You’ve probably heard the saying: “You are what you eat.” To an extent, this is true, at least for the physical body.

If you take into account the importance of proper digestion and assimilation, it might be more accurate to say: “You are what you absorb.” Still, eating and assimilating nutrients are all part of that dimension we call the physical body.

There are also people who say: “You are what you think.” I have struggled greatly with the seeming contradiction between these two philosophies. On the one hand, I know that what we eat makes a difference or at least my personal experience leads me to think I know.

On the other hand, I have also found lots of evidence to support the idea that our thoughts create our reality. If I do indeed create my reality with my thoughts, why should it matter what I eat as long as I THINK it is good for me?

As with all paradoxes, there must be a greater truth that absorbs the two seeming contradictions and brings them to a level where they no longer oppose each other. To bring us a step nearer to this greater truth, we will take a look at the other dimensions of our existence… the emotional, mental, and spiritual bodies… to see if we can reconcile some of the apparent contradictions.

The Four “Bodies”

Each of our four bodies, the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual, is in fact an energy field existing at a certain level of vibration. They are all interconnected. In fact, we are only separating them into four distinct “bodies” so that we can better understand the total picture.

In reality, they are probably all part of a continuum, which can be pictured more as a hologram than a series of discrete or distinct components. (You may have come across other terms such as etheric body, causal body, or astral body, but for simplicity, we will confine our discussion to the four bodies mentioned above.)

The physical body exists at the slowest vibratory speed of the four and is a reflection of all the bodies combined. Thus our physical body is a three dimensional, solid reflection of our emotions, thoughts, and spirit/soul. It has a magnetic field with polarity, which is influenced by all the magnetic fields it interacts with, including the food we eat as well as other humans. The magnetic field exists right at the DNA level.

If we take a close look at ourselves or at others, we can actually see the physical manifestation of the emotions and thoughts permeating this magnetic energy field. Many people who are “weighed down” with heavy emotions and fearful thoughts will carry extra weight on their bodies.

Thoughts and emotions also cause stress on the body and that stress may cause the magnetic field to become chronically reversed. Reversed magnetic polarity shows up as energy depletion and decreased resistance to disease. It is more difficult for people whose magnetic fields are reversed to lose weight.

The other three bodies are not directly visible to our physical eyes or even to our scientific equipment, so we need to define them by function in relation to the physical body. This doesn’t mean that the physical body is the most important; only that it is the most easily perceivable to our physical eyes, and, therefore, the starting point of our awareness in this dimension.

The emotional body is the part of us that feels and reacts to sensation. It carries the sum total of all our experiences and relates each new experience to its memory of previous ones. One could say the emotional body is “programmed” much like a computer.

If a stimulus is recorded as positive (meaning it feels good to the physical body at the time) the emotional body will be drawn to similar experiences. If it is recorded as negative (meaning it is painful in some way) the emotional body will avoid similar experiences in the future. The more pain the emotional body has recorded, the more it will seek to protect itself from actual or perceived pain.

The mental body is the part of us that thinks and reasons. However, in most of us, the programming of the emotional body has reduced the powers of the mental body. No matter how reasonable or sensible certain actions may be to the mental body, if the emotional body has been programmed to resist those actions, the person will have great difficulty carrying them through.

The spiritual body is a catch-all term for anything that is not physical, mental, or emotional. It includes concepts of the soul, the higher self, the multi-dimensional self, and even the possibility of parallel or previous lives. The spiritual body is also the part of us that writes the “contract” for our experiences in this lifetime, or if you prefer the part that sets up our “karma,” also known as the law of cause and effect. You, the reader, will need to discern for yourself which of these concepts (if any) fits into your belief system. It is not my intent to promote one spiritual view above another, but merely to allow for the possibility of another dimension beyond the physical, mental and emotional ones promoted as reality by conventional psychology.

The Problem With Programming

From birth onwards (and some would say even before birth) our environment programs us and that programming is recorded in the emotional body. We learn what brings pleasure and what brings pain to the physical body. We learn what brings good feelings (in the form of approval from significant others) and what brings bad feelings (in the form of disapproval or anger).

Our belief system of what is good and bad stems from those experiences as well as directly from the verbal comments made and behavioral examples set by significant others in our environment. For example, eating gives pleasure through taste, but what we consider to taste good is a result of cultural programming. Few modern Americans would enjoy the taste of whale blubber, yet Inuit people living in the arctic consider it a great treat.

Programming works partly through association. If a beloved parent rewards a child for “good behavior” with candy bars, then the emotional body associates candy bars with love. In the future, a feeling of not being loved may trigger a desire for candy bars. The person may not remember why that candy bar is so comforting because the program that associates candy bars with love is no longer part of conscious memory. All the person remembers is that a candy bar makes him or her feel better.

Programming also works through indoctrination, commonly called education. The beliefs and thoughts of a culture are transmitted to the young directly. Coercion (in the form of rewards and punishments) is used to make sure the student accepts the beliefs and ideas. This way the mental body is influenced through the emotional body.

When different levels of programming contradict each other we experience conflict. For example, the mental body, through the educational process, may have been programmed to think that candy bars are harmful to the physical body (beliefs and thoughts), yet the emotional body has associated candy bars with love (feelings). Because the need for love is so strong, we will often give in to the emotional program and eat the candy bar.

However, the mental body’s program may cause us also to experience guilt. Since guilt and self-love are contradictions, we may end up feeling worse about ourselves and crave even more candy bars. Also, the belief that candy bars are harming the physical body may engender a feeling of fear which stresses the physical body and makes the candy bar more harmful than it otherwise would be. Generally speaking, our feelings (even unconscious ones) direct our thoughts.

Working With the Emotional Body

The emotional body is the repository of our programming and since most of our behavior (at least until we do the healing work) is directed by our programming, the emotional body is in charge. As we have seen in the candy bar example, the emotional body is very powerful. Because it works mostly at the subconscious or unconscious levels, we may feel we have very little control of our lives or ourselves. We make choices and decisions (mental body) but we sabotage ourselves continually (emotional body).

When people become aware of this lack of control they often seek out therapy. Some of the available therapies (for example behavior modification, some kinds of hypnotherapy, or aversion therapy) seek to substitute a new program for the old, counter-productive one. In my opinion, a more constructive approach to personal growth and change is to get to the root of the program and release it. We have the potential for free will and personal power. Any time we act from a program we are not exercising our potential. Substituting one program for another does not empower us.

Working with the emotional body is not easy and is often painful. We have to bring all our suppressed feelings into consciousness so they can be released. Often people have layers and layers of suppressed pain…feelings that were so overpoweringly painful they have pushed aside or denied many years ago. There may be experiences of abuse, (emotional, physical, or sexual), experiences of abandonment, or of neglect. We usually don’t want to go there… yet only by acknowledging the depth of our pain can we start the healing of the emotional body.

Here’s an interesting bit of information for those of you who believe we live more than one lifetime. People who have done research via hypnosis into other lifetimes have found that sometimes the emotional scars carry over from one lifetime to the next.

In some cases, the person may unconsciously re-enact the emotional trauma so that it can be brought to consciousness. “That which we did not complete, we are doomed to repeat.” Individuals have healed themselves of destructive patterns simply by uncovering the source in other lifetimes and “feeling the feelings.”

I have found that the key to working with the emotional body is to allow it to express itself. Sometimes that means simply feeling the pain as a memory surfaces rather than suppressing it. Sometimes it means allowing the tears to flow. The most important thing is to be aware. Notice the thoughts and especially the resistant thoughts that meander through the mind.

Become aware of the connections between thoughts, feelings, and programmed responses (like the urge to run to the store for a candy bar). Speak your truth to a caring and non-judgmental friend or counselor. Support groups can be very helpful for this. Learn not to judge yourself for your thoughts or your feelings. Rather allow and accept all that surfaces with unconditional love.

So What Do We Do?

There are no “quick fixes” here. Part of our journey through this life is doing the work of personal growth. Our physical body, as a reflection of our other bodies, is uniquely designed to show us what needs working on if we are willing to look. It uses the processes of eating, digesting, and assimilating to build exactly what we most need to see in the mirror every day.

We do have a choice. We can choose to work on the problem of weight/health issues by coming at them from the physical angle. That may mean discipline in diet and monetary expenditure for supplements. We can also choose to work on the problem from the angle of the emotional body.

That may mean mental discipline in the form of choosing different thoughts and doing the emotional cleansing necessary. There is no real contradiction because it is all part of the whole. For optimal results we can approach it from both angles…we can choose different physical habits and we can choose emotional healing. The choice, as always, is our own.