It all comes together for us with Self-Awareness at the top of a triangle, and Body-Awareness and Mind-Awareness  taking the base of the triangle at both bottom corners, as represented by the image below. Because the Self  is considered to be superior to body and mind, the Self  is depicted at the top over both.

TheBodyIsMind: The Self, Body, Mind Triangle

For folks who have lost all hope and have difficulty finding meaning in their lives, this triangle has collapsed inwards upon itself so that there can be no apparent separation of self from the bodymind. Learning how to create that separation again is the greatest lesson anyone can possibly learn in their lives, and this lesson is most often learned through suffering.

In this life, not one of the three corners can exist without the other. If you believe that there is no separate self from the bodymind, then who the hell is reading these words?

As the self collapses into the body and mind, the triangle above would eventually come to be represented by a flat line. The self would still be there but be crushed by a lack of awareness of self, at which point the self can truly cease to exist – mainly through death.

Knowing we are neither our brain, our body, nor our mind means we can plot a path towards wellness which doctors don’t normally talk about when they prescribe pills for everything which ails us. We can learn about our options like you’re doing now, which will empower us to take responsibility and new actions for our health.

Understanding the difference between the self and the bodymind is the key to self-healing. Yet we don’t need to comprehend the nature of our consciousness in order to make sense of our world. What is apparent is that there is an organized system of intelligent biology which keeps our body alive, and then there’s us. No one argues about having a sense of “self.”

Our self-awareness resides within the same framework and system shared by around 37 trillion cells. About 300 different molecules manage biological processes within an organic network which allows the cells of our bodies to communicate at the speed of light. Together, they work to build over 20,000 different proteins and write the long-term memory of our experiences into our DNA so that we can pass on lessons learned to our grandchildren.

We really don’t need to argue about whether self-consciousness arises from the Body and Mind, or even whether the ‘Self’ is something separately tangible or intangible. We only need to know and understand ourselves. But without having ‘Self’ represented by the top circle on the illustration, all we have is the age-old “mind-body problem” – and that gives us nothing but problems.

The reason we can’t think of ourselves as having merely a two-dimensional nature (body and mind without self) is that it’s a dichotomy. According to the Google dictionary definition, a dichotomy is “a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.”

How could you expect to ever exercise free will or learn control over your thoughts and emotions if you can’t consider your SELF as something separate from the Body and Mind? When it comes to our health care, how we think about ourselves  accounts for about 80% of our wellness. So having this perspective gives you command of your mind and body health.

This Self+Body+Mind  Venn diagram helps us visualize why it’s so important to conceive of ourselves this way, and without needing to offend anyone’s religious sensibilities or beliefs systems. We just need to take ‘self-consciousness’ into consideration more often in our discussions around healthcare.

The Self+Body+Mind Venn Diagram – TheBodyIsMind

We can have good days and bad days. On bad days, it seems that our body is against us. Indeed, some of us even hate ourselves because of the way we feel. The constant need to cover up our pain fuels our addictions and self-destructive behaviors.

But once we begin to perceive a difference between ourselves and our body and thoughts, then we can start to exert some form of control over the relationship between our thoughts and our pain. It doesn’t happen, though, until we can make that clear distinction and start living and thinking within the new perspective that the body is mind and that the self is an independent conscious force.

This is where we learn that the body is the subconscious mind. Or, as Candace Pert wrote about three decades ago in her book The Molecules of Emotion, “…many memories are stored throughout the body. The body is the unconscious mind!”

The 20th-century education which taught us that the brain is the mind and that both the conscious and subconscious live in the brain is no longer our understanding. Therefore, it generally is a source of amazement to most folks outside of psychology today to learn that body and mind are one in the same.

Knowing this changes everything about our approach to healthcare and makes existing pharmaceutical medicine look quite archaic. Considering that pharmaceutical drugs are treated as toxins by our body, it means that when you take drugs, you are essentially poisoning both your body and your mind. Your bodymind.

The bodymind can take our self-awareness offline in dangerous situations. This happens whenever we experience painful physical or painful emotional trauma. It has been discovered, and as reported by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, that even “when people remember their trauma, their whole frontal lobe goes offline. SO, the whole part of the brain that has to do with thinking, figuring things out, and telling you what’s right and wrong, goes offline. The speech center of the brain goes offline.”

In other words, your self-awareness gets bypassed. You are cut out of the loop.

Every living person on this planet has suffered in one form or another. That’s part of the dichotomy of life; without suffering, how would we know joy and elation? Without pain, how could we be humble? Without learning from the school of hard knocks, how could we ever experience personal growth?

Your pain may not be optional, but your suffering is. Take a look out there in the world and if you look hard enough, you’ll see inspirational folks who have lost everything and still somehow manage to recover well enough to go out and make a positive impact on their world.

If you need some examples of people who have overcome all odds, check out multiple cancer survivor and author Anna Renault, or veteran Johnny Joey Jones who lost both his legs after an IED exploded under him and still finds it within himself to give back in a positive manner. Or read about Army veteran Tony Drees who survived the deadliest Scud missile attack of the Desert Storm war in 1991 and endured 74 surgeries before losing his right leg in 2018, now an inspiration to others through his work as a motivational speaker and life transition expert. 

You, friend, can re-engage with life and learn to live with yourself again!

The fundamental basis of this website is that the journey starts with the seven steps offered as part of The Self-Healing Path. Find where you’re starting on the seven-step path, then visit the Ultimate Healing Guide and allow your interest to guide you.

Below are some additional resources to help you on your way.