How Spirituality Affects Diet and Nutrition
By Paul Piotrowski on Sep 14, 2007 in Spirituality, Health and Fitness
In my last post I spoke about how my beliefs broke my diet. There are basically two parts to the challenge I’m encountering and today I figured out one part.
How Spirituality Affects Diet and Nutrition
Is a slimy cheeseburger dripping with fat bad for you? Does it harm your body? Or is it only bad for you if you believe it is bad for you?
Common sense tells us that eating crappy foods is bad for you. However, spiritual teachers such as Dr. How Len and Deepak Chopra as well as many others have made references to the fact that the foods themselves might only be “bad” for us if we believe they are bad for us. If you believe in a purely subjective reality model of the universe, this would obviously make total sense. Since in a subjective reality model we create everything we see, the food we eat doesn’t even exist, it is all just energy. It is only our beliefs and expectations that cause the effect. In this model it is only because we think chocolate cake makes us fat, that it makes us fat.
This line of thinking has been somewhat messing with my head lately and I know it’s at least partly to blame for my inability to stick to my 98% Diet and Fitness Plan . Today I found a logical solution.
Let’s assume for a moment that we do in fact live in a purely subjective reality model of the universe. Everything we see in front of us is purely created by us, by our subconscious beliefs. If so, does that mean then that we can eat whatever we want and as long as we believe that it is good for us we will be ok?
Yes and No. The challenge, as always is belief. In a subjective reality model yes you could eat whatever you wanted if you could somehow replace all of your subconscious beliefs and totally eliminate all reference to certain foods being bad for you. Practically speaking though, that is not easy to do.
For myself specifically, I realized that I have beliefs such as these already present in my conscious / subconscious mind:
- There are some foods that are good for me and some that are bad
- Some foods that are bad for me are …
- Some foods that are good for me are …
- When I eat foods that are bad for me, I am essentially slowly poisoning my body
- When I eat foods that are bad for me my body stores fat to protect itself from the toxins I ingest
- etc.
Because of this, when I do eat something that I know intellectually to be unhealthy such as a sloppy cheeseburger dripping with fat I will suffer, my body will suffer and a simple “Oh cmon, it can’t be that bad for me, it’s only bad for me if I believe it’s bad and I don’t really believe it’s bad” is NOT going to work (not for me). Yes, hypothetically speaking to a purely enlightened being food does nothing, but such a being can also drive nails through it’s hands and still be ok.
So, I’ve concluded my thinking on this with this simple experiment you can also do for yourself at home:
Step 1) Ask yourself - “Am I far enough with my spiritual studies that I can consider myself fully enlightened where I can do cool stuff like walking through walls and raising myself from the dead?”
Step 2)
If you answered YES, it is probably ok to eat cheeseburgers all day long. If you die, just raise yourself and keep eating. 
If you answered NO, then you are probably not enlightened enough yet to be able to get away with eating whatever you want, therefore refer to step 3.
Step 3) If you want to be healthy and save yourself from years of pain going through countless debilitating degenerative diseases, eat healthy and continue your spiritual studies until you can answer step 1 with a YES.
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‘Step 1) Ask yourself - “Am I far enough with my spiritual studies that I can consider myself fully enlightened where I can do cool stuff like walking through walls and raising myself from the dead?”‘
Very, very interesting. I was trying to offer some equivalent piece of advice earlier suggesting that eating crappy food wouldn’t work unless you firmly believed both that it wasn’t crappy and that subjective reality works as well. I think you’ve answered your own question much more concisely. Let me know when you call walk through walls though.
This makes me think about something else. What do you think about the importance of “believing in” a diet? I think many diets create such arbitrary and difficult to follow guidelines that most people have a hard time understanding the reasoning behind and putting their faith in these diets. And from a subjective reality viewpoint, going on a diet you don’t have faith in would be pointless, perhaps even detrimental.
Therefore, I think the best diets would be based on self-evident, simple rules of nutrition.
Jeremiah Reid | Sep 14, 2007 | Reply
Off topic…………
I believe that by just being a part of “Priscilla Palmer’s Personal Development list” suggests that each of us post this list. You like me (Killeris at “Attitude, the Ultimate Power”) are on this list. If you have already posted it, THANK YOU. If you have not posted it, I am officially putting out a challenge that you add additional sites that fit the theme and post the entire list. This is my opinion only. If you disagree I respectfully understand. If you do agree with me this list can be found at: http://mondaymorningpower.blogspot.com/2007/09/personal-development-list-challenge.html
Mel | Sep 14, 2007 | Reply
@Jeremiah - Yes, I do believe that you need to believe in a diet in order for it to be helpful.
This brings up an interesting point. If you believe in a diet, but nobody else does, then by my theory it means that you don’t really believe in it (subconsciously).
The next step in this line of thinking then would be learn what “others out there” believe in order to see what we really believe. However, we would only look at people of authority, because we wouldn’t count the opinions of people who don’t know anything about healthy diets right? So basically, it would seem that if we take a census amongst the people in our lives that we see as authority figures in an area we are looking at, we will get OUR subconscious beliefs about a subject.
When THEY change their minds, it means we’re starting to change our minds and our true beliefs. I’m probably not explaining it properly, but I hope it makes sense to some.
Paul Piotrowski | Sep 14, 2007 | Reply
The idea of subjective reality is interesting and at least partly accurate I’m sure.
The problem I have with the idea is that some things are just bad for you whatever your knowledge or belief.
Smoking is the best example. Before people believed that smoking killed did fewer smokers die from cancer? I don’t think so.
In the same way do people who believe they will never die die? Yes. That “they didn’t believe strongly enough” sounds hollow.
Andrew
Andrew | Sep 16, 2007 | Reply
@Andrew: Subjective reality is a complex topic. The beliefs I speak of are actually subconscious rather than conscious. For example, you have a subconscious belief that the sun will rise tomorrow even though you almost never think about it.
In either case, you have to act at the level of your beliefs. If you believe that proper nutrition will make your body healthy, then you should definitely follow proper nutrition, until such time (if ever) when your beliefs change to no longer truly believe that (consciously and subconsciously).
Paul Piotrowski | Sep 17, 2007 | Reply
I must admit to being troubled by this “subjective reality” idea. Especially because it might defy any kind of logical analysis or empirical test. Add in the idea of “subconscious belief,” and I am not sure that we are any further along.
Isn’t easier to say that belief cannot effect basic biochemistry that makes some foods bad for us and others better?
Occam’s Razor?
But I do like this idea that our beliefs are shaped by others, especially those close to us. That idea lines up rather nicely with a lot of social psychology about others’ influence on the way we think and behave.
Habit Guy
Habit Guy | Sep 17, 2007 | Reply
You might want to pickup a book called “The Biology of Belief” by Bruce Lipton, Ph.D. It might answer your questions better then I can.
Paul Piotrowski | Sep 17, 2007 | Reply
Everyone wants more energy. Coffee, stimulants, and soft drinks all push the body without nutrient support and thus deplete stored energy. Regulating our nervous system and stopping the constant outflow of energy due to various adrenal stressors is the first step to creating real energy. It is through the natural regulating mechanism of the body— homeostasis— that real energy can be restored and used to rejuvenate the entire system.
Gilbert | Sep 19, 2007 | Reply
As long as you doubt, even unconscious, it will not work.
But I sincerely belief that there is another factor off which is seldom spoken: it is the matter of karma. So we will have to clear a lot before we can get healthy be mere thoughts alone.
Bottom line: better eat good foods. You thoughts will then already be in line with the health benefits of the food.
olivier | Sep 28, 2007 | Reply