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The Biology of Magic(k) Reviewed
Orphic Gold Prayer Tablet. Source: http://orphism.wikispaces.com/
The Pythagorean Alcmaeon (c. 500 BCE) and Plato taught that Divine Fire is found both outside surrounding us and inside us at the center of our being. Therefore, “man is made of portions of the cosmos, and in death like returns to like”: the soul goes to heavenly Aithêr, and the body goes to Earth, each returning to its own element. Thus, according to the Orphic Golden Tablets, when the soul reaches its destination, it should say, “I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven alone; this Ye know Yourselves.”
— Ariel Sirocco, Fire
I was making sautéed baby spinach today. It was organic spinach that had been sitting a few days longer in my refrigerator than it should have. Some of the leaves were going bad. What I noticed is that the leaves were not going bad universally – they were going bad in layers. Bacteria-ridden leaves lie on top of fresher leaves that were seemingly unaffected. Knowing what I know about biology, I recognized this as a great example of cooperative nature. The bacteria-affected leaves, in an effort to save its brothers and sister leaves from the same fate, send an energetic signal to the other leaves signaling them to protect themselves from infection. The interesting thing is that the infected leaves are able to send that signal due to their ingestion by the bacteria, and that it is the bacteria that actually send the signal. As the bacteria digest the leaves, they excrete a signal that is a blend of the bacterial energy and the leaf energy. The frequency of this signal warns the receptors along the membranes of the other leaves to shut themselves against the frequency, or the tone, that the bacteria emits. It is such a concert of wonder that it often makes my mind reel in awe and astonishment.
Of course, at the time, I was not thinking about that. I’m a human – a comparatively big, smashingly complex predator that normally has little consciousness of all this singing of leaves and bacteria. At the time, I saw fresh and slimy leaves. Both sent a signal to my system, which was interpreted as an emotional response by my body. That emotional response guided my eating choices. Even if I knew nothing about bacteria, the slimy leaves sent a signal to my emotions that resonated disgust. Get rid of the slimy leaves and rinse the strong leaves off. The bacteria, which had consumed individual leaves to the point that, if I had eaten them, I probably would have been sick, sent me a signal to avoid them. That’s cooperation in nature. There are still bacteria on the fresher leaves, but not to the point that they would make me sick if I ate them – just to the point that my body could build an immunity to them.
I tossed the bacteria-infested leaves out and consumed the fresher leaves. The fresher leaves, including their bacteria, are now part of my biology. They live on, very literally, as a part of me – and that which is incompatible with my biological community is broken down by my immune system and excreted out. That which is excreted – both by me and the bacteria, becomes nourishment for the soil via other organisms that love slime and animal excrement. Nature, when in balance, wastes nothing.
However, I am a human. I am a creature unlike most creatures ever produced on this planet. By my very nature, by my very construction, I live in extreme excess. Humans dominate everything around us with our wits and our perceived needs. Unlike every other creature, we consume and waste more resources than any other and actively change our environment in a manner that suits us, regardless of how it affects our neighbors. We live outside the cooperative rule of nature.
We are the most remarkable species that the Earth has ever produced: supremely cognitive, spiritually aware, and capable of extraordinary examples of compassion. At the same time, we are on a course of gluttony that threatens not only our own existence, but the existence of almost every life form on Earth.
It is a quandary I have pondered for decades. Through much study and consideration, the best theory for our divine yet destructive natures I have surmised is that, through extreme environmental hardship at least 70,000 to 200,000 years ago, our hominin brothers and sisters experienced an abrupt, collective demise through which the only humans to survive were the humans who could adapt, consume, and expand at all costs (Sealy). The dichotomy of this genetic expression, and that which also makes us wonderful, is that our brains expanded enough not only to perceive the “supernatural,” but to also to conceive the workings of that which is not evident and to work with forces hitherto beyond reach (Sealy).
Today, the planet has been living with the result of a half-finished process – the human ability to create and exploit without perfect conception of the results of our participation in this process. At the same time, many of us feel as if we are victims within, subject to genetic programming that is beyond our control. The combination has made us incredibly insensitive to our affect on our own bodies and the environment. Indeed, many consider the development of species homo as the heralding of the sixth great extinction of this planet (Eldredge). We know we must overcome our shortcomings in order to progress (and, perhaps, to take the rest of our brother and sister species) to our next evolution.
What is not very clear to most of us is that we have the ability to do so right now, right this very minute.
Western mystics hold the belief that we are, ultimately, children of the Earth, who need to live in harmony with nature. We acknowledge that there are forces beyond simple perception that we can harness, and that we are creatures who participate in those higher forces. We also believe that because we are aware of these things, we are to hold ourselves accountable for our behavior and the outcome of our actions. Yet, holding a simple belief without proof of that belief can hold us hostage to our doubts and insecurities…”what if I’m wrong?”
It is one thing to believe that we are creatures greater than what is obvious, that we are creative expressions of Divinity that have the ability to change things at will; it is quite another to be shown that this is a biological truth. This paper is an introduction that attempts to show that, biologically, we are not separate, small, helpless machines at the mercy of a situation greater than any one of us, but a community of interdependent entities experiencing different perspectives of one experience. And as such, we are capable of changing the course of our lives at will.
Two million years ago, homo erectus emerged (Hawks, et al) – an animal that was prolific and already remarkably intelligent by global evolutionary standards. It learned to manipulate fire, it expanded on its ability to create tools, and it learned to form tribal communities that not only worked together, but clearly emotionally cared for one another and took care of its sick and elderly well beyond their ability to contribute to the survival of the tribe (Vekua).
Homo heidelbergensis, which emerged 400,000-600,000 years ago, left evidence that it had a primitive language, created art, and believed in an afterlife. For instance, 300,000 years ago in Spain, this hominin that produced both homo sapiens and neanderthal left a burial site along with symbolic treasure in the grave – namely, an amethyst-colored axe.
Professor Eudald Carbonell, of the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain, and a key member of the team that unearthed the axe, was jubilant about the find. “It’s a great discovery… (it) could be the first evidence of ritual behaviour and symbolism in a human species…”It’s a very special colour,” said Juan Luis Arsuaga, director of the Atapuerca excavation. “They would have needed to search it out. I think this colour had some significance for [these humans],” he added (Rincon).
Image credit: BBC news archive.
Homo sapiens diverged from heidelbergensis probably between 200,000 to 170,000 years ago. 164,000 years ago, small bands of homo sapiens in Africa moved into caves in South Africa and stayed there for over 70,000 years, throughout a great genetic bottlenecking event during which the global hominin population was reduced to only a few thousand breeding pairs (Ambrose, Williams) and only a select few genetic expressions of homo sapien survived. Humans in those caves learned to subsist on seafood and sea vegetables – something no other hominin did in the history of hominids. The homo sapiens that survived were the ones that were able to expand their consciousness and think in ways no other hominin before had ever thought in order to survive.
In 2008, Curtis Marean and his team from Arizona State University, along the coast of South Africa found incredible artifacts some 164,000 years old that suggest highly-advanced social and spiritual development. In the above photo, Archaeologists at Pinnacle Point, South Africa, sift the sediments at Cave 13B for evidence of the first modern culture.
Image Credit: Curtis Marean.
Homo sapien, as an animal, learned to systematically plan events over time designed to manipulate practically everything in the immediate environment for shelter and consumption. They became aware that there were aspects of life beyond which they could touch, taste, smell, hear, and see, that affected their ability to manipulate their environment (i.e., the moon affected the tides, the sun was necessary for plants to grow), and attached meaning to the unknown aspects of life. The homo sapien, by its very nature, was driven to imagine and understand the nature of the both the physical and metaphysical.
As a species, we are very young. We’ve only been on this planet for an evolutionary blink of an eye. Driven by our very nature to consume and expand, we have never developed the collective ability to slow down and work in true harmony with the rest of nature. After the planetary climate normalized, everywhere the homo sapien expanded out of Africa shows extinction of other hominin species and game animals and depletion of the natural resources in its wake (Eldredge). Indeed, with every expansion and development of human culture and population, there seems to be a devastating occurrence of animal and plant extinction. Since the 1950s, every year, there are 30,000 species that go extinct annually, directly from the action of humans on the environment (Eldredge, Frasier).
It is a widely-held belief that Charles Darwin believed that “survival of the fittest” meant that the strong overcame the weak and thus evolved over time. This interpretation is wrong; Darwin believed that the “fittest” species in nature expand through cooperation – not survival of the most dominant. Darwin’s predecessor, a French naturalist named Jean Baptiste Lamarck, proposed in 1801 that evolutionary change in species development occurred through use and disuse. Lamarck noticed a striking number of similarities among many of the animals he studied, and was impressed by the concurring evidence of an increasingly abundant fossil record thanks to a blossoming archeological movement.
It led him to present the idea that life was not fixed; when environments changed, organisms changed in order to negotiate their environment. If they began to use an organ more than they had in the past, that organ would grow in size and complexity over its lifetime. He used a giraffe for example. If a giraffe stretched its neck for leaves, a “nervous fluid” would flow into its neck and make it longer. Its offspring would inherit the longer neck, and continued stretching would make it longer still over several generations.
Image credit: Biologiafacil’s Blog.
Meanwhile organs that organisms stopped using would shrink (Berkely). Further, as organisms adapted to their environments, they shared tasks and dependencies with other organisms. This interdependency drove these organisms inevitably from simple to increasingly complex forms. He noticed that species that could not adapt and could not cooperate with its environment eventually died off.
With the discovery of heredity and the belief in the primacy of genetics, Lamark’s observations were largely abandoned until recently. Scientists, through the human genome project, have finally discovered that all organisms have similar quantities and types of genes, from humans to worms. It is not the number of genes present that determines complexity. It is the expression of a relatively small amount of genes through protein sleeves that determines expression in an organism (Clamp).
Image credit: Dirk Hanson, Addiction Inbox.
Protein sleeves express themselves through use and disuse. When a band of DNA is not used in an organism, proteins cover it and the trait is never expressed. When a band of DNA is in demand, a protein sleeve pulls back and exposes that band of DNA, thus allowing the information in the DNA to be recorded by RNA into expression. DNA, in other words, are not the building blocks of life. DNA are, for lack of a better term, blue prints (Lipton). The building blocks of life are proteins. Only demand will change the expression of a protein.
Further, the expression of a gene is not only determined by the demands of the environment (Fodor). Expression occurs through quantum molecular interactions as well as universal principles of self-organization, such as fractal structuring, minimum energy expenditure, shortest paths, optimal packing, that translate through the construction of genes, chromosomes, cells, tissues and the structure of organisms.
Of course, Lamark could not have predicted these findings in 1801, but buried in his idea of “nervous fluid” is the idea that the giraffe wanted a leaf and stretched his neck to get it. The giraffe willed his body to change in order to get the leaf, and to change within its lifetime. This, we are finding, is the truth of evolution and the truth of everyday DNA expression: that will is the driving force for change.
In order to continue this discussion, it would be helpful to conceptualize a few basic concepts. The following three paragraphs are meant to briefly bring the reader up to speed regarding the state of science today. Each is vastly incomplete and not meant to be taken as wrote – because, as we are discovering, the rules change with changing perception.
Physics: There is no matter, per se. Matter and waves are one. You are closer in similarity to a candle flame than a brick. Fluid dynamics, frequency, and optics as presented in Newtonian terms are observable expressions of quantum mechanics. There is no universal vacuum. There is compelling evidence that the universe is electric in nature, governed by electromagnetic field principles. There are now five states of matter: solid, liquid, gas, plasma, and the Bose-Einstein Condensate. Gravity has been explained temporally and electromagnetically.
Chemistry: Particles are collections of waves that interact. Interacting waves express themselves as interference patterns. Particles only appear upon observation. Particles pop in and out of observable existence. All of reality is probability based on observation and perception…in other words, you are not definitely here; you are probably here. The smallest bit of matter/wave energy is called a phonon, in expression of the tonal nature of the universe. Groups of particles organize themselves in patterns that repeat themselves infinitely small and infinitely large in equal proportions, known mathematically as fractal geometry. Often these geometric structures overlap with the Euclidian phenomenon known as Fibonacci’s Golden Mean of 1.618 – a spiral formation that can be found in a sunflower or through the lens of the Hubble telescope.
The laws of physics and chemistry are, once again, becoming readily considered as one science, very aptly returning to the old philosophy of “as above, so below.”
Biology: Biology, often and historically considered separate from physics and chemistry, is slowly waking to the fact that life is subject to the laws of physics and chemistry.
The most plausible theory of the beginning of life is that life began when pigments developed out of inorganic matter in such a way as to capture the light of the sun.
Before there was life, there was inorganic chemistry. Inorganic chemistry seeks stability (a rock likes to be a rock). There is little impetus in the realm of inorganic chemistry for evolution. However, when pigments evolved (such as iron oxides), they were able to capture photons of light from the sun, take that energy from the photons, and use it to move electrons. Thus, photons, aided by pigments, took inorganic chemistry and made organic chemistry.
The simplest biochemical expression of the synthesis of organic compounds from carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) by photosynthesis is given by the following equation.
In the absence of light there is no energy source for photosynthesis and there is no assimilation of carbon dioxide. Inorganic chemistry + Sunlight = bioorganic chemistry.
The smallest expression of organized biochemistry is a carbohydrate. The simplest carbohydrate is glucose – a carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen combination that is the fuel of life.
Image credit: How Stuff Works
Fats are large carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen combinations with a hydrogen-oxygen ratio larger than 2:1. The smallest expression of a fat is a glycerol. Fats are non-polar, insoluble compounds that store energy.
Image credit: Gtroyal, Photobucket
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The smallest functional building block of a protein is an amino acid. Amino acids contain carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen – the four basic elements of our atmosphere, and the basic elements that formed the first inorganic compounds on Earth. Peptides are combinations of amino acids. Proteins are combinations of peptides.
All amino acids contain 3 parts, an amino group NH3+),a carboxyl group (COO-)and an “R” group. The “R” group varies among amino acids.
Image credit: Plant and Soil Sciences.
Without sunlight, carbohydrates, fats, and proteins would not exist. Without them, we would not exist.
We are energized matter. In the chaos zone between electronic shifts, life occurs. We physically come from the Earth, but we energetically come from the sun…Mother Earth, Father Sun.
Sexual reproduction mirrors this process. The egg contains mitochondrial DNA that does not mix with the sperm. It is matrilineal information – the expression of the ancestors. The sperm delivers new information in the form of nucleic DNA that blends with the egg’s nucleic DNA and creates a combination of information not realized in the matrilineal lineage before. We are built at the interface of stability and dynamicism. It is the same all the way down, and all the way up.
In water, simple peptides self-organize into bi-layer membranes of the type needed to create long-range order (Liang et al). In order to form nuclei, which become the templates for growth, the peptides must first repel water. This is accomplished electronically. The bi-layer membrane forms with inner and outer faces and an additional, buried layer that localize functionality within the interior. The peptide membranes combine the long-range structure of cell membranes with the local order of enzymes. From this assembly, chains of peptides – polypeptides – form proteins.
Image credit: Emory University.
The ability to organize things within compartments and along surfaces underpins all of biology. From the bi-layer phospholipids of cell membranes to DNA helices, self-assembling arrays define the architecture of life (Liang).
Phospholipids are fats that replace a fatty acid combination with a nitrogen molecule (acquiring all the four basic elements) and a phosphate group. A phospholipid bilayer is also a self assembling structure – shake them up and they assemble automatically.
Image credit: Institute of Structural Biology and Biophysics (ISB).
Sometimes, when phospholipids are suspended in water, a bilayer forms a sphere in which water is trapped inside. The hydrophilic (water loving) phosphate regions interact with the water inside and outside of the sphere. The fatty acids of the phospholipids interact and form a hydrophobic (water hating) center of the bilayer.
Image credit: City University of New York (CUNY) Brooklyn.
The proteins that get caught inside the sphere of the phospholipid bilayer assembly are in a separate domain from those floating about outside because of the lipid layer of the phospholipid bilayer sphere. If the environment changes on the outside, it remains stable on the inside. Those captured proteins and the captured water form cytoplasm inside the sphere.
Life occurs within a membrane structure because those are regulatable domains. Life needed the membrane first to start.
Proteins started to carry out functions inside the cell (bacteria). Bacteria cells started to interact with each other, living interdependently. Then they began to come together in a biofilm – a collection of bacteria that surround themselves in a membranous structure. Within that structure, there is information exchange, including DNA. Please note: this is different DNA from different bacteria within the membranous structure.
Eventually, the bacteria within the membrane evolved into a more advanced structure: a eukaryotic cell, where the structures expressing the different DNA bacteria evolve into different structures working collectively inside the cell. This is the fundamental human cell.
Our educational systems have led us to believe that humans are an expression of one kind of genetics; consequently, we tend to limit our self-expression to that of the singular (I). However, each person is made of somewhere on the order of 50 trillion individuals called cells. So, in reality, when speaking of ourselves, the royal “We” is in order.
Further, each nucleated (eukaryotic) cell is, quite literally, composed of two different life forms that formed a symbiosis three to four billion years ago: the nuclear-cytosol “host” cell and a colony of cytosolic bacteria called “mitochondria.” Thus, the components of each cell contain two different life forms.
Image credit: Mitoweb.
The left side of the image above shows the relative physical relationship of the nucleus-cytosol and the mitochondria. The right upper panel shows a high resolution picture of the mitochondrial organism and the right lower panel shows electron micrographs of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) (Martin).
These two organisms were co-equal at the time of the original symbiosis. However, over the intervening billions of years they have become specialized. The nuclear-cytosol organism specialized in generating the structures of the cells and later of the tissues and organs (Figure, left half). The mitochondria specialized in energy generation to fuel the development of these increasingly complex structures, yet they still retain their own genomic integrity and separate information storage and retrieval systems (Figure, right half) (Martin).
Keep in mind that, as an organism, we are host to a community of trillions of completely different genetic organisms (viruses, bacteria, fungi, etc.), none of whom we could survive without. Along with the fact that our very cellular structure is composed of two different organisms, it is not incorrect to say that, fundamentally what makes you human is not human. Your body is an ecosystem – a symbiotic relationship of cellular organisms all dependent on one another to live. Further, every time you eat anything, you are eating a completely different ecosystem that becomes a part of you. The spinach I had for lunch is, very literally, a part of me now.
Let’s get back to our basic building block, the cell. The skin of the cell is the brain of the cell. Just like our skin is made from the same expression as our brain and spinal cord. The phospholipid bilayer + – – + are integral membrane proteins (imp) with carbohydrate antennaes that act like tuning forks that resonate with environmental signals. The signals that compliment the formation of the antennaes initiate changes in the shape of the backbone of the protein (amino acids) to let in (receptor) or send out (effector) information.
Image credit: Cell Biology Wiki.
These two proteins, receptors (also known as gates) and effectors (also known as channels), are the awareness of the cell – the perception of the cell. The action of the awareness translates to action – what the cell will do with the information.
Membrane potential: inside the cell membrane is a negative (–) charge; outside is a positive (+) charge. The cell is a battery and it functions by the charge differential.
The ligand is acetylcholine in visceral cells and noradrenaline, ATP and peptide hormones in vascular smooth muscle cells. The Ca2+ gate is an example of a receptor; the Ca2+ pump is an example of an effector. The ligand is an example of a signal.
Image credit: University of Copenhagen.
A protein channel will not change its conformation without an energetic signal. These signals can be constructive or destructive. The signal has to be present to affect the protein. When you open the channel, coupling the receptor lets the charge flow across.
Molecules with a regimented formation are in a crystal formation. A phospholipid bi-layer is a crystalline structure with no chemical compounds connecting them. They are movable crystals – liquid crystals. Together, with the receptor and effector proteins (gates and channels), they make a semiconductor – some things get through, some things do not.
Image credit: Nanobiology Notes.
In summary, the membrane of a cell is a liquid crystal semiconductor with gates and channels.
Bruce Lipton, PhD first realized this next factoid in the late 1980s and has been educating the public on the following since. This should sound familiar to anyone who is familiar with computer technology.
Does anyone know what a computer chip is? It is a crystal semiconductor with gates and channels. Cells and computer chips are exactly the same.
An electron microscope image of one silicon quantum chip. The bright lines are metal (aluminium) gates on the surface of the chip that control the location of electrons in the silicon underneath.
Image credit: Susan Angus, Centre for Quantum Computer Technology.
Cell membranes are programmable carbon chips (as opposed to silicon chips). The cell membrane is the central processor. It picks up environmental data and converts it into biological awareness. A bit of data, the i/o (input/output) in a silicon chip, is equivalent to a the receptors/effector protein on a cell. The carbohydrate antennas along the phospholipid bilayer act as the keyboard (or screen, if you’re using iPads, iPods, Androids or Microsoft Surfaces) – the input mechanism. Their input engages the programs in the cell. The nucleus is the hard disk of the cell, containing the programs. The genes are the programs. They are not necessary once they’ve been activated. The programs don’t run the computer. The human who interfaces with the keyboard or the screen runs the computer. You drive the expression of your cells, as you would the processes of a computer.
“Your perspective is always limited by how much you know. Expand your knowledge and you will transform your mind.”
― Bruce H. Lipton
Let me reiterate, because we are arriving at the key to the magick of biology: Cells and computer chips are not simply similar to each other – they are exactly the same. What this implies, and indeed, what is true, is that genes do not determine the function of your body. Genes are programs. On the macro level, your body is the screen, the image of the results of the programs. Your health, or dis-ease states, are readouts of the internal programming. You determine and control the function of your body…not the genes you are given!
So, who are we, and where are we in all this? Science has been searching and searching for the entity that is “us” in every nanometer of our bodies. The closest we have come to a physical representation of “self” are self-receptors called histocompatability receptors, HLA antigens, embedded on the membrane: they recognize self as opposed to non-self. This is why organ transplant patients have to be constantly monitored for organ rejection. The cells on the organ do not have “self” receptors for the host – their self receptors are those of the donor. If we were to take self-receptors off every cell in that organ, we would be able to place that organ, without any problem, into any body, anywhere.
Image credit: National Cancer Institute.
Time and again, there has been story upon story of people who receive other people’s organs and somehow inheriting the memories and traits of the donor.
For example:
“A 47-year-old Caucasian male received a heart from a 17-year-old African-American male. The recipient was surprised by his new-found love of classical music. What he discovered later was that the donor, who loved classical music and played the violin, had died in a drive-by shooting, clutching his violin case to his chest.
“An eight-year-old girl received the heart of a ten-year-old girl who had been murdered. After the transplant, the recipient had horrifying nightmares of a man murdering her donor. The dreams were so traumatic that psychiatric help was sought. The girl’s images were so specific that the psychiatrist and the mother notified the police. According to the psychiatrist, “. . .using the description from the little girl, they found the murderer. He was easily convicted with the evidence the patient provided (Takeuchi).”
Cellular memory has been a persistent theory in the past; however, as far as we presently know, the only part of a human cell that can store memory is a higher-order neuron, and only fleetingly (Sidiropoulou). On the whole, cells are transmitters and receivers of information. So what happens?
The carbohydrate antennas on the surface of the cell are receivers of information. They are reading the external environment, not the inside of the cell. Scientists have discovered that, if you modulate the subtle frequency that activates the antennae, that frequency will affect the conformation of the carbohydrate antennas of the cell (Acar). In other words, the energetic waves surrounding the cell are what give the cell its perception.
The receptors are reading a perception unique to you. If you take the receptors and transfer them to another cell, that cell receives your personal perception. It would follow that if you took a collection of cells – an organ – and transplanted it into another body, the neurons in the brain of the host would interpret a signal new to that organism.
Let’s take a radio. The radio receives a signal through its antennae and transmits whatever is in that signal. Now, smash the radio. Did you kill the broadcast? No…you can get another radio, tune it in, and receive the same broadcast.
Is the voice originating inside the radio? No. The voice’s origin is around the radio. The radio is simply tuned to play on the frequency of the broadcast.
Like the radio, the memory is not in the cell: the memory is in the field. The cell is receiving the signal of us from the field. If that is true for the cell, it is true for the organism.
We are not simply the sum of our parts – which we now see, is mostly not “us,” anyway. We are not in our bodies. That which we perceive as “us” is in the field, broadcasting a signal that our bodies are attuned to receiving. Our cells pick up on our soul’s signal and project that signal onto the screen that is our bodies. When our bodies finally wear out and run their course, our broadcast does not end.
Image Credit: Alex Gray.
What does this all mean? Why experience life in these bodies? For this, we must return to our philosophy.
Every ancient wisdom tells the reason of this. How else can the Divine experience itself, if not in our bodies? How else can the Divine know what it is like to die and to be killed – to eat and to be eaten – to love and to be loved, if not through the creation of trillions upon trillions of consciousnesses throughout the known universe?
All of nature is fractal: from the smallest potential of existence that we know of, the phonon, to the outer reaches of the known universe, and that which we are mathematically proving is outside of the known universe. As above, so below.
Until now, we did not have the technology to fully understand our natures. For particles and waves, the action of creation is at the interface. This is the chaos zone: there is an etching on the surface of the energy of the waves and the physical energy of the particle when they interact…just like the bursts of sun energy that strike the electromagnetic field of the Earth and cause change, just when an emotion releases a surge of peptides and are received through a receptor causes change, like an idea can create peace or destruction…knowing we are projections into this reality, and that all we experience is a reflection of our interaction at the surface, we are empowered to collectively overcome our ignorant creating and create our reality with intention. That is the art of magick.
Image credit: NASA
How can we use this information to create change in our lives? There are studies, but we have not yet funded an overwhelming amount of them. Love this quote: “lack of evidence is not evidence of lack.” Here’s some observations of anecdotal success stories to whet your whistle.
Dr. Joseph Dispenza, author of Your Immortal Brain, summarized the four common characteristics shared by those who had spontaneous remissions from life-threatening disease (e.g., cancer, diabetes, and emphysema):
Dr. Joe Dispenza
1. Every person accepted and believed that there was a Divine Intelligence running their body—with a transcendent will and mind separate from their own. “I’m riding on the back of a giant. If I could just learn to tap into this intelligence, it will do the healing for me.”
2. They understood that their thought patterns contributed to their disease, largely because thoughts produce chemicals. Negative and insecure thoughts cause us to feel exactly the same way that we are thinking.
3. In order to break their thinking process, they had to re-invent themselves. They had to become “someone else” and by beginning to think of who they wanted to be, they stopped the thinking/feeling feedback loop.
4. When they re-invented themselves, they spent long moments where they lost track of time and space. They removed their attention from the body and environment (the 2,000 bits of information that most people concentrate on) and onto the rest of the 400 billion bits of information that largely goes unnoticed by most people. Thus, their brain began to create new patterns (Dispenza).
We have always carried the ability to create within ourselves and create without. Until now, we have been creating thoughtlessly – without understanding our role in our circumstance. We have willed the world we live in – both within and without.
We have 50 trillion cells living as interdependent entities, sharing one environment – you. When you are in health, the ecosystem that is you lives in harmony and its parts are able to share, work together, and support each other. When we consider the health of our planet, we all live in harmony among each another, carrying out different functions, all designed to present to the Divine all the different facets of experience that can be experienced.
However, if we pollute our bodies with dissonant chemical, physical, and emotional signals, we throw the ecosystem of our bodies out of balance and dis-ease occurs. If this dissonant input persists, it disrupts all of the processes necessary to carry on and perpetuate itself and the body dies miserably and prematurely. The same rules apply to life on our mother, the Earth.
Cells convert signals from our environment and from our perceptions into information that we can experience. We can understand our perceptions and experience our environment from the signals the bodies interpret. We read the energy of interaction via the body in a way we can understand. Our bodies are a device through which we can experience life and create the world.
We repeat ourselves over and over again. We, as humans come together to work in community with each other, known as civilization. Our civilization interacts with our brothers and sisters, the animals and plants and crystals. Our collective existence, both organic and inorganic, make up the body of our mother Earth.
Do not look to the afterlife for wisdom. The afterlife is for reflection. Our wisdom is here and now.
References
Sealy, Judith, Modern Behaviour in Ancient South Africans: evidence for the heat treatment of stones in the Middle Stone Age S. Afr. j. sci. vol.105 no.9-10 Pretoria Sept./Oct. 2007
Niles Eldredge, The Sixth Extinction – American Institute of Biological Sciences, Washington, 2001 – cnr.usu.edu
J Hum Evol. 1998 Jun;34(6):623-51.
Ambrose SH., Late Pleistocene human population bottlenecks, volcanic winter, and differentiation of modern humans. Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana 61801, USA. Ambrose@uiuc.edu
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Rincon, Paul, Evidence of Earliest Human Burial, BBC news archive, April 10, 2008 •
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What is Health? Part IV: Social Health (a.k.a., Spiritual Health)
Preface note: In this forth installment of the article, “What is Health”, as per many historical wise people’s instructions, the terms “brother” and “sister” are used to describe people and forces upon which all of us depend for survival, nourishment, and growth.
The way we treat our brothers and sisters, and the way our brothers and sisters treat us, creates cultures of health as well as cultures of disease. The extent that we influence others, and the extent that we allow others to influence us, directly affects the extent of health and disease conditions in our immediate contact culture. Likewise, the way we treat our animal, insect, and plant brothers and sisters, as well as the way we treat our brothers and sisters of the air, earth, and water, directly influence our collective health and disease states. Either we all move forward together, in growth and diversity, or we all collapse together in disease and decay. It’s just that simple.
This is not news to any of us. All the great peace leaders of all time have told us so. We need go no farther than the (real) teachings of Jesus, the Buddha, Mohammed, Abraham, Plato, Socrates, as well as the mythological teachings of cultures worldwide to know that humanity has always understood this simple truth.
These same teachers of truth, peace, and health live, breath, explore, create, and teach us now in our culture. They are the voices of inspiration, compassion, and hope. They are the activists of consideration and thoughtful choices. They are the givers and teachers of tools that make us all better friends and family members to ourselves as well as our brothers and sisters of all creeds, species and elements.
They are the broad, long thinkers, the broad, long lovers. They are as easy to find as the lady on the sidewalk setting aside the morning appointments in order to help an injured pigeon. They are as quiet as the parents who read labels at the grocery store to make certain the ingredients in the food and products they buy are safe for their children and the environment. They are as close as the cat or dog in your home who knows when you are sad and comes around to cheer you. They are as near as the friend who sat with you for hours when your heart was broken. Their teachings are as available as the first page of Google when you type in the keywords, “peace leaders in history.”
Everyone carries around some form of emotional baggage that they have acquired from some unhealthy person or persons. The brain seems to retain a vast amount of negativity with no problem. If you are fortunate enough to have been born into a nurturing, supportive environment with parents who taught you compassion and a loving appreciation for all life forms and their struggles, then call me. I need you to guest blog for me. Most of us, however, have to struggle day by day with the compelling voices of fear, anger, despondency, hopelessness, and agony.
It is very easy for us to be cynical and defensive. Sadly, it is useless to deny that we are in a collective soup of strife worldwide. Those of us trying to spread our personal vision of perfection are easily frustrated by seemingly ignorant people who insist upon a vision different than our own. Worse, it is easy to persuade those who are steeped with anger, pain, and fear to follow a course that promises easy relief, even if that course leads to even greater fear, pain and anger, as well as self-righteousness, vengeance, thoughtlessness, and destruction.
It is much more difficult to persuade those who seek relief from physical and emotional anguish to follow a slow, rocky course of cooperation, patience, compassion, and open-mindedness. Yet these are the steps that nature follows in order to create wondrous variations of life and love. If there is one lesson that you must garner about the acquisition of health, is that you must follow the ultimate example of the processes of life: nature.
Nature’s expression of universal intelligence shows us that it is the actions we take day by day, minute by minute, hour by hour, that determine the course of our lives. Occasionally she presents the Earth and its in habitants with abrupt, drastic changes, like erupting volcanoes and tsunamis, but in her infinite wisdom she has created a species with the consciousness to understand past, present, and future consequences, and she has endowed this species with the intelligence to weather such changes through right living, planning, consideration, compassion, and love.
That didn’t come overnight. That took time to develop, and it is still developing. We call her Mother Earth because we come from her; but also we, among all other species, were gifted with the qualities of caretakers for our brothers and sisters of all kinds. We are at the point now when her children – us – must stand up and take the lessons she has taught us through her example and, through compassion, love, and the awareness of our interconnectedness, prepare ourselves and our earthly environment for our budding adulthood. We are the creators of peace and war. We choose compassion or apathy. We choose love or malice. We choose whether we all move forward into marvelous, adaptive, collective life, or fall into disrepair, disaster, and destruction.
Nature created our expression of life over time, and it was never a steady progress. It was always filled with periods of expansion and contraction. It is the way of things. Similarly, our lives are never a slow, steady, continual process of expansion. We cannot grow and change into excellent beings without periods of trial and challenges. That is the way of life in all its forms. It is okay to experience periods of struggle. The lesson is that we have each other to help out during these times!
Social health begins with each individual body. If we learn to love our personal gifts and challenges, and to be patient and compassionate with ourselves during the challenging times, we can express the same to our brothers and sisters everywhere, and together we will express social health like the world has never seen.
In Part II, Physical Health, I presented the example that when we have a flu and get mildly feverish, achy, fatigued, and often vomit and have diarrhea, and that this is an expression of health. An expression of health is not always a cheerful expression. Sometimes we have to go through trials in order to be stronger, smarter, and healthier on the other side. Our immune system needs these challenges to work effectively.
If our immune system overworks – i.e., destroys the body in order to destroy the internal virus – that is not an expression of health. That is an expression of disease. If we suppress our immune system with toxins, bad lifestyle choices, and lack of caring about ourselves, those viruses will find our weakness and destroy us. That is also an expression of disease. No parasite can live on a host that dies. No body can live without the will of the mind.
Likewise, when we face our brothers and sisters with challenges that we see, and we express love, compassion, thoughtful decision-making, helpful persuasion and collective cooperation, we create an environment of healthy progress. The body moves forward through the collective will of the people.
If we let our base emotions of fear, anger, hatred, selfishness, apathy and impatience rule our relationships and we persuade through lies, physical and emotional torture, and hate-bating, we all fall together. No parasite can live on a host that dies.
So let’s start at the beginning. Let’s start with what we can do every day in order to achieve long-lasting physical, mental, and social health. We start with our choices we make for ourselves every day, every minute.
Here are the nice steps to perfect health in all its forms.
Dr. Claire’s Nine Essentials of Good Health
Rest
Get 6.5-7.5 hours of sleep. If necessary, take in a 45 min-1½ hour day nap.
Stretch/Exercise
Don’t skip stretching! Stretch/Exercise 4-5 times a week (for stretch examples, go to fitzpatrickspinecenter.com and click “Events and Links”).
Proper Inner and Outer Environment
Eat small meals the size of your fist 5-6 times a day (every 3 hours). Lean protein, low glycemic veggies and carbohydrates, good fats. Add whole food supplements, digestive enzymes, amino acids, and probiotics; food quality isn’t what it was 100 years ago.
Eat food grown and raised locally. Know your farmer! Choose supplements carefully. Soap, lotion, beauty and cleaning products: If you would hesitate to eat it, don’t use it!
Meditation/Prayer
The health benefits are astounding. Make sure your spine/neck is in a straight line. Breathe deeply into your belly. Pay no attention to head chatter. Start with 5 minutes a day. Work up to 30 minutes a day, twice a day.
Mental Exercise/Laughter
AT LEAST 3-6 hours a day spent in conscious pursuit of your bliss. Yours to choose. If your work is your bliss, all the better for you!
Proper Posture
Straighten your spine, chin forward, tuck in, roll shoulders back and down, unlock your knees, point big toes forward, and breathe from your belly — not your shoulders.
Brush and Floss!!!
When food gets stuck between your teeth and gums, it decays. That bacteria can be toxic. You can decrease the chances of everything from the common cold to a heart attack by brushing and flossing twice a day at least.
Drink 8 Cups of Filtered Water A Day
Not tea, not coffee, not soda, not Poland Spring, not Crystal Lite, not milk…CLEAN, FILTERED WATER!
Chiropractic
Get your spine checked regularly for subluxations and have them removed so that your body has the best opportunity it can have for a healthy expression of its nervous system. As a famous chiropractor once said, “Align the spine and mind with the Divine and you’ll feel fine!”
In the following blog posts and in my upcoming book(s), I will cover specific examples and methods that we can all use to easily incorporate these nine steps to perfect health into our lives. In the meantime, if you found these posts on “What is Health” valuable, share them with our brothers and sisters and ask them to subscribe to my mailing list so that they can be informed of all the happenings and events at OptimysticLiving. Please sign up yourself and don’t hesitate to contact me with questions and ideas. We are all in this together.
Truthtime question:
Which of the nine steps do you regularly incorporate into your day right now?
Optimistic Living 