Each
human being is an utter mystery. Each of us possesses vast powers
that go largely unrecognized. Most people, it seems, simply have no
idea of their intrinsic magnificence nor of the full extent of their
creative potentials. Many live their lives on the hard surfaces of
‘concrete-reality’ and often complain about boredom – or as
Thoreau put it, they, “… lead lives of quiet desperation.”
What
is the mostly unrecognized, untapped essence of a human being? For
starters, and directly stated, each human being is an inscrutable
intersection of infinities. You, me – everybody! Consider this:
Like tiny bugs blown out to sea on great storms, engulfed by the
immensity of sky above and black depths below, we, with our
self-reflective consciousness, are able to consider our presence
within three vast arenas:
Temporal;
past times, and future times yet to be
Spatial;
of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ spaces
Numerical;
of the inconceivable numbers and relative sizes of things: atoms,
microbes, cells, people, seas, mountains, planets, stars, and
galaxies
Recognized
or not, these realities contextualize and intersect within each of
us. Such disturbing vastness, when deeply contemplated, can for some
bring on a sense of nausea, and thus the scientist Teilhard de
Chardin metaphorically referred to each of these immensities as a
kind of ‘malady.’
Numbed
and entranced by all the dizzying demands of modern living, few
people ever scratch the surface of their basic high school science.
We mostly miss the staggering circumstances in which we are embedded.
Philosopher Abraham Heschel counsels us,
Under
the running sea of our theories and scientific explanations lies the
aboriginal abyss of radical amazement.
It is
ultimately a profound realization to understand that the sun is
actually a star, just like all the brilliant white pinpoints of light
seen at night; though instead of a distance of light-years, our
home-star sits a mere hundred and fifty million kilometers away. It
takes but a few minutes for light to reach our eyes from our home
star… light from a somewhat ordinary star amongst hundreds of
billions in our home-galaxy, the Milky Way.
Now
astronomers have concluded that there are one to two trillion
galaxies in the known universe, meaning that in the cosmos there are
more gigantic thermonuclear balls of gas (stars) than there are
grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth.
Yogis
and mystics throughout the ages have told us that what we consider
the ‘inner-universe’ is just as immense as the outer. Each human
being is situated between these truly ineffable immensities, wherein
words are incapable of adding meaning to the sheer fact of it all.
Again,
we exist between a deep past and a deep future – measured in
billions of years, tottering precariously, briefly, just on the edge
of now. Our modest life-spans seem to blur into what some have called
‘time out of mind.’
And
then there are also the scales of reality – the relative sizes of
things. Humans seem to be medium-sized – in the middle – between
galactic clusters and quantum particles. Thus, in these three ways
(temporal, spatial, numerical) we are truly, each one of us, an
intersection of infinities. Miraculous!
We
traverse our days and nights, having our unique (and often
undervalued) experiences as glowing self-aware mysteries, moving –
hopefully evolving (perhaps inevitably) – toward greater
Self-Awareness. Life is amazing!
So,
being actually poised between all these immensities, what then are
our creative capacities? Maybe consider this example: To a tribal
hunter-gatherer who has never seen a car, it would be intriguing to
simply look at a car – to walk up to it, tap the roof, prod the
tires with his spear, and if he were bold and a door were open, maybe
get in – perhaps sit in the driver’s seat, or even turn the
steering wheel. But from only this much experience does this
individual know what a car really is? And how might his understanding
intensify were a driver to get in, start it up, and drive that car
away?
How
much do we really know about our potential as human beings? Have we
ever truly plumbed the depths of our intrinsic powers? Hints can be
found in cases of the acute dissociative condition commonly known as
‘multiple personality disorder.’ In this extreme affliction, a
human being has more than one centralized identity.
Consider
a woman with fourteen distinct personalities – each with a
different name and unique personality traits. In scientific studies
of this condition, it has been verified by blood sampling wherein
over thirteen hundred highly complex biochemical changes occur in the
human body in a matter of moments as each of the personalities comes
to the fore.
Food
can be deadly for one personality who has a severe allergy to that
food – yet in the same physical body, a different personality can
eat that food without any adverse reaction. One personality could be
a diabetic with all the intricate biochemistry and needs of that
condition, but a moment later, as another personality emerges, that
diabetic biochemistry disappears and the condition of the body
becomes completely normal. This kind of modulation of the physical
body seems to border on the supernatural.
The
biochemistry of love is vastly different from that of anger. Yet, we
can let go of anger and feel love – or feel love and then
experience intense anger – each state radically transforming our
body’s biochemistry, posture, facial features, resonance, and
behavioral repertoires.
The
good news is that emotional states can be modulated consciously, and
renewing-emotions like gratitude, compassion, and joy are only a
choice away. It’s like we’ve heard so often - ‘Just choose
love!
And
the power of love? Any browser search for mothers lifting cars off
trapped children will give examples of how love trumps the
impossible. Mystics, yogis, top athletes, and thank goodness,
mothers, have given us many demonstrations.
We
mostly hear derision when a profound healing experience occurs after
someone has taken an inert substance thinking, believing, and
expecting it to be medically active. “Oh, that’s only the
placebo effect.” Only! It’s a case of mind over matter if there
ever was! Something of the inner-mind has brought about a real and
often dramatic change on the physical plane, and to the physical
body.
The
medical literature is filled with case histories of what seem like
miracle cures. One of
the most well-known and medically documented placebo-response cases
was of a ‘Mr. Wright’ that occurred in Long Beach, California in
1957 when tumors the size of oranges melted overnight when his
physician, Dr. Philip West, injected him with the serum, Krebiozen,
that was later proven to be completely ineffective against cancer.
The
essence of this research is that human beings themselves are
generating the measurable changes; not some inert substance! We have
powers and potentials that slumber within, and yet, all too often
fear and doubt induce a repression of that magnificence.
One of
the supreme attainments of all our human potentials occurs when we
‘re-cognize’ our way into an ‘awareness of awareness.’ This
explosive, iterative, sweet-spot of ‘Self being consciously aware
of (It)Self’ – Self-Realization – happens outside of time. The
‘little-self’ gently evaporates. Linear time evaporates. Verbs
evaporate... and then: … the always-already-present
Unified-Reality beyond all the conceptions of the thinking-mind …
bliss, compassion, wisdom, love, infinity … just … THIS!
Spiritual
teacher Marianne Williamson, by her prescient nudging, shines a light
onto this dilemma of the small self, its fear, and its associated
potentials when she says,
Our
deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that
we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness
that most frightens us.
And
sometimes the linguistic residue of this realized wisdom consists of
moving poetic pointers: Again, from Heschel,
Each
thing is a surprise, being is unbelievable. We are amazed at seeing
anything at all.
Adapted
from article by Richard Henry Whitehurst on Monday August 24th,
2020 at upliftconnect.com