In My Head

Is That All There Is to It?

If you saw the film What the Bleep Do We Know? or have paid attention to some of the neurobiological research that has periodically gotten news coverage over the last ten years, you have heard about the biochemical basis of love. With some degree of certainty, we know that the feelings and behaviors that we associate with "love" are ascribed to a mix of neuropeptides, hormones, and other informational molecules that set off an explosion of nerve bundles in the limbic system of the brain. This is our emotional center, so these signals have to be filtered and processed through brain centers with higher, more rational function, but the primitive feelings are primary.

There goes the mystery. In a quantum poof, all transcendent states, pitter-patters of the heart, and the mystery glue that somehow holds our society together in couples and families from generation to blissful generation become nothing more than a series of nerve cells shooting their axons off, lighting up other nerve cells, and so on. What a letdown.

Stepping back a bit from life as a cell, it all gets a little more complex than just a chemical equation. Time and time again, it becomes exquisitely clear that we are people who need each other for our very survival. As infants we need parents to love us to keep us alive. As adults we need to love each other to raise our own families, to heal each other, and to divide the labor of living. As elders we need others to love us to help us live to the end of our lives and then care for our bodies after our spirits have moved on. We need the love of each other for survival. We are people who need people, all of us.

But not everybody gets this. Not everybody realizes that we need each other, that love and what we do with it is synonymous with our survival as individuals and as a planet. Not everybody wants to play on the planet-Earth team. We play our own solo games instead, believing that we are enough unto ourselves, whether as individuals or as nations.

It's every person for himself and the world just keeps getting crazier.

What if we open our hearts a little and let those love neurojuices flow a bit more? Open ourselves up to each other, recognize that we can't live without each other, and open up our hearts just a little bit more? Because the more we love each other, the better we feel. And the better we feel, the less likely we are to blow each other up, or run each other over, or try to cheat each other out of a few thousand. It's simple, I know. Too simple, maybe. But I do know that it really is our only chance. Either we are loving each other, or we're killing each other. Every single one of us.

While the theme of this issue is "love," the message is about connection. We have an opportunity in each moment to realize the true manifestation of ourselves as human beings, loving human beings, or not. Whether we are in meditation, or teaching, or healing, or walking to the store, we have an opportunity to open our hearts up to the world. We can spread a little love, fire up a little limbic love in ourselves, and get that fire started up in somebody else. Pretty soon the whole neighborhood is juiced up with a groovy kind of cellular fireworks. One molecule really can change the world.

Enjoy this issue. May you be who you are in the biggest way possible. May the love you feel be multiplied ten times over and showered upon you. May each of us see that we are all one. May we all do and be our own personal best.

Very truly yours,
Stevan A. Walkowski
Editor