The Cell and the Spirit

There is an analogy I enjoy playing with ... comparing the life of a cell to the the life force we call Spirit. It helps answer questions about ideas of the One-ness of existence and the many-ness of its expressions.

A single cell multiplies by a process of dividing itself - the one becoming two, the two becoming four and so on. As we repeat this process a mere 64 times, like putting a penny on a checkerboard and doubling the amount for every successive square, we end with more money than the wealth of the entire world.

We could call the original cell the parent cell and with each division its progeny retains the essential information of the parent cell with which it began and the as yet unexpressed potential of its future evolutions. If Spirit were to function as the cell we could fairly say that even the advent of a new spirit would posses the information or "memory" of all that came before it and all that might come after it. Its existence then would seem beginningless and endless in terms we could compute.

The idea of death of course enters into the observation of the cell as a material biological entity. Yet we are learning that there too is a quantum realm to biology and that a "body" is a function of energy fields which extend beyond its material existence. Awareness of this existence may lie in a future activation of life's potential, yet the mystics have long spoken of realms of being beyond the material and advances in science do more to confirm such ideas than counter them. Were this to be the case, physical life may viewed is a cocoon for the gestation an other order of existence and specialization.

In the duplication of cells we do see that each is a unique improvisation on the original pattern. As a spirit our uniqueness seems important enough to assert - even to the point of denying our unity. That is how important identity is. It is only identity misplaced which seems a real problem and thus the council to "know thyself."

In terms of spiritual practice we might consider then that validating our individuality is as important of affirming our unity. Our uniqueness is perhaps affirmed and demonstrated best as our unique purpose in the context of the unity of the whole, much like cell in the cornea is distinguished between a cell in the heart - all unique, all functionally part of a specialty team, and all playing a responsible role in the health and harmony of the whole.

As each cell carries the history of its making, so too might spirit AND ... spirit might rightly lay claim to itself as a reincarnation of its ancestral stream.

Of course these thoughts are simply part of a game I play. Yet playnig games is a childs preparation for life. As a child of the spirit of the uni-verse I engage my studies with gusto and take them none to seriously. In this lack of seriousness lies to a child's enjoyment even in the exercise it's drama.

I invite the reader to play with these ideas and see what other connections can be found that may shed some light on the matter, for I have only scratched the surface. And besides, what what one discovers for oneself is the more valuable.