Body – Integration – Diet
by pre.
In lap one around the spiral, back when we were using bedtime meditations, we discussed diet. Changing your tastes to increase the chance of you eating foods which are better for you. Finding ways to avoid eating too much. Eating a wide variety of different things and how the food you eat is digested and used differently depending on your metabolic rate.
Your body is made out of chemicals. Many of them it can make itself, others it needs to get directly from the diet. Even the molecules which the body can manufacture require the raw ingredients from which to make them to be present in your diet. Your body will only function at it’s best if it has the right mix of nutrients coming in through the lining of your gut, and it should be obvious that you need a fully functioning body to even be alive, let alone aware, let alone transcendentally aware. Getting your diet right is certainly necessary, if not sufficient, for all the skills in the transcendence spiral. Without the raw ingredients, your mental functions will suffer.
Your awareness of the world is based on your senses, all of which require the right combinations of foods to function at full capacity. Your eyes need vitamins, your ears need vitamins. The neurons which give you the power of touch, and even the awareness of that touch, all need salt (but not too much) to work their ionic pumps to create the potential difference they use to signal each other. Your awareness arises from your body, and your body needs the proper foods.
Likewise with your memory. It is built from the interactions of neural cells in your cortex, and those cells are molecular machines, which need to constantly replace their parts as they wear out. The parts are built, directly or more indirectly, from molecules in your diet. This isn’t just idle speculation, scientific studies show that poor diet increases memory loss.
Some think consciousness is a spooky magical even immortal thing, but all the evidence suggests that at least every consciousness we’ve come across is made of neurons, of cells interacting and sending messenger molecules to each other. Molecules which need the right mix of chemicals in your diet to be built properly. Your self awareness, your ability to think, the entire process of cognition is more than just molecules, but it is still made out of them, it certainly requires them.
Diet is the very foundation of all mental activities and therefore should be monitored and maintained at optimal level wherever possible as you struggle to grow, to learn, to become more transcended.