DMITRI FEOKTISTOV

I firmly believe that altruism, attitude and asceticism form an important mind-body relationship to help one progress up their health scale and achieve their health goals. These three aspects form a ‘triangle of health’, where the physical aspect, Asceticism, is supported by two mental aspects - Attitude and Altruism. The more challenging the health goal is, the more significant the role of the ‘triangle of health’ and the relationship between its elements, becomes.

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In case you haven’t been introduced to the aspects of Asceticism and Attitude yet, here is a brief introduction. In order to successfully practise ascetic lifestyle, one must develop and cultivate attitude based on altruism. In other words, your body must be supported by your mind in order to fully adopt ascetic ways of life. Therefore, Asceticism as a physical aspect of your overall health and wellbeing must be supported by positive attitude and altruism.

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In order for the shift towards positive attitude to happen and become a part of your everyday life (i.e. when you think, believe, feel and act as the person you want to become), you must cultivate the driving factor that is bigger than you or your self-centred desires. This is essentially what ‘Altruism’ is – putting the interests of others ahead of your own.

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Now, let’s talk about why Altruism becomes an important driving factor once one decides to practise ascetic lifestyle in order to achieve better health. First, let me ask you a question: Can you imagine that everything in the Earth ecosystem (no matter how big or small, living or non-living) is interconnected and works together to sustain and support itself? Or think of smaller ecosystems perhaps, such as forests, oceans, coral reefs, etc. Let’s imagine that some part of such an ecosystem stops interacting. Do you envisage what effect this may have on the entire ecosystem? Let’s take the Great Barrier Reef as an example, where every living organism, every coral and seaweed are an integral part of the coral reef structure. Each one of them has a bigger role to play as they all form the basis of the aquatic food chain, and therefore, they do not simply exist to satisfy their own needs but take part in a sustainable life cycle that ensures survival of the entire reef ecosystem.

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Now, what if we start thinking of a human in a similar fashion? What if every part of our bodies, down to every single cell, plays an integral and important role in our body’s lifecycle in order to maintain its health at an optimal level? It is, in fact, the case, and this phenomenon is called ‘homeostasis’. What do you think would happen if some of the body cells stop serving their rightful purpose, with the body still feeding the cells, directing energy and nutrition into them? What if such cells keep growing and dividing in the body without benefiting to the rest of it? Would it be possible to maintain homeostasis having such ‘self-centred’ cells spreading across the body and mutilating organs and the entire body system? As you’ve probably already guessed, these ‘self-centred’ cells are cancerous cells, and once the human body recognises such cells as potentially damaging or life threatening, it isolates them by forming a cocoon around them, to stop them from spreading.

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Now, if we think of the Universe as a human body, perhaps we can compare such ‘self-centred’ cells to self-centred people who always act out of their own best interests even if they end up hurting others, and do not contribute to the overall wellbeing of the society?.. I will leave you to ponder this question, but I firmly believe that the Universe functions in such a manner that self-centred people eventually get either isolated or eliminated… The Universal Laws apply to everyone and everything without a fail - whether we acknowledge the existence of such laws or accept them, or not. In this case, the Universal Laws work akin to an immune system, which sole purpose is to recognise and destroy various types of body invaders, such as viruses and pathogenic bacteria, as they are harmful to human bodies, as well as to isolate cancerous cells. Knowing all this, what type of person would you want to be?

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If you would like to learn more, we will be happy to share more information with you, and tell you more about Altruism, its role and how to make it a #1 driving factor towards achieving your health goals. Book an ABC session with us today!