Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence (31 page)

Shamanic practitioners may tell us there is an assemblage point in our body or energy field that holds tight to each memory. Some say this point is between or behind our shoulder blades. We may even feel places in our bodies that resonate with grief or anger, a remembered insult.

Yet as we have learned in this chapter, our memories and obsessions are not linear strings; they have more dimension than that. They are holographic waves that ripple through our bodies. So if we want to forget—or perhaps more accurately—to change the effect of a memory on mind and spirit, the question becomes, “How can we change the pattern of that memory’s waves?” Electrical messages between brain cells travel in ripples or wave fronts, and when wave fronts meet, they intersect like multiple ripples in a pond. If we want to diminish the waves of an unhappy relationship from the past, why not, then, introduce new waves that are slightly out of sync with them? In other words, generate a new set of waves to “wash out” or diminish the old pattern. Is this possible?

I meditated on this question with the aid of a favorite Tibetan “singing” bowl. Tibetan singing bowls can be made to “sing.” Just like making a wine glass hum by rubbing the rim with your finger, when you rub
the rim of a Tibetan singing bowl with a mallet, it vibrates and emits its characteristic sounds. Traditionally, these bowls are made from a combination of at least seven metals so that they produce multiple harmonic overtones. For centuries they have been used in Buddhist rituals, for meditation and for healing. Rubbing the rim and sounding the bowl repeatedly always takes me to a deep meditative state. Remember that sound represents waves of electromagnetic energy. If you ever have a chance, explore how resonant sound and the power of these bowls relax you and carry you into a meditative state. Waves of energy fill you.

In this case, using it to help me find an answer to a question, I rubbed the edge of the bowl with the mallet until the sound waves filled me, and then I rang it again and again. Each time I struck it, I held the intention that these new sound waves would supplant the waves of an unpleasant memory—and I felt a shift. I will continue to experiment with the theory that filling the body with new waves of energy can mitigate the power of holographic memories that no longer serve us; already, in my inner work, I can see and sense the undesired waves leaving me.

I know this sounds like an unlikely solution, and it may be. But if what we think we know about memories being held in waves and vibrating strings is true, will future healers help tune us in to a new state; can we become more in tune with what our cells want for us and leave the menacing magnets of the mind behind? Each of us must find our way toward eliminating what no longer nourishes us and strengthening what does.

Memory, Ritual, and the Senses: Doorways to the Divine

Sound, smell, and our other senses are doorways to invoking a sense of the sacred. They are part of most ritual and spiritual practices. The sound of bells or a chant and the scent of burning sage are among such ways to invoke the sacred. When we attend a ceremony in a church or outdoors in a tent, we may hear chants and songs we’ve heard before—or
some we have never heard but that seem familiar somehow. Waves of incense embrace us. Burning candles and their warm light surround us with a sense of holiness. And through our senses we remember. Our consciousness opens to an “extra-ordinary” state. The whole experience is carried in waves of information encoded in holograms of memory and vibrating strings. We can reignite the light of a sacred ritual using any of the senses through which we experienced it.

In fact, I suspect that one of the reasons religious traditions ritually repeat the same prayers is to reconnect us with our inherent holiness, to help us remember our sacredness. When our ancestors developed these traditions, they surely didn’t think about how they were impacted physiologically—such analysis was irrelevant. Still, they embodied the experience. They saw and knew the results, and so can you.

EXPLORATION

Our Senses as Doorways to Heightened Awareness

Our senses are conduits to receiving information, and when we attend to them individually they also serve as doorways to the sacred. I first learned this meditation from Jürgen Kremer at the California Institute of Integral Studies and have since seen it described in numerous spiritual texts.

As always, set aside about fifteen minutes or more to do this in a safe, nurturing space. Read through the directions and then act on the instructions.

Close your eyes and listen to the sounds all around you. Receive the sounds without naming them or looking for them. Be receptive to all that you hear.

You can also do this listening when out in nature, simply walking and listening. You’ll be surprised at all that comes to you. The listening meditation is a wonderful way to connect inside and out, matter and ethereal. Try this for thirty seconds at first and then for longer periods of time.

Should you choose to go beyond listening, feel your body breathing. Feel the air touching your skin. Stay with this sense of touch, where your breath touches inside and where you touch the chair, the ground, and so on. Next
allow yourself to be open to seeing without labeling or judging. You can simply focus on one of the sensory impressions or stay with listening. As you become adept at this simple, quieting meditation, you may discover you are becoming elevated in mind and spirit. By increasing our level of awareness, we change our consciousness and our internal state of affairs.

REFLECTION

What do I need to remember?

What do I want to forget?

What reactions or responses are too habituated, too hard-wired within me?

What does my heart’s mind desire?

What new wisdom do I want to explore?

What am I most grateful for?

What do I want to remember more often?

Chapter 8

Wisdom Keepers—Reflect

For the ice age cave paintings through the middle ages, art was an expression of our faith that the universe is spiritually coherent. Indigenous cultures lived closer to the chaotic resonances of nature in which the spirit of life was revealed.

— JOHN BRIGGS AND F. DAVID PEAT
Seven Life Lessons of Chaos

T
hus far on our journey we’ve met our cells in many dimensions—as miracles of molecular construction and as sanctuaries, listeners, messengers, and choosers. We’ve learned how they function, identify themselves, communicate, learn, and remember. And we’ve learned a number of practices, inspired by our cells, to enhance our well-being. Each step along the way we’ve glimpsed our cells’ sacred nature.

In this chapter we go a step further and pose a question: “Could cells have served our ancestors in their quest for spiritual knowledge?” Might our ancestors have traveled within and found mythic dimensions in the structure and functioning of their cells?

Is Our Cellular Biology a Doorway to Spiritual Wisdom?

In broaching this question, I am not asking whether spiritual wisdom or longing might be hardwired in our brain cells. Rather, in my speculations I’m seeking to understand whether visioning our cells and molecules could have been a source of sacred wisdom. I am wondering if embedded in the architecture of the cell we might find frameworks for the perennial spiritual teachings passed down cross-culturally through the ages. This does not mean that our ancient ancestors labeled what they saw as a “cell” but that they inherently knew they were visiting their own inner world.

The idea that inner vision and art can precede scientific discoveries is not unprecedented. Leonard Shlain writes in
Art and Physics
that artists “saw” and expressed concepts that we now consider the purview of the physicist long before scientists discovered them. Presaging the science, they were seers, visionaries.
¹

In his groundbreaking explorations of the shamans of Peru, anthropologist Jeremy Narby provides evidence that their visions of the “cosmic serpent” corresponded strongly to molecular biology’s representation of DNA.
²
Living with these shamans in the Amazonian rain forest, he saw repeated in their paintings two snakes wrapped around each other. He knew that the snake is an archetypal symbol found in most of the world’s traditions and religions, and this strengthened his conviction that there is the link between DNA and serpent imagery. He concluded that with a little help from the hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca, shamans were able to enter into the consciousness or intelligence of their very cells and molecules and then paint what they had seen.

The serpent keeps recurring through the earliest cycles of mythology, always as a central symbol for the life of the universe and the continuity of creation. There are two great identical snakes on a Levantine libation vase of around 2000 BC, coiled around each other in a double helix, representing the original generation of life.

— LEWIS THOMAS, MD
The Lives of a Cell

Inner Vision

Before I read Narby, I had already begun interpreting depictions of our biology in shamanic and sacred art. I hadn’t been looking for symbolism when I began my adventures at the microscope. It was only after I had dwelt for some time in that micro-universe that I began to recognize its echoes in ancient art.

Until Narby’s book came out, though, I thought the parallels that now seemed so obvious might be the result of a kind of dream—the product of a vivid imagination that no scientist would own up to. But I was excited by the connections I had begun to see everywhere. Perhaps they existed because, as some scientists maintain, God is hardwired into our brains; the need for spiritual connection is part of our nervous system. Seeing our biology reflected in art through the ages affirmed my belief that human consciousness has always understood that we are sacred beings who are divinely designed. And this invited me to ask, “What are we innately capable of knowing and seeing, unaided by scientific tools, theorems, and formulas?”

In ancient traditions, people used art, dance, and gesture to enfold and express sacred wisdom. They developed symbols and rituals to teach, honor, and touch the gods of creation. Mystical traditions developed meditations, visual constructions, and sacred art to guide people toward contact with the divine essence of life.

The great mythologist Joseph Campbell brought together a synthesis of science, myth, and the sacred. He wrote that scientific discoveries enabled us to recognize in the universe a reflection of our own inward nature, reconnecting us to ancient wisdom. Furthermore, Campbell said that we are leaping toward knowledge not only of our outer nature but also of our own deep inner mystery.
³

It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.