THE SACRED CELL: WHAT NATURE TEACHES US ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

By Diane Tegtmeier

You’re invited on a journey into the deeper complexities of human relationships with The Sacred Cell as your guide.

Move through your struggles with family, lovers, and community by following the principles of Nature’s masterpiece—the cell membrane—as it manages relationships in all living systems.

An expanded understanding of sexuality in Nature offers insight into how we can co-create solutions to the personal and planetary crises we now face. Diane’s personal stories and practice exercises are included to help you along Nature’s way and follow a path of Oneness with all life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Azalea Art Press
• Release date: Apr 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781943471836

Book preview

Chapter Listings

Preface

Section I:

The Cell Membrane Model

Introduction

Chapter 1:

Oneness

Chapter 2:

Differentiation

Chapter 3:

Selective Permeability—

The Key to a Smart, Open System

Chapter 4:

Containment

Chapter 5:

Centering

Chapter 6:

Relationship Field

Section II:

Healthy Family Relationships

Introduction

Chapter 7:

Intergenerational Family Patterns

Chapter 8:

Balancing the Family System

Chapter 9:

Parenting

Chapter 10:

Siblings

Section III:

An Evolutionary Look at Sexuality

Introduction

Chapter 11:

Sex in Nature

Chapter 12:

Human Co-Creative Sexuality

Chapter 13:

Embodying the Complexities

Section IV.

Healthy Community Relationships

Introduction

Chapter 14:

Money, Gifts, and Reciprocity

Chapter 15:

Cells in the Workplace

Chapter 16:

Governance

Chapter 17:

The Evolutionary Journey Continues

Appendices, References, Acknowledgments, About the Author, and Contact Information

Appendix I:

The SMART Process

Appendix II:

Practice Exercises

References

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Contact

Preface

In this book, we will take a close look at what natural systems can teach us about relationships.

Listen

Have you ever been sitting on the shore of the ocean or a lake, or walking through the forest, maybe pondering some question in your life, when suddenly, an insight arrives? Something comes through that puts things in perspective? That’s what it’s like for me at times when I need a little push, need to understand something that my brain just can’t resolve. When I listen to Nature, I pull something out of the background wisdom that permeates all living systems. When I’m ready to listen, my doors of perception open.

Recently, walking through the forest, I listened. On that day, I heard, Now is the time to write about Nature’s relationships. Life depends on humanity learning and practicing the way all living systems relate to each other in peace and harmony. It came not as words, but as an insight or inner knowing arising out of my connection to the forest.

I thought, Oh, no! Not again! It took me seven years to write my first book, Relationships that Heal, Natural Ethics for Today’s Health Practitioners. Now I'm asked to apply those same natural principles to all levels of human relationships? Ugh! Writing is not my favorite thing to do. I’d rather hike in Nature, not write about it.

My resistance eased, however, as I heard clients and friends being unable to trust their lovers or talk to their family and friends about touchy subjects, like politics and religion. Many felt isolated in a world of rapid change. We were also in a pandemic, the Western United States was on fire, and the climate was and is changing everywhere. I kept hearing, life depends on relationship, and I realized the forest was right. This is how I can help.

I realized I could draw on my experience in biochemistry research, environmental activism, clinical social work, and energy healing to bring my lifelong study and intimacy with Nature into another book that would serve all I love. It felt like a sacred calling.

What voices are you listening to? The screamers in the news? The voices in the street? The fears grabbing your gut? Come with me into Nature—into the forest, the prairie, the ocean. Let’s look and listen closely to these natural cellular relationship systems that have thrived through billions of years of evolution.

What can they tell us about relationships that can lead us on pathways to peace? We don’t need to be shamans or psychics to listen to these teachers of the natural world. When we follow an urge to take a walk or stand in silence under a tree that attracts our attention, we are listening. The next turn in our evolutionary spiral demands this skill. This skill can be practiced, and it grows from there.

Throughout the evolution of life on Earth, crises have always led to higher levels of complexity and consciousness. Consider that wild ecosystems have no waste. Ponder the reality that each unique organism has value and contributes to the whole.

There are no boundaries in Nature, only selectively permeable membranes that make choices about what serves the individual and the community and what doesn’t. Ecosystems communicate through a worldwide web of cells and energy that our technology is only beginning to emulate.

Many of us are listening when Nature teaches and the time is right. It’s time now to step more consciously into the evolutionary dance of life.

—Diane Tegtmeier

March 2024

I. THE CELL MEMBRANE MODEL

Introduction

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We humans find ourselves living amidst countless individual species, each with their own unique qualities and roles to play. As I walk beside the creek in the forest, I’m aware of many species relating to each other and to me. Plants grow in varying heights to receive just the right amount of sun or shade to foster their growth. Several species of animals serve the continuation of forest life by pairing up with just the right flowers. Fungi form a web of communication throughout the whole system. The same kinds of molecules that transmit messages within our nervous systems are at work among the cells of the living tissue everywhere around me. How do they do this, and what can we learn from them?

Some years ago, on a walk in the woods, I pondered how I would teach bodywork students about ethical relationships with their clients. I was reminded of lessons from my Cell Physiology class over 50 years ago. A few years later, I was impressed by a presentation by Janine Benyus at a Bioneers Conference. She described her work, Biomimicry, in which she turns to Nature to design technologies that align with the way life has evolved in response to challenges.

In what follows, I will take you on a tour of experiences and insights—direct results of my connection with the natural world—that now guide me in my own relationships, my healing practice, and how I live my life.

The Cell Membrane:

A Mirror and Mode

for Relationships of All Kinds

All living beings are made up of highly differentiated cells. A selectively permeable membrane holds the cell together and contains all the components each cell needs to do its job. For example, the membrane knows how to attract the precise molecules each cell needs to thrive and screen out the ones it doesn’t. In this way, the cell membrane allows for highly complex forms of communication within a smart, open system.

This is true for all life, regardless of the ecosystem we are talking about. Life wouldn’t be viable if each cell in each plant or animal just did its own thing, as if it were separate from the others. Each of these systems consists of an intricate bundle of relationships necessary to sustain life, and the cell membrane manages all of them.

A Living Cell

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Artist’s illustration of a living cell,

showing the cell membrane enlarged.

It’s exactly the same in us humans. Inside your body, for example, your highly developed heart cells are worthless without their relationship to all your other cells. The same holds true in the relationship between you and the world beyond your individual body. In a real sense, you are like a cell in the larger body of Nature.

A small example: When you step into the forest, you effortlessly become part of that system as you breathe oxygen given off by the green plants. They, in turn, take in the carbon dioxide you breathe out and use that CO2 to turn the sun’s energy into food with obvious benefits all around. Life depends on relationships like this one, and the cell membrane manages all of them.

The principles of the cell membrane and how it functions carry over into how we relate within the large systems of human interaction. Let’s take a close look at six principles at work in cell membranes that have direct analogues in human interactions. You will be surprised how many of the issues in our personal and professional relationships were worked out long ago by the cell membrane.

Six Cell Membrane Principles

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CHAPTER 1 | ONENESS

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The cell membrane is a smart, open system that enables cells to relate to each other and the organisms of which they are a part. As part of the web of life, we humans are literally cells in a greater body. Our actions affect the whole.

Viewed through a microscope, we see the cell membrane as a matrix of molecules that both hold the cell together and allow the movement of information in and out of the cell.  In this smart, open system of cells, organs, tissues and organisms, each part offers its unique gift to the functioning of the whole. 

We humans got off track when we stepped out of our sense of Oneness with all life. This was the beginning point of the problems we are now facing in relationship with each other and the more than human world, and it has been an ongoing process. In a nutshell: some say (McElvaine.