Spring has finally arrived! So much change takes place with a little more sun and a little more warmth, and I actually skipped to the car this morning as I made my way to a fitness class. Yes!
Busy Minds Keeping Track of Time
Just to recap from last week’s blog post:
“My mind is busy with ideas, forming in the deepest recesses of my mind, making connections between healthy soil, healthy human life, birth, and spirituality.
Each week for the next four or so weeks, the plan is to plant these little idea seeds and wait/see if/how they take root. Rather than overwhelm you with too much all at once, We are going to break down the next few blog posts into manageable, healthy bit-size bits. Plus…I need to get this stuff out of my head before it implodes and gets ‘weedy’ like a dandelion long past the time to prevent it going to seed and spreading willy-nilly on the changing winds.”
WHERE’S THE HOMEOPATHY?
We will get there eventually because homeopathy is all about supporting the healing of all life with its sustainability, non-toxicity, and super-diluted nano-particles of material substances and potency. Homeopathy recognizes the ability of each living organism/being to self-heal given the energy that is needed to support rather than poison or harm. Which is like soil, our starting point for this entry into the world of the microcosm of all things small and mighty…microbes.On the practical side with remedies, you will receive some great handouts on gardening remedy kits to have on hand, remedy kits for the allergy/hay fever sufferers, and some handouts for remedy kits to take the bite, sting, burn and bruise out of summer fun in the sun.”
(You’ll receive a handout next week with suggestions for a Home Gardener’s Remedy Kit…in time for Easter! By then we should be well into digging in the dirt!)
Human Soil Within the Body: Mighty Microbes
Last week was soil, this week is the ‘human soil’…that which is within us that is a part of the miracle of the immune system.
Living within us is a whole microcosm of cells—human and bacterial—living together, sharing, communicating, and eating at the same table (commensals)…all in harmonious balance.
Image credit: Jonathan Bailey, NHGRI
If you guessed last week that we are more bacteria cells than human cells, you are correct! But just how much more are we bacteria than human?
Check it out with Bonnie Bassler from her TED Talk, ‘How Bacteria Talk’:
“There is about a trillion human cells that make each one of us who we are and able to do all the things that we do, but you have 10 trillion bacterial cells in you or on you at any moment in your life. So, 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells on a human being. And of course it’s the DNA that counts, so here’s all the A, T, Gs and Cs that make up your genetic code, and give you all your charming characteristics. You have about 30,000 genes. Well it turns out you have 100 times more bacterial genes playing a role in you or on you all of your life. At the best, you’re 10 percent human, but more likely about one percent human, depending on which of these metrics you like. I know you think of yourself as human beings, but I think of you as 90 or 99 percent bacterial.
These bacteria are not passive riders, these are incredibly important, they keep us alive. They cover us in an invisible body armor that keeps environmental insults out so that we stay healthy. They digest our food, they make our vitamins, they actually educate your immune system to keep bad microbes out. So they do all these amazing things that help us and are vital for keeping us alive, and they never get any press for that.”
Harmonious Balance
What governs this harmonious balance of SO many microbes and human cells interacting even when we are unconscious of the communication? Must be something that has to do with life, because without this organizing principle that we cannot see, on death our bodies decay. There is a great scene in the movie Temple (Temple Grandin is a professor, inventor, best-selling author, and rock star in the seemingly divergent fields of animal science and autism education) where a cow is killed. She turns to ask the person she is with, ‘Where did it go?’ The animal was alive, then dead. The ‘something’ that was animating the cow was suddenly gone. Something was missing…something that could not be seen except that it was animating the cow, giving it life, and then it wasn’t there and only death remained.
In homeopathy we call this ‘it,’ this ‘invisible’ organizing principle, the vital or life force.
“In the healthy human state, the spirit-like life force (autocracy) that enlivens the material organism as dynamis, governs without restriction and keeps all parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation as regards both feelings and functions, so that our indwelling, rational spirit can feely avail itself of this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.” ~ Aphorism 9, Organon of the Medical Art by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann
The vital force is energetic…pure energy that is directing, orchestrating, and keeping all the bacterial cells and human cells in harmony. Only when there is a disturbance or imbalance within the cells or from the external environment is the vital force moved into action. Only then does the Vital Force create symptoms as a way to bring back this order. This is the ONLY way the vital force, which is invisible energy, can communicate that there is within the organism, imbalance.
Our World, Our Soil, Our Bodies, Our Immune Systems: As Above, So Below and Within
The dirt/soil/earth/planet/universe is a living entity, as is our physical inner human form.
We are all governed by the same principles of life organizing life, communicating, growing, and evolving. There is purpose, there is balance, and there is harmony. As humans, we have the gift of being conscious of this organizing life force.
Some might even be so bold as to say that this governing vital force is Love itself.
Something to Ponder Until Next Week
Here is a quote from the book The Universe is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story by Brian Swimme:
“For so long we’ve considered the Earth as just a big dead ball of dirt. It shocks us nearly out of our minds when we discover we’re involved within something that moves. Copernicus said the Earth moved: he meant that it moved around the Sun. When we say the Earth moves, we mean the whole process is alive. The Earth moves. In a sentence that is the heart of our cosmic revolution.
The whole process is present in the individual creature. The dynamics that fashioned the fireball and the galaxies also fashion your ideas and visions. I don’t mean this in a crude sense; the whole system of life and being presents itself in each particular event as well. In your specific personal dreams and desires, the whole process is present in your own personal self. The macrocosm is not disconnected form the microcosm.”
We are more than cells, more than human genetic coding, more than bacterial cells. We are more than our sickness, more than our health. We are at an important crossroads in how we understand health and healing.
I would love to hear your thoughts. Share them with me in the comments below or on Facebook.
Yours in health and healing,
Donna
