If our Cells were like humans We’d All be Dead

 

I watched an interesting episode about Cells inside the human body called Curiosity: Battlefield Cell. It shows - in vivid detail - what happens when a virus enters your body and the process it goes through and how it attacks and infects cells.

The particular virus they showed was one that causes things like congestion in the nose and cold or flu. This virus goes through a very arduous process and it has one objective – to find a cell, clone an army and destroy it. The body has its defenses against viruses and bacteria and it actually goes into battles almost daily to keep viruses away from your cells.

I never knew just how complicated the body is, even before the virus gets to any cells there are many defenses within the body that detect and destroy these viruses. In turn the virus has many defenses and tactics to get past these defenses. When a virus eventually does get into a Cell it makes its way into the center where the virus DNA will kind of “overwrite” and replace the cell DNA with its own DNA. Then the virus will start cloning itself rapidly and create new viruses, thousands within this particular cell. Then it destroys the cell and these thousands of viruses will start the whole infection process with other cells in the body.

While this is all happening – when a cell gets infected and is about to get overrun and killed by the virus it will send out a warning to the other cells nearby and to the body. The white blood cells will come to the cell and start fighting the virus clones by consuming the virus clones. If the cell is beyond repairing the white blood cells will destroy the infected cell. Even nearby healthy cells that are close to the infected cells will actually destroy themselves to stop the spread.

This is simply amazing – all of this happening in the body and all we experience is a runny nose. The body does all it can to protect. All the cells within the body are all working together with the basic understanding that if one cell does not do its part, then it compromises all the other cells and the body as a whole. So a Cell will destroy itself to protect the body as a whole. It will do what is best for all.

Now imagine that these Cells were like humans. Acting in pure self-interest for example one day simply too lazy to fight a virus, or choosing to preserve itself instead of destroying itself to stop a spread of infection. We would be royally screwed. What if your heart decided it will only beat if you give it something in return? Or it is just not in the mood to beat? You will die.

We all need to be more like these Cells. This earth is one big organism and we humans are the cells. As you can see with the state of this organism we are slowly killing it with our greed and self-interest. We should look within ourselves at the effeteness of working together. Currently we are more like the virus, but we must learn to change and be more like OurCELLves.

Day 176 - First Experience with Authority

 

 

In my previous blog, I wrote about manners and respect, and how I was taught that my “elders” are superior to me because of it. I had to show them respect and have manners – basically I had to present myself the “right” way. Every time I was in the presence of someone older than me, like for example the parents of friends, I would be all polite and remember my manners. Which brings me to my next point – Authority. ‘Keeping in mind though’, that I am NOT saying to now disrespect others / don’t have manners! I am saying though, the starting point / approach within it all primarily being done through fear and not within the starting point of considering/regarding others / “treating others as you would want to be treated” – such living principles are cool, cause it brings through an awareness of considering/speaking/behaving/being with others as you would want them to be with you. Now, we have “manners / respect” being demanded out of fear and hierarchy and in this, there is no such principles existent of “considering/regarding/treating others as you would want to be treated”. So, we’ll look more into this in posts to come.

My parents were my first Authority-figures in my life. And since I was taught to “respect my elders” I believed that all older people have a Authority. As I grew up I held on to this belief subconsciously. If I look closer now - whenever I was in the presence of “my elders” there was a hint a fear, because of when I was a child I was taught to show my manners and respect them, otherwise I would get into trouble.

The word Authority was linked with fear and helplessness.  I myself had no authority since I believed myself to be inferior to others based on the perception and idea that “my elders”  have more value/superior to me since I had to respect them but they did not have to respect me since I am just a child.

An example would be the following: When I was alone I would be a certain way, when I was around friends I would be a certain way. When I was around “my elders” for example talking to parents and older people I would act very differently. I was not really aware of these changes. I did not stop and look to see what I was doing and why. I was not even aware of the fear I had. What I did know is that I did not like speaking to “my elders”, because I was never comfortable with it. Now I can see why. Primarily because, the respect/manners in relation to adults/elders are “demanded / taught” – the child then “acts like the parents demand” and so, every time I was around adults/elders – I put on the act of manners/respect. Obviously, with my friends and when I was alone – I was also in characters/personalities, this is how we function in the world: dependent on the people/hierarchy/environment: we put on different acts/characters/personalities. Which within this, makes one wonder: do we really then in fact know who we are if we change/act dependent on where/with who we are???

So, I assumed a role/character that I created long ago based on what I was taught and my perception and beliefs of what I taught.  That I as a child have no authority – parents do and teachers do. I as a child must listen and be “a good boy”.  And that is what I did from childhood. Now when do you stop being a child and start becoming an elder that must be respected by kids? When do you join that club?

Sure my body is aging and growing, but where does the authority come in? Nobody really taught me authority. I did not have a class named Authority 101. In school we learn that teachers and the headmaster have the Authority – not us children. I Never had the opportunity to learn Authority. Only after living here on the farm did I have the opportunity to experience Authority within myself. Which I will cover in my next blog, and within this see what Authority means within the principle of/as a Living Word.

Fighting with Myself - Leadership

 

One of the points that came up was fighting with myself within being in a leadership role. How i was in the beginning a person with no leadership skills and quite lazy to diving right into the role of being a leader and my idea of what i leader is or should be.

Before I came to the farm I was a lazy person. In school I did the least possible and generally stayed away from doing allot of work.

When I first came to the farm I did not know what to expect. We saw that there was quite a bit of work needed to be done and got started on it right away. Now there is me, my whole life trying to avoid any kind of work, now facing it head on. Understand that I looked forward to it, but faced allot of resistance when I started.

The first thing we did on the farm was unpacking everything. There was some heavy lifting involved. I don’t know if any of you ever moved to a new place, but the new farm was quite exciting so unpacking everything and settling in was fun. I did not feel like doing the work, but did it anyway.

At that time there were only 2 able bodied guys. LJ and I. I was the oldest so I took it upon myself, or more I believed I should take it upon myself to take the responsibility of being a ‘’leader’’. I did not have any idea what that means, I just dived right in.

I noticed that people would come to me when needing some advice on a particular task and I felt important within it. I believed it important to be in a leader position.  I defined myself as a leader, and to be a leader Is to have discipline and not be lazy. So I believed that I should fight myself, my laziness to keep it from creeping up on me and hinder my definition of being a leader.

Every time when I am faced with a feeling of resistance - I would fight it. The thoughts that would come up is: can’t give up, can’t give in, must push. I experienced it as a feeling creeping up bringing me down and that I would fight it to stop it

And I fought, hard. Eventually on some of the points it became natural, I changed. Where I no longer needed to fight myself. I was disciplined within myself in tasks. There were still some points I fought myself with.

 

What is interesting is that within all this my experience of myself was like me being hyper all the time, placing myself in hyperdrive in order to do everything believing it was the only way to get things done, but its not. Pushing through resistance does not mean fighting it - because the resistance is me and thus pointless to fight myself. I have been slowing myself down the past few weeks and breathing and stopped the endless fight with myself.

Day 123 - Stomach problems continue

 

An update on my body:

I have now gone almost 2 weeks without gluten. Thus far there has been no improvement and I started loosing weight and getting very tired. So instead of struggling to find the reason and diagnoses I going to a doctor. I have attempted to sort this out myself for months now without success so it time to seek professional advise.

P.S. Regarding my back - I was fine not rolling over in my sleep until last night and woke up this morning with a nice fresh neck and back pain. Lets see how this develops. A problem is that my back is out and hurting so I'm going to get it set again

Within all this to me it seems that I failed in fixing my stomach problems myself.

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to feel as if i have failed in fixing myself

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to believe that because my problem is not going away I am doing something wrong

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to fear that it might be something worse and thus anticipate the worse

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to create fear and anxiety in wondering ht could be happening to me

I forgive myself that i have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that i wont know for sure what is causing the problems with my body until I see a doctor

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to become angry at myself to having this problem where it affects my daily life and keeping me from fully participate

I forgive myself that i have accepted and allowed myself to not want to go to a doctor, because of me being stubborn in not wanting to admit that there is something happing to me that requires attention

I commit myself to stop wanting to do EVERYTHING myself - instead i realize that there are things that i cannot possibly do myself and that i do need assistance

I commit myself to stop the belief that i am doing something wrong if something takes longer than i expected it to  - instead i breath and be patient

I commit myself to  stop always anticipating the worse and create fear and anxiety - instead i see it is what it is and fearing it won change a thing so i stop

I commit myself to stop being angry at myself for not being able to participate effectively in my daily routine and to realize that if my body cannot handle it i will only harm myself more by not listening

I commit myself to when necessary to not wait in stubbornness but to seek out medical attention when needed.

Thanks