The body you live inside of is a temple. It's made up of forces that are well beyond human understanding.

Though beyond our understanding, the forces we are made of are not beyond our control. Once we learn to grow and shape our internal forces, they will lend us spectacular power. If we ignore them, however, these exact same forces will turn sour and rot inside of us.

I believe the host of degenerative diseases, and the diseases that weaken our systems and lead us through a slow, long death, are entirely the result of neglect of our own incredible internal resources. And I believe that engaging our internal resources is the secret to a fulfilling life, a long life, a healthy life, and a happy life.

What exactly is it that differentiates a living cell from a dead cell? What differentiates a living creature from a dead creature? You can take a dead man, place him on a bike, move his legs around to pedal the bike, and he just doesn't come back to life. Try making his heart beat regularly just like it used to. Still not alive again? How about if we force some air into the lungs. Hmmm. Still dead. Sit him in a chair and chomp his jaws over some cereal. Force the cereal down his esophagus. What? Still dead?

We have put men on the moon. We have cloned mammals. We have split the atom. But we have not and will never return the dead to life.

There are specific physiological dysfunctions that define death. Our hearts quit beating and our lungs stop expanding and our kidneys cease filtering and our toes no longer wiggle. But once we restore these functions in a dead creature, life doesn't return.

It seems like once we are dead, it's very hard to stop.

There is a difference that is very important between something alive and something dead. It is not something mechanical like the failure of a heart valve or the presence of a large tumor. If it was only this, we would never die. We have, for generations, had the ability to restore or to remove these imperfections.

That difference between the dead and the living is the force that is life. There is no other name for this force. It is not measurable or fathomable by the way of controlled, empirical science. There is no precise physical formula to predict the actions of this force. There can be no experiments compartmentalizing this force into a canny theory.

It is as powerful and as supernatural as any force that we've heard of in bedtime stories or read about in books.

It is what animates tissues that would otherwise be as dead as a lump of clay. It is what makes our presence in this world possible. It is what makes this world itself the most remarkable of all the worlds we know.

The force of life, the force we are made of, is a force that holds power over all of the inert forces. Everything that is not alive is something which we hold power over. We of course may have a problem calming the sea with a thought, or forcing wheat out of sand. We do not have supernatural powers as overt as that. But we do have control over the inert objects and the inert forces surrounding us because of the fact that we are alive and they are not.

Not only are we alive, we are the pinnacle of living creatures. The force of life, as it exists inside of us, is this force in its most complex, most intelligent form.

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