Freeing Nature from Our Psychic Projections

Mountains, rivers, forests, and oceans may exist independently of human perception, but the term “nature” is merely a projection of the human psyche onto unsuspecting environments. What we’re looking at, what we’re walking through, what we’re sailing across, what we’re cutting down and exploiting depends on the mental filters and emotive associations used to create meaning. When we look across the valley from a rise we may see the geographic skin of deep time, a color palette that will inspire our next painting, a mountain bike track, the home to an endangered species of butterfly, hidden oil resources, a paradise, a dangerous swamp, lost childhood, national pride, a threat, a new start, redemption…the list goes on and on. "Nature” is potentially all these things at the same time and the projections take only an instant.

It’s difficult to hear the natural world speak when our minds are shouting at it in this way, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try because it has so much to teach us – if we can only learn to listen. Therefore, we need to get a handle on our psychic activity. The first step is to take an inventory of our current assumptions, narratives, and emotional stirrings connected to the natural world. The second step is to analyze the sources of these attitudes. The third step is to practice psychic quietude while engaging with nature.

1) Taking a Personal Inventory of Our Attitudes Toward the Natural World

It’s impossible to completely engage the natural world on its terms rather than ours because our brains simply won’t allow it. We bring too much personal baggage to the moment, so we must first unload this psychic suitcase to see what’s in it. We need to examine what we believe: Is the natural world a place to fear? Is it our last hope? Is it a source of livelihood and food? Is it a refuge? Is it just trees and water? Should it include wildlife? Is there a place in it for predators? Do we have personal memories associated with the natural world? Do we hope it will heal us? How does our breathing and heart rate respond to entering a cave? Do we experience wonder? Dread? Does it turn us on? There’s a whole spectrum of associations and meaning connected to the natural world, and the question is: Where do we reside on it? Jack London’s brutal naturalism? Social media posts showing lions acting like playful kittens? Somewhere in-between?

This is important because what we believe often determines what we see. In 2018, a National Geographic video of an emaciated polar bear with the caption, “This is what climate change looks like,” went viral. The poor creature was literally on its back knees, dragging itself across the snow. Full disclosure: I believe in climate change and that it’s a human-made emergency, but I also recognize that there is no way of telling why that particular bear looked like it did. It was obviously very close to death, but it may have just been old, injured, or sick. However, the image fit a certain narrative perfectly and was used to hammer home a message. Conversely, there is an entire industry of nature photography that portrays a one-sided version of untouched, pristine landscapes. This form of “nature porn” is also selling an untruthful story because there might easily be an oil refinery or a strip mine just outside the frame. To illustrate, the website of Weyerhaeuser, one of the largest timber companies on the planet, shows 4 photos. Three are of unspoiled landscapes and one shows a house being framed. Unsurprisingly, there’s not a clear-cut hillside in sight.

The list of our preconceived, unconscious attitudes provides the map of where our minds usually go when thinking about, discussing, or experiencing nature. There’s nothing wrong with possessing internal schemata that orient and direct our understanding. They make it easier to explain concepts and connections, decide where to go on our next adventure, explore new environments, etc. However, they tend to set rigid boundaries on our thought, speech, and behavior, and when they are unexamined and unconscious, they seriously limit our full experience of the natural world, perhaps even keeping us stuck in ruts of misunderstanding. If we’re going to learn everything nature can teach us, then we need to investigate all the hidden factors that drive our attitudes one way or the other. This will create an opening for nature to speak to us rather than us telling it what to say. These hidden factors include:

• Culture
• Personal history
• Instinct 

      

      This leads to the second step in getting a handle on our psychic activity.

2) Analyzing the Sources of Our Attitudes

Culture

Putting out a finger and pinning down one’s culture is a tricky business. For instance, I used to bartend in a small town in the western part of the United States. Cowboy and mining cultures were still very real and alive in this place, and I got to interact with a lot of “old timers” who frequented the bar. One lined and leathery rancher who still ran a big spread would always talk about his “karma” and how it was messing with his life and business. The term struck me as odd coming from someone like him, so I asked where he heard it. He said he picked it up while in the army during the Korean War. So, cultures mix. And cultures evolve. In fact, there is no culture that people share perfectly, but interestingly, it’s a term we all use to categorize and describe personal background and context. It’s not perfect, but apparently, it’s still useful.

Culture results from the intersection of instinct, environment, and history – a constellation of internal and external experiences composing a collective narrative. It includes language, religion, ethics, art, literature, music, sports, clothing, and customs related to sexuality, birth, death, food, major life events, relationship toward one’s physical body, and attitudes toward the stranger. It declares what is valued and what is despised. It underlies and drives behavior. It provides the framework and context of human life – and engagement with the natural world.

Even if we break away from our origins and set a novel course, our particular culture is what we’re breaking away from and, like it or not, it leaves an indelible imprint on our consciousness. To break free from cultural filters, we must first acknowledge that we operate out of one and then forcefully, intentionally, and consistently push ourselves out of this default programming, because if we don’t, we’ll just slide back into the groove of the world that surrounds us; a universe of culturally affirming messages, aligned organizational structures, and sanctioned activities. Again, there’s nothing wrong with living inside a culture, unless its unexamined aspects unconsciously direct our thoughts, speech, and behavior down paths we may not want to travel. In this current discussion, there are no perfect cultures because they all create predetermined frameworks that distort the voice of nature.

Personal History

Personal history includes all dimensions related to family of origin, birthplace and hometown(s), the era into which we’re born, personal and external events that greatly impacted our development, and our personal disposition/in-born traits. Are we the children of immigrants or are we the 10^th generation living on the same land? Do we come from large families or are we only children? Were our parents bigots or free thinkers? Are we from military families or were we pacifists? Were we religious or secular? Something in-between? Were we financially secure or living hand-to-mouth? Was the internet invented when we were born or was color TV still a novelty during our childhoods? Did we grow up in urban or rural environments? Did we grow up in rural environments that slowly turned suburban as we got older? Was our nation engaged in a bloody war when we were teenagers? Are we by nature aggressive and adventurous or more timid and cautious? Do we have physical, mental, or emotional disabilities that impact our thoughts, speech, and behaviors?

These questions are vital to ask (and answer) because we bring them all to our encounters with the natural world. Our personal history shapes where we go, what we see, and what we do. It creates a stencil that we lay down on what’s in front of us so what shines through often confirms our pre-conceived notions and personal affinities. This is problematic because then nature never surprises us, shows us something we weren’t expecting, or contradicts long-held beliefs about the world. For example, it may be disconcerting and disorienting to watch an otter viciously kill, dismember, and eat a mole or other cute, furry creature if our vision of otters is limited to the fun-loving, silly animals that barrel down mud slides. The truth is, they’re both killers and goofballs and somehow, we need to see both sides equally and integrate this contradiction into our personalities. Conversely, if we understand the world to be a dog-eat-dog survival of the fittest slugfest, then we may never recognize the myriads of symbiotic relationships exhibited by different species inside mutually beneficial ecosystems. We may vaguely admit such things exist, but the fact doesn’t really change how we see and interact with the world.

Instincts

Humans are instinctual creatures controlled, to a large degree, by our impulses toward pain avoidance/pleasure seeking behaviors, survival, sexual activity, reproduction, food/energy acquisition, power and control tendencies, intimacy, cooperation, and insider/outsider orientation. To pretend that “we’re above all that” is a great deception that can lead to danger. In fact, instincts provide the base for human existence. It’s the default mode we revert to under stress. It stimulates movement toward what we desire and away from what we fear. Instinct drives us to: hesitate when entering a cave, hunt game animals for food and sport, engage in competitive sports, seek a mate, dominate other people or even entire regions, lend a hand to a friend in need, and look suspiciously at anyone unlike our own group or any situation outside our experience.

Our ability to consciously transcend this hard wiring is what sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. This transcendence occurs through two types of interventions. The first type is societal, including religion and humanistic education that promotes behavior that goes against personal or tribal self-interest, such as the Christian command to “Love they neighbor as thyself,” and the Buddhist teaching of compassion toward all sentient beings. However, societal level interventions are not very dependable because religion and education are easily co-opted by powerful interest groups that benefit from more instinctual ways of life. Throughout the centuries, Christianity and Buddhism (and all religions for that matter) have been used by political elites as weapons to crush external enemies and eradicate internal dissent – the Christian crusades and Zen Buddhism’s role in Japanese militarism during World War II being two shining examples. The second type of intervention is individualistic, including meditation, mindfulness, and shamanic practices that produce heightened states of awareness and expanded consciousness, thus moving the individual into a higher way of operating. This person remains impervious to cultural, personal, and instinctual influences while under the influence of these exercises.

This leads to the final step in getting a handle on our psychic activity: practicing psychic quietude.

3) Practicing Psychic Quietude

Historically, humans have used several techniques to cajole our inner worlds into alternative ways of operating. Shamans use plant and fungi-based, psychedelic substance or extreme rituals like the Sun Dance to trigger mystical experiences. Spiritual seekers from both the East and West use meditation to explore and learn from the psychic universe, leading to teachings about compassion, redemption, and the structure of the infinite worlds surrounding us. Music and trance are other ways to access an existence transcending the day-to-day. Finding a practice that works for us is an important step in our personal development, but we don’t need anything over the top to prepare to meet the natural world on its terms rather than our own. If we want to experience nature for what it is rather than what we want it to be then there is only one rule: be quiet – externally and internally.

As mentioned above, we must first be aware of what we’re bringing to the encounter. An inventory of our personal attitudes toward the natural world, and the source of these attitudes, are thus vital to the experience because our quietude may be disrupted in a myriad of unconscious ways. We think we’re being quiet, but we’re really not. Once we have a good sense of who we are and where our attitudes are coming from, the next step is to simply slow the breathing down, which slows down the mind and body. Practicing slow, deep, and regular breathing can be an immediate nervous system reset and allow us to gently weave our consciousness into the world around us rather than assaulting it with our preconceived notions. It leads to an immersive experience of the environment, activating all our senses. It also creates a more convivial manner of engagement. This simple technique can be used when we’re deciding where to go and what to do, traveling to and approaching our destination, engaging with the environment around us, and then processing what we’ve experienced.

Humans are exceptional creatures. We're both animals and...something else. If we have a purpose, then it is to come to terms with who we are and integrate ourselves gracefully into the world around us. Combining animal instincts with rationalistic thinking is a recipe for disaster, unless we also integrate the lessons from the natural world into a more comprehensive worldview. Then, we'll learn that nature seeks a dynamic balance that has nothing to do with human understanding, but at the same time, can inform and refine that understanding.