Mysterious and Powerful Human Beings

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:

1. Temporal; past times, and future times yet to be

2. Spatial; of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ spaces

3. 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