The Three Pillars

There are three ideas that are the MeatSuit™ philosophy:

Dualism. Radical Acceptance. Mindfulness.

They aren't three separate philosophies we're asking you to memorize.

They're three tools.

Think of Dualism as the engine.

Radical Acceptance is the oil that keeps the engine parts moving without friction.

Mindfulness is the brake system, letting you control vessel.

And when these work in tandem, something pretty useful starts to happen:

You create space between what happens to your MeatSuit™ and what you decide it means about YOU.

The MeatSuit™ vs. You

Let's start with the weirdest concept first.

Dualism is, at its core, the idea that the physical body and your consciousness aren't necessarily the exact same thing.

There are a lot (and we mean A LOT) of philosophical arguments about what that really means.

And we aren't here to solve all of them.

We're using the idea as a tool in our toolbelt.

Here's the gist of it:

You can observe your own body.

You can look at your hand.

You can watch yourself gain weight.

You can notice yourself getting older.

You can feel your heart beating.

You can experience pain.

You can notice that your'e angry.

You can notice you are anxious.

You can even notice yourself thinking.

This creates an interesting proposition:

If you can observe your body, are you ONLY the body?

That's the rabbit hole.

And NMMS goes down it.

Your MeatSuit™ is the biological vehicle you've been issued for this particular ride.

It changes.

Constantly.

It gains things.

It loses things.

It breaks.

It heals.

It gets hungry at extremely inconvenient times.

It develops wrinkles without asking permission.

It occasionally decides that you should wake up at 3am in a cold sweat, panicked about whatever was happening in your brain while you were trying to sleep. Great idea body.

That's biology.

That's the MeatSuit™ doing MeatSuit™ things.

But when something happens to the body, we have a tendency to default to:

"Something is wrong with me"

instead of :

"Something is happening to my body"

And that's why we need to create space between the action (our body betraying us) and our reaction (how we feel about it).

We don't want you to pretend like your body doesn't matter.

IT SO DOES.

You need this ridiculous biological contraption to experience life.

You need to feed it.

You need sleep.

Your vehicle occasionally needs maintenance.

You start hearing weird sounds coming from deep in the engine bay, it's time to get a professional involved.

But you do not have to confuse the vehicle with the person driving it.

Your MeatSuit™ can have a bad day without you being a bad person.

Your MeatSuit™ can change without you becoming less valuable.

Your MeatSuit™ can hurt without you being broken.

Your MeatSuit™ can fail without you being a failure.

That's using Dualism as a tool.

It creates distance.

And sometimes that's all you need.

stop fighting the weather

This one sounds so simple in theory.

It ain't.

Radical acceptance is not:

"Everything is wonderful!"

It is not:

"I love my body!"

It is not:

"My illness is a blessing!"

And it definitely is not:

"Just think positive!"

Fuck that.

Sometimes things suck.

Your body can hurt.

You can get sick.

You can gain weight.

You can lose weight.

You can get older.

You can lose abilities you used to have.

Your brain can dump a bucket of chemical into your bloodstream and now you're anxious, angry, sad, or terrified or a special cocktail of all of those at once.

You didn't necessarily choose any of that.

But here you are.

And this is how Radical Acceptance can be a useful tool for you.

Imagine you're outside, standing in a hurricane.

You can scream at the sky.

You can demand that the wind stop.

You can stand there yelling:

"THIS WEATHER IS UNFAIR!"

And you might be completely correct.

The might be spectacularly unfair.

It still doesn't change the fact that the hurricane is being a hurricane.

Radical Acceptance doesn't mean you like the hurricane.

It means you stop wasting energy arguing with the fact that the hurricane is currently happening.

You move.

You adapt.

You find shelter.

You figure out what you can control.

You deal with what is actually in front of you.

Your MeatSuit™ works the same way.

"My body shouldn't look like this."

Maybe.

But it does.

"I shouldn't be in pain."

Maybe.

But you are.

"My brain shouldn't be doing this."

Maybe.

But right now, it is.

Radical Acceptance says:

Ok. This is the reality of my MeatSuit™ right now.

Now what?

That's the important part.

Because acceptance isn't surrender.

It's accurate information.

You can't navigate your vessel if you refuse to admit the state it is in.

Your body can be having a terrible experience without YOU being a terrible person.

Pain isn't a moral judgment.

Illness isn't a moral judgment.

Aging isn't a moral judgment.

Weight gain/loss isn't a moral moral judgment.

A bad mental-health day isn't a moral judgment.

Your MeatSuit™ isn't failing a test of your character.

It's a biological machine responding to an environment.

Sometimes it responds beautifully.

Sometimes it responds catastrophically.

Either way:

This is your current vessel.

So let's figure out where we are.

That way we can figure out where we're going.

Put the brakes on the firmware.

Your MeatSuit™ has some seriously old instructions still running the show.

Hundreds of thousands of years of evolutionary development went into creating the brain you're walking around with.

And that brain is very good at keeping you alive.

It's also an occasional asshole.

Something happens.

Your brain reacts.

Then, it creates a story about what happened.

And suddenly you're responding to the story your brain created about the reality.

Not the reality of the situation.

You stub your toe.

Data:

"There is pain in my foot"

Brain:

"A;LKSJDFAL;KSDFJEVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE OMGASL;DKFJA;L"

Then:

"I'm such an idiot."

Then:

"I always do this."

Then:

"I can't do anything right."

Then:

"My life is a disaster."

Congrats.

You have gone from nerves sending pain signals to your brain to existential crisis in under twenty seconds.

That's the firmware.

Mindfulness gives you a brake pedal.

Not a magical off switch.

Not a way to stop having thoughts.

Not some mystical state where you float serenely above your problems while playing Tibetan singing bowls.

It's much more practical than that.

Notice what is happening.

Instead of:

"My life is falling apart."

Try:

"I'm having the thought that my life is falling apart."

Instead of:

"I'm broken."

Try:

"I'm experiencing pain."

Instead of:

"I'm a failure."

Try:

"I'm experiencing a tremendous amount of self-judgment right now."

See what happened?

You didn't deny the experience.

You didn't tell yourself everything is fine.

You simply separated

THE THING

from

THE STORY ABOUT THE THING.

That's how mindfulness can be a tool in your toolbelt.

So how do these three things work together to help me?

This is what really matters.

We could just throw some jargon on a site and call it a day, but that's not what we're about.

The Three Pillars are supposed to work together.

DUALISM

Creates the distance.

This is happening to my MeatSuit™.

MINDFULNESS

Lets you observe what is actually happening.

What am I experiencing right now?

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE

Stops you from wasting energy arguing with reality.

This is what is happening right now.

With these powers combined, you get something incredibly valuable:

CHOICE.

Maybe you can't choose what happened.

Maybe you can't choose what your body looks like today.

Maybe you can't choose what your hormones are doing.

Maybe you can't choose what your brain decided to throw at you this morning.

But you can work with these tools to create enough space to choose:

What do I do next?

The NMMS loop

Or, "How to human when your body betrays you"

OBSERVE.

What is actually happening?

SEPARATE.

Is this happening to my MeatSuit™, or am I turning this into a statement about who I am?

ACCEPT.

This is the reality I'm dealing with right now.

CHOOSE.

What can I do from here?

ADAPT.

The vessel has changed, so I change how I navigate it.

REPEAT.

Because you're still operating a MeatSuit™.

None of this means you should ignore your body.

Quite the opposite.

Your MeatSuit™ deserves care.

If your'e sick, get help.

If you're injured get help.

if you're struggling psychologically, talk to a qualified mental-health professional.

If something feels wrong, investigate it.

Radical Acceptance doesn't mean accepting something harmful when you have the ability to change it.

Mindfulness doesn't mean sitting quietly while your life burns down.

Dualism doesn't mean your body is unimportant.

Your body matters because it is the way you experience this life.

Take care of it, damnit.

Just don't make the mistake of believing that the vessel is the Captain.

The Three Pillars

DUALISM

Create the distance.

MINDFULNESS

Observe what's happening.

RADICAL ACCEPTANCE

Stop fighting what is.

AGENCY

Choose what happens next.

That's the MeatSuit™ philosophy.

You don't have to believe everything we believe.

You don't have to agree that consciousness is separate from the body.

You don't have to have an out-of-body experience.

You don't have to meditate for 40 days on a mountain peak.

You don't even have to like the word "MeatSuit™."

We're just asking you to try one thing:

The next time your body does something you don't like, pause.

Take a breath.

Look at what's actually happening.

And remind yourself:

THIS IS MY BODY.
THIS IS NOT ALL THAT I AM.

welcome to nmms

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The Three Pillars

The MeatSuit™ vs. You

stop fighting the weather

Put the brakes on the firmware.

So how do these three things work together to help me?

The NMMS loop

None of this means you should ignore your body.

The Three Pillars

welcome to nmms