The Emperor in My Brain: A Journey Through Molecular Memory and the Great Cosmic Dispersal
What is existence? I can think because microcurrents of electricity are triggered by the release of the simplest of neurotransmitters within the neurons of my brain. I can walk because my brain has perfected the symphony of neuronal firings it takes to coordinate the complex actions required for movement and balance of my physical body. I have a sense of self... I know where you end and where I begin. I can feel physical sensation. I can be cold, or hot. I can feel pain or pleasure. I have emotions. I can be sad, happy, or ecstatic. I can taste the delight of morning coffee. I can see majesty in a babbling creek. I hear airplanes flying low overhead and I feel the soft caress of a lovers embrace. Is this existence? Does our existence reside within our physical bodies? Could there be more? Could it be limitless? Timeless?
Could it be that a single molecule within my current body has flowed through time, having once been a part of a Roman emperor's brain? Could I have been a small part of the edge of the wound in the side of Christ? Could I have been the crown of thorns? Could a part of me have also been a part of Ghandi? Was I once a Buddhist Monk? Was I present when the library of Alexandria burned? Did I vibrate and shudder when the water of the great flood beat against me in the form of Noah's ark? Could I have existed silently upon the top of the great pyramid for a century before being blown across the desert to find a new life as the muck in the bottom of the river bed. Did I sit for a millennia at the bottom of the deepest ocean as the earth spun endlessly, and the moon my only friend as it exerted it's gravitational pull on the ocean tides as my only connection to the outside. Was I the bullet that shot Abraham Lincoln? Did a molecule that resides in me now once run through the savannah as a great cat? Could I have once flown through the sky over great oceans as the albatross?
If our molecules are continuously recycled, even as we live and shed ourselves, then is it possible that even now, I am flying free, or galloping, or creating... Shape shifting endlessly. If we expand our thoughts further we might begin to sense that we could, with enough dispersal, be everywhere. That is to say, what was part of me yesterday, is a part of you today. Have we shared sacred space? Did you receive a part of me because of my presence? Did I accept the offering you gave to me?
We must consider all that goes through us. What was growing in the farmers field, that which he harvested through great effort, is fully incorporated into my physical being today, the physical being in which my spirit resides and takes refuge. Does the farmer reside with me? Am I the Farmer?
If we allow ourselves the freedom to fully let the mind wonder through this endlessly, we begin to experience the sense of unity. There is no difference. I am you. You are me. Many parts that we now each call our own belonged to someone else previously. In this way, how could any part of us be individual? We are, we exist, and in this moment you may be yours... but in the next moment you are not the same. What was yours now belongs to another, or is now owned by the earth. You are now the dust bunny under the couch. The mouse ate you yesterday and today you become the mouse. We do not exist in isolation and the unity of all things, the recycling of ourselves, is the oneness.
At one point, humanity came into existence. There was a moment, the birth of a particularly peculiar great ape, in which we became distinct. Our collective journey began. Our sacred identity was bestowed upon us. And, as it always has been, we are nothing because we are everything.
