It’s been said that “we are what we eat”. On the surface, this sounds fairly meaningful and provocative, but on closer inspection is a rather feeble comment.
The cliche attempts to invoke a pause in our daily round before we have our next meal in hopes that we consider the wisdom of it. Not a bad idea, but in metabolizing food, we break it down through the chemical action of enzymes into glucose, amino acids, minerals, salt, and water. So while the cliche is true, it is more a matter of recognizing that everything we eat is, at root, the same essential stuff. We are a complex and continuous reforming of key molecules into which all foods are analyzed. A much more provocative and meaningful idea, with spirituality in mind, is the statement: We are what we think. Now that really piques my interest.
I can recall occasions when I was thinking of something upsetting, and caught myself walking rapidly as if fleeing a threat. I think we all have had racing thoughts to the point of almost feeling feverish and having trouble sleeping because of it. Indeed, our entire physiology responds rapidly to ideas. In my biofeedback practice, I see the result of ideas on physiology daily, influencing skin temperature fluctuations and shifts of electromyographic activity as a result of what we are discussing accompanied by changes in EEG (brain waves), EKG and skin conductance. All of these metrics are correlated with the contents of consciousness.
A former client that was a gymnast struggled with her routine on the uneven bars, always freezing at one point. Though she had never fallen, her fear of doing so, after seeing others become seriously injured , threw a wrench into her otherwise smooth performance. In biofeedback, as she closed her eyes and described her routine to me , in terms of what she was seeing and feeling,there were marked energy deflections as she approached that one movement . After learning corrective relaxation just before, during, and after that one segment of the routine, she managed to describe it to me with no deflections on these measures. At that point she was ready to tackle it in the gym, and she was subsequently poetry in motion. This example shows that fear- generating ideas and imagery were the triggers of performance inhibition.
As Shakespeare put it: ” Thinking makes it so.” Though we may adopt vegetarianism, go on regular fasts, participate in regular worship, and pray daily,we yet may be living a disingenuous and fragmented spiritual life. To cultivate a coherent spiritual lifestyle, we must examine the central questions surrounding our habits of mind.
What are we thinking about? What images do we keep in mind? What is our emotional palette, on average? How often do we laugh? What do we read and write? What kinds of art are we drawn to and why? In all, are our mental contents congruent with our other spiritual practices or at odds with them?
There is no debating it, we are what we eat, but, even more importantly, we are what we think. Taking time daily to check the contents of consciousness is as important to living spiritually as calorie counting if we are on a diet, tracking weight lifted and repetitions if weight training, and clocking distance and time if we are runners. In matters of Spirit, there is no such thing as compartmentalization.
There is no deceiving the Beloved. S/he is closer to our hearts and minds than are we. As Saint Paul said it so well: ” I do what I would not do. I say what I would not say.” Such is the core spiritual dilemma.
© Brother Anton and The Harried Mystic, 2009. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
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