Murder, Death, Kill – World Vegan Day – Killing and Consuming Life?

Today is November 1st and is World Vegan Day. It’s also christian All Saints day which in contrast to Halloween is about celebrating the light and good side of life. As I spoke about in another article, Halloween is about embracing the darker side of life, the evil side (which is of course not evil at all).

So what is the big fuss about? Who cares about the animals? Well we should and do! So the obvious argument is about battery farming and animal cruelty. The general understanding why most spiritual teachers and those exploring deeper and more subtle natures of consciousness and joy don’t eat meat is assigned to not wanting to cause pain or kill another life form. This often Buddhist associated belief is the one most referenced for why spiritual teachers and spiritualists are vegetarian and vegan. It makes sense but then this is suggesting life should all be lovely and soft, when in fact there must be yin and yang, good and evil, birth and death. True awareness is not a projection of how you feel life should be, but an acceptance of the world. There is really nothing to change from a Universal perspective. This is much more Zen, check out Alan Watts clip below.

However there are other reasons why we should be vegetarian/vegan that are far more selfish than the above.

First of the selfish reasons is that consuming meat is actually ecologically unsustainable. In other words we can’t maintain the system we have and continue as a species without ‘Easter Islanding’ our planet. Currently we’re growing massive amounts of grain to feed the animals. hundreds of thousands of hectares of rain forest are being destroyed to farm cattle and grow soy to feed the animals. There is a much repeated stat as repeated by the Guardian that claims it takes 7kg of grain to create 1 kg of beef (4kg of grain to create 1 kg of pork). It is a fact that this practice happens in many areas of the world. However organically hand reared meat doesn’t need this level of exchange. This statistic is from battery farming. This idea of mass production has no heart, no love, simply and only logical. The fantastically elegantly beautiful movie Samsara depicts this movement well. I recommend checking it out for a good outline on what it means to be Human.

To maintain the level of meat demand across the world we have developed the battery, mass production system. It doesn’t need to be this way, but will always take over in a society that focuses upon profit and large organisations running the planet. See the Russell Brand inspired discussion I wrote. We need to move back to a more ecologically balanced method of meat production if that’s your thing.

So finally the main reason why I personally am a vegetarian. It’s to do with consciousness and what I put into my vehicle. My body is a temple and all that! This Human body is our ‘space suit’ and it enables us to move around the Earth as separate from it. Plants are already connected to the Earth and have no space suit (nervous system if you like). Every space suit has an energetic venting and waste excretion system. We call this the chakra system. The psychological mental and emotional bodies (or Auras) interact with the physical body and bring conscious awareness from interaction, in part, with the endocrine system. The endocrine system alters the body’s hormones controlling every emotion you ever feel, from alert to asleep, angry to content and from happy to sad. Now when we consume another space suit, we also consume the energy system of that space suit. If that space suit has just had a massive hormone release of fear (like in a battery farm death) then those hormones get consumed by your body. You then have to manage and put energy into either the storage, or conversion of those ‘negative’ hormones into your own consciousness and body system.

So what about organically reared meat. A little bar lamb that was stroked and kissed everyday by the farmer, fed lovely vibrant whole foods and slept on a silk covered bed. Had her own hand maiden and pedicurist. Ok a little far, but you get the point. Then one day the farmer, while stroking the lambs head, just as she was falling asleep put a pulse to the head and killed her in an instant. Would this animal still have the stress hormones for us to digest? Well, yes but not many. This is not the important bit. The reason why consuming meat can be an issue is if you are exploring consciousness more subtly. The Human physical body, or space suit, is the most dense, most heavy and most grounded form of consciousness. It’s like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, where the first most basic needs of the body are gross and heavy, rather than a more subtle spiritual conscious awareness.

In advanced meditation practice, for example, the aim is to become aware of the more and more subtle levels of consciousness. This requires our center of conscious gravity to move away from the heavy, gross physical body and into the more subtle ‘fluffy’ levels of of energy bodies. When we consume another chakra system we also consume an identity with the physical gross body. Thus if you are trying to become subtle and eating something heavy and dense you are working against yourself. It would be like trying to climb a mountain and keep picking up rocks to put in your backpack, at some point you will be able to go no further.

So in conclusion, avoid all meat (and even dairy products) that are created in a mass production battery farm way, both from an ecological and from a health perspective. Secondly if you want to explore consciousness, enlightenment, and those other levels more subtle than the base gross physical body then avoid all other bodies, space suits or chakra systems that will only keep you grounded in the earth.