Ok, so you’re probably feeling a little confused as to why I’m saying something you don’t often hear — especially in conversations around self-love and self-image, where phrases like “my body is my temple” are everywhere. But I can confirm, this is not a typo: The body is not my temple. And I’m going to tell you why. It all comes down to one simple idea — a statement that has genuinely pulled me out of countless self-hate sessions in front of the mirror and helped me see past the reflection staring back at me:
Let me explain. Imagine we lived in a world where you could bottle up your essence — your inner self, your soul, your spirit, whatever you want to call it.
Now ask yourself: Would your waist size go in that bottle? Would your skin, your hair, your body shape? Or would you recognise that none of these things actually belong there?
The soul is the source both of bodily health and bodily disease for the whole man, and these flow from the soul in the same way that the eyes are affected by the head. So it is necessary first and foremost to cure the soul if the parts of the head and of the rest of the body are to be healthy.
Take me, for example. What makes me the person I am now (Jas), and the person I will continue to grow into (future Jas), is not physical. It’s a kind of “jas-ness” — something I can’t reduce to a body part, a measurement, or a reflection. And importantly, it’s not even my beliefs, experiences, thoughts or desires — because all of those change over time. Instead, all of those things depend on something deeper and more constant: me. Not my body. Not my appearance. But my personhood — my essence, my inner core. The thing that, without it, I would no longer be Jas.
This doesn’t mean my body doesn’t matter. It does. But it means my body is not me in a bottle — and it never will be. Parts of it change. Parts of it don’t. Some of it I like. Some of it I don’t. But none of it defines what I am. So, when I say the body is not my temple, I’m not encouraging disregard or neglect of our physical selves. I’m not saying our bodies don’t deserve care or appreciation. What I’m saying is this:
We begin to see them for what they are: physical attributes that are subject to change and ultimately irrelevant to who we are at our core. In other words: If there were a bottle labelled “me”, no part of my body would go in it.
I no longer understand or recognize these sophisticated causes and if someone tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a bright colour or shape or any such thing, I ignore these other reasons – for all these confuse me – but I simply, naively and foolishly cling to this … that it is through Beauty that beautiful things are made beautiful
Now for those of you who have downloaded Golden Ladder’s Philosophy Pack: Appearance Vs. Reality: The Divided Line this might already feel familiar. That’s because it rests on the same core philosophical idea: Appearance and reality are not the same thing. This is a distinction that runs through Ancient Greek philosophy
* Physical things — bodies, objects, anything we experience through our senses
* Particular examples — a beautiful painting, a kind person, a just decision
* Non-physical things — ideas, meaning, reasoning, reflection
* Universal concepts — beauty, justice, kindness
These are not tied to one moment, one body, or one perspective. They represent something deeper — something more stable. So yes, I embrace the physical side of myself — and I think we all should. But I also stay aware of this: What people see when they look at me is not fixed. I might see myself one way. My partner sees me another. Someone else sees something different entirely. And all of that can change.
The answer is simple: Only if I let it. Only if I confuse how things appear with what they are, and let my eyes do the thinking for me.
It’s not that we need to stop appreciating our bodies. It’s that we need to start appreciating them properly. For what they are responsible for, not for what they are not. Your thighs, your bra size, your muscles, your upper lip hair, your skinny legs — these are all appearances. And appearances do not determine reality. They determine how things look, not what things are. So when we blame our bodies for how we feel about ourselves, we’re placing responsibility in the wrong place.
Without you, there is no “you” to even evaluate in the first place. When we begin to understand this, something shifts. We start to see our bodies for what they really are: Not a definition of who we are, but a snapshot — a moment in time, from a particular perspective. And once we recognise that perspectives change, we also realise: appearances are unstable. They cannot tell us anything permanent, and they cannot define anything real.
This doesn’t mean we’ll suddenly love everything about ourselves. Let’s be real. There will still be days where we pick ourselves apart, criticise what we see, or wish things looked different. And that’s ok. But here’s the shift:
Once you recognise that your physical view is just one perspective — shaped by your position, your mindset, your environment and your biases — you begin to see that: how your body appears has less to do with your body, and more to do with how you interpret it. And this is where the power lies.
So no, I’m not saying don’t care about your appearance. And I’m definitely not saying you can’t enjoy how you look, or want to look a certain way. What I am saying is this: Your body is not your identity. It is not your essence. It is not your reality. It is one appearance — at one moment — from one perspective.
That was the ultimate vision, and we saw it in pure light because we were pure ourselves, not buried in this thing we are carrying around now, which we call a body, locked in it like an oyster in its shell.
And so I made a choice. To stop letting appearances define me. To recognise that I am more than what you see, what you hear, what you experience and what you think. I am me.
And if you want to change them, you don’t need to change your face or your body. You just need to change how you see them.
