Happy New Year to you all.

My brain works in mysterious ways. At any given point during the last couple of hours, I could easily tell you how my current thinking came about by the thoughts immediately preceding. What is somewhat more nebulous is seeing the connection between New Year’s Day and the community of cells that make up our body. You see, somehow I got from thinking about what to write regarding the new year and ended up thinking about what we are.

I’m not sure how I got here. 🙂 Be that as it may, I’m fond of the thought that wherever we’ve ended up is precisely where we needed to be, so as I sit here at the computer ready to write, this is obviously the topic for which my fingers are ready. Whatever the topic will turn out to be.

Shall we begin? 🙂

Thanks to a recent and somewhat bizarre mix of deep meditation and Farscape reruns, I’ve been thinking a lot about the relationships we have with others. On my way back from the convenience store this morning (2011’s first “act of kindness” for me was to ensure my wife had milk for her coffee), I had a most enthusiastic encounter with another life form.

Perhaps not alien by definition, this particular dog was remarkable. There was a complete connection between the two of us, which I chose to honour and, thankfully, the dog’s owner allowed. We giggled and yipped with each other (not always in the order you’d assume) and generally looked completely unglued in our enthusiasm for greeting. After the light changed green and it was time to walk, we parted ways, but I was left with a strong sense of “wow” from our encounter.

The rest of my walk home featured a veritable landslide of commentary that featured both macro- and microscopic perspectives. My New Year’s greetings to the dog owner and convenience store clerk led to yips and giggles, beyond Earth to extraterrestrial encounters (hence the Farscape element) and down to the submicroscopic (courtesy of me pondering inflammation caused by coffee and chocolate-chip muffins). My mind raced, trying to place perspective on our encounters and our role in our communities.

Intriguingly, I had a very pronounced fractal representation of existence pop into my mind. I realized that the community that I was thinking about extended into my very understanding of the Oneness of Being. Each of us isn’t “one” at all; we are a community of trillions.

Trillions. We are trillions of cells. Think about what that means. Life is not about compartmentalizing Oneness into trillions of components; life is the cooperation and communication of trillions of organisms to create a greater expression of that Oneness. We tend to forget that our singularity of expression is the result of the cohabitation of trillions of diverse cells. Our evolution, really, is the coming together over time of many, many types of cells that have learned to live together in harmony for the benefit of the greater good.

Each of our cell types perform vital roles in our ability to survive. Each of our cell types come from a common source: the stem cell. Stem cells are rather miraculous in appearance in that they seem to magically become whatever the body needs. Rather than magic, however, stem cells become whatever their conditions create. If you place a stem cell in one environment, it will be come one kind of cell. Change the environment and any stem cells within it will become a different kind of cell. And, as we have become very aware, change the environment enough and the stem cells will die (and so will we).

The fractal view extends downward into the quantum realm and back up beyond the solar system, milky way, the Local Group of galaxies and on and on. At every level, we see the same thing: organizations of energy and matter that have come together to create something greater. Whether we’re looking through an electron microscope or at the ultra-deep fields taken by the HST, the vista looks much the same.

In the end, a macrophage inside a cell experiences the same sense of vastness within the confines of a cell membrane as we might on the Earth.  As we move up and down our fractal perspective, we see universes within universes. To that end, our knowledge of the finite expression postulated via the Big Bang may only scratch at the surface. We can, after all, only see as far as we can see.

And yet … We are all inextricably linked. We are all aspects of Source and, as such, share a common base of consciousness. That common base of consciousness extends inward and “downward” to our cells, chemicals, molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles and into the very vibrations of quantum strings that make up Source itself. That common base, then, can only extend and expand upward to include all the planets, solar systems, galaxies and whatever even greater superstructures there are that we have yet to discover.

We’re all connected. We are stardust. There are bits of the sun in each of our cells. The very strings that vibrate deep within the most elemental quantum aspects of our expression share their existence across all the universe itself. The intention that sparked the possibility of existence into Being is something that everything shares.

In the end, none of us could possibly be alone. Our thoughts are the sum of the collaboration and communication of trillions of cells. Within our supposedly homogeneous make-up, we enjoy the symbiotic relationship with trillions more bacteria and viruses. Within a single human body, a community strives to maintain harmony and balance that perpetuates the growth and betterment of the whole.

And so in looking both inward and outward, I am drawn today to encourage you to see the community in all levels and aspects of life. Remind yourself that how you think, eat, sleep and act affects all manner of life within. As well, remember that how you think, eat, sleep and act affects all manner of life without. There is no separation. Universes within universes.