In yoga class last week, my teacher said that “the body is not eternal.”
I get what she means: If there is a part of us that enters heaven, it is most likely our soul, spirit, or some derivation thereof. The egoic mind goes goodbye, and the body decomposes in dirt.
And yet.
I believe that our bodies are eternal.
No, your body won’t look the same after it dies. But it doesn’t look the same today as it will tomorrow, or did yesterday…let alone 14 billion years ago.
That’s when your body was born. And that’s why it’s eternal. Because your atoms (the building blocks of all matter) came from stars that lived a looong time ago and recently recycled themselves as you.
These stars, by the way, don’t just come from our Milky Way galaxy. It is now understood that our star-stuff arises from at least eleven other galaxies (out of 100 billion currently known, a number that is likely to increase as telescope technology improves). Which means that, not only is our home galaxy a melting pot of particles…but so are you. You’re not just “in” the galaxy anymore, Toto. You are literally part of it … and it is part of you.
{Brief pause to reflect on the flabbergasting nature of reality}
Since the Big Bang, your galactic atoms probably made a few pit stops before becoming you. Which raises some interesting questions about incarnation. And yet another opportunity to listen to a great song by the Indigo Girls. But I digress.
What would you do if you knew that your bits-and-pieces are eternal? Would you treat yourself differently? Be more likely to be more kind to your body parts so that they better maintain for wherever they’re going next?
Because they’re going somewhere.
Because, whether your physical form decomposes or its ashes are spread across the Adriatic, your energy recycles. It’s the whole “energy is conserved, can’t be created-or-destroyed, only transformed” thing.
But while your body’s here now … here’s a reiteration of the question at hand, as well as my personal answer:
Q: What would you do if you knew that your bits-and-pieces are eternal? Would you treat yourself differently?
A: Yes. I would treat myself as sacred.
Sacred.
Sacred is not rushed, fearful or confused.
Sacred is ____, ______ and ______.
Please fill-in your answer.
And please take the rest of the day to consider what actually living your three adjectives (e.g. compassionate, gentle, magic) might look like.
Because you affect others in many ways. Including—but not limited to—resonance (something I wrote about here).
Bear with me a final moment: Imagine that when you live sacred, there is a certain frequency to it (akin to how frequencies like relaxation, for example, are measurable by EEG). And imagine that this frequency relates to the particles in you that come from the Andromeda galaxy (because the frequency has to originate somewhere). And, furthermore, when you invoke your inner Andromeda, these bits resonate with the corresponding bits in your mom/friend/stranger. Which helps them feel sacred, too.
And which will lead me to some future blog on non-locality and electron entanglement.
For now, however, a hint for living sacred:
Consider the notion.
Close your eyes and feel it. Feel sacred. Might take a moment to conjure the sensation, but I assure you it’s there.
The next time you’re re-hashing in your mind’s-eye what you really would’ve liked to have told your lover/colleague/etc. earlier today…. pause, close your eyes, feel sacred…and then send some sacred-ness to that person. Because it’s probably due to some perceived lack of their own sacred-ness that they acted in a way that pissed you off, anyway. And if you can feel sacred and help others feel the same…well, there’d probably be a lot less war in the world. Not tomorrow. But at some point.
As the marvelous Max Planck said:
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
So let’s help the younger generations become familiar with sacred by treating ourselves, others, and the whole universe, accordingly. Because we’re all made of the same stuff. Galactic-stuff, in fact.