Visionary Vegan or Praying Carnivore?

Diet seems to encourage conversation easier than many other topics. I notice this when I post a status update on Facebook that’s about food, and immediately the responses start pouring in, whereas if I post a prayer I might get one or two responses over time. Not everyone prays, but I think it’s safe to say that every one of us eats. Vegetarianism, veganism, and raw-ism are some controversial topics in today's world. We heard a sermon, believe it or not, on veganism yesterday and it was conversationally stimulating, to say the least. In fact, we are still talking about it, reacting to it, and in wonder about it. It caused such intense reactions in the audience that the minister received some anonymous hate mail on her windshield. I'd say that if one can elicit this type of reaction, then they are making some waves that cause growth one way or another. A vegetarian for 21 years, a vegan for 3 years, and two different month long forays into a raw diet, I have some things to say on the topic. I feel that I’ve explored different diets and the lifestyles that go with them. I’ve even encountered health afflictions created by some of them. My sweetheart reminds me that we visited veganism together twenty years ago and gave it our full monty…and have lived to tell the story, too. My personal journey into vegetarianism first as a spiritual choice and then a health choice was not so difficult. My Higher Power made it abundantly clear to steer from cows by downloading an intense vision of a live cow being forced through a meat grinder as I bit into a Big Mac one day at a drive-thru. That first bite was spit out vehemently and was the last bite of red meat I was to take for the next 23 years I was religious about it. My poor mother tried to make my fiancé and I some vegetable soup one day and thought she could get away with a beef broth base without my noticing. Wrong. The soup ended up in the toilet. I forced her to sit thru a Tofurkey at Thanksgiving against her will, and when she brought home what used to be my favorite dish ever, a live lobster that was a gift from a friend, I was mortified. I begged and pleaded, tear streaming down my face, not to boil that lobster. She finally relented and handed it to me, and I drove to the canal and sent it home in front of a fisherman at the dock who stood there with a strange look on his face. My day of reckoning came when I became so ill I couldn’t eat. My stomach was on fire, and my skin had broken out. A plague of symptoms too terrible and personal to list had befallen me, and the doctor couldn’t help. Nothing helped. As a final attempt at relief, I sought out a holistic nutritional doctor that a friend recommended, and they determined that my body had developed severe sensitivities to every substance foundational to my diet. What was left to eat now? Bark? Trees? Dirt? It was indeed a big dilemma. For a year or so I lived on meager fixin’s where no meat, no gluten, no soy, no wheat, no tomatoes and no yeast or dairy passed my lips. It was impossible to eat at a restaurant, and it was painfully boring, but at least I wasn’t suffering from the horrible food reactions anymore. Then I became pregnant and a new lesson was in store for me. Five months in I could not stay awake, falling asleep even standing up. I was exhausted, depleted, and unwell. The doctor announced severe anemia, and no amount of pills or Floradix, or prune juice could fix it. I was actually craving steak in my dreams. And so, with great trepidation and deep concern, we went to a restaurant to order the first steak in well over two decades. I couldn’t even bear to cook it myself, nor did I even know how. That was a rough meal for me and for my beloved, who had to cut the meat for me because I couldn’t bear to. The lifting of the fork was a push/pull, wanting to eat and not wanting to eat. My baby’s life depended on it, though, and so eat I did. I made peace with what was, in my own way. Having a strong background in spiritual studies, my intention was pure and I prayed over that cow, chicken, fish hard and long before partaking. Heck, I had been practicing praying over vegetables before chopping them for decades as well. This was the full circle of my experience with extreme diets, and it’s not even touching on weight loss diets I’ve tried. The message was very clear after this, that I had no right to judge anyone who ate meat or didn’t eat meat, nor did I have a right to presume that I knew best what they should be eating or whether they were ignorant or enlightened about food. Even judging someone who is beginning to find their consciousness in what they eat is entitled to their experience without judgment. I was that person who was zealous in my newfound passion for saving the lives of animals, cleaning up the planet, and honoring life the best I could. I was also that person that had to eat things I would rather not have eaten, for survival and health purposes. Nowadays, I practice conscious choices and prayer, raising the vibration of whatever I consume, and forgiving myself when I forget or when I choose things I know aren’t good for me. My current path is one of love and healing towards that which I consume, praying with deep gratitude for whatever gave of itself so that I could live. I make the best choices that I can in terms of whether to purchase leather or cloth, natural or synthetic. There are arguments in every direction for what is best or worst and it seems that evidence can be found in every direction according to one’s intention. My mantra is balance in all things. Balance is a good place to seek and a beautiful place to land.

Making Time For Pleasure

When everything is just too overwhelming and life seems to be racing in a zillion directions, how do you handle it? Do you drink more coffee, try to do more, stay up later, get up earlier, or break down? Do you let stress build and ignore it? Do you just stuff your face with sugar like I do? It's a huge challenge to stay focused and prioritized, and to make the time for rest and balance in these times. We have so many mediums of communication all vying for our attention, not to mention careers to work, families to tend to, functions to attend, plans to make, appointments to keep. The list goes on and the stress seems to mount, until we find ourselves either sick or in breakdown somehow. I see many people who seem to wait until they're sick for a small break, and then they jump back up before they're even ready to go back into the ring for more. It's scary to watch. I can't help but wonder if they are truly happy, or just afraid to stop. For some, I'm sure that staying in the game full frontal brings them joy, but this isn't not true for everyone. The perfect antidote for stress is pleasure. Nothing gives us more of an "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" feeling. It doesn't really take much if we learn to breathe and center our attention on our hearts, get present with the moment, and then feel into it. I don't believe that pleasure can happen when our minds are racing in the opposite direction. Ever tried to completely relax while running? Doesn't work that well, does it? You have to get the mind to stop, drag it back to where your body is and sync your system up with the now. Only then can you really be with whatever pleasure you're offering yourself. One of the more advanced routes to pleasure is associated with our sexuality, and in a pinch our sexuality can be channeled into any activity and then it becomes sensuality, which is highly pleasurable. Pleasure in eating something delicious, feeling the sun on your face, getting a shoulder rub, stretching, looking at beautiful art or photos, listening to gorgeous music...these are all so pleasurable. If we focus on feeling our bodies respond as we enjoy these activities, we are officially having a sensual experience. This is where the pleasure we are feeling can light up our brains, our groins, our whole physiology, and we are healing, opening, and receiving the relaxation and rejuvenation we crave. In the book, The Pleasure Zone, Resnick lists the 8 fundamental pleasures as being primal, pain relief, play, mental, emotional, sensual, sexual, and spiritual. The last three can "be thought of as the consummate realms for reaching your pleasure potential", she says. Take some time out for pleasure today and if it feels good try it daily for a while

. I would love to hear back from you how it affects your life.

Painful Bliss

I've been thinking alot about pain lately, as I've been in some pretty intense pain for about five months. What goes through my mind, given the work I do, is primarily the questions about what this pain means, what my body it trying to communicate to me, where I might be blocked in my relationships or how I move through the world, and whether it really means anything or nothing. My mind likes to keep itself quite busy with all of the possibilities that might make my pain meaningful to it's greatness, and I say that tongue in cheek.

As I meditate and pray, process and dream, I begin to see patterns of thought I hold in mind that don't serve me. I also get "hits" or intuitive aha moments of seeing a way that I may have operated in my life that is obviously undermining what I intend for myself. I'm open to looking at these things because I hold myself gently with compassion. The more compassionate I am with myself, the more I am able to release old habitual ways of being that hold me back.

I think we tend to get stuck in holding patterns of negative circumstance when we judge and criticize ourselves, because the internal prosecutor is in charge and has us in a corner where there's a frozen standoff. If we realize that we can tell the prosecutor to shut up and sit down, we can replace him with a loving witness who remembers our humanity and our heart's innate goodness. The loving witness is a soothing balm and a kind ally who opens gateways of tremendous growth and enlightenment, melting the standoff in an instant. My own internal loving witness took years of meditation and hard work for me to locate. Hopefully by reading this, you'll hear yours sooner.

Yoga at the master level teaches us about mass consciousness mind that is just chatter that flows through all of us randomly, and once we realize this, we can see the innocence of everyone in this beautiful drama of life. We can see that our physical symptoms are an experience we chose before time, and hopefully allow ourselves to sink into a surrendered agreement of what is in this present moment.

In the present moment, I find bliss in the sensations of this pain I have held for these many months. I find that I can love that pain with an open heart, and hold it with compassion and gratitude. My pain brings more gifts than I can list here, but the biggest one is the gift of remembering the Infinite Presence that lives in every cell of my being.