What we are made of
I personally believe that we are a little more than just the sum of all of our parts. Those parts, which I like to call “the pillars of existence”, are what make us uniquely human. Imbalances between them create ripple effects on our overall quality of life in this human experience of ours.
The Pillars
Mind, Body, Emotions, Soul…we all have heard about those, right? These are our four pillars. We are supposed to cultivate a sound mind, train and diet for a healthy body, have balanced emotions and a blissful spiritual life that connects us to something higher than ourselves. And so we set out on that task and tackle each of those four areas one by one. We take mindfulness classes, sign up for the gym, do an anger management course and try to be more consistent in our religious or spiritual practice…only to find that the moment something, anything, occurs in our life that we aren’t prepared for and don’t like, it all comes crashing down on us again. Back to Square One with the unpleasant feeling of failure and not going anywhere.
So why is that?
Because as I said at the beginning of this post…we are more than just the sum of our parts, i.e. pillars. Mind, body, emotions and our soul are intricately connected in a variety of ways. If we treat them as isolated entities, developing potential in one of the four areas will always be at the expense of one or more of the others.
Mind, Body, Emotions, Soul
The human mind, someone famous once said, is our greatest blessing and our worst curse. It is the generator of thoughts, the creator of penicillin, the hydrogen bomb and the feeling that our neighbor does not like us. It does all that, and it does it pretty much constantly. As we all have experienced at some point, if it is left unchecked it can run pretty rampart on occasion. In that process it is able to produce a lot of emotions that can be, let’s say, difficult to handle.
Mind to Body, Emotions and Soul – the prime connection
Emotions are primarily bodily expressions of our thinking. They give us feedback on the quality of our thoughts. That’s why it is impossible for any one person to make us feel a certain way – like, sad for example. We feel sad because our mind generates thoughts about that person’s behavior. These thoughts trigger neurochemical processes that actually give us the feeling of sadness – no magic involved, and certainly no one on the outside. Emotions and the body are inseparable. We all know this – we have all experienced how we can actually feel our emotions physically, from the sweaty hands of fear to the blushing of shame and embarrassment and everything in between.
As for spirituality – we all have that, and it doesn’t matter one bit whether you are a staunch atheist or the most devout of religious believers or anything in between. Actually, it is totally irrelevant if you are religious at all. Our soul is the part hidden deeper inside us. It is our very core, and is normally difficult for us to access because we so much love to distract ourselves and surround us with as much “white noise” as possible. Seeking out the “consciousness within”, our “higher self” or whatever you like to call it, has become very much en vogue these days. But again, without a sound mind that generates healthy thoughts the search for spiritual fulfillment will be a futile task – because our mind runs most of the show in our daily lives, and it needs to create space for the soul to thrive.
Equilibrium
As you already read in the “Life Mastery” post, homeostasis is all-important. Look at your human existence as a beautiful but temporary experience. The goal is to enjoy the journey while fulfilling a purpose – and you simply can’t do that with parts inside you battling each other.
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