Comforting Thought: Your body is not just mineral and elemental. No, it’s vividly alive

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Comforting Thought: Your body is not just mineral and elemental. No, it’s vividly alive #bookquote #love #spirituality

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We only get one body in this life, the one we are each endowed with at this moment. Please begin by giving yours the respect it deserves.

Did you realise that every atom is 14.5 billion years old? All bodies are part of matter, created at the big bang, 10 billion years before earth appeared.

The water in your body seems to flow into your mouth from a fountain or a glass, then out again through pores and orifices. But like all of the waters on earth, no one knows where it came from. Perhaps a comet’s tail, it’s said.

Your body isn’t just mineral and elemental. No, it’s vividly alive, as anyone knows who’s ever danced, had a sore throat, made love or stubbed a toe.

All of the baroque variety of life on earth is considered to come from a tiny common ancestor who appeared about 4 billion years ago.

Still today, on a cellular level, basic functions like respiration look similar in plants and animals. So does your DNA -we humans share about half of our genetic material with plants. We truly aren’t very far away from anything.

Our salty blood remembers oceanic origins, the structure of our spines and ribs was first developed by fish. Population geneticists agree that all of us are literally one family. What would our world be like if everyone acted on this truth?

Yet as connected as we are, there is astonishing diversity even within human beings. Each person is utterly distinct. Our fingerprints, toeprints and tongueprints will never be reproduced.

Scientists believe that the human brain is the most complex object in the universe, capable of making one hundred trillion neural connections. Lay all of your neurons end to end and they’ll reach to the moon and back. Awake, asleep or dreaming, your brain is active night and day, a magic lantern. Not only that but your brain is capable of self-awareness.

Brain and body are inseparable collaborators, producing the symphony that fully absorbs us. This is the wonder of life. How amazing that we can even be amazed.

Sharon Salzberg

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Quote extracted from: Real Love – The Art of Mindful Connection by Sharon Salzberg

Written in short chapters that culminate in in-depth guided meditations, this is a book that spans vast tracts of interdisciplinary knowledge from the areas of Buddhism, Christianity, Psychology, Sociology and brings together these fields in a compelling, thought-provoking and deeply nourishing way. This is a book for the soul and spirit yes – but tempered with scientific knowledge and grounded practical advice for how to improve one’s ability to give and receive love in its variety of different forms.