Originally Posted by Papp
I guess it's fair to say that it is my opinion that intention is possibly the key. No matter what you eat, it will have been infused with lifeness or spiritness at one time. With that said...
The beautiful thing about life and spirituality, it's open - you get to choose. Experiment with things, look deeply at what is involved and how that makes you feel with what you currently believe and your current intentions, if it pans out - great... if not, that's great too.. at least you will learn something.
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This reflects exactly my thoughts as well, only Papp said it far more eloquently than I could have.
I've got friends who are vegetarians and vegans, and at times in my past I've felt prompted to go in that direction myself, not so much for health reasons as for ethical ones regarding the sanctity of all life. Then I've come again full circle with the realization that life includes vegetation as much as animals, and that everything we consume should be properly honored no matter what its source.
What Papp wrote about how it makes you feel personally I think is the one central key. Though I eat meat presently, there may come a time when it no longer "feels right" to me, and I'll make changes accordingly at that time.
There is one advantage to a meal of vegetation I can think of, and you may or may not subscribe to this idea. It seems to me that when we eat meat we're eating a substance that has been energetically dead for a period of time. Many times meat has been aged before being sold, particularly those higher end cuts. Proper aging of meat is considered something of a gourmet badge of honor among carnivores. I believe that the longer something has been dead (read here, "cut off from its life source") the less beneficial it is for us.
Again, you don't have to subscribe to this notion because I certainly can't prove it to be true, but aside from just eating to obtain fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals and enzymes, I believe we also ingest something of the life essence of what we eat. Food that has been cut off from its life source for a longer period of time, as is most meat, probably has less of this life essence to offer us.
Personally, I've shifted in recent years to eating as much locally produced food as I can get (not always an easy thing to do in Alaska since most of our food has to be imported in from the lower 48.) But still, I choose the freshest caught fish I can find, and wild, locally hunted game, and we do have a greenhouse in which we grow some of our own produce, which we harvest right when we intend on eating it. I'm convinced we get greater nourishment by eating this way than we do by eating things that have been grown and harvested several days or weeks earlier then transported up to us.
Michael recommends not eating immediately before meditation, and most traditions of meditation offer similar caveats. Eating a large meal then entering meditation is a recipe for falling asleep. I would extend this to say that regardless of what you choose to consume, don't over eat. Years ago I had a trainer who bucked the conventional wisdom and he taught me that if I wanted to maintain a healthy weight all my life, eat until I take the edge off my hunger and then stop. Don't eat to satiation. Then, when the edge of hunger is gone, give it about 20 minutes so that my body gets time to register the fact that I've taken in that food. If I still feel hungry after 20 minutes, eat a little more until the edge is gone again. I've found this was valuable advice and have tried to live by it ever since, not just for the weight aspect but as a way of enhancing my own mental clarity.
Spiritual awareness and diet
) Yet I guess to use it fully I need to embrace the whole gift and what it can give to others...
What have you experienced?
I feel great love for you, being sent through me to get your attention... All the best Papp, the reassurance that is there for you is great...all will be well.
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