Conscious Nutrition Choices

Most people “live to eat”, understandably, as food is often delicious, satisfies cravings, is an enjoyable and sociable activity, and acts as an emotional suppressant when people feel bad. So how do we let go of our current “live to eat programming” and become our own health physicians, making conscious nutrition choices that improve our health and vitality? First, we need to become aware of our nutrition programs, and then we need to recognize why and how we've been programmed. Your mind is a great tool for analysis and memory recall, but it is a terrible master as it is limited in conscious awareness and is therefore most often unaware of the difference between a truth and a falsehood. An example of a confused programmed mind is when someone says, “I love animals” while chewing on a BBQ chicken leg. This is where you will notice a kind of schizophrenia between the programmed mind and the kind, loving, and compassionate heart. This was me for most of my life! Yes, animals are conscious beings that have chosen to be on Earth knowing humans consume their bodies and have offered their physical vehicles as an unconditionally loving service to the human species and animal consumption has played a natural part of human evolution. Beyond the judgements of right and wrong or good and bad is such an activity. It's the lack of conscious honoring and recognition of these souls that is distorted. There are many historic human behaviors such as slavery, that in the past have served as a natural part of our evolution; however, as we evolve more in spiritual maturity as a species we realize the distorted nature of such actions. 

What I am about to explain to you forms the foundation of making ‘Conscious Nutrition Choices’ by creating predetermined nutrition boundaries to make your food choices within. I invite you to stop thinking about your nutrition choices (Living to Eat) and start to feel your nutrition choices (Eating to Live). What do I mean by feeling your nutrition choices? You can discern if your nutrition or lifestyle choices are being made from the mind or heart by asking this one simple question, “Is the nutrition choice I am making only good for me or is it good for the whole?” because the programmed ego mind only knows how to do what’s best for itself. In contrast, the kind, loving, and compassionate heart only knows how to do what’s best for the whole. The mind has been programmed into believing what it currently believes to be true about nutrition, but as mentioned above, the problem is that your mind most often cannot discern truth from falsehoods. Think about how many times in your life thus far you have believed a lie that someone has told you? Remember when you have had a gut feeling about something being untrue, but your mind convinced you to believe it was true. What we refer to as a ‘gut feeling’ is your intuition speaking to you through the experience of a feeling. This intuitive feeling is a knowing that comes from your heart, but it is most often felt in your gut.

As you integrate with a more "Heart-Centered Lifestyle", you will operate from the space of your true self, where you recognize the mind is an amazing tool you have access to but your heart is your true master. The schizophrenia once experienced between the mind and heart will end. Allowing you to naturally embrace a morally and ethically consistent diet with core human values, such as not causing unnecessary suffering to any living and sentient beings. Your understanding of nutrition will evolve, alongside your level of compassion, making healthier, more informed, compassionate, and conscious choices where an effortlessly graceful transition is possible into a "New Heavenly Reality" of health and vitality for all in abundance.

Feeling Your Nutrition Choices ~ The Journey From The Mind Into The Heart

To form a solid nutrition base and boundaries, you need to let go of all questions based on duality.

Examples of these questions are:

• Which foods are high protein or low protein?

• Which foods are high in fat or low in fat?

• Which foods are high in fiber or low in fiber?

• Which foods are high in sugar or low in sugar?

• Is the food a cruel or kind food choice?

• Is it keto-friendly?

• Is the food too high in carbs?

• Is it vegetarian, vegan, paleo, carnivore, etc.?

As we have already discussed, instead of trying to use the programmed analytical mind to make your nutrition choices, I encourage you to feel your nutrition choices with your heart.

The easiest way to make heart-centered nutrition choices is to experience the harvesting of the food firsthand or watch a video of the entire harvesting process and see how this makes you feel. Examples of what this looks like are:

• If you enjoy eating steak (which is really cow’s flesh), go to a cattle farm and see what it feels like killing a cow or watching a cow being killed and then cut into pieces. Alternatively, visit an animal slaughterhouse to experience the animal’s harvest (slaughter/murder) there. If this experience causes heaviness and sadness in your heart, then this food is not for you. If you cannot physically visit these places, then watch a video of the experience. In my experience, most people are horrified by this experience.

• If you enjoy eating fish, go fishing and see how you feel catching a fish and then cut the flesh off the fish (fillet) and see how this makes you feel. If you cannot physically go fishing, then watch a video of the experience. If this experience causes heaviness and sadness in your heart, then this food is not for you. However, if you feel nothing and the experience is enjoyable for you, you should eat fish at this point in your conscious evolution. In my experience, a few people feel comfortable with this, but most people feel sadness and empathy for the fish.

• If you enjoy eating dairy foods, go to a dairy farm and observe the entire process of manufacturing dairy products. If you cannot physically visit a dairy farm, watch a video of the experience and educate yourself on the full process. Following are three things I advise you to become aware of: 

1. How are the cows treated, and what are their living conditions?—This differs considerably from farm to farm, and it’s very different for commercial factory farms compared to smaller family farms and for grain-fed cows compared to free-ranging grass-fed cows.

2. How long do the cows live before they are slaughtered?—Most dairy cows are slaughtered at about five years of age or younger if they are not producing enough milk, yet the average life expectancy of a cow is 15 to 20 years.

3. What happens to the bobby calves (male calves)?—Bobby calves are instantly separated from their mother’s, so they can’t drink any of the profits made from the mother’s milk and are slaughtered within the first week of their lives.

If experiencing these dairy industry manufacturing processes or having knowledge of these manufacturing processes causes heaviness and sadness in your heart, then this food is not for you. However, if you feel nothing, then you may choose to eat dairy products at this point in your conscious evolution. In my experience, a few people feel comfortable with this, but most people feel sadness and empathy for the cows and bobby calves.

• If you enjoy eating fruit, vegetables, herbs, nuts, and seeds, visit a fruit, vegetable, herb, nuts, or seed farm or go into your own garden if you have one and see how picking the fruit, vegetables, herbs, nuts, and seeds from the farm or garden makes you feel. In my experience, all people feel good about this experience, particularly if the farm or garden is organic. However, when visiting large commercial farms that reek of synthetic chemicals and poisons, most people will not have a good feeling—the heart, in this instance, is guiding you to eat organic plant produce.

My wish is that the above examples have given you a good understanding of what making nutrition choices with your kind, loving, and compassionate heart looks and feels like. Because as mentioned above, this forms the foundation of making "Conscious Nutrition Choices" as it helps you create predetermined nutrition boundaries to make your food choices within.

Personally, I choose not to eat anything with eyes as it is my understanding that the eyes are the gateway to the soul and if you look into any animal's eyes, you will see a reflection of yourself in their eyes. For me, this is confirmation of our oneness and connectedness to all living things, including plants. As human beings, the greatest illusion we are here to liberate ourselves from is ‘the illusion of separation’. The reality is that what I do to you or for you, I do to or for myself. We are one! You can call this ‘karma’; you can call it ‘the law of cause and effect’; you can call it ‘for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ No matter the name or description, at certain levels of spiritual maturity, our hearts know and feel this to be a ‘divine truth.’ I personally choose to consciously not cause unnecessary pain, suffering, or death to any animal, and I most definitely consciously choose not to feast on their flesh and body parts.

I also choose to not eat dairy unless it is dairy from a cow that I know has a free and happy life and that only small amounts of milk are taken from her to ensure her baby has all the milk it requires to be strong and healthy and that this beautiful mother will not be murdered but will instead be left to live to old age and die from natural causes. The same goes for eggs. If I know the chickens are free-ranging and living a happy life eating their natural diet and the eggs have not been fertilized, and that the mother hens will not be murdered when they stop laying enough eggs to make them commercially viable, I feel fine with this. I, therefore, would be okay with eating these eggs in moderation.

Pretty much every food choice we make to differing degrees causes some pain, suffering, and death to animals. But remember, this is not about getting stuck in the weeds of the overthinking analytical ego-mind; this is about experiencing or becoming aware of the manufacturing processes involved with bringing a particular food from farm to plate and then making an intuitive heart-centered choice based on how you feel about this process. For example, I would try not to stand on an ant because I don’t feel good about killing it, but if I accidentally do stand on an ant, I am not overly saddened by the event. Likewise, suppose ants are invading my kitchen, and it is to the point of being an absolute annoyance. In that case, I will not like that I have to remove them from the kitchen and, in the process, most probably kill many of them, but I won’t feel emotionally devastated. Now to use another example, if I were asked to stab a cow, pig, dog, cat, or even a chicken in the throat and murder it, I would not be able to do it unless I were in a life or death situation whereby my very life depended on eating their flesh, and even still I would be emotionally devastated by having to do this. 

How somebody with a judgmental and dogmatic view of nutrition views my nutrition choices is irrelevant to me, and it should also be irrelevant to you. Personally, I feel good about doing my best to follow my heart and make nutritious choices that cause as little harm and death as possible. Still, I honestly feel different about killing an ant, mosquito, or other certain insects than I do about killing a larger, seemingly more sentient animal like a cow, pig, dog, cat, chicken, etc., and I’m sure the overwhelming majority of people feel the same way. So I know that some insects, worms, bugs, and other small animals are ‘unintentionally’ being killed during farming organic vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, and I feel compassion for these animals. However, I feel no heaviness in my heart about this, but I feel a heaviness in my heart knowing that a cow, pig, chicken, deer, elk, etc., are being ‘intentionally’ murdered for the sole purpose of eating their flesh and body parts.

My intention by sharing these examples here is to assist you in letting go of your nutrition programming and help guide you on a short-distance journey, nevertheless the longest journey we have to take as human beings. This journey is from the programmed egoic mind to our kind, loving, and compassionate heart. The programmed egoic mind is developed by a lifetime of conditioning. It opposes our natural character and innate divinity we all possess by inhibiting our ability to find true happiness in our lives because it views life from the perspective of duality within the illusion of separation. Therefore its focus is on fear of not surviving as it believes it constantly has to compete against everything outside of itself to stay alive and get ahead in life (survive). It is, therefore, always full of fear and only knows how to do what’s best for itself. An egoic mind is a great tool but a terrible master! In direct contrast to this, once our heart has become our master and the egoic mind has become the heart's disciple, our experience of life is one of unity, cooperation, kindness, love, and compassion because the heart is fully aware of our connectedness and therefore only knows how to do what’s best for the whole (all of existence). Return home to your heart and ascend!