Body, Mind, Soul
Imagine yourself as a walking flower pot. Inside is a flower. That’s your soul. The brain is the soil. The soul lives somewhere in the neural pathways between the cells.
The pot is the body, the Earth suit we live in. An exoskeleton for the mind. The body has its own intelligence: it runs on the spinal cord and the ancient structures people call the reptile brain. It acts on its own, and its built-in reflexes protect you before you even have time to think.
The mind is thoughts, emotions, perception. It’s plugged straight into the body: whatever happens in the body, the mind knows. It’s run by the monkey brain, which keeps checking: is the grass greener next door? Are you keeping up with the Joneses? Hence that constant, nagging dissatisfaction.
And the soul is you, the flower growing inside. The eternal, unchanging core. Consciousness, identity, I.
The body gives the flower life and a way to reach the world. The flower gives it consciousness and identity.
A flower needs care, sunlight and water. Your soul needs the right conditions too. Your job is to look after this flower. Water it with good emotions.
Yet for a lot of us the flower wilts from anxiety and everyday stress. What went wrong? We got stuck. Stuck proving ourselves in pyramids we never even chose.
Mastery
Take the pyramid people spend whole decades inside: mastery.
Whatever field you walk into, a hierarchy of skill and experience is waiting. A pyramid you have to climb. The Chinese have a word for the climb: kung fu. Originally it meant any skill earned through time and effort, not just fighting. Twenty hours of practice already puts you above average. Twenty minutes a day, and within a season you’ve passed most of the people who “always wanted to try”.
At the base of the pyramid is “Proving it to others”. Making an impression. Higher up is “Proving it to yourself”. And mastery comes when you realize there’s nothing left to prove.
At that point you’re no longer inside the pyramid. You’re free. Some people never get there and stay stuck on one level or another, feeling they don’t measure up. See what you really are, and you’ll be free.
And success isn’t zeros in your bank account. It’s a state of joy. Comfort. If someone thinks I shouldn’t live like this, that’s their problem. I don’t want to feel bad. I don’t like it.
But the pyramids don’t end there. They’re nested inside each other.