Sunday Newscape Magazine

Our Deepest Fear by Marianne Williamson: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

Are you a Star Trek fan? Not The Next Generation or whatever came after...no, the original show with a gallant, but egotistical, Kirk and a brilliant, but aloof, Mr. Spock. I remember watching every week as Captain Kirk and the crew faced ferocious extraterrestrial beasts (now laughingly primitive special effects) and beamed up and down in and out of danger. What I loved most was the message behind each episode. Each had a “moral to the story” built within the action. Something that made the futuristic drama seem a bit more relevant to a young kid.

In one episode, the Enterprise (since Waking Up goes out internationally and I’m not at all sure whether Star Trek made it that far, the Enterprise was their space craft) received intelligent signals from an uninhabited planet. Kirk and the crew beamed down and found a cave with glass-encased brains mounted on pedestals. With no mechanical ability to communicate with vocal chords, the brains could still communicate through telepathy.

They related that they too had once had bodies and over generations and centuries their intellect had grown so large that their bodies began to be unimportant - and eventually, they had no need of a body so they simply evolved into just a brain. They could imagine and dream and create with their minds, but over the centuries, some of them had begun to miss the ability to “feel” and experience in a way that only a body can fulfill. To touch, to feel pain, to breathe deeply, to smell. They missed it so much that they lured spaceships to them in hopes of being able to transfer their intellect into a near-standing body and hijack that body for as long as it lived. Hence, the presence of the Enterprise crew.

Sometimes I wonder if our world isn’t headed in the same direction. Just like the enshrined brains, we’ve put our own intellects on a pedestal and have often forgotten the majesty of the body. We thirst for knowledge, we reward intelligence - and we neglect our bodies and demean our emotions. We forget, or perhaps just don’t value, that we are multidimensional beings. We have a body, a mind, and a spirit.

As civilization has evolved, you can see the pattern. Hard labor (body) was replaced by machines and those with better ideas (mind) were put in charge. Emotions were denigrated as brute bodily responses from a person who had not achieved intellectual superiority. Emotions were either wimpish or criminal.

And where was spirit in all this? Spirit was cast as evil and voodoo. It was irrelevant to the advancement of humankind...even detrimental.

It seems as we recognize more capabilities, we feel a need to make the old capabilities wrong or bad. Like going berry picking and for each new berry you pick, you throw out the one you already have in your bucket. Instead of our “one or the other” thinking, it’s time we recognize that it’s all good. The elated and distressing emotions, the body that brings pleasure and pain, the mind that creates magnificence and folly. These are the human endowments that allow us to experience and make decisions about what we wish to experience.

But, it’s our eternal spirit that gives meaning to it all. Spirit is the compass pointing to true joy and our human-ness (body, mind, emotions) is our ship experiencing calm seas and perfect storms. Just for the experience - to feel, to enjoy, to engage. Our spirit knows that all those experiences are relevant to us as human beings, but inconsequential to us as spiritual beings. We’re here to experience, to risk, to jump in with both feet. We aren’t here to play it safe or to ignore our incredible capacity to create what we want.

We are our Creator’s expression of magnificence. We aren’t defective or incapable or weak. To believe so is delusional. And if you like deluding yourself, have a ball! But, if lying to yourself about how glorious life is and how amazing it feels to be alive is killing you, then give it up. You have the capacity to create what you want. Star Trek’s mission was to “Boldly go where no man has gone before.” Should yours be any less?

(c) Karen Wright all rights reserved - http://www.wrightminded.com - Catch Karen’s latest podcast at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Hearts-on-Fire