The Story of Life Short Version Nov 2019

We're all aware of the pollution of our physical environment. The exhaust and ozone in the air, the microplastics in the ocean, and the noise pollution. Perhaps even more important is the information pollution of our environment—the propaganda, advertisements, and fake news that has us believing that what we need is somewhere out there. But the truth is, we already have what we need. To accomplish what we are here to do. And now is the time we must make a commitment to awaken this wisdom and passion on a regular basis and focus it in the way our highest power, our highest wisdom guides us. The following meditation, with your eyes open or your eyes closed, is a powerful way to do this. Remember, don't just hear the words. Use all your senses. See the images, and most importantly, feel them. To open yourself right now to the experience I'm about to share, to give yourself permission to realize that at this moment in time there's no other place you need to go Nothing that you have to do and no problem that you have to solve, and therefore you can relax and bring your awareness into the present moment. Originally, I was trained as a mathematician, scientist, and physician, but unlike so many of my contemporaries, I was interested in the phenomenon of healing, not just the techniques and technology of medical practice. What fascinated me and what I wanted to learn about was life and about people and how they could become more happy and healthy. I found that if I was going to understand the phenomenon of healing, I first needed to understand the phenomenon of life. After all, without life, healing has no meaning. And without healing, as you'll see, life could not have survived the harsh assaults of this environment. —And the best science I know of takes us back about 13.5 billion years ago to the time of the so-called Big Bang, the beginning of time and space as we know them. And the best of our knowledge tells us that in that first billionth of a second, the universe was a sea of undifferentiated plasma. That within the plasma, waves gradually formed, waves that condensed into elementary particles, and then hydrogen, and then gradually heavier and heavier elements that in turn slowly coalesced into nebulas and black holes, into stars and galaxies, including our own galaxy. That was about 9 billion years ago. And revolving around one of the minor middle-aged stars in that galaxy was planet Earth. And in those days, 5 billion years ago, this world was a hot, harsh, primitive and very unforgiving place. It was a place of flaming volcanoes and boiling pools of lava that gradually cooled and hardened, giving rise to a vast, naked world of bare minerals and gases and waters. But nowhere was there any sign of life. Even the vast oceans were lifeless, yet they seethed with inorganic chemicals combining with each other through polarization and ionic bonding. Ionic bonds are the way atoms interact in a lifeless, inorganic world such as this. In inorganic bondings, atoms steal electrons from each other. Become polarized into positive and negative ions, creating unstable, corrosive, and lifeless compounds. Just as in our daily lives, highly polarized attitudes do not produce lasting relationships. And then along came the carbon atom with a bright new idea: Why not share electrons? Instead of taking an electron from another element or having to lose one, carbon much prefers to share electrons with its neighbors. In this way, tight bonds are formed that are stable and balanced without polarization. These are called covalent bonds. It was this new idea of covalently sharing electrons that made possible what we call organic chemistry. And that led, in turn, to that otherwise highly unlikely phenomenon we call living beings. This new sustainable kind of relationship made possible the evolution of ever larger molecules containing hundreds and thousands of atoms. I call it the urge to merge, that energy or force force that in this way created giant protein molecules, including that very special kind of giant molecule, the DNA spiral. And then, at some point, a group of these giant molecules decided to cling together and wrap a membrane around themselves. Giving rise to the first living cell, a brand new entity on planet Earth created by that same energy of holding together, that same urge to merge. This membrane was necessary for life to continue. The cell had to keep it intact so that the internal environment could continue to carry on the processes of life. Respiration, ingestion, elimination, metabolism, and sustain homeostasis. Obviously, if the membrane were to be broken, it would have to be closed rather quickly, lest the essence of its life drain away. Thus, a membrane had to have a way to sustain this wholeness and repair it itself if it is interrupted and restore its wholeness. This is the process we call healing, which is the strong tendency to maintain wholeness and balance. So life and healing are very closely related and may actually be the same thing, or different expressions of the same deeper phenomenon. Expressing the same essential urge to merge. And like this earliest cell, the very complicated bodies that we have still contain membranes, skin, and internal systems that must remain whole and that must heal from trauma back into wholeness. So when there's a trauma to the body, or trauma to a family or community or a nation, for that matter, it gives rise to the need to quickly heal and become whole again so that it does not lose that essence which maintains and sustains that life force. Another amazing thing about life is that it possesses the ability to reproduce itself. As that first cell did. And in time, as a result, soon there were lots of individual cells floating around, each one slowly mutating and becoming more unique, each one going its own way and doing its own thing, having essentially no relationship to the other cells around it. Then, one fateful day, instead of separating, the daughter cells of a dividing cell felt the urge to remain together and to function together, giving rise to the first multicellular organism, the first organism composed of individual cells functioning together as a whole. and again we see that urge to merge at work, sustaining and healing, the life force in action. You know this force. Can you feel it in your own desire to remain healthy and happy? In time, our scientific studies tell us that The same unifying force gradually gave rise to multicellular creatures of greater and greater complexity, with cellular specialization and the organization of subgroups of cells into organs and into organ systems, and evolving greater and greater diversity and intricacy. Creatures of great beauty and grace with remarkable abilities. And with their ever-increasing capability of action, there developed higher levels of complexity and the need for a more complex system for coordinating the many organs and subsystems. So there arose the need for more complex information processing. For this special purpose, life invented the nervous system and the brain to sustain coordination, harmonious action, and wholeness. In other words, we need a complex brain in order to tell the foot which way to carry the body so that the hand could reach the food that the eyes have seen. Complex nervous structures that could create neural networks that were up to the task needed to be evolved. They need to allow for fluidity of motion and the ability to function in the water with elegance and on land, and with refinements that allowed them to overcome gravity gravity and rise gracefully to soar effortlessly through the clouds. And at the center of it all, acting invisibly, the fantastically intricate central nervous system, ultimately responsible for maintaining balance, coherence, for sustaining wholeness and wellness. Can you imagine that this is simply another form of that same self-organizing principle that expressed itself as the covalence of organic bonds, an ever-evolving theme of wholeness and healing that plays within the nervous system like a beautiful melody enabling the central nervous system to coordinate all the parts of the body and allow them to dance in rhythm with that melody, working through networks of cells, all communicating with each other chemically through neurotransmitter chemicals flowing across the synapses of neural networks, all in support of the sole function of having all parts work smoothly together, guided by a common purpose. Common purposes that might vary from serving a tennis ball to throwing a pot, from playing a violin or dancing to surfing. Or doing a card trick, or texting a friend. Imagine the job of coordinating all these parts so accurately and with such synchrony while still maintaining balance and coherency on the inside. Health. And as it evolved, The huge brain and nervous system of higher animals became able to express the urge towards sharing by sustaining wholeness and integrity in relationships with things and with others in the environment. Again, common purpose, oneness, and dynamic balance are crucial. Can you feel it at work here? That same force of holding together and functioning smoothly as a whole, that force that held together that first cell now holds together the members of the herd or family or community. In other words, that same force that creates health and wholeness within an individual is also responsible for creating health and whole relationships with respect to the environment and to others in the environment. It is a sensitive and responsive connection, this innate drive towards merging into a sense of oneness and shared purpose. And we see it most vividly in the higher animals, and especially the mammals, We see it in the extraordinary way they are guided from within to support each other and to gather in families and herds for the common good, to join together and to act together with like-minded and like-bodied others, to serve, to protect, and to band together as communities. Just as the carbon atoms found a way to share and join together in stable structures, just as organic molecules merged to create life, just as cells stayed together to create complex creatures, we see the same innate tendency among animals to form bonds to support common interest in food. Function, interacting in a way that serves their shared values. And certainly nowhere is this life force more visible than in that incredible bond between mother and child. Have you felt this at some time in your life? Can you allow yourself to feel it right now? What we humans human beings call love is the emotional experience of this urge to merge and the absolute joy of being with those you love. How strongly can you allow yourself to feel it right now as you think of those you have loved? And one of the more dramatic expressions of this urge towards oneness, the drive to merge in love, to have and to hold, is that form of love that produces new life— erotic love, passionate love for a person and the beauty within that person. And you know the power that attraction has. And you can also Also tap into your ability to feel filial love, the affectionate regard and friendship towards an equal, agape, to will the good of another, and storge, or empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, and compassion, all forms of this same fundamental force. Can you feel it? Take a moment and imagine you can let yourself feel the love expressed in these images as you hold them in your mind. Feel it and notice where in your body you feel it. And can you even experience interspecies love? Different though they may be, all these relationships at their essence have the goal of staying connected, of remaining together. And just as a damaged membrane requires healing, if the integrity of a couple or group is broken, it must be repaired. Love— the healing process at the collective level. Love is the internal felt sense we experience. Healing is the phenomenon we observe in our physical, behavioral, mental, and emotional life. Love with a capital L. Shared values, integration, inclusiveness, both and, caring, intimacy, balance, harmony, empathy, compassion, wholeness, collective intelligence and collective wisdom and coherence. So give yourself permission to be, right now, in touch with your ability to feel love. And one surefire way to feel it more powerfully is to think of and mentally visualize someone who's precious to you and who you would hate to lose, or someone who makes you feel that special feeling inside. Inside, a child, a lover, a beloved parent, or even a favorite pet, and feel it right now. And whether this be someone from your present or your past, this feeling can be an anchor for you. And whenever you return to this thought, you will recreate within a most important awareness about your power to love, to heal, and to live. Yet beyond this exquisite beauty and magic, as we are all aware, living is not unmitigated joy. There's pain in all our lives, physical pain and sickness, sickness, as well as emotional pain. There's the suffering we inflict upon ourselves and that inflicted by others. And there's the damage we do trying to escape our pain. And of course, there's violence at the collective level as well, and at the global level. [FOREIGN] But we can change all this. Next, we will examine these problems and the emergence of what I call the dark force, and how in all its forms it can be confronted and transformed using the tools we are exploring. Learn more Visit drmiller.com/Transformation. Thank you for spending this time with me.