How My World Works - Pt 2
The three body problem: physical, mental, spiritual
When I called the series how my world works, I meant how I constructed it for myself. As I’ve said in part 1 and I’m sure will repeat again, I don’t think of any of it as truth. It’s more of how I relate to the world that makes the most sense in the context of my life.
I wrote it for two reasons:
Clarify my own thoughts (which is ridiculously hard I tell you. You think you know what you think until you need to write it down).
Entertainment value. I love reading about how other people see the world.
The beauty of Life is that it’s inherently mysterious and no one really knows what it is. Fun!
Humans are the holy triad: body, mind and spirit (yes, I’m aware of the Christian influence. Read a great piece on why everyone’s Christian). In other words, I’m equal parts animal, human and soul (maybe consciousness is a better word because I don’t relate to the word soul, but most people do so I’ll stick to it).
I do think about it as a three-body problem (unrelated to this but great book series!) because if one or more parts break down or are operated under subpar conditions, I lose access to the full experience. So it’s important to understand how each part operates and how to take care of it.
The Body
The body is a machine. It needs to sleep, eat, breathe, self-regulate and do other crazy stuff like pump blood, regulate hormones etc.
The body is a very important aspect of my life because it lets me experience Life. I'm done if a big system failure occurs like my heart stops.
It’s designed so perfectly that sometimes I pause to wonder how such complicated machinery even exists. Have you ever cut a finger and then noticed how much more difficult your life has become? And that’s just one finger.
Anyway 👇
To have a well running machinery, I have to make sure the basic things are taken care of
I sleep enough (P.S. The 8-hour rule is false. Our sleep cycle is 90 mins and if we wake up in the middle of it, we feel groggy. 8 hours IS waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle. So it’s best to sleep 6, 7.5 or 9 hrs/night)
I eat the right diet for me. I was a vegetarian for 8 years but transitioned into eating meat within the last year and feel ridiculously good (read more here). Makes me wonder what else I’m not doing that would have a massive positive impact on my life.
So when it comes to diet it really doesn’t matter what you eat, as long as it feels right. This is a big caveat because most people are so disconnected from their bodies that they don’t know what feels right.
Mini rant
Diet has also been turned into identity. Have you noticed that a carnivore, a vegan, a gluten-free, or a keto person will add this to their social media bio as if that’s a big part of who they are? It’s just food, calm down. No one ever says “I’m a middle-aged bureaucrat who eats a varied diet and vacations one month a year.” But someone will write '“I run a 7-figure modelling agency, am the CEO of 10 other businesses, mom of 22, keto-, vegan gluten-free world traveller, 690 countries and counting.” Social media has us present the most extreme or interesting parts of our identity to signal where we’re at socially.
But I digress. Back to machinery operating manual 👇
I move my body. The more versatile the better as long as I get my heart rate up, strengthen my muscles, and stretch, I’m happy
I stopped drinking at 22 (29 now) and never missed it. During those 7 years had a drink two or three times and didn’t get why people do that every weekend
The rest such as supplements, ice baths, sauna, skincare (interesting podcast on how 99% of skincare is BS) are important but secondary
I’m 100% convinced that my thoughts affect my body and worked a lot on developing a positive relationship with my body.
The mind
It’s a hard thing to describe because it’s so abstract. I tried googling and there are too many different descriptions, so I’ll assume you know what I’m referring to.
Clarity of mind = quality of thoughts. Dare I say our minds are highly impressionable but we don’t do enough work to clear the garbage.
Here are some things I observed about my mind
reading the news, watching violent anything, listening to complaining, negativity and other forms of toxicity make my mind fearful and negative
whatever the mind thinks feels like it’s ME thinking that (spoiler alert: it’s false)
thoughts are mostly automatic mental garbage created by past programming, survival instinct and reinforcing identity & ego
my thoughts have nothing to do with me (the real me). As mentioned earlier, we identify with the voice in our head even though we’re not it. If you can hear the voice how can you be the voice? Doesn’t make any sense. When I hear a TV, I don’t think I’m the TV 🤷♀️.
Most of the time, that voice is equivalent to an asylum escapee. I look at the tree and it tells me this is a tree. I know, I can see, why comment on what’s obvious? I have a conversation with someone and the person goes away and then the voice rehashes the conversation, argues with itself, with the person then jumps to what I’m going to have for dinner tonight all in the span of 20 secs. If my friend behaved this way, I would never take anything they say seriously.
So I train my mind by
meditation, metacognition, mindfulness and visualisation
carefully picking the information coming in
creating distraction-free environment
picking out friends that inspire rather than put me down
resisting false dopamine hits (social media)
exerting mental effort (focusing and doing the hard things)
learning new things, being interested and open-minded
You know the old saying “The mind is a good servant but a terrible master”? It’s true in my world. It seems it’s true for most entrepreneurs too (basing this on podcast interviews I listen to).
Spirit (soul)
Since I was young, it was evident that there’s more than meets the eye. This life that we are presented with doesn’t feel like it.
To be clear, I don’t believe in past lives, soul contracts, karma, heaven and hell or other religion-made morality stuff but I do believe there are some laws. Remember, I think that the most likely thing is that we’re living in a Simulation or Maya and every game has its set of rules.
The game is to make everything appear so real that we forget we’re in a game. The goal of the game: to realise that we create our own reality. (I know I know, Matrix much?)
But that implies that someone created the game aka higher power. My explanation breaks down beyond this point and as I said in part 1, I don’t really care if that’s the case. Am I insane? I don’t know, that is definitely possible but in the context of my life it works just fine so I’ll stick to it, at least for now 😂
But I derail again. I think there’s more to us than our animal and human side. There’s a part that transcends that and I call it consciousness. I’ve been consistently meditating for over 2 years now and once in a while I experience oneness.
I also read a series of books by Jed Mckenna recently and his main point is that the only testable truth is I AM. And if I am, everything I see is appearing within me. You've got to read the books to understand his argument, I am NOT doing it justice here. But you could start with this article 👈
I feel like I could say so much but it would turn into a philosophical paper and I’m steering away from philosophizing these days. I heard a thought on a podcast about a month ago that people who over-analyse life, its meaning and purpose are simply neurotic and struggle to live in the present moment. It stuck with me and it was true about me so I stopped and feel much happier 🙂 💛
To reiterate, I don’t think it matters what the “truth’ is as long as it works. I don’t need to believe in the Universe giving stuff out to me to get the things I want.
Part 3 about perceptions, beliefs, personality and other stuff is coming soon.
Love ya,
💖 Rima
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