By Jeff Martens
Your cells are blind. They don’t have ears. And their sense of smell leaves much to be desired. What they do have though are inter-membrane proteins. And this is the key to putting a smile on your cell’s DNA (or a frown).
In yoga, the teaching of samtosha or fulfillment is the secret of contentment and gratitude now, in this moment. Not waiting for something else in the future to make us complete. The challenge of this is that we keep experiencing our present circumstances as reality and keep feeding this experience into the environment around our cells, thereby reinforcing the external reality on the inside over and over again. This locks us into our past on a physiological or cellular level, and as a result we keep re-creating ourselves based on our habitual perceptions of the past.
Contrary thoughts are repelled by becoming the opposite.
It is not enough just to think or wish yourself different. You have to feel different. With your senses. Now. Your present circumstances may feel like a locked prison cell. However when we can cultivate the opposite, when we can find joy in the midst of sorrow, strength in the midst of weakness and calmness in the face of adversity, we can literally change What the ancient yogis knew long ago modern science is now confirming: that an attitude of gratitude can actually change your perception of a given situation and ultimately change the experience as well.
In his book “Awakened Imagination”, Neville Goddard tells the story of a blind woman in the 1950s who took the bus to work every day. When the busses were rerouted, her 15 minute ride to work turned into a multi-transfer affair that would stretch into two hours or more. After careful consideration, she came to the conclusion that she needed to drive to work – something, of course, she could not do for herself. Nevertheless, she did not let that stop her. She did not dwell on the impossibility of it or wallow in self-pity. She knew she would have to be driven to work. And though she had no idea how this would happen, she did not limit herself trying to figure out the how. Instead she focused on experiencing what she wanted right then and there. She sat and imagined herself riding in a car, feeling the motion and stopping, smelling the odors, touching the sleeve of the driver to get in and out of the car. She felt the car come to a final stop at her destination and turned to the driver and said “Thank you very much, sir. She then heard the driver respond that it was his pleasure and she got out of the car and went into work.
When we change our attitude – which is based upon our perceptions of ourselves and our lives – we have the potential to have everything change. On a cellular level this means changing the environment around the cells. Why? Recent studies and research spearheaded by Bruce Lipton and brought into awareness through the science of quantum physics as early as the 1930s point to the importance of the cellular environment in determining the experience for our cells. Your cells ‘feel’ what you experience, and more importantly, how you perceive it. For it is this environment and not some pre-mapped fate in the DNA that is the prime determining factor for how the physical expression of life within us will grow.
Calming Awareness dawns as suffering is met with friendliness, compassion, joy and happiness, as the virtuous and non-virtuous are met with neutrality.
Just as there is an incredible wisdom orchestrating the functioning of the human body and all of its cells, so too is there a mysterious wonder linking an coordinating all of creation. Quantum Physicists know this as “The Field”. Spiritual paths call it God or a higher intelligence. When we meet a challenge such as getting to work with a great attitude, we open the possibility for miracles and the unexplained (from our old point-of-view) to happen. The blind woman visualized and directly experienced her imaginary ride for two days when she was told about a newspaper story mentioning a man who was interested in helping the blind. She called this man and stated her need to the man. The next day this man was in a bar and mentioned the woman’s plight to the bar’s owner. A stranger sitting nearby said that he could take her to work in the mornings. At this point, the man said that if the stranger took her in the mornings, he would take her home in the evenings.
Because our cells cannot directly sense the outside world, to know the world we live in there is a reliance on the external senses, the breath rhythm and the “vibration” of thoughts (including peptide chains of emotion pumped into the bloodstream through the hypothalamus). From this cellular environment, certain processes are activated in the cell’s structure and DNA that can literally change the course of our bodily evolution, one cell at a time. Through awareness, asana, pranayama and dharana, yoga offers us many tools to change the cellular or gross aspect of our beings by engaging the most subtle. This gives the opportunity to be a conscious living expression of the Divine Law of entanglement or synchronicity to the point that we literally experience a different concept o ourselves and therefor, a different reality. Then we live this reality as our real and direct experience. Then we can be like the blind woman on her first actual car ride to her office which took less than 15 minutes, she turned to the man who drove her and said “Thank you very much, sir.” And then she received the reply “The pleasure is all mine.”
Jeff Martens teaches yoga therapy and other workshops such as “Quantum Biology”. For more info, visit our workshop page.