2/17/09

a cellular meditation

You are made up of trillions of cells. The number I learned was 73 trillion, and it is a close enough number. Maybe a few trillion more, maybe a few trillion less. You are trillions of tiny cells. You are trillions of collaborations occurring each moment.

Each cell is individual. Each cell consumes energy and produces waste. Each cell respirates: inspiring and expiring. Each cell has a job, a task, and a purpose. Each cell communicates, interacts, and does its part. I believe that each cell has its own sentience, its own awareness, its own memory, and its own emotions. You are a colonial organism, a great collaboration of 73 trillion cells.

You are one being. You have a beginning and an end. You can look down and see the physical extent of your body. You can close your eyes and feel the physical extent of you body. This body is you. As far as any truly knows, this body is your only chance at existence. There is no guarantee of any existence beyond this unique opporutunity.

The perception of the self as a solitary being is an illusion. Your very existence is dependent upon the grand collaboration of the trillions of cells that make up your body. The experience of the self as a unique solitary being is an experience of unity, an experience of the many being one.

Each of us on the planet are part of the greater whole as well. Interacting, existing, respirating, consuming, producing, living and dying. Not one of us can exist outside of the earth community. We are but a cell in the intricate existence of the planet.

You are unique. You are part of the whole. This is true. Each of us must come to understand this dichotomy. We are unique and we are one. Only when we can come to terms with our own split personality, only when we can embrace our place in the whole, only when we can take full responsibility for our part in the whole, will we be able to responsibly live out our part in the whole.

In the current global millieu, humanity is living like a cancer. We are consuming way more than our share of the resources. We are committed to growth even when such unabated growth will eventually kill off the organism. We are contriving our own death in our pursuit of growth. We can change this, but each of us must look hard at our place in the whole. We must experience our own existence: individual, collaboration and unity.