Secrets of Your Cells: Discovering Your Body's Inner Intelligence (6 page)

Consider the cell’s survival skills as lessons from within. Every cell is in a constant state of maintaining integrity, balance, and fluidity. Our cells will carry us to the very end—how do we carry our cells?

EXPLORATION

Cell Prayer: Your Cell Self

This is an easy exercise to discover your sense of boundaries and go further in your experience of “cell-ness.” Read the following instructions and then allow yourself to engage in the suggestions offered.

Sit quietly, close your eyes, and breathe naturally. Now breathe into the place that feels like your center, reaching deep inside yourself with each inhale. Next, take your attention to your outermost boundaries, your outer edges. Where are they? Are they at the edge of your skin? Do they go beyond your physical edges? Notice the appearance of that boundary; is it solid, ragged, broken, or tattered? Now imagine that you are inside this cellular universe, a center core protected by whole, intact boundaries that are receptive to all that is good for you. If you like, you may even chant or hum out loud to connect all parts of your cell self. Voicing a sound with each exhale for a few minutes helps your cells resonate together. The sound “mmm” is particularly strong, and you will learn more about humming your cells in the next chapter.

Finally, take a moment or two to tune in and offer gratitude to this divine design that is you.

Sanctuary: A Deeper Look

In its broadest definition, a sanctuary is a refuge, a safe haven. From a spiritual perspective there is an extra dimension of meaning: a sanctuary is a sacred place, a sanctified area, or a place containing an altar—a place permeated with spirit and imbued with the spark of life.

In Europe, Christian churches were often built on land considered holy, perhaps in a place where a miracle had occurred or a holy person was buried. The area around the altar came to be known as the sanctuary. In most modern synagogues, the main room for prayer bears the same name. The sanctuary is the innermost or holiest part of any place where people gather to pray.

Just like our cells, we humans build many kinds of “containers” for safe and sacred space. In the physical world, we seek sanctuary in wisdom circles, support groups, prayer circles, and knitting circles. We find sanctuary in our homes and sometimes even our cars. In indigenous traditions, healing circles include the whole community, and in the sacred tribal circle around Grandfather Fire, we come to pray, heal, and seek wisdom.

When we join in circles, we welcome love into our lives.

When we touch one another or hold hands,

we re-create molecular embrace and sanctuary on a grand scale.

Creating “Sanctuary” for Your Self

We can explore more secrets of the cell when we step into the sanctuary of our own life. Our innermost sanctuary is the heart of our cells. When we tune in to our sacred nature, we are able to recognize that we
carry such a refuge within, and we can create an outer manifestation of this wherever we happen to be. For example, when I travel I bring a candle, incense, and a special cloth to make a hotel room “mine.” At home, my garden is a sanctuary I go to on warm mornings to do my daily practice. Inside, I create altars to provide further reminders of sanctuary. There, a candle is always lit. No matter how small the space, we can always create reminders to help us remember the sacred. And in the space of our imaginations, we can always imagine that within each cell is an altar to life.

EXPLORATION

Creating an Altar and Sanctuary

If you don’t already have an altar or a place you think of as a sanctuary, take some reflective time to find such a place and consider what you would like to include there. Candles, stones, crystals, incense, plants, or pictures of your family, ancestors, or spiritual teachers are a few items you might want. A simple cloth and candle are more than enough to anchor sacred space and remind you to take time to enjoy and ignite the sacred from within.

Creating sanctuary is about embracing and honoring ourselves, taking the time to listen to what our inner wisdom has to tell us. It helps reconnect all parts of ourselves. When we take a step toward sanctuary and daily ritual, we help establish a new rhythm for ourselves and our cells.

Secrets in Our Cells: Cellular Anthropology

The microscope opens deeper and bigger ways to understand life. It both uncovers the hidden workings of our cells and provides a doorway to unknown mysteries and other realties. In fact, in earlier centuries, microscopes and telescopes were considered to hold such power that most people were forbidden from looking through them, lest they alter their view of reality.

As a scientist, I learned that the microscope provides us with clues to our divine design and life teachings. As I noted in the preface to this book, I certainly wasn’t looking for deep mythic meaning when I began studying cells and molecules. Nonetheless, they revealed a magical, mysterious realm that I learned to interpret through the eyes of a “cellular anthropologist.”

DEFINITION

Cellular anthropology?
Yes. Anthropology is the study of human cultures and their origins; cellular anthropology looks at how the origins and forms of our cells may have contributed to human traditions, values, and art. A cellular anthropologist is a
code finder
who looks for clues to spiritual and social life hidden in our molecular structures as well as in the art and architecture we create. If you look again at the image of the medicine wheel (
plate 4
in the center insert), can you imagine it also representing a cell?

Spiritual Architecture

I propose that our inner universe, including the cell, provides the template for spiritual architecture, a scaffolding upon which are built beliefs, values, art, and rituals. Humans, from the earliest times, created stories and symbols, music and prayers to move and touch their gods. People built edifices and altars, sang prayers, drew in the sand, danced, and discovered the basic forms and energy of the universe. Our cells contain secrets to such mysteries. What our cells do to hold and maintain life teaches us about divining life. In invisible sacred forms we discover the divine within and everywhere.

REFLECTION

Consider the sanctuary of your cells as a metaphor for your life as you contemplate the answers to the following questions: