareness. We instead believe we have only five senses. Writes Cohen, "During the eons before humanity walked on Planet Earth, the natural world and its spirit, - an attraction to support life in balance that some call green spirit - thrived and grew in the non-polluting ways of nature's self-correcting perfection and restorative powers." The 53 natural attraction senses are nothing but the manifestation of this green spirit.

This web page gives a glimpse of Michael Cohen's vision of Green Spirituality:

http://www.ecopsych.com/kechnholspirit.html