Louise Bailey WPD activist
A real life Earth Guardian Angel
I know people on this page have mostly read Will’s book, and so don’t need this review I wrote today for a different facebook page. But I wanted to share it here, as it is about World Peace Diet, and expresses my own deepening understanding and appreciation of it. x
Will Tuttle’s book The World Peace Diet, was nothing short of a transformation in consciousness. I’ve travelled all over the world, pushed every boundary I could, and went over the edge many times. Read many many spiritual new age books. Spent years in therapy. Trained as a therapist. Practiced yoga, meditated. All of these things were useful, were steps along the way. But discovering Will Tuttle and his work has been the transformation I always sought but never found. He has all the pieces of the puzzle. He sees the roots of oppression in our society very clearly. Explains them in a way which communicates much more than words. Listening to him, brings me into my own heart. He’s so without guile. He speaks from the place I want to be. The place, I’m learning now, to be.
What he’s saying, is that we as a species, become essentially messed up, by the very act of eating other animals. We are living in a disconnected, disenfranchised state. Split in our consciousness, by living a lie. Deep down, we are all kind, loving, compassionate people. But we aren’t living our values. Kind people don’t brutally murder other living beings unnecessarily. They don’t live in such a disconnected state from nature that they destroy the very environment they depend on to survive.
Something is very wrong. Even as we pretend it isn’t, and get on seeking after the illusions the adverts sell us. We live in oppressive systems, exhausted, chasing things we never find.
What we are looking for is our hearts, our integrity, and the capacity to live in loving meaningful connection to all other living beings, and the Earth herself.
But we are conditioned, programmed to be otherwise. To be as we are. A crazy, destructive, violent people, who are not living from their deepest truth, who are not living with the compassion and kindness they truly are.
Reading this book is like having the mechanism of the oppressive system which conditions us to be this way, exposed. Brought to light, as its understood, we can find healing and release. Find our way home.
It’s a book of such hope. But it doesn’t pull any punches. He understands thoroughly the urgency of the situation, and sees the big picture, what’s happening to the oceans, the environment, the animals, the people, the Earth. He knows the situation is dire. But he has such faith in us, and he offers the tools to help us free ourselves. Will Tuttle’s book to me offers a light of hope.
Peace.
Will Tuttle’s book The World Peace Diet, was nothing short of a transformation in consciousness. I’ve travelled all over the world, pushed every boundary I could, and went over the edge many times. Read many many spiritual new age books. Spent years in therapy. Trained as a therapist. Practiced yoga, meditated. All of these things were useful, were steps along the way. But discovering Will Tuttle and his work has been the transformation I always sought but never found. He has all the pieces of the puzzle. He sees the roots of oppression in our society very clearly. Explains them in a way which communicates much more than words. Listening to him, brings me into my own heart. He’s so without guile. He speaks from the place I want to be. The place, I’m learning now, to be.
What he’s saying, is that we as a species, become essentially messed up, by the very act of eating other animals. We are living in a disconnected, disenfranchised state. Split in our consciousness, by living a lie. Deep down, we are all kind, loving, compassionate people. But we aren’t living our values. Kind people don’t brutally murder other living beings unnecessarily. They don’t live in such a disconnected state from nature that they destroy the very environment they depend on to survive.
Something is very wrong. Even as we pretend it isn’t, and get on seeking after the illusions the adverts sell us. We live in oppressive systems, exhausted, chasing things we never find.
What we are looking for is our hearts, our integrity, and the capacity to live in loving meaningful connection to all other living beings, and the Earth herself.
But we are conditioned, programmed to be otherwise. To be as we are. A crazy, destructive, violent people, who are not living from their deepest truth, who are not living with the compassion and kindness they truly are.
Reading this book is like having the mechanism of the oppressive system which conditions us to be this way, exposed. Brought to light, as its understood, we can find healing and release. Find our way home.
It’s a book of such hope. But it doesn’t pull any punches. He understands thoroughly the urgency of the situation, and sees the big picture, what’s happening to the oceans, the environment, the animals, the people, the Earth. He knows the situation is dire. But he has such faith in us, and he offers the tools to help us free ourselves. Will Tuttle’s book to me offers a light of hope.
Peace.
· Waking up and choosing to do no harm to animals, is a transformation in consciousness. Where you find yourself suddenly taking responsibility for all violence you do, all insensitivity and unkindness. I’m still waking up, and I slip back into defensiveness sometimes. But what is heavenly, is that mostly, I’m finally at peace. I feel my heart as this place inside that is light, expansive, soft, open. I connect with people better, and all my relationships are benefitting from this transformation which I’ve undergone, simply by choosing to no longer contribute without conscience to the violence and exploitation of animals. More and more often, I actually find myself feeling compassion and care, for people who remain cocky and arrogant, and mock these animals with lip smacking gestures a...bout the taste of their flesh. More and more I just see how lost they are, and that they have a heart like everyone else, underneath. Just somehow its become closed down, they’ve become hard, and that’s a really sad thing for them, and they just don’t know how to get out of that place.
I know, now, as I make this journey, that while ever someone is capable of, belligerently or just unconsciously, being brutal to other animals, taking a life that doesn’t belong to them, their hearts will remain shut down, and they will always be in conflict both with themselves and will experience conflict in their relationships with others. There will be a lack of ease with themselves, either, because some part of them knows better, their conscience whispers, and yet their behavior contradicts, doesn’t listen to or act from conscience. Or, because their whole disposition and outlook is about the cold, using of other living beings for their own ends. Not because they are bad or evil. But because they have been taught to be this way, because life has hurt them, their hearts are closed, and this is the only way they know. But while they are this way, they will never know peace.
If you want peace, you have to choose it. It’s a simple, yet powerfully transformative act. To act with the intent of doing no harm wherever possible.
Veganism, is the road out of hell. The hell that you know as home. Where you are at now, may have its moments of seeming excitement, based around power, humor at the expense of others, physical pleasure at the expense of others, but it will all be based on exploitation. There will only be moments…like taking a hit…like a drug…of this pseudo happiness. But you’ll never actually experience peace, fulfillment, genuine, heartfelt, kind sensitive connection in your relationships with self or others…until, you stop willfully using other living beings, until you stop choosing power, dominance and brutality, over kindness.
Peace. Louise Bailey
1. Moving around London today, looking at the faces, feeling the energy. People seem closed, hard, depressed, stressed, the energy feels jagged, frenetic, unsettling, unkind. The bus I’m on passes the street where The Loving Hut is and my body relaxes just at the thought of it. Its like a drop of what the whole world could be. In the Loving Hut vegan restaurant, people are gentle, open, sensitive, respectful. Almost always the conversation at one table, becomes a conversation amongst several tables, friends are made instantly. The energy is peace filled. It sparkles, quietly, unobtrusively, with kindness. No harm is done here. Everyone who entered, for the brief time they are there at least, did no harm. Even their words seem to be softer. Even when it’s a hardened meat eater who has popped in to eat the tasty vegan food because its inexpensive, even their conversation, though edged with defensiveness, is open, curious. Their energy opens in a way they seem unaccustomed to.
Remembering this, and comparing inside the restaurant, to the chaos of unconsciousness outside it, it really does feel that eating other animals is the root of all evil. The root of all unconsciousness perhaps. We must switch off, shut down, disconnect from compassion to eat other animals, to wear their skin, their hair as clothes…we have to ‘not care’. Stopping abusing animals for food, for entertainment, for any reason, is like the light switch of our hearts, our souls.
Although today I saw how many there are still asleep, hearts closed, mindlessly consuming the violence towards other species, I had hope. Usually it overwhelms me, the magnitude of the unconscious masses. But people can change, it only takes education, awareness, and a little time for adjustment and processing the change. What would help people to change, is for them to understand and see the qualitative difference to their own lives, that living with kindness would bring. The shift in consciousness that could take place, in their individual lives, could spread like wildfire. Soon, the whole of their culture, their world’s energy could be like the Loving Hut. Talking about the suffering of animals and how to help stop it and change the way we see and act towards nature and animals, could bring strangers together everywhere.
Although today I saw how many there are still asleep, hearts closed, mindlessly consuming the violence towards other species, I had hope. Usually it overwhelms me, the magnitude of the unconscious masses. But people can change, it only takes education, awareness, and a little time for adjustment and processing the change. What would help people to change, is for them to understand and see the qualitative difference to their own lives, that living with kindness would bring. The shift in consciousness that could take place, in their individual lives, could spread like wildfire. Soon, the whole of their culture, their world’s energy could be like the Loving Hut. Talking about the suffering of animals and how to help stop it and change the way we see and act towards nature and animals, could bring strangers together everywhere.
I can see this happening. Feel it happening. It feels good, to have hope for the human race.
(The Loving Hut is a new international fast food chain of vegan restaurants set up by Supreme Master Ching Hai and her loving devotees who work there. Food is delicious, and cheap. The staff, so far as I’ve experienced, are so loving and kind, that I stop by as much to see them as I do to eat their tasty food.)
(The Loving Hut is a new international fast food chain of vegan restaurants set up by Supreme Master Ching Hai and her loving devotees who work there. Food is delicious, and cheap. The staff, so far as I’ve experienced, are so loving and kind, that I stop by as much to see them as I do to eat their tasty food.)
‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.’ The controversial statement a famous model made in recent years.
I’d say nothing tastes as good as a clear conscience feels.
A clear conscience is the best feeling in the world. Finally, you can begin to find peace. That awful feeling, of reaction and defence and then wrangling with ourselves, which happens when we are not being absolutely honest and acting from our highest integrity, is the bain of everyone’s life. The source of all conflict, in all relationships, the source of discontent.
Veganism, is the first step out of that hell. Checking the labels, shopping ethically, living responsibly, in many other ways naturally begins to follow. When your life becomes about listening to your conscience and acting from there, you may find yourself acting in ways that are much kinder to you, too. Finding work which is genuinely more satisfying, getting out of unhealthy relationships, or healing them with this newfound uncompromising honesty and integrity. So many people who embrace a vegan lifestyle for ethical reasons, talk about this transformation in consciousness which happens. Its because we all, do feel guilty when we know we are harming and exploiting other living beings, we do because deep down we are all Spirit, all God, all one. If we’re not acting from that consciousness, and we’re living in ways that are harming other and are being dishonest about that, even to ourselves…then we will feel discomfort and conflict in many areas of our lives.
I wish for the whole world to begin to know inner peace, to find their highest kindest truth and live it, together, in an organic vegetable paradise garden world.
I’d say nothing tastes as good as a clear conscience feels.
A clear conscience is the best feeling in the world. Finally, you can begin to find peace. That awful feeling, of reaction and defence and then wrangling with ourselves, which happens when we are not being absolutely honest and acting from our highest integrity, is the bain of everyone’s life. The source of all conflict, in all relationships, the source of discontent.
Veganism, is the first step out of that hell. Checking the labels, shopping ethically, living responsibly, in many other ways naturally begins to follow. When your life becomes about listening to your conscience and acting from there, you may find yourself acting in ways that are much kinder to you, too. Finding work which is genuinely more satisfying, getting out of unhealthy relationships, or healing them with this newfound uncompromising honesty and integrity. So many people who embrace a vegan lifestyle for ethical reasons, talk about this transformation in consciousness which happens. Its because we all, do feel guilty when we know we are harming and exploiting other living beings, we do because deep down we are all Spirit, all God, all one. If we’re not acting from that consciousness, and we’re living in ways that are harming other and are being dishonest about that, even to ourselves…then we will feel discomfort and conflict in many areas of our lives.
I wish for the whole world to begin to know inner peace, to find their highest kindest truth and live it, together, in an organic vegetable paradise garden world.
We humans have a tendency to step away from difficult emotions and avoid rather than confront things which make us feel uncomfortable about who we are. We step back from confrontation, from making changes to our lives which may upset the people around us.
This is the way that evil is allowed to exist and continue unheeded in this world. We see a crime being committed, an injustice taking place, and we say and do nothing about it, preferring not to make a fuss, or to face the challenge of standing up to an oppressive person or system. This happens in families, when a parent sees a family member being abused and say’s nothing. Not always beaten or sexually abused, it could be seeing someone being continually verbally put down, or bullied and not protecting them. These subtler levels of not speaking out, not speaking our truth, not standing up for what is right, can be equally damaging. Like, when we go along with what others expect from us in any given situation, whatever life choice that may be, which is ours to make, but instead of listening to what our truth is, we are tuned, instead to the feelings and attitudes of those around us, and follow their lead instead.
This is the way that evil is allowed to exist and continue unheeded in this world. We see a crime being committed, an injustice taking place, and we say and do nothing about it, preferring not to make a fuss, or to face the challenge of standing up to an oppressive person or system. This happens in families, when a parent sees a family member being abused and say’s nothing. Not always beaten or sexually abused, it could be seeing someone being continually verbally put down, or bullied and not protecting them. These subtler levels of not speaking out, not speaking our truth, not standing up for what is right, can be equally damaging. Like, when we go along with what others expect from us in any given situation, whatever life choice that may be, which is ours to make, but instead of listening to what our truth is, we are tuned, instead to the feelings and attitudes of those around us, and follow their lead instead.
This, when we behave like this, is the land of the lost souls. We are lost from ourselves. Lost from that inner voice which is only ours, the most precious thing we have, our truth. What feels most right for us to do in any given moment, voicing and acting from that. It is only when we follow this inner voice we are truly completely free, only when we are in touch with this place and acting from there, that we can know true inner peace.
It seems we have become so adept, so practiced at being tuned to the outer influences around us, we find it hard to even hear our inner voice of truth anymore. But it is always there, it’s a feeling deep down inside. In stillness, in quiet moments, alone, we can hear it. The more we honor that voice, the stronger our connection to it grows again.
Sometimes that inner voice speaks to of us something which is unique to us about our journey. But sometimes, some truths, are shared by us all. The compassionate truth that we should harm none, wherever we can help it, is something we all know deep inside. But the culture we live in has taught us not to listen to that voice, by the very act of eating animal products, we must deny our inner voice, deny our conscience. As our conscience, IS our true spiritual nature, then the practice of eating animal products, disconnects us from that, fundamentally wounds us at our core. We cannot reconnect, until we listen to our conscience, and stop doing harm wherever possible.
Killing animals unnecessarily for food, is the fall from grace. It cut us off from our spirit, our souls, from our ability to be able to see heaven. When we began killing unnecessarily, without compunction, that is when we as a species lost the ability to appreciate the miracle of this life, and these beautiful angelic creatures we share this planet with. These dear sweet gentle beings, each of them an individual, a loving being the centre of their own life story as you are yours. Different in some ways from us, but in so many the same. These gentle animals who, if we give them a chance, if we love them, love us back in ways we can only aspire to love. These animals who, if we love them, have so much to teach us. Without words they communicate what is important, they know, they remember, the only reason for being, is to hang out with those you love, play, snuggle, connect, eat some, play some more, sleep a bit. They may not have our intellect, our capacity to create wonders of technological advancement. But they are not lost souls as we are. They are still in touch with what’s important. What is true. They can teach us this again, by their example. If only we will listen to them.
I truly believe that facing the uncomfortable truth, being courageous enough to really turn and look at the horrific ways we are treating animals, is, our way home. Only by being willing to face the pain we are inflicting on other animals, and stop inflicting it, will we ever find our way out of this lost land. This hell of our own creation.
Somewhere deep inside us we remember how to love. With humans, who have often hurt us, in their coldness and complexity, its not always so easy. But with animals, they are so pure, so innocent, so uncomplicated. Its simple. They hurt, they need gentleness and kindness, love and nurture, they need us to be devoted careers of them, to return to a state of grace and wonder at their presence in this world. Doing this will return us to our own hearts and affect all other relationships in our lives.
As we lost the ability to see animals with love, care, respect, and feel empathy for them. We, at the same time, became capable of acting coldly, disrespectfully and unkindly to one another. Literally, when animal ‘farming’ first began, several thousand years ago, at this exact same time, and only then, began human oppression, slavery, seeing women as chattel to be bought and sold. A wealthy elite arose, those who through brute force, power, could take the most land, the most animals, as ‘property’ hold onto that at the expense of others. A terrible thing happened in the human consciousness, where living beings became things. Their inherent spirit, their soul, was denied. As we did this, all soul was denied. As power and property, became our guiding lights, this world fell into darkness.
To rise again out of the darkness, all we need do, is begin to make kindness and compassion and listening to our deepest truth, our guiding light again. Then, all the evil in this world, will gradually, but quite quickly actually, fade away. Practicing kindness and compassion at the fundamental ritual of eating, is key to our transformation. Releasing animals from our violent oppression is key to our awakening. The small discomfort of changing our diet, of choosing to do what feels right, rather than what is normal….is not much of a price to pay, to get out of hell.
It seems we have become so adept, so practiced at being tuned to the outer influences around us, we find it hard to even hear our inner voice of truth anymore. But it is always there, it’s a feeling deep down inside. In stillness, in quiet moments, alone, we can hear it. The more we honor that voice, the stronger our connection to it grows again.
Sometimes that inner voice speaks to of us something which is unique to us about our journey. But sometimes, some truths, are shared by us all. The compassionate truth that we should harm none, wherever we can help it, is something we all know deep inside. But the culture we live in has taught us not to listen to that voice, by the very act of eating animal products, we must deny our inner voice, deny our conscience. As our conscience, IS our true spiritual nature, then the practice of eating animal products, disconnects us from that, fundamentally wounds us at our core. We cannot reconnect, until we listen to our conscience, and stop doing harm wherever possible.
Killing animals unnecessarily for food, is the fall from grace. It cut us off from our spirit, our souls, from our ability to be able to see heaven. When we began killing unnecessarily, without compunction, that is when we as a species lost the ability to appreciate the miracle of this life, and these beautiful angelic creatures we share this planet with. These dear sweet gentle beings, each of them an individual, a loving being the centre of their own life story as you are yours. Different in some ways from us, but in so many the same. These gentle animals who, if we give them a chance, if we love them, love us back in ways we can only aspire to love. These animals who, if we love them, have so much to teach us. Without words they communicate what is important, they know, they remember, the only reason for being, is to hang out with those you love, play, snuggle, connect, eat some, play some more, sleep a bit. They may not have our intellect, our capacity to create wonders of technological advancement. But they are not lost souls as we are. They are still in touch with what’s important. What is true. They can teach us this again, by their example. If only we will listen to them.
I truly believe that facing the uncomfortable truth, being courageous enough to really turn and look at the horrific ways we are treating animals, is, our way home. Only by being willing to face the pain we are inflicting on other animals, and stop inflicting it, will we ever find our way out of this lost land. This hell of our own creation.
Somewhere deep inside us we remember how to love. With humans, who have often hurt us, in their coldness and complexity, its not always so easy. But with animals, they are so pure, so innocent, so uncomplicated. Its simple. They hurt, they need gentleness and kindness, love and nurture, they need us to be devoted careers of them, to return to a state of grace and wonder at their presence in this world. Doing this will return us to our own hearts and affect all other relationships in our lives.
As we lost the ability to see animals with love, care, respect, and feel empathy for them. We, at the same time, became capable of acting coldly, disrespectfully and unkindly to one another. Literally, when animal ‘farming’ first began, several thousand years ago, at this exact same time, and only then, began human oppression, slavery, seeing women as chattel to be bought and sold. A wealthy elite arose, those who through brute force, power, could take the most land, the most animals, as ‘property’ hold onto that at the expense of others. A terrible thing happened in the human consciousness, where living beings became things. Their inherent spirit, their soul, was denied. As we did this, all soul was denied. As power and property, became our guiding lights, this world fell into darkness.
To rise again out of the darkness, all we need do, is begin to make kindness and compassion and listening to our deepest truth, our guiding light again. Then, all the evil in this world, will gradually, but quite quickly actually, fade away. Practicing kindness and compassion at the fundamental ritual of eating, is key to our transformation. Releasing animals from our violent oppression is key to our awakening. The small discomfort of changing our diet, of choosing to do what feels right, rather than what is normal….is not much of a price to pay, to get out of hell.
All I know is, whenever I haven’t been being entirely honest with myself, I’ve felt discontent. I’ve always sought to be honest with myself, but its like life teaches you to lie. So actually, in spite of my efforts to tell the truth, it still seems that life is a process of uncovering unconscious lies. Like we have to dig really deep inside to find what is actually true. Following the trail of what feels uncomfortable. For me, choosing to do no harm was the biggest lie I uncovered. I thought of myself as a good and kind person, but then I had to realize I wasn’t acting kindly at all. This world had taught me violence. Violence towards animals was normal, but violence in my communications and actions towards others was too.
Judging people is unkind. I’m still struggling with that one. I judge people who are defending their right to abuse and kill my friends, and dine on them at parties, laughing and joking and not for one moment considering the lives that lay desecrated on their plates. I judge people when I walk through the supermarket, and especially, when I see a discarded piece of animal body at the checkout. Someone decided they didn’t’ want to buy it after all, and they just leave it there, to go off, so that no-one else can buy it. I’m caught then between the horror of that living being seen as food….then the double horror of the animal having suffered and died for no reason whatsoever.
Yes, I am still struggling with my violence in this respect. But I am trying to see with compassion that its like a vicious circle which harms people, who harm animals, which harms people, who harm animals and the whole thing has spiraled to this nightmare out of control. The way back the way out of the nightmare, is to start living kindly towards animals, but the people are so harmed by the harm they have done to animals….I wonder if they even can stop.
Thankfully, I hear feedback, from this page, from other sources, so many places, where people turn vegan, are beginning to wake up, to understand the cycle and step out of it. Find a new and kinder way. Everyday I see the results of vegan choices, not only on the happy animals in the sanctuaries, but in the lives of those who have chosen to love. They are more radiant, more at peace, more genuine, more free. I pray we all continue to set us all free.
Judging people is unkind. I’m still struggling with that one. I judge people who are defending their right to abuse and kill my friends, and dine on them at parties, laughing and joking and not for one moment considering the lives that lay desecrated on their plates. I judge people when I walk through the supermarket, and especially, when I see a discarded piece of animal body at the checkout. Someone decided they didn’t’ want to buy it after all, and they just leave it there, to go off, so that no-one else can buy it. I’m caught then between the horror of that living being seen as food….then the double horror of the animal having suffered and died for no reason whatsoever.
Yes, I am still struggling with my violence in this respect. But I am trying to see with compassion that its like a vicious circle which harms people, who harm animals, which harms people, who harm animals and the whole thing has spiraled to this nightmare out of control. The way back the way out of the nightmare, is to start living kindly towards animals, but the people are so harmed by the harm they have done to animals….I wonder if they even can stop.
Thankfully, I hear feedback, from this page, from other sources, so many places, where people turn vegan, are beginning to wake up, to understand the cycle and step out of it. Find a new and kinder way. Everyday I see the results of vegan choices, not only on the happy animals in the sanctuaries, but in the lives of those who have chosen to love. They are more radiant, more at peace, more genuine, more free. I pray we all continue to set us all free.
What waking up to the suffering of animals has brought about a transformation I’ve always needed to make. I watched a film by Mercy For Animals, called ‘From Farm to Fridge’. My life for the next couple of months was a living nightmare. Literally didn’t sleep most nights, haunted by the images of what animals are undergoing on factory farms, in animal hell, everywhere, in their billions. I understand why people don’t take it in, don’t look because to endure what you see almost drives you out of your mind. Yet, if we don’t look, and don’t see, then those who don’t usually carry on contributing to it. If its that hard for us to look at, imagine how it is for the animals to go through it.
But after the hell of the first month or two, to cope with it and not go mad, I found that I had to force myself to do things I knew were good for me. If I were going to be the best possible advocate for animals if I were going to be the strongest possible force I could be to help end their suffering, I had to do yoga, meditate, eat healthily, monitor when I needed time out…and crucially, make lots of friends who are already involved in animal rights….oh and I found a website, Animal Rights Zone, which was the best education I could have come across. So every day, night and day, I listened to their podcast interviews, with lifelong animal rights advocates, and all the top thinkers and activists in this field. Read all the books I could. I poured all those terrible feelings of knowing the agonies animals are enduring into action….to stay sane.
Its paying off….I’m finding a balance…still reading and studying, still getting support from more experienced and newly awakened animal advocate friends, and slowly finding my own ways of helping.
But what its ended up in being, is me doing what I never really could do when I was living only for me. Like, to really discover health, sanity, inner peace, deep fulfillment, was to step into the thing that was most painful, and act, to help alleviate that suffering. Becoming vegan was the first step, in living more consciously, more kindly and then the next was having to do something about the suffering of animals, it really is the root of all our suffering in the world, it disconnects us from our hearts and souls.
Waking up to see this and help free animals continues to be a radical awakening every day, and though challenging, finally I’ve learnt that life only begins, when instead of looking for things that comfort us and give us pleasure, we turn and step into what brings us pain, face it, and do something about it.
But after the hell of the first month or two, to cope with it and not go mad, I found that I had to force myself to do things I knew were good for me. If I were going to be the best possible advocate for animals if I were going to be the strongest possible force I could be to help end their suffering, I had to do yoga, meditate, eat healthily, monitor when I needed time out…and crucially, make lots of friends who are already involved in animal rights….oh and I found a website, Animal Rights Zone, which was the best education I could have come across. So every day, night and day, I listened to their podcast interviews, with lifelong animal rights advocates, and all the top thinkers and activists in this field. Read all the books I could. I poured all those terrible feelings of knowing the agonies animals are enduring into action….to stay sane.
Its paying off….I’m finding a balance…still reading and studying, still getting support from more experienced and newly awakened animal advocate friends, and slowly finding my own ways of helping.
But what its ended up in being, is me doing what I never really could do when I was living only for me. Like, to really discover health, sanity, inner peace, deep fulfillment, was to step into the thing that was most painful, and act, to help alleviate that suffering. Becoming vegan was the first step, in living more consciously, more kindly and then the next was having to do something about the suffering of animals, it really is the root of all our suffering in the world, it disconnects us from our hearts and souls.
Waking up to see this and help free animals continues to be a radical awakening every day, and though challenging, finally I’ve learnt that life only begins, when instead of looking for things that comfort us and give us pleasure, we turn and step into what brings us pain, face it, and do something about it.
A kind world? That’s too idealistic. The world is hard! People say.
It is hard. Even if we were being kind, our loved ones would still die some day. We’d still meet people we love who would outgrow us and move on.
There would be less sickness in a kind world, but there would be some accidents no doubt. There would be much greater sense of meaningful connection to everyone and everything. But there would still be challenges, life at times would still be hard.
But we wouldn’t run ourselves into the ground trying to earn, achieve, acquire, and never finding happiness and fulfilment, destroying everything in sight along the way, and silliness like that.
We’d love, we’d hang out, we’d make things, watch and help life grow. We’d explore inner and outer realms together.
But it would still, at times be hard.
But this…this nightmare we now live in….because we aren’t being kind.
Justifying that because…well, life is hard. So, we’re hard.
Is madness.
At our source, we are all God, are all one. We are here in this Earthly form, on an adventure. We came, to see what it would be like to be separate. To be the billions of different individuals we all are, in a myriad forms.
At times, that is hard. There are endings. We hurt when we don’t mean to.
Why make it hard the rest of the time….more than hard…why make it hell here, for the animals, and ourselves, by hurting deliberately, without caring at all.
When we could just be kind.
Please, stop paying people to torture, murder and cause horrendous suffering, every mealtime.
Please, stop seeing animals as things and using them for food, forcing them into the hell of our systems of efficiency and power, which are utterly devoid of any kindness and heart.
Please, stop creating that world. Please be kind.
It is hard. Even if we were being kind, our loved ones would still die some day. We’d still meet people we love who would outgrow us and move on.
There would be less sickness in a kind world, but there would be some accidents no doubt. There would be much greater sense of meaningful connection to everyone and everything. But there would still be challenges, life at times would still be hard.
But we wouldn’t run ourselves into the ground trying to earn, achieve, acquire, and never finding happiness and fulfilment, destroying everything in sight along the way, and silliness like that.
We’d love, we’d hang out, we’d make things, watch and help life grow. We’d explore inner and outer realms together.
But it would still, at times be hard.
But this…this nightmare we now live in….because we aren’t being kind.
Justifying that because…well, life is hard. So, we’re hard.
Is madness.
At our source, we are all God, are all one. We are here in this Earthly form, on an adventure. We came, to see what it would be like to be separate. To be the billions of different individuals we all are, in a myriad forms.
At times, that is hard. There are endings. We hurt when we don’t mean to.
Why make it hard the rest of the time….more than hard…why make it hell here, for the animals, and ourselves, by hurting deliberately, without caring at all.
When we could just be kind.
Please, stop paying people to torture, murder and cause horrendous suffering, every mealtime.
Please, stop seeing animals as things and using them for food, forcing them into the hell of our systems of efficiency and power, which are utterly devoid of any kindness and heart.
Please, stop creating that world. Please be kind.
Lierre Keith, author of 'The Vegetarian Myth'
puts forth the case for murder.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNON5iNf07o
One expert say’s one thing, another say’s another. I lack the education to know who is right. In that sense, I found this quite disturbing.
But what about the Hindu’s? Aren’t there a lot of them…haven’t they lived for centuries, millennia even, quite healthily, producing some of the oldest yogi’s on the planet, eating a vegetarian with very little dairy diet? So how come they didn’t die from all these nutrients Lierre Keith says our body supposedly can only get from meat? The healthiest longest living people I’ve ever heard of, were vegetarian yogis.
I agree with Lierre that there should be a return to the feminine principle, if, that principle is to nurture and relate, in balance and harmony. I agree too about the end of mono-cropping, and that we should begin permaculture ways of gardening, which interfere with nature as little as possible. And yes, the animals and birds should all return to the land. But not so we can kill them, so they can live there freely and we can love them.
I agree, to birth control and education for women, freedom for women who live in oppressive patriarchal countries, and yes, the end of rich countries taking from the poor in the name of Capitalism.
But killing the animals…no. If the Hindu’s could do it and survive, so can I. If the vegan communities who Will Tuttle encountered can live for hundreds of years, then everyone can. The animals, in balanced number, can live on the land again, and we can have a richly diverse ecosystem…without killing and brutality.
Lacking the education to know which of the scientists with equally convincing arguments is right. I look to my heart and intuition. The ethical vegans radiate health and vitality on so many levels. There’s a glow of kindness and aliveness to them, my heart opens just listening to them. I light up too. My consciousness expands and begins to move into a whole new dimension and paradigm. They are love in action.
As I open up to here what this woman has to say, if I start to think she might be right, I sort of shrink, contract, dumb down, I feel that heavy sad, leaden feeling of head bowed, just got to live with it then, we must kill, to survive.
Only I can’t believe her, because my heart is too open now. I could no more kill another living being intentionally now, than I could kill my own family and friends. I’m sorry, once you’re awake, this woman just sounds insane. But insane people are who we’ve all been indoctrinated by, and like her, they can sound, for a moment, very plausible and convincing, in a sinister, cold macabre sort of way. They, like her, sound convincing because they genuinely believe killing is the way.
I’m sure Hitler, could have made just as convincing an argument, for why he had to kill Jewish people. In that respect, this video is really quite disturbing
puts forth the case for murder.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNON5iNf07o
One expert say’s one thing, another say’s another. I lack the education to know who is right. In that sense, I found this quite disturbing.
But what about the Hindu’s? Aren’t there a lot of them…haven’t they lived for centuries, millennia even, quite healthily, producing some of the oldest yogi’s on the planet, eating a vegetarian with very little dairy diet? So how come they didn’t die from all these nutrients Lierre Keith says our body supposedly can only get from meat? The healthiest longest living people I’ve ever heard of, were vegetarian yogis.
I agree with Lierre that there should be a return to the feminine principle, if, that principle is to nurture and relate, in balance and harmony. I agree too about the end of mono-cropping, and that we should begin permaculture ways of gardening, which interfere with nature as little as possible. And yes, the animals and birds should all return to the land. But not so we can kill them, so they can live there freely and we can love them.
I agree, to birth control and education for women, freedom for women who live in oppressive patriarchal countries, and yes, the end of rich countries taking from the poor in the name of Capitalism.
But killing the animals…no. If the Hindu’s could do it and survive, so can I. If the vegan communities who Will Tuttle encountered can live for hundreds of years, then everyone can. The animals, in balanced number, can live on the land again, and we can have a richly diverse ecosystem…without killing and brutality.
Lacking the education to know which of the scientists with equally convincing arguments is right. I look to my heart and intuition. The ethical vegans radiate health and vitality on so many levels. There’s a glow of kindness and aliveness to them, my heart opens just listening to them. I light up too. My consciousness expands and begins to move into a whole new dimension and paradigm. They are love in action.
As I open up to here what this woman has to say, if I start to think she might be right, I sort of shrink, contract, dumb down, I feel that heavy sad, leaden feeling of head bowed, just got to live with it then, we must kill, to survive.
Only I can’t believe her, because my heart is too open now. I could no more kill another living being intentionally now, than I could kill my own family and friends. I’m sorry, once you’re awake, this woman just sounds insane. But insane people are who we’ve all been indoctrinated by, and like her, they can sound, for a moment, very plausible and convincing, in a sinister, cold macabre sort of way. They, like her, sound convincing because they genuinely believe killing is the way.
I’m sure Hitler, could have made just as convincing an argument, for why he had to kill Jewish people. In that respect, this video is really quite disturbing
I had a lovely day. A rest, refresh myself in the waters of connection and love with other kindred spirits.
Back to work now though. It just feels wrong to focus on personal happiness and get out of touch with the animals pain. They are there suffering in a hell worse than anyone's worst nightmare, and I'm their voice. How could I forget them? How could I have forgotten them my whole life?
Concentrating on personal happiness.... contrary to all we are told... IS unconsciousness. As I feel myself focusing on personal happiness again, accompanying the feeling is a sense that something's missing, off in the distance on the edge of my happiness...there's a sense that ‘something's not quite right though’. Simultaneously I find myself reaching for stimulants, ice cream (vegan of course), the sudden desire for coffee.
So the vague discomfort I feel when I'm happy, at forgetting those who are suffering in the world, I try to mask with addictions.
This is the human condition. We've lost touch with the reality of our oneness. We are numb, sleepwalking, unconscious. It IS wrong, for us to focus on our personal happiness, whilst our brothers and sisters of all species are suffering so much. We cover up our discomfort at the fact we've forgotten them, left them there suffering, whilst we enjoy ourselves, with addictions and perverse attachments.
People do try to remind me not to get 'too down' when I get back to the suffering. I know its because they care, maybe they worry that if I open up to the suffering too much I'll lose my mind. Too late. I opened fully to it. I nearly lost my mind but found that actually, what's more insane, is to put it back out of my mind.
Its part of the conspiracy to be happy. THAT is our conditioning, how we are programmed to be unconscious.
How much pressure there is on us, mostly through the media, but from many other sources, to be always in the pursuit of 'personal happiness'. The image of success is to project 'happiness'. Not go around with a miserable face on upsetting people with the truth that billions upon billions of lives are enslaved agonized and utterly tormented, then stolen entirely, by the very people you're talking to. Mustn't mention that too often, or too loudly. Nor that those same people in their brainwashed focus of self and pursuit of personal pleasure are destroying the very fabric of life itself.
No, its time to go diving again. Back to where my friends are. In hell. Not forgotten by me. Not for one moment. Not anymore.
Wow…what I also just realized which is really sad, and ironic, and the most messed up thing about this conditioned focus of personal happiness, is the goal is never, ever, reached. There will always, at the very least be a sense of emptiness and something's not quite right, physical illness and emotional and psychological suffering to some degree will arise out of this lack of consciousness. Addictions and aggressive or perverse twisted behaviours too.
While our sphere of compassion extends only to ‘us and ours’, we are not fully conscious, and not truly happy.
Living with kindness is the only solution. Living with compassion for all that is, is the only way.
Which begins and is fuelled by the food choices we make, in that most fundamental ritual we practice several times a day, eating. Eating is powerful. You are eating and creating heaven, or hell, every meal time.
Back to work now though. It just feels wrong to focus on personal happiness and get out of touch with the animals pain. They are there suffering in a hell worse than anyone's worst nightmare, and I'm their voice. How could I forget them? How could I have forgotten them my whole life?
Concentrating on personal happiness.... contrary to all we are told... IS unconsciousness. As I feel myself focusing on personal happiness again, accompanying the feeling is a sense that something's missing, off in the distance on the edge of my happiness...there's a sense that ‘something's not quite right though’. Simultaneously I find myself reaching for stimulants, ice cream (vegan of course), the sudden desire for coffee.
So the vague discomfort I feel when I'm happy, at forgetting those who are suffering in the world, I try to mask with addictions.
This is the human condition. We've lost touch with the reality of our oneness. We are numb, sleepwalking, unconscious. It IS wrong, for us to focus on our personal happiness, whilst our brothers and sisters of all species are suffering so much. We cover up our discomfort at the fact we've forgotten them, left them there suffering, whilst we enjoy ourselves, with addictions and perverse attachments.
People do try to remind me not to get 'too down' when I get back to the suffering. I know its because they care, maybe they worry that if I open up to the suffering too much I'll lose my mind. Too late. I opened fully to it. I nearly lost my mind but found that actually, what's more insane, is to put it back out of my mind.
Its part of the conspiracy to be happy. THAT is our conditioning, how we are programmed to be unconscious.
How much pressure there is on us, mostly through the media, but from many other sources, to be always in the pursuit of 'personal happiness'. The image of success is to project 'happiness'. Not go around with a miserable face on upsetting people with the truth that billions upon billions of lives are enslaved agonized and utterly tormented, then stolen entirely, by the very people you're talking to. Mustn't mention that too often, or too loudly. Nor that those same people in their brainwashed focus of self and pursuit of personal pleasure are destroying the very fabric of life itself.
No, its time to go diving again. Back to where my friends are. In hell. Not forgotten by me. Not for one moment. Not anymore.
Wow…what I also just realized which is really sad, and ironic, and the most messed up thing about this conditioned focus of personal happiness, is the goal is never, ever, reached. There will always, at the very least be a sense of emptiness and something's not quite right, physical illness and emotional and psychological suffering to some degree will arise out of this lack of consciousness. Addictions and aggressive or perverse twisted behaviours too.
While our sphere of compassion extends only to ‘us and ours’, we are not fully conscious, and not truly happy.
Living with kindness is the only solution. Living with compassion for all that is, is the only way.
Which begins and is fuelled by the food choices we make, in that most fundamental ritual we practice several times a day, eating. Eating is powerful. You are eating and creating heaven, or hell, every meal time.
POWER
Power to own your own home
Power to own and drive a car
Power to go on holidays abroad
Power to accumulate money for your future
Power to buy accessories and clothes
Power to buy anything you like from a supermarket
Power to sit around and do nothing
HAPPINESS
Committing yourself wholeheartedly to alleviating suffering and ending oppression
Pursuing selfless goals of service to humanity, to animals, to the planet
Being creative, speaking, acting, with the intent to raise consciousness and alleviate suffering, in every moment
Feeling meaningfully connected to all who lives, and acting with compassion towards them, in every moment
Taking care of yourself, making yourself the strongest healthiest you can so you can be of most service to the good of all
Loving animals, the earth, trees, flowers, birds, insects, and the beauty of the skies, the air, filled with life, the miracle of the bountiful fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, which the Earth grows miraculously, wondrously, for you…. Plentifully…without you needing to harm or exploit anyone, in order to survive
Being thankful for all these things, for the opportunity to be here, every day, to help clean up this mess of the era of power
Power to own your own home
Power to own and drive a car
Power to go on holidays abroad
Power to accumulate money for your future
Power to buy accessories and clothes
Power to buy anything you like from a supermarket
Power to sit around and do nothing
HAPPINESS
Committing yourself wholeheartedly to alleviating suffering and ending oppression
Pursuing selfless goals of service to humanity, to animals, to the planet
Being creative, speaking, acting, with the intent to raise consciousness and alleviate suffering, in every moment
Feeling meaningfully connected to all who lives, and acting with compassion towards them, in every moment
Taking care of yourself, making yourself the strongest healthiest you can so you can be of most service to the good of all
Loving animals, the earth, trees, flowers, birds, insects, and the beauty of the skies, the air, filled with life, the miracle of the bountiful fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, which the Earth grows miraculously, wondrously, for you…. Plentifully…without you needing to harm or exploit anyone, in order to survive
Being thankful for all these things, for the opportunity to be here, every day, to help clean up this mess of the era of power
I’ve been putting meditation last. Putting it off for too many days now. I can get loads done, and it all seems very important…it is important…getting the message out. But what I totally underestimate everyday, is the value of meditating. The power of imagination and the focus of our hearts and energies is so vital, yet there’s a sort of inner compulsion to somehow avoid doing it. Is it the ego? Maybe. I hear it likes to be rational, busy, competent, in that organizing side of the brain.
When I meditate, I come into my heart, and move into the power of imagination and visualization. A side of ourselves which is drastically undernourished and largely unexplored. The power of imagination when I have used it, has had quite a magical effect, every time. If I have had a row or a moments tension with someone, whenever I take the time to quiet my mind and go into my heart and visualize a loving interaction with them taking place, forgiveness and understanding dawning between us….miraculously next time I see that person the air is cleared between us. Some situations are trickier than others, but this always, inevitably shifts things.
I can strengthen myself too, with visualization, in meditation. Using the chakras as a map I can spend five minutes on each, visualizing a healthy state for each chakra, first for me, then for the whole planet. For the base chakra, I see us all feeling safe, secure, abundant…no need to grab…fulfilled, healthy in body, with all we need physically, grounded, stable. For the sacral I see us enjoying ourselves, having fun, relating with pleasure and enjoying the ebb and flow and sensual delight of living on Earth… moving on up the chakras visualizing a healthy vibrant state for each one. I believe, this visualization has quite an effect.
Supreme Master Ching Hai who visualized then manifested the worlds Largest and fastest growing chain of vegan restaurants, among many other laudable and compassionate healing and supportive initiatives worldwide… says that our imaginations are very powerful indeed. She recommends that we all visualize the world as we want it to be, and hold that image in our minds as much as we can. We imagine it as if its already happened, that part is key. Your imagination is so powerful, that if you imagine it happening in the future, that’s when it will happen…and it will stay something just out of reach. So, its important to close your eyes, or open them, and pretend that its already happened, that the world around you right now, is vegan, peaceful and kind. Imagine the relief, the deep sweet pleasure of knowing everyone has woken up and wouldn’t, if they could help it, harm a fly.
Really, I’ve been trying for a while now, and its quite a challenge to even envisage it.
Tonight I reached new depths with it though. I was practicing the Metta Bhavana loving kindness meditation, where you spend a few minutes wishing yourself happiness and wellbeing, then a few minutes wishing your friend happiness and wellbeing, and then an acquaintance, then someone you find a bit of an adversary or challenge at the moment, then you end by sending wishes for wellbeing and happiness to the whole world.
Well it struck me suddenly that the perfect vision of happiness for all of them was to see people knowing that their own happiness lies in acting kindly in every moment. Seeing them filled with love compassion and kindness for others and it just pouring out through their every action and them filled with joy and love.
That…was the best visualization yet. Felt amazing!
I’m going to try it again tomorrow. And not forget again how powerful and important it is to stop being so busy and get into this side of my brain.
Quite funny really, all that ego busy-ness…and I know, there is practical work to be done…but if we spent even a little time using the magic power we have inside us…might save us a whole
When I meditate, I come into my heart, and move into the power of imagination and visualization. A side of ourselves which is drastically undernourished and largely unexplored. The power of imagination when I have used it, has had quite a magical effect, every time. If I have had a row or a moments tension with someone, whenever I take the time to quiet my mind and go into my heart and visualize a loving interaction with them taking place, forgiveness and understanding dawning between us….miraculously next time I see that person the air is cleared between us. Some situations are trickier than others, but this always, inevitably shifts things.
I can strengthen myself too, with visualization, in meditation. Using the chakras as a map I can spend five minutes on each, visualizing a healthy state for each chakra, first for me, then for the whole planet. For the base chakra, I see us all feeling safe, secure, abundant…no need to grab…fulfilled, healthy in body, with all we need physically, grounded, stable. For the sacral I see us enjoying ourselves, having fun, relating with pleasure and enjoying the ebb and flow and sensual delight of living on Earth… moving on up the chakras visualizing a healthy vibrant state for each one. I believe, this visualization has quite an effect.
Supreme Master Ching Hai who visualized then manifested the worlds Largest and fastest growing chain of vegan restaurants, among many other laudable and compassionate healing and supportive initiatives worldwide… says that our imaginations are very powerful indeed. She recommends that we all visualize the world as we want it to be, and hold that image in our minds as much as we can. We imagine it as if its already happened, that part is key. Your imagination is so powerful, that if you imagine it happening in the future, that’s when it will happen…and it will stay something just out of reach. So, its important to close your eyes, or open them, and pretend that its already happened, that the world around you right now, is vegan, peaceful and kind. Imagine the relief, the deep sweet pleasure of knowing everyone has woken up and wouldn’t, if they could help it, harm a fly.
Really, I’ve been trying for a while now, and its quite a challenge to even envisage it.
Tonight I reached new depths with it though. I was practicing the Metta Bhavana loving kindness meditation, where you spend a few minutes wishing yourself happiness and wellbeing, then a few minutes wishing your friend happiness and wellbeing, and then an acquaintance, then someone you find a bit of an adversary or challenge at the moment, then you end by sending wishes for wellbeing and happiness to the whole world.
Well it struck me suddenly that the perfect vision of happiness for all of them was to see people knowing that their own happiness lies in acting kindly in every moment. Seeing them filled with love compassion and kindness for others and it just pouring out through their every action and them filled with joy and love.
That…was the best visualization yet. Felt amazing!
I’m going to try it again tomorrow. And not forget again how powerful and important it is to stop being so busy and get into this side of my brain.
Quite funny really, all that ego busy-ness…and I know, there is practical work to be done…but if we spent even a little time using the magic power we have inside us…might save us a whole
Leather. Real leather. I remember the feeling that goes with that. The sense of pride that I owned something made of real leather. A wallet. Boots. The first thing I ever saved up and bought after leaving school, was a leather jacket. I hung it up where I could see it and glow with pride and happiness. Real leather!
No idea. Absolutely no idea.
I mean, of course, intellectually part of me knew that was the skin of an animal. But all those adverts for ‘real leather’, then people asking….’is it leather?’ Or saying with pride… ‘look what I’ve got…real leather.’ All these things had thoroughly indoctrinated me to see this as something to revere, for its quality. Ooh…smell that real leather. That’s going to last.
Often things made of leather are bought as gifts too aren’t they. As if that proves you are loved, to bought a gift of real leather.
So I understand where someone is coming from, when I see them wearing their jacket or boots so proudly, and can sense the care and pride in their leather ipad case, or phone wallet.
But I’m no longer living that conditioned nightmare dream. Now, I know, that, was someone’s skin. That someone, was as real to me, as alive and full of feeling, as you are. That someone had relatives and friends, desires and longings, and sadly, a great deal of suffering in their life. They had a life, which, no matter how much suffering was in it, still, they fought for it at the end, when it was stolen from them, so you could steal their flesh, their skin, take away their soul’s right to life on this Earth.
Yet any of you still doing that, I know, are not bad, anymore than I was bad as I proudly hung my leather jacket up to stare at…because it was real leather.
You have no real feeling, no empathic understanding, no real awareness of that living being, any more than I had. You are still spiritually asleep, unconscious, controlled, by a media, a culture, which has stolen your heart, and distracted your mind, so much so, that you can read these words and feel very little at all for the living beings who have died and continue to die all around you.
You actually cannot, make that connection, that we vegans have, not yet. If you could, you would. But it takes time to wake up, and it sometimes, takes great effort. If you’re in a really deep, deep, sleep.
But once you’re awake, what you find is a whole new world, where your heart is opened, and you can see other living beings and feel, actually feel something in your heart for them. Feel something so beautiful, that you could never hurt them, never steal their life, or do something so horrifically macabre as wear their skin.
Once you’re awake, this world looks very different indeed. When you start to learn that the wealthy elite, who control our media, and influence our governments, first rose to power, by enslaving and abusing animals. When you start to see that Capitalism…that very word arising out of ‘capita’ meaning ‘per head’, of cattle, with all the exploitation and oppression and ruthless values that profit oriented culture has inflicted on this world. When you wake up and see the original wound, was the abuse of animals, making man/woman satanically greedy, taking lives which weren’t theirs to take. When they had so many bountiful fruits and vegetables nuts and seeds and herbs and all kinds of wondrous foods the Earth provided for them in her love for them. But when man/woman first began stealing life from other beings, stealing their children, seeing them as something they could own, as property, control their reproductive systems….that, was a very dark day indeed. That, was when humans fell from grace, and began creating this hell on Earth that we see today. A world insane. A world where they have destroyed 90% of all other living species in order to protect their ‘cattle’. A world where they have poisoned all their oceans, and polluted their skies to such a degree, with their ‘animal agriculture’, that life itself will soon be unsustainable. A world where animals are gratuitously tortured and mutilated, confined and abused in the most horrific ways imaginable, and people feel absolutely nothing. Where the desire for power, which first made this species take the lives of other animals, has so perverted human nature, that in their insanity, they have destroyed everything. They are so completely out of touch with reality, that they themselves are suffering epidemic levels of disease which they know comes from eating animals. But in their desire for power, they just can’t stop. The power to walk into a restaurant and supermarket and buy anything they want. The power to eat all the familiar flavors they so desire. This power to have, to own, to eat, is all bound up, in this living hell, where conscience, and consequences are so little considered, that we’ve almost destroyed ourselves and all life on Earth
I understand, it’s hard to wake up. How deeply the media has entranced you. How strongly you’ve been indoctrinated, by the powers that be. But the only way you are going to find your way back out of hell, is if you stop listening to them, turn off the TV, and see that the milk you are drinking does not belong to you. The skin you are wearing, belonged to a sacred being, who you forgot was your friend. The flesh that you are eating, was another body, belonging to another soul, not very different to yours except in some small ways of form, and different in that you have the power, and they don’t.
Waking up is hard. Seeing through all that is hard. But if you don’t, you’ll continue to live chasing dreams sold to you which are not real, always, with an ache inside, always an emptiness, no matter how many things you kill, or own. You, will be dead forever.
The time is now. This is the time you’re meant to wake from that….or my sense is…you’ll never get the chance to wake up at all.
No idea. Absolutely no idea.
I mean, of course, intellectually part of me knew that was the skin of an animal. But all those adverts for ‘real leather’, then people asking….’is it leather?’ Or saying with pride… ‘look what I’ve got…real leather.’ All these things had thoroughly indoctrinated me to see this as something to revere, for its quality. Ooh…smell that real leather. That’s going to last.
Often things made of leather are bought as gifts too aren’t they. As if that proves you are loved, to bought a gift of real leather.
So I understand where someone is coming from, when I see them wearing their jacket or boots so proudly, and can sense the care and pride in their leather ipad case, or phone wallet.
But I’m no longer living that conditioned nightmare dream. Now, I know, that, was someone’s skin. That someone, was as real to me, as alive and full of feeling, as you are. That someone had relatives and friends, desires and longings, and sadly, a great deal of suffering in their life. They had a life, which, no matter how much suffering was in it, still, they fought for it at the end, when it was stolen from them, so you could steal their flesh, their skin, take away their soul’s right to life on this Earth.
Yet any of you still doing that, I know, are not bad, anymore than I was bad as I proudly hung my leather jacket up to stare at…because it was real leather.
You have no real feeling, no empathic understanding, no real awareness of that living being, any more than I had. You are still spiritually asleep, unconscious, controlled, by a media, a culture, which has stolen your heart, and distracted your mind, so much so, that you can read these words and feel very little at all for the living beings who have died and continue to die all around you.
You actually cannot, make that connection, that we vegans have, not yet. If you could, you would. But it takes time to wake up, and it sometimes, takes great effort. If you’re in a really deep, deep, sleep.
But once you’re awake, what you find is a whole new world, where your heart is opened, and you can see other living beings and feel, actually feel something in your heart for them. Feel something so beautiful, that you could never hurt them, never steal their life, or do something so horrifically macabre as wear their skin.
Once you’re awake, this world looks very different indeed. When you start to learn that the wealthy elite, who control our media, and influence our governments, first rose to power, by enslaving and abusing animals. When you start to see that Capitalism…that very word arising out of ‘capita’ meaning ‘per head’, of cattle, with all the exploitation and oppression and ruthless values that profit oriented culture has inflicted on this world. When you wake up and see the original wound, was the abuse of animals, making man/woman satanically greedy, taking lives which weren’t theirs to take. When they had so many bountiful fruits and vegetables nuts and seeds and herbs and all kinds of wondrous foods the Earth provided for them in her love for them. But when man/woman first began stealing life from other beings, stealing their children, seeing them as something they could own, as property, control their reproductive systems….that, was a very dark day indeed. That, was when humans fell from grace, and began creating this hell on Earth that we see today. A world insane. A world where they have destroyed 90% of all other living species in order to protect their ‘cattle’. A world where they have poisoned all their oceans, and polluted their skies to such a degree, with their ‘animal agriculture’, that life itself will soon be unsustainable. A world where animals are gratuitously tortured and mutilated, confined and abused in the most horrific ways imaginable, and people feel absolutely nothing. Where the desire for power, which first made this species take the lives of other animals, has so perverted human nature, that in their insanity, they have destroyed everything. They are so completely out of touch with reality, that they themselves are suffering epidemic levels of disease which they know comes from eating animals. But in their desire for power, they just can’t stop. The power to walk into a restaurant and supermarket and buy anything they want. The power to eat all the familiar flavors they so desire. This power to have, to own, to eat, is all bound up, in this living hell, where conscience, and consequences are so little considered, that we’ve almost destroyed ourselves and all life on Earth
I understand, it’s hard to wake up. How deeply the media has entranced you. How strongly you’ve been indoctrinated, by the powers that be. But the only way you are going to find your way back out of hell, is if you stop listening to them, turn off the TV, and see that the milk you are drinking does not belong to you. The skin you are wearing, belonged to a sacred being, who you forgot was your friend. The flesh that you are eating, was another body, belonging to another soul, not very different to yours except in some small ways of form, and different in that you have the power, and they don’t.
Waking up is hard. Seeing through all that is hard. But if you don’t, you’ll continue to live chasing dreams sold to you which are not real, always, with an ache inside, always an emptiness, no matter how many things you kill, or own. You, will be dead forever.
The time is now. This is the time you’re meant to wake from that….or my sense is…you’ll never get the chance to wake up at all.
Food is powerful.
Seems quite mundane, ordinary and insignificant from one perspective. Yet the very fact that we think it so, is almost part of the conspiracy. I’m not sure there is a conspiracy even, not really. But something’s up with this whole affair and I’m trying to see my way out of it.
Imagine, there was a conspiracy. What if, food, was really fundamentally powerful, and someone wanted to control us through that medium. So, what they did, was make it seem as though food were nothing more than a function, something that was like brushing your teeth, a means to an end. At the same time they told you to eat the foods which would poison your mind, steal your soul, and then told you that these foods were the most nutritious you can eat. Essential, in fact, that you eat them. What if, they knew that by teaching you to eat those foods, you would be set in conflict with yourself, unable ever to be at peace. What if they knew that out of this would arise conflict with others, and out of that, violence that would wreak havoc on this Earth and eventually, ultimately destroy life itself.
What if they told us misleading stories, like, the real evil, was eating an apple. When in fact, an apple, represented a benevolent loving beautiful world in balance and harmony. Instead they gave you stories of bloody sacrifice, and conquest over ‘beasts’. What if they knew that by slaying the beasts you would be thereafter living in a world based on fear, out of which all your actions would arise from discord and imbalance, creating chaos in the perfect order of life around you. A violent, bloody, dark, destructive millennia or two would follow. A long dark night of the soul, until almost, every single thing was lost.
Then, suddenly, finally, out of the darkness, came a light. The light of knowing. Light of understanding. Remembering. Liberating your soul from the clutches of satan’s jaws.
And it said. Its simple. All you have to do, to get out of hell, is to eat the apple, and stop dominating the beasts. All this whole nightmare of violence and conflict in your world didn’t begin when you bit into the apple, but when you took the life of a being when it wasn’t necessary. When you began enslaving and dominating your brothers and sisters on this Earth, and could no longer could see that all life is sacred. That is when you went astray. Stopping doing that, is your way home.
What if food were more powerful than you realized.
Seems quite mundane, ordinary and insignificant from one perspective. Yet the very fact that we think it so, is almost part of the conspiracy. I’m not sure there is a conspiracy even, not really. But something’s up with this whole affair and I’m trying to see my way out of it.
Imagine, there was a conspiracy. What if, food, was really fundamentally powerful, and someone wanted to control us through that medium. So, what they did, was make it seem as though food were nothing more than a function, something that was like brushing your teeth, a means to an end. At the same time they told you to eat the foods which would poison your mind, steal your soul, and then told you that these foods were the most nutritious you can eat. Essential, in fact, that you eat them. What if, they knew that by teaching you to eat those foods, you would be set in conflict with yourself, unable ever to be at peace. What if they knew that out of this would arise conflict with others, and out of that, violence that would wreak havoc on this Earth and eventually, ultimately destroy life itself.
What if they told us misleading stories, like, the real evil, was eating an apple. When in fact, an apple, represented a benevolent loving beautiful world in balance and harmony. Instead they gave you stories of bloody sacrifice, and conquest over ‘beasts’. What if they knew that by slaying the beasts you would be thereafter living in a world based on fear, out of which all your actions would arise from discord and imbalance, creating chaos in the perfect order of life around you. A violent, bloody, dark, destructive millennia or two would follow. A long dark night of the soul, until almost, every single thing was lost.
Then, suddenly, finally, out of the darkness, came a light. The light of knowing. Light of understanding. Remembering. Liberating your soul from the clutches of satan’s jaws.
And it said. Its simple. All you have to do, to get out of hell, is to eat the apple, and stop dominating the beasts. All this whole nightmare of violence and conflict in your world didn’t begin when you bit into the apple, but when you took the life of a being when it wasn’t necessary. When you began enslaving and dominating your brothers and sisters on this Earth, and could no longer could see that all life is sacred. That is when you went astray. Stopping doing that, is your way home.
What if food were more powerful than you realized.
Why the blanket of silence about the issue of animal suffering? Because what am I really saying? I’m pointing out the abuse happening in a dysfunctional family system. Denial is the mechanism the family use to not face what is going on. Usually through fear, or because someone is enjoying the continued abuse, or because to confront it seems to threaten the cohesion of the family unit. I read a book once about recovering from abuse in childhood. As part of the process of healing this particular therapist/author was suggesting it was essential to confront the abuser. Not in an angry or retaliatory way, just, that the secrecy surrounding the abuse was part of the damage, and part of the healing process was to break the unspoken vow of silence within the family about it.
There were lots of personal stories recounted of her various clients and their experience of confronting their abuser. Almost always the reaction was not positive or supportive of them initially. Usually there would be a furious outbreak and all the typical ways the abuse had been hidden, the rationalisations and excuses, the denial and attempts to shame and ostracise the victim, all of that came out and initially was even stronger than ever. But if the person who was confronting their abuser stayed strong in their truth, clear about it, but didn’t react to the attack or get angry, then often, given some time of adjustment, if the victim refused to go back into their old role of saying nothing, but stayed firm, yet calm, often, what would happen is there would be a readjustment and some acknowledgement even of the abuse, the healing could begin to take place.
I understand how hard it is, to speak out for animals. Because exactly this kind of thing happens. Only animal abuse, is the greatest taboo of all. And your family, are large in number. The abuse, is endemic and has gone on for millennia.
It’s a tough job, but we must do it. Because these animals are not only being sexually abused, though that is bad enough. They are being routinely tortured, confined in the worst conditions of suffering imaginable, then murdered.
Likening this to humans being mistreated, will seem extreme to those who have come to see abusing and killing animals as normal, and they will justify it with all kinds of rationalisations. But violence, and cruelty, are what they are, whatever the species. Taking someone’s freedom, hurting and killing them, are what they are. No rationalisations, no gathering together in a furiously self righteous storm, or mocking and dismissing what those who speak out for animals are saying….none of it, can change the fact that the compassionate truth is dawning, finally in human consciousness. The abuse, is coming to light, and is coming to an end.
The more of us who are willing to acknowledge we have been brought up to abuse animals without conscience, and to honestly listen to their hearts in this matter, and stop hurting the vulnerable, the innocent….and start speaking out for them. The sooner this can end.
There were lots of personal stories recounted of her various clients and their experience of confronting their abuser. Almost always the reaction was not positive or supportive of them initially. Usually there would be a furious outbreak and all the typical ways the abuse had been hidden, the rationalisations and excuses, the denial and attempts to shame and ostracise the victim, all of that came out and initially was even stronger than ever. But if the person who was confronting their abuser stayed strong in their truth, clear about it, but didn’t react to the attack or get angry, then often, given some time of adjustment, if the victim refused to go back into their old role of saying nothing, but stayed firm, yet calm, often, what would happen is there would be a readjustment and some acknowledgement even of the abuse, the healing could begin to take place.
I understand how hard it is, to speak out for animals. Because exactly this kind of thing happens. Only animal abuse, is the greatest taboo of all. And your family, are large in number. The abuse, is endemic and has gone on for millennia.
It’s a tough job, but we must do it. Because these animals are not only being sexually abused, though that is bad enough. They are being routinely tortured, confined in the worst conditions of suffering imaginable, then murdered.
Likening this to humans being mistreated, will seem extreme to those who have come to see abusing and killing animals as normal, and they will justify it with all kinds of rationalisations. But violence, and cruelty, are what they are, whatever the species. Taking someone’s freedom, hurting and killing them, are what they are. No rationalisations, no gathering together in a furiously self righteous storm, or mocking and dismissing what those who speak out for animals are saying….none of it, can change the fact that the compassionate truth is dawning, finally in human consciousness. The abuse, is coming to light, and is coming to an end.
The more of us who are willing to acknowledge we have been brought up to abuse animals without conscience, and to honestly listen to their hearts in this matter, and stop hurting the vulnerable, the innocent….and start speaking out for them. The sooner this can end.
Its just so strange. I am blessed to live in a beautiful part of London. Right by a two square mile plot of heathland with ancient trees, lakes, high hills overlooking the whole town, and quiet glades where you could be in the heart of ancient England. The architecture around here is classical and its shapes and angles, curves and scope, lift your spirit to higher dimensions. The streets are lined with big old trees. The cluster of shops and cafes alongside the heath has a village atmosphere, at the same time, a sophisticated definitively London feel. Some quite special energy is in the air around here, it draws to live here many of the souls who are most nourished by it. Therapists, artists, writers, free thinkers, free spirits, healers and shakers of all kinds. Sometimes I’ve moved away for a time. When I come back what refreshes me instantly, is to hear the conversations of people as I walk behind them in the streets, or on the heath. They are so alive with questions, reflecting on themselves and their lives, seeking and moving into new perceptions. They feel so alive!
But its strange, that even here, since I’ve woken up to what’s really happening, to the animals, to the planet….even here, I see that people are slow to wake up.
I see that all the seeking and searching, the questioning and reflecting…if its all just about ‘me’…its not really going anywhere, achieving anything.
I know that many many of us are waking up now. Particularly through this internet world, those that are, can connect, support one another and the awakening is gaining momentum.
But still, considering the urgency of the situation, its just plain eerie to be walking around in a world where most people are still asleep. Maybe the signs aren’t so visible on the surface. Maybe, underneath their surface façade of leisurely passing their Saturday eating artfully presented meals of tortured animals, fishes, and their secretions…maybe, they are actually feeling guilty, feeling some awareness that its time…to wake up. To stop dominating the other living beings, to stop contributing to this global catastrophe, to see that we’re heading over a cliff only years away, and to start living for others, not only ourselves. To stop thinking only of and spending our days managing personal drives and desires.
If we are genuinely in any kind of quest, to becoming all that we can become, surely, that is about waking up, and waking others up, to see the planet sized elephant in the room. The planet which is so sick, is dying. Or at least, the capacity for life on Earth on the surface of it, us, and all that lives with us….are being poisoned to death, by our obsession with ourselves and our desires. Our drives for self realisation…are futile, ridiculous, and no more laudable than the guy who wants a bigger house or faster car, if those self realisations do not lead us to see the urgency of the situation beyond our selves, and to do everything we can to help that situation, putting our self interested pursuits aside until this planet is healed. We aren’t going to have a life to pursue those interests in, within decades, if that. We may kid ourselves we’re being better people if we spend our time as therapists, or creating art that enlightens the human condition. But there’s only one thing this planet and these people need right now, and need it big time, and fast. That’s for you to stop paying every mealtime for others to torture and kill animals, and supporting through that, the industries which have poisoned the Earth almost to the point of no return.
Any other venture, other than becoming a vegan activist. Is like you’re living in the twighlight zone. Comfortably numb. Not looking at the Earth sized catastrophe, under your feet, under your bum, as you walk towards and sit down to your next purchase, which is causing the catastrophe to happen.
But its strange, that even here, since I’ve woken up to what’s really happening, to the animals, to the planet….even here, I see that people are slow to wake up.
I see that all the seeking and searching, the questioning and reflecting…if its all just about ‘me’…its not really going anywhere, achieving anything.
I know that many many of us are waking up now. Particularly through this internet world, those that are, can connect, support one another and the awakening is gaining momentum.
But still, considering the urgency of the situation, its just plain eerie to be walking around in a world where most people are still asleep. Maybe the signs aren’t so visible on the surface. Maybe, underneath their surface façade of leisurely passing their Saturday eating artfully presented meals of tortured animals, fishes, and their secretions…maybe, they are actually feeling guilty, feeling some awareness that its time…to wake up. To stop dominating the other living beings, to stop contributing to this global catastrophe, to see that we’re heading over a cliff only years away, and to start living for others, not only ourselves. To stop thinking only of and spending our days managing personal drives and desires.
If we are genuinely in any kind of quest, to becoming all that we can become, surely, that is about waking up, and waking others up, to see the planet sized elephant in the room. The planet which is so sick, is dying. Or at least, the capacity for life on Earth on the surface of it, us, and all that lives with us….are being poisoned to death, by our obsession with ourselves and our desires. Our drives for self realisation…are futile, ridiculous, and no more laudable than the guy who wants a bigger house or faster car, if those self realisations do not lead us to see the urgency of the situation beyond our selves, and to do everything we can to help that situation, putting our self interested pursuits aside until this planet is healed. We aren’t going to have a life to pursue those interests in, within decades, if that. We may kid ourselves we’re being better people if we spend our time as therapists, or creating art that enlightens the human condition. But there’s only one thing this planet and these people need right now, and need it big time, and fast. That’s for you to stop paying every mealtime for others to torture and kill animals, and supporting through that, the industries which have poisoned the Earth almost to the point of no return.
Any other venture, other than becoming a vegan activist. Is like you’re living in the twighlight zone. Comfortably numb. Not looking at the Earth sized catastrophe, under your feet, under your bum, as you walk towards and sit down to your next purchase, which is causing the catastrophe to happen.
Its not easy to hear our conscience, we have to dig deep, and our minds can mislead us so easily. The justifications and rationalisations seem so reasonable, loud and clear. They make perfect sense. A feeling of being right, satisfied with ourselves, a certain jutting of the jaw, and full stop emphasis at the end of them. Well that’s just it then, I’m going to do it! Our mind decides. Justifying something we want, when we’re not listening to the whisper about the ethics or appropriateness of the action.
Or…the other way which was always a favourite of mine… throwing yourself gleefully, with abandon, right on into it…’without a care in the world’. I even spent several years once, diving off the edge into anything I wanted, mistaking this for a state of spiritual enlightenment. Entirely unfettered by fear, which felt incredibly liberating, and was very special in moments, which enabled me to be in my heart, and it all felt very spiritual. But reflecting on those years some time later, I could see that I’d done such thoughtless insensitive things, and was cold, disconnected, in a la la land of my own making much of the time. All seemed very plausible at the time, when someone described spiritual enlightenment as simply living without fear. But what, about conscience….he’d not mentioned that. But then, he didn’t seem to have one. Another thing I didn’t see at the time
No, the mind can be very loud, persuasive. It happens quickly. To hear my conscience, I have to slow down and dig deep for it, to create space, to meditate or pray regularly, to constantly be vigilant and on the lookout for wayward deviations from its path. At least at first its like that, it is getting easier and this wonderful sense of being able to trust this wise knowing inside me and act from there, feels to be exactly what I’ve always wanted and looked for. Just wasn’t able to do. It took a lot of work and effort to reach a point where I could hear and follow my conscience in every moment. As if this world is full of encouragement, indoctrination even, to live in ways which go against conscience and heart. This world teaches you to lack integrity, to live without a higher state of grace, which can only come through kindness, and awareness of others around us. We’re taught to be cold, cruel, taught that it’s a hard world, and we must be hard to survive it. We’re seen as successful the more we acquire and achieve, even if, and sometimes especially because that involved denying feeling and exploiting or using others.
How often are people praised for their ability to concoct a tasty feast for their family made of tortured abused and murdered animals or their secretions? This is seen as the fundamental act of kindness and the most ‘right thing a loved one can do for you’.
Yet…that could not be more wrong…more sick… more insane… if you were listening to your conscience, you’d know that. Conscience would still cook delicious food for you, but it wouldn’t have harmed anyone in the making.
Becoming vegan, is like agreeing to reconnect to our conscience, and, it begins with stopping abusing animals, but, if you really mean it, and you become vegan because you care, and you actually, honestly want to be the kindest most harmless person you can be. If you’re genuine in this, what follows is a fascinating and life altering journey of your conscience awakening, your heart awakening like the light you’ve always longed for, dawning finally in every area of your life.
Or…the other way which was always a favourite of mine… throwing yourself gleefully, with abandon, right on into it…’without a care in the world’. I even spent several years once, diving off the edge into anything I wanted, mistaking this for a state of spiritual enlightenment. Entirely unfettered by fear, which felt incredibly liberating, and was very special in moments, which enabled me to be in my heart, and it all felt very spiritual. But reflecting on those years some time later, I could see that I’d done such thoughtless insensitive things, and was cold, disconnected, in a la la land of my own making much of the time. All seemed very plausible at the time, when someone described spiritual enlightenment as simply living without fear. But what, about conscience….he’d not mentioned that. But then, he didn’t seem to have one. Another thing I didn’t see at the time
No, the mind can be very loud, persuasive. It happens quickly. To hear my conscience, I have to slow down and dig deep for it, to create space, to meditate or pray regularly, to constantly be vigilant and on the lookout for wayward deviations from its path. At least at first its like that, it is getting easier and this wonderful sense of being able to trust this wise knowing inside me and act from there, feels to be exactly what I’ve always wanted and looked for. Just wasn’t able to do. It took a lot of work and effort to reach a point where I could hear and follow my conscience in every moment. As if this world is full of encouragement, indoctrination even, to live in ways which go against conscience and heart. This world teaches you to lack integrity, to live without a higher state of grace, which can only come through kindness, and awareness of others around us. We’re taught to be cold, cruel, taught that it’s a hard world, and we must be hard to survive it. We’re seen as successful the more we acquire and achieve, even if, and sometimes especially because that involved denying feeling and exploiting or using others.
How often are people praised for their ability to concoct a tasty feast for their family made of tortured abused and murdered animals or their secretions? This is seen as the fundamental act of kindness and the most ‘right thing a loved one can do for you’.
Yet…that could not be more wrong…more sick… more insane… if you were listening to your conscience, you’d know that. Conscience would still cook delicious food for you, but it wouldn’t have harmed anyone in the making.
Becoming vegan, is like agreeing to reconnect to our conscience, and, it begins with stopping abusing animals, but, if you really mean it, and you become vegan because you care, and you actually, honestly want to be the kindest most harmless person you can be. If you’re genuine in this, what follows is a fascinating and life altering journey of your conscience awakening, your heart awakening like the light you’ve always longed for, dawning finally in every area of your life.
Sometimes, I do get confrontational and judgemental of people. I lose the plot a bit.
When I look back on days when I was just vegan, then I was able to see people with compassion all the time too. But there’s a big difference between being a vegan, and being an activist. As a vegan you make your choices based on some information, but then get on with your life, not really thinking about the animals suffering. You aren’t contributing to it anymore you’ve settled your conscience about that, but you also aren’t immersing yourself in the realities of what’s happening to animals, every moment of every day, focusing all your energies and attention on helping them anyway you can. When you do its easy to lose the plot a bit and get judgemental with people at times. You feel the suffering of the animals all of the time, every moment you are aware of billions and billions of what feel like your children, your family, suffering that much, and at the same time the weight of the apathy, the invisible wall surrounding the subject for most people. Its hard, to balance those strong feelings, and face not only the suffering but the silence, apathy and inactivity to help the animals.
I even feel judgemental of the vegans who are not being more active sometimes. Its hard, to be feeling the suffering, really feeling it, and to see people just getting on with their personal lives and not doing anything to help. Especially, when they do actually care about the animals, do see a little bit, have let in that suffering, that horror, enough to stop contributing to it. But then, when you do that, but still don’t help them, that’s hard to understand too, at times. Sorry, if that’s difficult to hear. I understand, you have to make a living, have families and things to attend to. But the animals need us so much. The animals need you, because you actually do see their plight, not many do just yet. The animals need every single one of us who hear them, to help them, as much as you can.
Yesterday another animal activist posted something about this on his page, and I’m glad he did, I’m going to echo his words. Veganism….is not enough. It really isn’t. If you were an animal incarcerated in that hell, would you think it enough, for someone to just stop contributing? I think every single animal is begging, begging for mercy and release. Begging for you to help them.
When I look back on days when I was just vegan, then I was able to see people with compassion all the time too. But there’s a big difference between being a vegan, and being an activist. As a vegan you make your choices based on some information, but then get on with your life, not really thinking about the animals suffering. You aren’t contributing to it anymore you’ve settled your conscience about that, but you also aren’t immersing yourself in the realities of what’s happening to animals, every moment of every day, focusing all your energies and attention on helping them anyway you can. When you do its easy to lose the plot a bit and get judgemental with people at times. You feel the suffering of the animals all of the time, every moment you are aware of billions and billions of what feel like your children, your family, suffering that much, and at the same time the weight of the apathy, the invisible wall surrounding the subject for most people. Its hard, to balance those strong feelings, and face not only the suffering but the silence, apathy and inactivity to help the animals.
I even feel judgemental of the vegans who are not being more active sometimes. Its hard, to be feeling the suffering, really feeling it, and to see people just getting on with their personal lives and not doing anything to help. Especially, when they do actually care about the animals, do see a little bit, have let in that suffering, that horror, enough to stop contributing to it. But then, when you do that, but still don’t help them, that’s hard to understand too, at times. Sorry, if that’s difficult to hear. I understand, you have to make a living, have families and things to attend to. But the animals need us so much. The animals need you, because you actually do see their plight, not many do just yet. The animals need every single one of us who hear them, to help them, as much as you can.
Yesterday another animal activist posted something about this on his page, and I’m glad he did, I’m going to echo his words. Veganism….is not enough. It really isn’t. If you were an animal incarcerated in that hell, would you think it enough, for someone to just stop contributing? I think every single animal is begging, begging for mercy and release. Begging for you to help them.
UNCONSCIOUSNESS
Food is something I never give any thought to.
Food is something I think of only in terms of myself. It is the fuel I put into my body, the flavors I particularly enjoy, the foods I’ve shared with loved ones, a topic of conversation I indulge in, like sexual fantasy, for the sensual gratification remembered or anticipated.
Lost in my own mind, in stories about myself, in neurotic loops of this or that kind, I’m unaware of my body’s real needs, so either I gorge emotionally on foods or I forget I need to eat until I’m ravenously hungry. By which time, the ability to reflect on what I’m eating, even in terms of my own health, is seriously impaired….i just EAT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING till I am satisfied.
CONSCIOUSNESS
Food is a miracle. The earth supports and provides for me a paradise garden filled with all kinds of plants, which offer freely, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, vegetables, which are not only ineffably beautiful, delicious to taste, but they are also natural medicine and help my body to thrive.
Food is a sacred experience, I eat slowly and mindfully, appreciating the gift that it is, and wonder over the larger order. As I eat it I’m aware of the pure intentions, the kind actions, of those who grew and prepared it. I’m aware that food is the way humans take part in the story of creation. Helping things to grow, tending their gardens, living in harmony with a peace filled natural order of many other living beings from the bugs and insects, the birds and animals who spread the seeds, to the elemental forces which combine quite magically to create a whole which is indescribably greater than the sum of its parts.
Since I see life as sacred, I move slowly through it, appreciating the moment, the vibrant aliveness of my body. I’m aware when I become hungry, and respond quickly, giving my body healthy nutritious snacks. I never become ravenous, anymore. Never stuff my face or forget to eat. Feeling my body’s aliveness is such a delightful part of life, moment to moment, that I would never treat myself that way.
THE DIFFERENCE
When I ate animal foods I had to disconnect from so much. Being violent towards other animals, essentially, made me selfish and neurotic. I was taught by eating animal foods, that my needs, my desires, come first, even if meeting those desires meant killing others. I could not appreciate how the food had been created, or what a miracle life is, when killing was part of the process.
Brutal slaughter of others, is so abhorrent to us, that we cannot contemplate it without a sense of horror and repulsion. So imagine then, how damaging it is to our ability to be conscious, when we combine that violence, and our daily meals. If, in this fundamental activity, practiced several times a day, we are forced to disconnect from any kind of spiritual ethical awareness, even to disconnect from the simple reality of our actions. Imagine how damaging this is to our ability to live with integrity and kindness in other areas of our lives. If we can switch off to the reality of another’s suffering in order to eat, we can switch off to the suffering of anyone, at any time, in order to satisfy our desires without conscience.
THE RESULT
Eating foods based on violence and cruelty, is the source of all neurosis, and is directly responsible for all the suffering we see around us. Practicing unconsciousness in our fundamental food rituals, is like practicing being Satan, unfeeling, cold, brutally cruel, and believing there to be nothing wrong with this. What else, would animals see us as, but Satan? What else would any kind of God see us as, when we were given this miraculous paradise, and we’ve entirely and utterly decimated it, without compunction, all for our addiction to the taste of another’s flesh?
The way out of all this, is to choose to be kind, to practice being connected, compassionate and conscious, at every mealtime. Soon after that, if we all did that, everything will be OK. There is no punishing God, no heaven and hell. There is only this world, and we make it a heaven or hell, based on our actions.
Food is something I never give any thought to.
Food is something I think of only in terms of myself. It is the fuel I put into my body, the flavors I particularly enjoy, the foods I’ve shared with loved ones, a topic of conversation I indulge in, like sexual fantasy, for the sensual gratification remembered or anticipated.
Lost in my own mind, in stories about myself, in neurotic loops of this or that kind, I’m unaware of my body’s real needs, so either I gorge emotionally on foods or I forget I need to eat until I’m ravenously hungry. By which time, the ability to reflect on what I’m eating, even in terms of my own health, is seriously impaired….i just EAT ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING till I am satisfied.
CONSCIOUSNESS
Food is a miracle. The earth supports and provides for me a paradise garden filled with all kinds of plants, which offer freely, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, vegetables, which are not only ineffably beautiful, delicious to taste, but they are also natural medicine and help my body to thrive.
Food is a sacred experience, I eat slowly and mindfully, appreciating the gift that it is, and wonder over the larger order. As I eat it I’m aware of the pure intentions, the kind actions, of those who grew and prepared it. I’m aware that food is the way humans take part in the story of creation. Helping things to grow, tending their gardens, living in harmony with a peace filled natural order of many other living beings from the bugs and insects, the birds and animals who spread the seeds, to the elemental forces which combine quite magically to create a whole which is indescribably greater than the sum of its parts.
Since I see life as sacred, I move slowly through it, appreciating the moment, the vibrant aliveness of my body. I’m aware when I become hungry, and respond quickly, giving my body healthy nutritious snacks. I never become ravenous, anymore. Never stuff my face or forget to eat. Feeling my body’s aliveness is such a delightful part of life, moment to moment, that I would never treat myself that way.
THE DIFFERENCE
When I ate animal foods I had to disconnect from so much. Being violent towards other animals, essentially, made me selfish and neurotic. I was taught by eating animal foods, that my needs, my desires, come first, even if meeting those desires meant killing others. I could not appreciate how the food had been created, or what a miracle life is, when killing was part of the process.
Brutal slaughter of others, is so abhorrent to us, that we cannot contemplate it without a sense of horror and repulsion. So imagine then, how damaging it is to our ability to be conscious, when we combine that violence, and our daily meals. If, in this fundamental activity, practiced several times a day, we are forced to disconnect from any kind of spiritual ethical awareness, even to disconnect from the simple reality of our actions. Imagine how damaging this is to our ability to live with integrity and kindness in other areas of our lives. If we can switch off to the reality of another’s suffering in order to eat, we can switch off to the suffering of anyone, at any time, in order to satisfy our desires without conscience.
THE RESULT
Eating foods based on violence and cruelty, is the source of all neurosis, and is directly responsible for all the suffering we see around us. Practicing unconsciousness in our fundamental food rituals, is like practicing being Satan, unfeeling, cold, brutally cruel, and believing there to be nothing wrong with this. What else, would animals see us as, but Satan? What else would any kind of God see us as, when we were given this miraculous paradise, and we’ve entirely and utterly decimated it, without compunction, all for our addiction to the taste of another’s flesh?
The way out of all this, is to choose to be kind, to practice being connected, compassionate and conscious, at every mealtime. Soon after that, if we all did that, everything will be OK. There is no punishing God, no heaven and hell. There is only this world, and we make it a heaven or hell, based on our actions.
I’m sitting here listening to school sports day in the nearby sports ground. Its an ugly sound. I don’t hear children having fun. I hear children being indoctrinated to be savage, coarse, ugly in nature.
As I think this, in my mind rise all the objections from those who consider competition healthy, don’t want to go too far with this namby pampy softening up of our tough lads. Men, boys, need to have an outlet for their innate violence and predatory nature. I can hear the roar of the aggressive football crowd now.
No, I explain to the football fans in my head, this isn’t natural, its part of the deadening of you mind heart and soul, your higher faculties. It keeps you stupid. However skilled your feet may be. What you are doing is the height of ignorance.
I flash into their minds for a moment an alternative to this dumbing down and developing of ignorance in our young.
Into their minds comes an image of an ancient culture, far removed from today’s society. In the climate of ancient Egypt or Native American…not those that we know of, told to us through our dominator culture textbooks, in our current education system, which only seems to recount stories of wars and violence. No, this is a secret culture from long long ago. As we move into the picture, back in time, we feel the presence in the air, its an aliveness, an awareness, a kind of hushed reverence. It’s a different kind of school which takes place outside in nature. Milling around naturally are the wise elders, and absorbed in activities, around plants, or deep in contemplation, are the young students. Looking into their eyes, and they can see us, people from the future, travelling back in time to look into their world. They are not shut down and ignorant. They know there is no such thing as time, or separation, really. Its only an illusion we once were lost in. There’s such consciousness in their eyes, its thrilling to look into them. This is no namby pamby softening of young men…those very words thought of in this atmosphere, are like children’s play bricks of a long forgotten civilization in the future which took the path of ignorance and violence. No, there’s an infinite strength in these young people’s eyes, shimmering from the depths of an awareness which spans all space and time. These young people are aware they are in these bodies, and simultaneously are aware they are Gods and Goddesses, conscious and existing on many other dimensional levels, and essentially, at the heart of them, are one.
In this ancient culture, humans live with utmost respect and reverence for all life. Every living being is a source of marvel to them. Every living being is God, is themselves in a different form. A source of delight, humour, curious difference to appreciate, whilst resonating as one.
There are all kinds of exercise activities, a high form of yoga, and acrobatics, they love to swim, to run free just for the pleasure of running. Not to ‘get fit’, in a systematic jogging kind of way. But to simply enjoy the feel of the impulse to run until its over. Sensual pleasure, creativity, relationship, are the pastimes, but there’s no real education as such, because young people are born highly conscious, psychically connected, they learn quickly what they need to know and follow their own path of enjoyment and deeper experience through life. Food is grown, they contribute, there are beautiful gardens, technologies beyond our current understanding are utilized to make life beautiful, are in harmony with nature, and make life simple and nurturing of all life.
That’s it.
But currently, here we are, in this killing machine of humans on earth, in their savage ignorance at its most brutal height. Technology employed to dominate, to violate, to torture, to inflict suffering every day, every mealtimes, on all the innocent defenseless animals. On each other. Where its seen as normal, manly, joyful, to go and roar like savages, at the sight of people competing with one another on the most basic level of intelligence, then stuff our faces with tortured animals.
Uugggh! This is hell on Earth. If we don’t wake up and evolve to a more sentient, heart centered conscious culture, I pray this cruel dominant stupid species violate themselves to death real quick.
As I think this, in my mind rise all the objections from those who consider competition healthy, don’t want to go too far with this namby pampy softening up of our tough lads. Men, boys, need to have an outlet for their innate violence and predatory nature. I can hear the roar of the aggressive football crowd now.
No, I explain to the football fans in my head, this isn’t natural, its part of the deadening of you mind heart and soul, your higher faculties. It keeps you stupid. However skilled your feet may be. What you are doing is the height of ignorance.
I flash into their minds for a moment an alternative to this dumbing down and developing of ignorance in our young.
Into their minds comes an image of an ancient culture, far removed from today’s society. In the climate of ancient Egypt or Native American…not those that we know of, told to us through our dominator culture textbooks, in our current education system, which only seems to recount stories of wars and violence. No, this is a secret culture from long long ago. As we move into the picture, back in time, we feel the presence in the air, its an aliveness, an awareness, a kind of hushed reverence. It’s a different kind of school which takes place outside in nature. Milling around naturally are the wise elders, and absorbed in activities, around plants, or deep in contemplation, are the young students. Looking into their eyes, and they can see us, people from the future, travelling back in time to look into their world. They are not shut down and ignorant. They know there is no such thing as time, or separation, really. Its only an illusion we once were lost in. There’s such consciousness in their eyes, its thrilling to look into them. This is no namby pamby softening of young men…those very words thought of in this atmosphere, are like children’s play bricks of a long forgotten civilization in the future which took the path of ignorance and violence. No, there’s an infinite strength in these young people’s eyes, shimmering from the depths of an awareness which spans all space and time. These young people are aware they are in these bodies, and simultaneously are aware they are Gods and Goddesses, conscious and existing on many other dimensional levels, and essentially, at the heart of them, are one.
In this ancient culture, humans live with utmost respect and reverence for all life. Every living being is a source of marvel to them. Every living being is God, is themselves in a different form. A source of delight, humour, curious difference to appreciate, whilst resonating as one.
There are all kinds of exercise activities, a high form of yoga, and acrobatics, they love to swim, to run free just for the pleasure of running. Not to ‘get fit’, in a systematic jogging kind of way. But to simply enjoy the feel of the impulse to run until its over. Sensual pleasure, creativity, relationship, are the pastimes, but there’s no real education as such, because young people are born highly conscious, psychically connected, they learn quickly what they need to know and follow their own path of enjoyment and deeper experience through life. Food is grown, they contribute, there are beautiful gardens, technologies beyond our current understanding are utilized to make life beautiful, are in harmony with nature, and make life simple and nurturing of all life.
That’s it.
But currently, here we are, in this killing machine of humans on earth, in their savage ignorance at its most brutal height. Technology employed to dominate, to violate, to torture, to inflict suffering every day, every mealtimes, on all the innocent defenseless animals. On each other. Where its seen as normal, manly, joyful, to go and roar like savages, at the sight of people competing with one another on the most basic level of intelligence, then stuff our faces with tortured animals.
Uugggh! This is hell on Earth. If we don’t wake up and evolve to a more sentient, heart centered conscious culture, I pray this cruel dominant stupid species violate themselves to death real quick.
I was thinking last night…dreaming actually…of a time when the vegan movement is SO huge, that we’ll have this amazing worldwide Live Aid type event, but much bigger, for the animals. One that doesn’t end, but only grows each time we come together to do another event. All the famous talented people who are vegan could share their musical gifts for the animals. There could be footage of different animals in the sanctuaries, telling their story. The horrendous suffering in the factory farms could be exposed. . Lots of all these amazing speakers who are springing up could each speak out on behalf of animals. There are already so many come to mind we could make it a 24 hour event no problem. How to get those people together, and galvanize enough support, enough awakening, enough momentum? Well it all starts with a dream, so lets indulge that fantasy as often as we can, imagine it happening now, not in the future, and collectively we could dream it into being.
But as I was dreaming that the world was that awake, that the awakening was just about to go stratospheric, beyond anything we can imagine because we can’t even conceive just now of what that would feel like, so many humans being kind at once. At that point, I thought with compassion suddenly of the slaughterhouse workers, the wealthy elite, and felt really sorry. Sorry I’d ever judged them. Flashed into my mind was the little boy that slaughterhouse worker was, and I don’t see him getting much love. I could see in a flash the first moment they shut down their heart, the sad cold or maybe violent unstable environment which helped to shut him down further. The culture who turned him into a hard brute. I saw how hard it would be for him to see every time he made a wrong turn in his life, and took the path of acting out his pain instead of finding a way to deal with it. To forgive himself. It struck me deeply with such sadness, how hard it would be for this man, when the world is that awake, that kind. Or, for the richest, most Machiavellian or scheming, ruthlessly profit oriented amongst us. What about them?
Suddenly, when in my mind I could see the enemy no long had any power, I felt such compassion for them. Understanding that, the more hard we’ve become, the harder it is to wake up. Or will be, when the tipping point is reached.
Still, I hope what happens at that moment, is what just happened to me, and our hearts are filled with love and compassion for them, and we find ways to support them waking up too.
Image Our Beautiful World and Universe page
But as I was dreaming that the world was that awake, that the awakening was just about to go stratospheric, beyond anything we can imagine because we can’t even conceive just now of what that would feel like, so many humans being kind at once. At that point, I thought with compassion suddenly of the slaughterhouse workers, the wealthy elite, and felt really sorry. Sorry I’d ever judged them. Flashed into my mind was the little boy that slaughterhouse worker was, and I don’t see him getting much love. I could see in a flash the first moment they shut down their heart, the sad cold or maybe violent unstable environment which helped to shut him down further. The culture who turned him into a hard brute. I saw how hard it would be for him to see every time he made a wrong turn in his life, and took the path of acting out his pain instead of finding a way to deal with it. To forgive himself. It struck me deeply with such sadness, how hard it would be for this man, when the world is that awake, that kind. Or, for the richest, most Machiavellian or scheming, ruthlessly profit oriented amongst us. What about them?
Suddenly, when in my mind I could see the enemy no long had any power, I felt such compassion for them. Understanding that, the more hard we’ve become, the harder it is to wake up. Or will be, when the tipping point is reached.
Still, I hope what happens at that moment, is what just happened to me, and our hearts are filled with love and compassion for them, and we find ways to support them waking up too.
Image Our Beautiful World and Universe page
Loving animals is so simple, uncomplicated. I walk around my flat and I pass them often, and my heart bursts with love. Maybe I see the rabbits having a moment snuggling together, or a moment alone. Or I walk past Lilly in the hall and notice she is enjoying lifting each piece of dry cat food out with her paw and eating it that way for a change. Or I’m stopped in my tracks by the sight of Tabitha,... the sleek black magic cat, who grows more graceful and goddess like everyday.
The love I feel for animals literally, warms and opens my heart everyday. Now too this passion to help those animals suffering the most, has utterly transformed me. I’m now the best I can possibly be, consciously, in every moment, as much as I can be, to become the strongest most aware most empowered I can, to help them. So I’m discovering, how love for animals transforms and heals us. How finding the strength to face what is happening to them, makes us first, yes, horrified, sometimes overwhelmed, but most of the time it is both the most difficult yet most rewarding thing we can do. Maybe its not everyone’s path is to be an animal rights activist. But I really believe, if we have any kind of purpose, and are on any kind of spiritual path, then to become kind, to become vegan, and to begin to wonder over, delight in, be transformed by our love for the animals, is part of our journey
When I first went into therapy, I found that my greatest most urgent wound, was the pain I felt about what is happening to animals in this world. Why… was nobody doing anything to help them? It took years of working through all kinds of other issues and even a year after leaving therapy, before I reached the realization that I wasn’t doing anything to help the animals either.
Maybe we do need to heal first, and have personal issues to work through. But we can all, in a moment, no matter what our issues and what our life circumstances, choose to be kind to animals. For some, to stand out against the crowd is the hardest thing. To become different, to begin to care seems like they’d have to change their whole life around. For most of us, the task is truly that big. It’s a process. Everyday I learn how to live more consciously and less destructively or exploitatively, through my purchases. We spend so much time spending, consuming.
Maybe we do need to heal first, and have personal issues to work through. But we can all, in a moment, no matter what our issues and what our life circumstances, choose to be kind to animals. For some, to stand out against the crowd is the hardest thing. To become different, to begin to care seems like they’d have to change their whole life around. For most of us, the task is truly that big. It’s a process. Everyday I learn how to live more consciously and less destructively or exploitatively, through my purchases. We spend so much time spending, consuming.
That too, is the source of our awakening, learning to make all purchases kind, considerate, conscious. Soon enough though, after you start making kindness your priority, you start to be really fulfilled by acting kindly. You don’t really need to consume so much, but instead, begin to be more creative with how to be kind. Loving animals and plants, people, loving peace, loving stillness, becoming the healthiest strongest you can be, so you can help in whichever way feels most right to you, to clean up this mess we’re in….replaces all other delights.
Also this amazing thing happens. Before, I was empty, and always trying to fill that void of emptiness, or worse, was always longing for it to be filled by things, people on the outside who never did fill it. Then, now, what has happened is there has been a complete change of direction. Now I see it for what it is, a flow of energy. Now, there is this ever stronger flow of energy moving outwards, which fills me in every way I longed for, and more every day. So I see now that a lot of other people live in this strange empty disconnected, very painful, or just numb state. We’re told this or that purchase or acquisition, this or that position, other people’s love or approval, will fill it. But that’s an illusion. A lie most effectively employed by the media to sell us things. The truth is, we will only get what we really need and long for, when we begin step by step, to act kindly. That switches on a light, the more we practice it, the stronger it becomes until we are filled with this amazing lovely energy felt warm and ever expansive in the centre of our chest.
I never feel that awful listless, wandering, lazing around not knowing what to do, bored, empty feeling anymore. To have ever lain around like that, when there is so much suffering in this world…there was something really wrong with that. Not, that I was essentially bad, or anyone else is bad. We’re just very much misdirected, misled, confused, lost.
The way home, is inside us, in our capacity to choose, in the power of our intention, and the development of compassion for the animals.
Image Our Beautiful World and Universe
Also this amazing thing happens. Before, I was empty, and always trying to fill that void of emptiness, or worse, was always longing for it to be filled by things, people on the outside who never did fill it. Then, now, what has happened is there has been a complete change of direction. Now I see it for what it is, a flow of energy. Now, there is this ever stronger flow of energy moving outwards, which fills me in every way I longed for, and more every day. So I see now that a lot of other people live in this strange empty disconnected, very painful, or just numb state. We’re told this or that purchase or acquisition, this or that position, other people’s love or approval, will fill it. But that’s an illusion. A lie most effectively employed by the media to sell us things. The truth is, we will only get what we really need and long for, when we begin step by step, to act kindly. That switches on a light, the more we practice it, the stronger it becomes until we are filled with this amazing lovely energy felt warm and ever expansive in the centre of our chest.
I never feel that awful listless, wandering, lazing around not knowing what to do, bored, empty feeling anymore. To have ever lain around like that, when there is so much suffering in this world…there was something really wrong with that. Not, that I was essentially bad, or anyone else is bad. We’re just very much misdirected, misled, confused, lost.
The way home, is inside us, in our capacity to choose, in the power of our intention, and the development of compassion for the animals.
Image Our Beautiful World and Universe
So, you’re walking along, through the world, and you are a good kind person, who sees those more vulnerable than yourself as someone to protect and support, you’re good to your kids, your grandkids, your grandparents. Younger or just less aware people, those less knowledgeable than you in your field, you take pleasure in showing them as best you can whatever will help them along the way. You genuinely care, about defenceless, innocent people. Your life, is about being a provider for yourself maybe, but you’re generous with those you love and care for.
There’s just one thing. Your sphere of compassion only extends to humans. Maybe to the animals you know as pets, or use for sport. But essentially, the love and kindness you are capable of in the rest of your life, you do not extend to other species.
Why?
Is it because you have grown up in a world where the cultural values are to exploit and dominate other species?
Is it because you’ve become so practised at disregarding the wellbeing and sentiency of other species, that you no longer feel anything towards them?
Is it that advertisements the media saturate and bombard you with, show images of dominance over other species. Show happy successful humans eating them without compunction. Because that’s normal, that’s what we do, that’s the food chain, that’s the top dog that we are, so…tough luck other species….we just eat you!
I get it, that you can be a kind person to people, that you can really do your best to be the best person you can in your human relationships. But, why stop there?
Why not be kind to other species too?
We don’t need to eat other animals, therefore, to do so is unethical, is wrong. We are talking about taking a life. A life! Life matters. Suffering matters. We should avoid causing suffering and death wherever possible.
I believe that those who are genuinely kind, whose motivations are to truly be the best they can be and do no harm wherever possible, will include animals in this. The truly kind may have been brought up thinking its normal to disregard, dominate exploit and kill them, but now, at this time where many others are evolving to be kind to animals and stop unnecessarily enslaving and slaughtering them, truly good people will see the sense in that. They may not change straight away. It might be something which requires some adjustment. But if you are genuinely kind, why, when a new more kind, more compassionate way of being is presented to you….would you not take it?
There’s just one thing. Your sphere of compassion only extends to humans. Maybe to the animals you know as pets, or use for sport. But essentially, the love and kindness you are capable of in the rest of your life, you do not extend to other species.
Why?
Is it because you have grown up in a world where the cultural values are to exploit and dominate other species?
Is it because you’ve become so practised at disregarding the wellbeing and sentiency of other species, that you no longer feel anything towards them?
Is it that advertisements the media saturate and bombard you with, show images of dominance over other species. Show happy successful humans eating them without compunction. Because that’s normal, that’s what we do, that’s the food chain, that’s the top dog that we are, so…tough luck other species….we just eat you!
I get it, that you can be a kind person to people, that you can really do your best to be the best person you can in your human relationships. But, why stop there?
Why not be kind to other species too?
We don’t need to eat other animals, therefore, to do so is unethical, is wrong. We are talking about taking a life. A life! Life matters. Suffering matters. We should avoid causing suffering and death wherever possible.
I believe that those who are genuinely kind, whose motivations are to truly be the best they can be and do no harm wherever possible, will include animals in this. The truly kind may have been brought up thinking its normal to disregard, dominate exploit and kill them, but now, at this time where many others are evolving to be kind to animals and stop unnecessarily enslaving and slaughtering them, truly good people will see the sense in that. They may not change straight away. It might be something which requires some adjustment. But if you are genuinely kind, why, when a new more kind, more compassionate way of being is presented to you….would you not take it?
What is becoming clearer to me is that a lot of people do understand the vegan message pretty quickly. But their reasons for defending against it can be complex. When I look at the people around me, some yes, avoid really hearing the vegan message because their attachment to comfort foods, because they are unwilling to or even believe they are unable to let of certain foods. But mostly, what I see around me, are people who hear the message and could change their food choices, but are most terrified to go against the flow, to stand out from the crowd. To say, ‘Yes, I hear you, exploitation of defenseless animals is wrong,’ would involve going against the status quo, something they’ve never been able to do.
What veganism does, is sorts the men out from the boys, so to speak. Real men, real free spirits, people who are really speaking their truth and acting from integrity, who are able to consider things afresh from a new perspective, and change, are likely to go vegan. Of those most unlikely to go vegan are those who have never had what it takes to stand out from the crowd.
Which is very sad, really, now I look at it like that. I am thinking of one person in particular who has lived their whole life doing what they felt they needed to, to be approved of, to be seen as accomplishing just the right things, at just the right age, someone who said to me once as they reach retirement, that they felt their life was already over and it hadn’t even begun yet.
This kind of person enjoys believing they are ‘good’, after all, that’s the only compensation for never having really lived…right…is that they did what was expected of them and in society’s eye’s turned out alright, are ‘good’. So its really difficult and infuriating for them to be confronted with the vegan message. Puts them in a bit of a bind. If they were truly ‘good’ then they would move towards living this new more compassionate way. But to do that, would involve, being part of a turning tide, going against the current cultural mentality of domination and exploitation. To do good, in this instance, would involve doing what that kind of person never really could do, act from what they felt was right for them, even if it means going against the flow and opinion of most people around them.
So, I see your bind, if you are one of these souls. I’m not sure how to help you. Except to say that maybe, this could be you your moment. In the same way that becoming an advocate for animals has made me stronger, I found the strength to do all the things I knew I should do to take care of myself, yoga, meditation, healthy eating, staying positive in thoughts (mostly), to be strong for the animals. Maybe, choosing veganism, could be your way of becoming strong, of truly acting from what you feel is right for you, no matter how much the people around you may mock you, pressure you, oppose you.
If you do it quietly, in the right way, you can continue to attend all the gatherings, be in the same job, be the same person, just, simply say, I’m vegan. If pressed for why, you could simply say, I want to avoid doing harm wherever I can. Or I don’t wish to discuss it, this is a decision I’ve made for me but I don’t choose to debate about it. Maybe if you’re in a friendly supportive environment you may want to discuss it further, but you don’t have to. You can set your boundaries and be firm about them, over this one thing. You might find as I did, that where you never had the strength to do it for yourself, you can do it for your love for animals.
If you don’t know what’s happening to animals, if you haven’t seen yet, please, watch Earthlings… here’s a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19eBAfUFK3E
Image came from David McDorman's page with the words;
Just keep coming home to yourself. You are the one person you have been waiting for. Byron Katie
What veganism does, is sorts the men out from the boys, so to speak. Real men, real free spirits, people who are really speaking their truth and acting from integrity, who are able to consider things afresh from a new perspective, and change, are likely to go vegan. Of those most unlikely to go vegan are those who have never had what it takes to stand out from the crowd.
Which is very sad, really, now I look at it like that. I am thinking of one person in particular who has lived their whole life doing what they felt they needed to, to be approved of, to be seen as accomplishing just the right things, at just the right age, someone who said to me once as they reach retirement, that they felt their life was already over and it hadn’t even begun yet.
This kind of person enjoys believing they are ‘good’, after all, that’s the only compensation for never having really lived…right…is that they did what was expected of them and in society’s eye’s turned out alright, are ‘good’. So its really difficult and infuriating for them to be confronted with the vegan message. Puts them in a bit of a bind. If they were truly ‘good’ then they would move towards living this new more compassionate way. But to do that, would involve, being part of a turning tide, going against the current cultural mentality of domination and exploitation. To do good, in this instance, would involve doing what that kind of person never really could do, act from what they felt was right for them, even if it means going against the flow and opinion of most people around them.
So, I see your bind, if you are one of these souls. I’m not sure how to help you. Except to say that maybe, this could be you your moment. In the same way that becoming an advocate for animals has made me stronger, I found the strength to do all the things I knew I should do to take care of myself, yoga, meditation, healthy eating, staying positive in thoughts (mostly), to be strong for the animals. Maybe, choosing veganism, could be your way of becoming strong, of truly acting from what you feel is right for you, no matter how much the people around you may mock you, pressure you, oppose you.
If you do it quietly, in the right way, you can continue to attend all the gatherings, be in the same job, be the same person, just, simply say, I’m vegan. If pressed for why, you could simply say, I want to avoid doing harm wherever I can. Or I don’t wish to discuss it, this is a decision I’ve made for me but I don’t choose to debate about it. Maybe if you’re in a friendly supportive environment you may want to discuss it further, but you don’t have to. You can set your boundaries and be firm about them, over this one thing. You might find as I did, that where you never had the strength to do it for yourself, you can do it for your love for animals.
If you don’t know what’s happening to animals, if you haven’t seen yet, please, watch Earthlings… here’s a link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19eBAfUFK3E
Image came from David McDorman's page with the words;
Just keep coming home to yourself. You are the one person you have been waiting for. Byron Katie
As humans we have so many dormant potentials. A razor-sharp sense for untruth. A psychic antenna for who is safe, who is not safe. Becoming a vegan seems to sharpen these senses.
Not that most people would hurt me physically personally, but its more about being able to sense the level of disconnect from the consequences of their actions in people, to sense their capacity for violence to those they are legally allowed to inflict it on. I can feel that in people sometimes now even without talking to them. Maybe its in their stance, their expression, something about a carelessness of movement, a lack of gentleness. Maybe its their facial expression, which is usually closed, and their bodies are contracted, tense. But, its more than these obvious physical things, there’s an actual energy about people, like you can feel their capacity for unconscious violence in this kind of mist around them.
With some its young, naïve energy, you can feel that they’ve just been trained, conditioned to not consider their food choices, they’re full of hubris and self, as the young are, but its cold, disconnected, uncaring, habitually, deeply entrenched. This too, is ugly, whether in a five year old or a 25 year old, to see a beautiful innocent child, who could have been brought up vegan, with a love for all living creatures and intent to do no harm, to see that child conditioned to be aggressive, cold, unkind, savage. Its ugly. Once you see it, once you wake up and see how this world has made us, it makes you shudder on some deep level, with horror. You see that there really is evil in this world, and its what we humans are, without seeing it. Evil is harming another when you could avoid harming them. Harming them with intent, because you want something from them, their very flesh. Uuggh! When you wake up, and you see we are teaching our children to do that. Then you suddenly begin to see how this affects their psyche, their stance, their energy, their relationship with the world and even their sense of identity. Eating animals literally fundamentally wounds us, disconnects us from our hearts, our souls, our gentleness and sensitivity.
So there are the young ones. Then there are those who’ve literally never questioned their cultural disposition towards other animals. The sort of people who are so far from reflecting on their actions and acting for themselves, or changing, that its literally like they are not really there. They are what life expected them to be, and so operate within a very predictable range of frequencies. They still do have their unique souls and personalities, but the more unquestioning of the status quo they are, the more their soul energy is like on a kind of very dim bulb. Its there, but faintly. Not getting much chance to shine through. This kind of person is usually older, and can have even cultivated the appearance of sensitivity and kindness, even be, more sensitive in some ways. But that almost makes it even more eerie, when they are practicing the same cold disconnect . To think that its even quite considered on some level. Rationalised nicely away, the violence.
Then there are the macho aggressive belligerent ones, the sort of football hooligan energy. Which can come in sophisticated, intellectual, form too, can be highly accomplished in many human respects of power and dominance over self, over a skill. Still its brutal, thuggish. The tough, hard, don’t care stance. Since waking up through choosing to be a vegan advocate, all these things become really clear. Its like the human BS detector. Because you can see the belligerent guys or women aren’t really as careless and carefree as they make out. Its all an act. However powerful, however accomplished, its Emperor’s new clothes once you wake up as an ethical vegan. Because you realise, what’s really important, ever, on this earth, is the capacity for kindness. That’s it. All the rest is pomp and ceremony, chest thumping and distractions from the real issue, of whether they are actually able to be kind or not.
But the people I find perhaps most conflicted in their energy are those, the majority, who can understand the vegan message on some level, but they are shutting it out. I see the amount of effort it takes them, the energy, the tension, to know, yet not to know. All that inner wrangling about whether they are a good person. Deep down they are a good person, but their actions are violent, and this contradicts their idea of themselves as a good person, so they become defensive.
The truth is, they’re not even sure why they’re acting that way. Through their lives they’ve been indoctrinated through every possible channel, their education system, their media, their family, to believe that violence and exploitation are normal, are ok, are, what we do. But we’re still good people. We need the protein, we couldn’t survive without it, we’re top of the food chain, other animals do it, all the rationalisations we’ve been fed to justify this violent behaviour. Yet the vegan movement is an awakening in this society, of people who see through the lies, who see that we not only don’t need the protein, animal products are the biggest killer of humans, and they are responsible for most of our modern epidemic levels of disease. The vegan movement shows the horrific levels of brutality and suffering in the animal concentration camps, and puts to the rest of humanity, that it is time to evolve and truly be kind, good people. To be the good people we are in other respects, and we are deep down, by expressing that goodness through all our actions, especially to these innocent defenceless animals. The vegan message is to wake up and see how our blindness, how following our profit driven animal torturing wealthy elite leaders advice, has wiped out 90% of other species, almost destroyed our ecosystem and is pushing us over the edge towards global warming.
Most people sense the compasstionate truth in the vegan message very well. Only, they aren’t free to follow it.
They’ve been conditioned to believe they are free….that was part of the programming. So, when they find that fear makes it impossible for them to challenge the status quo, its infuriating. They come out with all the defensive rationalisation arguments blustering away, but they’re not blustering against continued violence towards animals, not really, they’re not defending against an addiction to food. They’re defending against realising they are not actually free. Defending against seeing that they’re being controlled, they are too afraid of challenging what’s ‘normal’ and there’s no getting out of seeing now that they aren’t in fact free. They can see now their real motive all along, was to not rock the boat, to take the path of least resistance. This is uncomfortable, and its tough, because people who are like this are deeply afraid. They’ve spent a lifetime being dictated to by fear. It’s a real shame.
All through time in our human history, the majority have done this. But right now, as we stand on the edge of the brink of self destruction, in this moment its no longer appropriate to be a follower. We all, have to find our truth. Find the courage to act from the compassionate truth, and rise up like heroes, for the animals, for the planet, for ourselves.
When I first started advocating for animals what I thought we needed was like a Ghandi or Jesus type person, someone who was a powerful speaker because they’d woken up spiritually, to speak to people and help them see what they are doing to the animals, to wake them to compassion, before its too late. But now what I realise is this shift in perspective/dimension, this 2012 catharsis is about the ending of those days, where there were leaders and followers. This shift, is about us all waking up spiritually, us all breaking free of the status quo, challenging this cultural paradigm of violence and exploitation. Its about us all stopping buying into that, literally. Stopping allowing the wealthy elite to brainwash us into being their devils little helpers, while they get ever more rich, and the animals are tortured and planet destroyed to meet their evil ends.
Please, find the courage to just be kind, to do no harm, to stop paying for the exploitation and violence in this world. Please, find that strength before its too late.
Waking up, is an amazing feeling, seeing ever more clearly what you’ve been caught up in, and freeing yourself, and becoming a part of this movement towards kindness, meeting other people who are on the same compassionate journey. Honestly, its better than whatever you’ve known before. It’s the path home, to your heart.
Not that most people would hurt me physically personally, but its more about being able to sense the level of disconnect from the consequences of their actions in people, to sense their capacity for violence to those they are legally allowed to inflict it on. I can feel that in people sometimes now even without talking to them. Maybe its in their stance, their expression, something about a carelessness of movement, a lack of gentleness. Maybe its their facial expression, which is usually closed, and their bodies are contracted, tense. But, its more than these obvious physical things, there’s an actual energy about people, like you can feel their capacity for unconscious violence in this kind of mist around them.
With some its young, naïve energy, you can feel that they’ve just been trained, conditioned to not consider their food choices, they’re full of hubris and self, as the young are, but its cold, disconnected, uncaring, habitually, deeply entrenched. This too, is ugly, whether in a five year old or a 25 year old, to see a beautiful innocent child, who could have been brought up vegan, with a love for all living creatures and intent to do no harm, to see that child conditioned to be aggressive, cold, unkind, savage. Its ugly. Once you see it, once you wake up and see how this world has made us, it makes you shudder on some deep level, with horror. You see that there really is evil in this world, and its what we humans are, without seeing it. Evil is harming another when you could avoid harming them. Harming them with intent, because you want something from them, their very flesh. Uuggh! When you wake up, and you see we are teaching our children to do that. Then you suddenly begin to see how this affects their psyche, their stance, their energy, their relationship with the world and even their sense of identity. Eating animals literally fundamentally wounds us, disconnects us from our hearts, our souls, our gentleness and sensitivity.
So there are the young ones. Then there are those who’ve literally never questioned their cultural disposition towards other animals. The sort of people who are so far from reflecting on their actions and acting for themselves, or changing, that its literally like they are not really there. They are what life expected them to be, and so operate within a very predictable range of frequencies. They still do have their unique souls and personalities, but the more unquestioning of the status quo they are, the more their soul energy is like on a kind of very dim bulb. Its there, but faintly. Not getting much chance to shine through. This kind of person is usually older, and can have even cultivated the appearance of sensitivity and kindness, even be, more sensitive in some ways. But that almost makes it even more eerie, when they are practicing the same cold disconnect . To think that its even quite considered on some level. Rationalised nicely away, the violence.
Then there are the macho aggressive belligerent ones, the sort of football hooligan energy. Which can come in sophisticated, intellectual, form too, can be highly accomplished in many human respects of power and dominance over self, over a skill. Still its brutal, thuggish. The tough, hard, don’t care stance. Since waking up through choosing to be a vegan advocate, all these things become really clear. Its like the human BS detector. Because you can see the belligerent guys or women aren’t really as careless and carefree as they make out. Its all an act. However powerful, however accomplished, its Emperor’s new clothes once you wake up as an ethical vegan. Because you realise, what’s really important, ever, on this earth, is the capacity for kindness. That’s it. All the rest is pomp and ceremony, chest thumping and distractions from the real issue, of whether they are actually able to be kind or not.
But the people I find perhaps most conflicted in their energy are those, the majority, who can understand the vegan message on some level, but they are shutting it out. I see the amount of effort it takes them, the energy, the tension, to know, yet not to know. All that inner wrangling about whether they are a good person. Deep down they are a good person, but their actions are violent, and this contradicts their idea of themselves as a good person, so they become defensive.
The truth is, they’re not even sure why they’re acting that way. Through their lives they’ve been indoctrinated through every possible channel, their education system, their media, their family, to believe that violence and exploitation are normal, are ok, are, what we do. But we’re still good people. We need the protein, we couldn’t survive without it, we’re top of the food chain, other animals do it, all the rationalisations we’ve been fed to justify this violent behaviour. Yet the vegan movement is an awakening in this society, of people who see through the lies, who see that we not only don’t need the protein, animal products are the biggest killer of humans, and they are responsible for most of our modern epidemic levels of disease. The vegan movement shows the horrific levels of brutality and suffering in the animal concentration camps, and puts to the rest of humanity, that it is time to evolve and truly be kind, good people. To be the good people we are in other respects, and we are deep down, by expressing that goodness through all our actions, especially to these innocent defenceless animals. The vegan message is to wake up and see how our blindness, how following our profit driven animal torturing wealthy elite leaders advice, has wiped out 90% of other species, almost destroyed our ecosystem and is pushing us over the edge towards global warming.
Most people sense the compasstionate truth in the vegan message very well. Only, they aren’t free to follow it.
They’ve been conditioned to believe they are free….that was part of the programming. So, when they find that fear makes it impossible for them to challenge the status quo, its infuriating. They come out with all the defensive rationalisation arguments blustering away, but they’re not blustering against continued violence towards animals, not really, they’re not defending against an addiction to food. They’re defending against realising they are not actually free. Defending against seeing that they’re being controlled, they are too afraid of challenging what’s ‘normal’ and there’s no getting out of seeing now that they aren’t in fact free. They can see now their real motive all along, was to not rock the boat, to take the path of least resistance. This is uncomfortable, and its tough, because people who are like this are deeply afraid. They’ve spent a lifetime being dictated to by fear. It’s a real shame.
All through time in our human history, the majority have done this. But right now, as we stand on the edge of the brink of self destruction, in this moment its no longer appropriate to be a follower. We all, have to find our truth. Find the courage to act from the compassionate truth, and rise up like heroes, for the animals, for the planet, for ourselves.
When I first started advocating for animals what I thought we needed was like a Ghandi or Jesus type person, someone who was a powerful speaker because they’d woken up spiritually, to speak to people and help them see what they are doing to the animals, to wake them to compassion, before its too late. But now what I realise is this shift in perspective/dimension, this 2012 catharsis is about the ending of those days, where there were leaders and followers. This shift, is about us all waking up spiritually, us all breaking free of the status quo, challenging this cultural paradigm of violence and exploitation. Its about us all stopping buying into that, literally. Stopping allowing the wealthy elite to brainwash us into being their devils little helpers, while they get ever more rich, and the animals are tortured and planet destroyed to meet their evil ends.
Please, find the courage to just be kind, to do no harm, to stop paying for the exploitation and violence in this world. Please, find that strength before its too late.
Waking up, is an amazing feeling, seeing ever more clearly what you’ve been caught up in, and freeing yourself, and becoming a part of this movement towards kindness, meeting other people who are on the same compassionate journey. Honestly, its better than whatever you’ve known before. It’s the path home, to your heart.
Ironic really, how when you tell someone they are attacking and killing billions of animals each year, unnecessarily, and this animal ‘’agriculture’’, this terrible killing machine, is damaging the ecosystem almost to beyond repair…how they feel attacked. When it is they who are doing all the attacking, and vegans are living doing no harm wherever possible.
If you are eating animal ‘products’ y...ou are contributing to the worst crimes there has ever been in this world. The way we systematically abuse, torture, and kill, without even considering, , the many hellish mechanisms with only profit in mind, for them to fit into, as if they were no more than raw material. No care given to their sentiency or wellbeing at all.
We’ve abused animals so much we’ve defiled their very genes. Imagine that, if some more dominant species came along and started genetically modifying us. F**king with our very genes. So so sick. I feel so so sorry to animals, for what we’ve done to them. I so wish I could make it up to them….it could never be made up for. Even if we stop raising animals for slaughter now, and have sanctuaries for animals to live out the remainder of their natural lifespan, if we spent the rest of our lives, loving animals and feeling sorry for any harm that had ever been done to them by human hands. You’d never really wipe your soul clean, of this. But rather than ignore it, because its such a terrible crime, its best we face it, and stop cutting out our own hearts, with this killing, and start the healing process, of loving the animals, of forgiving ourselves. Maybe when we’ve been treating other animals with the love and respect they deserve for a millennia, we may one day feel this a dark and distant memory, from the darkest time on Earth.
But first we have to get out of this mess, and the only way out is through our hearts.
If you are eating animal ‘products’ y...ou are contributing to the worst crimes there has ever been in this world. The way we systematically abuse, torture, and kill, without even considering, , the many hellish mechanisms with only profit in mind, for them to fit into, as if they were no more than raw material. No care given to their sentiency or wellbeing at all.
We’ve abused animals so much we’ve defiled their very genes. Imagine that, if some more dominant species came along and started genetically modifying us. F**king with our very genes. So so sick. I feel so so sorry to animals, for what we’ve done to them. I so wish I could make it up to them….it could never be made up for. Even if we stop raising animals for slaughter now, and have sanctuaries for animals to live out the remainder of their natural lifespan, if we spent the rest of our lives, loving animals and feeling sorry for any harm that had ever been done to them by human hands. You’d never really wipe your soul clean, of this. But rather than ignore it, because its such a terrible crime, its best we face it, and stop cutting out our own hearts, with this killing, and start the healing process, of loving the animals, of forgiving ourselves. Maybe when we’ve been treating other animals with the love and respect they deserve for a millennia, we may one day feel this a dark and distant memory, from the darkest time on Earth.
But first we have to get out of this mess, and the only way out is through our hearts.
I look at the images on animals and nature pages, the horse whose soft white gold coat shimmers, who looks like some mythical being, the white owl taking off from a snowy landscape. The incredible myriad fishes and underwater creatures, which simply stun, with their beauty, transfix you for a moment. Its incomprehensible how beautiful and wonderful this world is. But the tether around the horses neck in the picture, is all wrong. That horse should be running free with his own kind. Those people should be hanging out harmlessly, in beautiful natural places, loving all this. Not dominating, breaking the spirit of, seeing as someone to use, for our own purposes, these lovely animals. Not for sport, not for food, not for entertainment.
When I look at the images on these pages, I see paradise. We live in paradise far more beautiful than even our wildest imagining. Yet, because we kill other animals for food, we can’t really see it, and feel it, not fully. Its there, but it means nothing, its unreachable, it’s a passing pretty picture. But the wonder, the awe, the deeply felt incredulity, you cannot feel if you are denying nature, by needlessly dominating and killing natures wonderful creatures. That deadens us to nature, deadens us to the beauty of the world we live in. In order to kill, for food, we have to not value the life in the animal we’ve slaughtered, not really. We couldn’t kill if we really cared.
So, in order to eat a particular flavour, of a familiar food which, once you’ve given it up, is actually quite disgusting, its just, what you know now, but holding onto that familiar taste, you’re missing out on life itself. Vegan food is so much more tasty, once you’ve made the change and found new foods to enjoy. You also never feel sluggish or that awful heaviness after eating. Cruelty foods weigh you down, they damage you. You don’t realise it until you stop and feel so much lighter. You also don’t realise the guilt you are carrying whilst you’re eating animal products. You may think you don’t care, but, try caring for a month, really caring, and see how much lighter you feel on every level. No, if you eat animal products you cannot see this world fully, cannot see it as a wonder, where all living beings, under all circumstances, should always be free.
Unless, they are a species who are out of control, and destroying the very fabric of existence, because they are wounded by their own greed, their own inability to face their mistakes, to see how wrong it is to dominate, confine and kill, whomever the species. When something like that happens, when a species become that dysfunctional, they really need to not be free, they need apprehending, and if there are too many of them and not enough power to apprehend them till they come to their senses. Then all we can do is try to tell them what is going on, show them their violence, their disconnect, their insanity. Then more and more of them will wake up from this evil trance, and find ways of seeing again, find ways to live with compassion, to reconnect and see the beauty in the world again. The more who wake, and join in this new peace song, the sooner we will be able to create a paradise on earth again. Not even create it, we just need to stand back and let nature replenish this fabulous garden of eden again. We just need to stop dominating, controlling, confining and killing. Wake up and see the light.
When I look at the images on these pages, I see paradise. We live in paradise far more beautiful than even our wildest imagining. Yet, because we kill other animals for food, we can’t really see it, and feel it, not fully. Its there, but it means nothing, its unreachable, it’s a passing pretty picture. But the wonder, the awe, the deeply felt incredulity, you cannot feel if you are denying nature, by needlessly dominating and killing natures wonderful creatures. That deadens us to nature, deadens us to the beauty of the world we live in. In order to kill, for food, we have to not value the life in the animal we’ve slaughtered, not really. We couldn’t kill if we really cared.
So, in order to eat a particular flavour, of a familiar food which, once you’ve given it up, is actually quite disgusting, its just, what you know now, but holding onto that familiar taste, you’re missing out on life itself. Vegan food is so much more tasty, once you’ve made the change and found new foods to enjoy. You also never feel sluggish or that awful heaviness after eating. Cruelty foods weigh you down, they damage you. You don’t realise it until you stop and feel so much lighter. You also don’t realise the guilt you are carrying whilst you’re eating animal products. You may think you don’t care, but, try caring for a month, really caring, and see how much lighter you feel on every level. No, if you eat animal products you cannot see this world fully, cannot see it as a wonder, where all living beings, under all circumstances, should always be free.
Unless, they are a species who are out of control, and destroying the very fabric of existence, because they are wounded by their own greed, their own inability to face their mistakes, to see how wrong it is to dominate, confine and kill, whomever the species. When something like that happens, when a species become that dysfunctional, they really need to not be free, they need apprehending, and if there are too many of them and not enough power to apprehend them till they come to their senses. Then all we can do is try to tell them what is going on, show them their violence, their disconnect, their insanity. Then more and more of them will wake up from this evil trance, and find ways of seeing again, find ways to live with compassion, to reconnect and see the beauty in the world again. The more who wake, and join in this new peace song, the sooner we will be able to create a paradise on earth again. Not even create it, we just need to stand back and let nature replenish this fabulous garden of eden again. We just need to stop dominating, controlling, confining and killing. Wake up and see the light.
For every single person who chooses to be vegan approximately 90 animals including birds and fishes are spared a torturous life and terrifying death. Not only that, but usually, one vegan affects the people around them, some turn vegetarian, some also see the compassionate truth and choose to go vegan. So if say, for every one vegan there becomes one more vegan, that’s not only the 90 lives a year you’re saving, but their 90 too. Also, if that vegan, enlightens just one more person, you have effectively saved another 90 lives a year. Onwards and outwards the ripples spread in incalculable ways.
So, if you think it won’t make a difference, changing your food choices to cruelty free, please consider this. You are actually, more powerful than you think. Each animal, bird, and fish, is a someone, like you. Imagine living your life in total confinement, in chronic pain, driven out of your mind, and then facing a brutal and terrifying death. By choosing to go vegan you spare thousands of someone’s undergoing that, from your own refusal to contribute to cruelty alone. By default, through your example and people who became vegans because of you, tens of thousands of other animals, birds and fishes, are saved too.
I don’t know the exact environmental figures, but you and also save tons on your carbon footprint each year too, you stop contributing to the toxic waste run off which is going into our oceans and stop contributing to the gasses and soot creating global warming. You make a difference. A big one.
You also, step up, wake up, and become a part of the turning tide, the shift in consciousness which is happening, which must happen if the human species is to survive. You bring your behaviour in line with your inner values of kindness, you make the commitment to do no harm wherever possible, a simple, yet powerfully transformational step. Which turns on a light inside you, makes you more sensitive, more open, more connected, in so many ways. Instead of being an unconscious consumer, you become a conscious responsible guardian of this earth and of those more vulnerable than yourself.
Maybe you don’t feel ready yet, maybe it feels too hard to change. But we don’t have much time left, so the quicker you can move in that direction at least, the better, for the animals, for you, and for the survival of life itself on this earth.
So, if you think it won’t make a difference, changing your food choices to cruelty free, please consider this. You are actually, more powerful than you think. Each animal, bird, and fish, is a someone, like you. Imagine living your life in total confinement, in chronic pain, driven out of your mind, and then facing a brutal and terrifying death. By choosing to go vegan you spare thousands of someone’s undergoing that, from your own refusal to contribute to cruelty alone. By default, through your example and people who became vegans because of you, tens of thousands of other animals, birds and fishes, are saved too.
I don’t know the exact environmental figures, but you and also save tons on your carbon footprint each year too, you stop contributing to the toxic waste run off which is going into our oceans and stop contributing to the gasses and soot creating global warming. You make a difference. A big one.
You also, step up, wake up, and become a part of the turning tide, the shift in consciousness which is happening, which must happen if the human species is to survive. You bring your behaviour in line with your inner values of kindness, you make the commitment to do no harm wherever possible, a simple, yet powerfully transformational step. Which turns on a light inside you, makes you more sensitive, more open, more connected, in so many ways. Instead of being an unconscious consumer, you become a conscious responsible guardian of this earth and of those more vulnerable than yourself.
Maybe you don’t feel ready yet, maybe it feels too hard to change. But we don’t have much time left, so the quicker you can move in that direction at least, the better, for the animals, for you, and for the survival of life itself on this earth.
Language, and the way we speak, what we speak about, seems to me lately very powerful.
Also, what we allow and tolerate to be said to us, what we entertain, give space, time and attention to.
Would you discuss with someone, whether it was right or not to continue killing humans?
When I hear people say, ‘I love animals, I treat my animals well, then I kill them kindly’, I realize that the world is completely insane. That person, speaking, is so crazy, they can think they can love and kill at the same time.’
If say, we lived in a culture where women were still bought and sold like chattel, or, where every family around had a black person who’d been kidnapped from their country and brutally forced into slavery. Would you listen to someone justify keeping their slaves, or selling women? Would you offer space to a Nazi general to explain his reasons for his treatment of Jews, Gypsies and other people incarcerated in concentration camps?
Or would you just say, in the end….look, there’s no justification for it, none whatsoever, and your arguments for continued exploitation and violence, whomever the sex, whomever the race, whomever the species, are just wrong.
Yes, there are long cultural indoctrinations…and you can provide evidence, videos of how the animals are being treated, killed. How our bodies are being poisoned. How the planet is being destroyed. I understand, people need to have their misconceptions deconstructed. People who are genuinely interested I have lots of time for. If, I say to someone…hey, you know, you don’t have to kill animals to survive…in spite of what we’ve been taught…its actually bad for us to eat them, and we have plenty of alternative cruelty free foods available… if I say this and the person I am talking to is a genuinely kind person, they’ll be really happy to hear that. Because why would they want to hurt someone if they could avoid it. Yes, that kind of person I understand may need information, support, and I’m happy to offer all I can.
But most people aren’t genuinely kind, they are selfish, they have no empathy, no compassion, to a degree which actually makes them clinically insane, but insanity is so normal, that we don’t see it. I intend from now on, to see it, and to treat it as it deserves to be treated. There is no rationalizing with people who are that chronically selfish and psychotic. They aren’t listening. They’re just digging their heels in and determining their reasons for continued killing. Their main priority is themselves and their own pleasure. Or, they are thinking of themselves of the personal repercussions of going against what’s normal, the status quo, and speak against a culture of violence and exploitation.
Whatever their reasons, if people are choosing violence, its just wrong.
Also, what we allow and tolerate to be said to us, what we entertain, give space, time and attention to.
Would you discuss with someone, whether it was right or not to continue killing humans?
When I hear people say, ‘I love animals, I treat my animals well, then I kill them kindly’, I realize that the world is completely insane. That person, speaking, is so crazy, they can think they can love and kill at the same time.’
If say, we lived in a culture where women were still bought and sold like chattel, or, where every family around had a black person who’d been kidnapped from their country and brutally forced into slavery. Would you listen to someone justify keeping their slaves, or selling women? Would you offer space to a Nazi general to explain his reasons for his treatment of Jews, Gypsies and other people incarcerated in concentration camps?
Or would you just say, in the end….look, there’s no justification for it, none whatsoever, and your arguments for continued exploitation and violence, whomever the sex, whomever the race, whomever the species, are just wrong.
Yes, there are long cultural indoctrinations…and you can provide evidence, videos of how the animals are being treated, killed. How our bodies are being poisoned. How the planet is being destroyed. I understand, people need to have their misconceptions deconstructed. People who are genuinely interested I have lots of time for. If, I say to someone…hey, you know, you don’t have to kill animals to survive…in spite of what we’ve been taught…its actually bad for us to eat them, and we have plenty of alternative cruelty free foods available… if I say this and the person I am talking to is a genuinely kind person, they’ll be really happy to hear that. Because why would they want to hurt someone if they could avoid it. Yes, that kind of person I understand may need information, support, and I’m happy to offer all I can.
But most people aren’t genuinely kind, they are selfish, they have no empathy, no compassion, to a degree which actually makes them clinically insane, but insanity is so normal, that we don’t see it. I intend from now on, to see it, and to treat it as it deserves to be treated. There is no rationalizing with people who are that chronically selfish and psychotic. They aren’t listening. They’re just digging their heels in and determining their reasons for continued killing. Their main priority is themselves and their own pleasure. Or, they are thinking of themselves of the personal repercussions of going against what’s normal, the status quo, and speak against a culture of violence and exploitation.
Whatever their reasons, if people are choosing violence, its just wrong.
You think you are completely sane don’t you. Completely conscious, completely aware.
We all do. Even really crazy people think that.
So how can you tell?
Do you look around you and see how similar your behavior, thoughts, attitudes and experience are to those around you?
But what if they were mad too?
What if, you were part of a species, who were in the process of destroying quite anarchically, systematically, devastatingly, catastrophically everything around them, all the while, thinking they were completely sane!
What if you knew you were doing it, but it felt bigger than you, beyond you, to do anything about it.
You could see your behavior, collectively, was insanity, only, couldn’t see what to do about it personally.
Till one day someone said to you.
‘’You only have to do two things, to stop all this madness, and to begin to heal the planet, before its too late.
1. Do unto others as you would have done unto you – this includes all species – harm none. Whatever you do, in your work, when you shop, in all your activities, consider the harm you are doing to animals, to people, to the Earth, and wherever possible, and in an ever increasing manner, reduce the harm you are doing, quick. Begin making the personal transformation from unconscious consumer, unconscious citizen of this Earth, to kind, responsible guardian of this planet and the beautiful animals we are blessed to share it with. It will empower and liberate you to realize the power you actually have.
2. Do not follow what everyone else is doing, unless they are following rule number one.
We all do. Even really crazy people think that.
So how can you tell?
Do you look around you and see how similar your behavior, thoughts, attitudes and experience are to those around you?
But what if they were mad too?
What if, you were part of a species, who were in the process of destroying quite anarchically, systematically, devastatingly, catastrophically everything around them, all the while, thinking they were completely sane!
What if you knew you were doing it, but it felt bigger than you, beyond you, to do anything about it.
You could see your behavior, collectively, was insanity, only, couldn’t see what to do about it personally.
Till one day someone said to you.
‘’You only have to do two things, to stop all this madness, and to begin to heal the planet, before its too late.
1. Do unto others as you would have done unto you – this includes all species – harm none. Whatever you do, in your work, when you shop, in all your activities, consider the harm you are doing to animals, to people, to the Earth, and wherever possible, and in an ever increasing manner, reduce the harm you are doing, quick. Begin making the personal transformation from unconscious consumer, unconscious citizen of this Earth, to kind, responsible guardian of this planet and the beautiful animals we are blessed to share it with. It will empower and liberate you to realize the power you actually have.
2. Do not follow what everyone else is doing, unless they are following rule number one.
I don’t know how it happened but I think I’m starting to feel more compassion for people. I was sitting on the bus, and it just sort of dawned, out of nowhere. It wasn’t a rational experience, just, something opened, in the centre of my chest, as I got an image in my mind of one or two people I’ve spoken to, quite nastily, lately. And I could see suddenly they just don’t get it. They actually really believe its ok to kill animals. They don’t even feel for the animals at all. It was as if I got a glimpse for a moment of what it was like to be them. Like I transported momentarily enough into their frame of reference to find compassion, just for their humanness, no matter what they do.
They are closed, completely disconnected, shut down. They feel absolutely nothing for animals, and their decision to kill them is entirely rational. The way they argue for killing animals, is coming from their conditioning. I could see it suddenly. Some people are just entirely conditioned. Their beliefs about how to act and what to do come from what they’ve been told is the thing to do, and they haven’t opened up to any deeper level, to question their practices, question their killing. Maybe some have a little, but not deeply. You either have a deeply felt compassion for an animal as a living being, the same way you would for a toddler wandering away from safety, or an old lady who needed help crossing a busy road…that sense of compassion for those who are more vulnerable and need protection. You either feel the vulnerability of animals, or you don’t.
I could see most of all though, how nasty and attacking I’ve been towards people and felt sorry, in this moment of compassion for attacking them. Its not like their actions aren’t violent, aren’t killing the toddler, killing the defenceless old lady, who I care for, and want to help. So I have compassion for myself too, and understand why the pain I feel at the sight of the killing, the suffering, the pleading in the eyes, the not understanding in the toddlers face as the crazy people string them up by one leg and cut them open, or confine them in hell for years. No, I understand the depth of pain I feel at that. But I see what I’ve been doing is taking that out on people who just do not see what they are doing. Whether its madness or badness, they do not see what they are doing. They couldn’t. No-one could really see and feel that, and still do it. Not unless they really were psychopaths, as I’ve been accusing everyone of being lately.
Most people are distanced from the reality of the suffering and killing they are paying for. But even the really sick psychopaths who enjoy making people and animals suffer, enjoy the cutting, laugh as they hack off the nose of the pig and rub salt in its wound as I read one account of….because killing is funny to them…because this is their job and they feel nothing. Even they are just mad, right. They are stupid, they are ignorant, but getting nasty and calling them stupid and ignorant is just as ignorant of me, in a way. Its not like the men who transport the cows on their way to slaughter, after a lifetime of agonising abuse, animals who routinely go without water in such freezing conditions, that they freeze to the sides of the transportation truck. Its not like those men are conscious of what they are doing. So really, how can being nasty to them, or to the people paying them, be reasonable of me. They’re completely coldly insane. Normal, because that’s what this world has trained them to be, but insane. You wouldn’t go and mock a lunatic in an asylum. Just because these people are respected members of the community…why mock them then. As I have been. Belittling, and talking down to… to the people who pay them at least.
Because the people who pay them, half the time have no idea of these sorts of details of the suffering their purchases and food choices inflict. My head is full, I’m flooded with more and more stories of these kinds of unbelievable injustices everyday, but they don’t know. They just come on here and go ‘well I’ve got a bit of Indian blood in me, or I’m a blood type who needs meat’. They’ve read some book, been told that all their lives they need the protein…whatever. They just don’t know and they just don’t see.
Maybe, they’ll be sitting on a bus one day, and it will hit them. They’ll have a moment’s compassion and insight into their victims lives. As I just glimpsed into their’s.
I hope this lasts, this new feeling. I hope I don’t go back to taking out my pain on those who don’t see.
As I sat on the bus, after feeling this compassionate insight, I remembered my friend’s post recently, where she shared that she had been talking to this woman she knows, who explained to her utterly coldly, what happens in a slaughterhouse. Her friend explained, well, you can pay for it to be sent to this box, then they kill it, and cut it up by the pound. On and on she went into the cold details of how her death would be served her, how convenient it was. As I recalled this I felt my blood boil again. And I’m still ok with that. That anger is healthy. To hear of someone cutting up the baby lamb who you love as much as those paying for it love their children, is highly distressing. To live in a world full of people who see grandmothers and toddlers as food, and don’t at all feel care for the vulnerable. It’s a living nightmare. So I forgive myself my anger and attacking people in the past. I forgive anyone who wakes up to actually see and feel the nightmare going on all around us. You are welcome to come to this page and vent your anger and pain if it helps. But I can see, for myself now, that these people truly are insane. Mostly they’ve been brought up to be that way. Its normal, it’s a sick society. But attacking them in my pain, I hope, isn’t something I’ll be doing anymore.
They are closed, completely disconnected, shut down. They feel absolutely nothing for animals, and their decision to kill them is entirely rational. The way they argue for killing animals, is coming from their conditioning. I could see it suddenly. Some people are just entirely conditioned. Their beliefs about how to act and what to do come from what they’ve been told is the thing to do, and they haven’t opened up to any deeper level, to question their practices, question their killing. Maybe some have a little, but not deeply. You either have a deeply felt compassion for an animal as a living being, the same way you would for a toddler wandering away from safety, or an old lady who needed help crossing a busy road…that sense of compassion for those who are more vulnerable and need protection. You either feel the vulnerability of animals, or you don’t.
I could see most of all though, how nasty and attacking I’ve been towards people and felt sorry, in this moment of compassion for attacking them. Its not like their actions aren’t violent, aren’t killing the toddler, killing the defenceless old lady, who I care for, and want to help. So I have compassion for myself too, and understand why the pain I feel at the sight of the killing, the suffering, the pleading in the eyes, the not understanding in the toddlers face as the crazy people string them up by one leg and cut them open, or confine them in hell for years. No, I understand the depth of pain I feel at that. But I see what I’ve been doing is taking that out on people who just do not see what they are doing. Whether its madness or badness, they do not see what they are doing. They couldn’t. No-one could really see and feel that, and still do it. Not unless they really were psychopaths, as I’ve been accusing everyone of being lately.
Most people are distanced from the reality of the suffering and killing they are paying for. But even the really sick psychopaths who enjoy making people and animals suffer, enjoy the cutting, laugh as they hack off the nose of the pig and rub salt in its wound as I read one account of….because killing is funny to them…because this is their job and they feel nothing. Even they are just mad, right. They are stupid, they are ignorant, but getting nasty and calling them stupid and ignorant is just as ignorant of me, in a way. Its not like the men who transport the cows on their way to slaughter, after a lifetime of agonising abuse, animals who routinely go without water in such freezing conditions, that they freeze to the sides of the transportation truck. Its not like those men are conscious of what they are doing. So really, how can being nasty to them, or to the people paying them, be reasonable of me. They’re completely coldly insane. Normal, because that’s what this world has trained them to be, but insane. You wouldn’t go and mock a lunatic in an asylum. Just because these people are respected members of the community…why mock them then. As I have been. Belittling, and talking down to… to the people who pay them at least.
Because the people who pay them, half the time have no idea of these sorts of details of the suffering their purchases and food choices inflict. My head is full, I’m flooded with more and more stories of these kinds of unbelievable injustices everyday, but they don’t know. They just come on here and go ‘well I’ve got a bit of Indian blood in me, or I’m a blood type who needs meat’. They’ve read some book, been told that all their lives they need the protein…whatever. They just don’t know and they just don’t see.
Maybe, they’ll be sitting on a bus one day, and it will hit them. They’ll have a moment’s compassion and insight into their victims lives. As I just glimpsed into their’s.
I hope this lasts, this new feeling. I hope I don’t go back to taking out my pain on those who don’t see.
As I sat on the bus, after feeling this compassionate insight, I remembered my friend’s post recently, where she shared that she had been talking to this woman she knows, who explained to her utterly coldly, what happens in a slaughterhouse. Her friend explained, well, you can pay for it to be sent to this box, then they kill it, and cut it up by the pound. On and on she went into the cold details of how her death would be served her, how convenient it was. As I recalled this I felt my blood boil again. And I’m still ok with that. That anger is healthy. To hear of someone cutting up the baby lamb who you love as much as those paying for it love their children, is highly distressing. To live in a world full of people who see grandmothers and toddlers as food, and don’t at all feel care for the vulnerable. It’s a living nightmare. So I forgive myself my anger and attacking people in the past. I forgive anyone who wakes up to actually see and feel the nightmare going on all around us. You are welcome to come to this page and vent your anger and pain if it helps. But I can see, for myself now, that these people truly are insane. Mostly they’ve been brought up to be that way. Its normal, it’s a sick society. But attacking them in my pain, I hope, isn’t something I’ll be doing anymore.
In Jungian terms, our culture’s enormous, intractable, overriding shadow is the cruelty and violence toward animal it requires, practices, eats, and meticulously hides and denies. According to Jungian theory, the shadow archetype represents those aspects of ourselves that we refuse to acknowledge, the part of ourselves that we have disowned. To itself, the shadow is what the self is not, and in this case it is our own cruelty and violence that we deny and repress. We tell ourselves that we are good, just, upright, kind and gentle people. We just happen to enjoy eating animal, which is okay because they were put here for us to use and we need the protein. Yet the extreme cruelty and violence underlying our meals is undeniable, and so our collective shadow looms larger and more menacing the more we deny it existence, sabotaging our efforts to grow spiritually and to collectively evolve a more awakened culture.
As Jungian psychotherapy emphasizes, the shadow will be heard! This is why we eventually do to ourselves what we do to animals. The shadow is a vital and undeniable force that cannot, in the end, be repressed. The tremendous psychological forces required to confine mutilate, and kill millions of animals every day, and to keep the whole bloody slaughter repressed and invisible, work in two ways. One way is to numb, desensitize, and armour us, which decreases our intelligence and ability to make connections. The other is to force us to act out exactly what we re repressing. This is done through projection. We create an acceptable target to loathe for being violent, cruel and tyrannical – the very qualities that we refuse to acknowledge in ourselves- and we attack it. With this understanding of the immense violence towards animals that we keep hidden and the implacable shadow this creates, the existence of 50,000 nuclear warheads becomes comprehensible.
The shadow is the self that does the dirty work for us so we can remain good and acceptable in our own eyes. The more we repress and disconnect, the more inner disturbance we will carry that we must project on an outer evil force, an enemy or scapegoat of some kind, against whom we can direct our denied violence.
Will Tuttle – The World Peace Diet
So often…people read or hear about animal cruelty, and do what is described above. Its the ‘shooting the messenger’ syndrome. People don’t like to be told, to have their denial disturbed, and I’ve been accused of bullying, attacking, pushing onto others, being a fascist, even when speaking non judgementally, just sharing the information. Where some read the posts who are either vegan already or who are open in their hearts and heading that way, and say ‘oh those words are beautiful…or thanks that’s helpful’ At the very same time those still asleep and in denial will see those words as attacking, bullying, accusing them of being something terrible. Well, I am pointing out your behaviour, which is violent and unnecessary but if you are genuinely trying to be as kind as you can, you will just thank me for showing you where you can be more so. If you don’t want to see it, you’ll attack in all kinds of ways, rather than see your behaviour, and change.
Waking up to being vegan, not only do the blindfolds begin to come off to all kinds of other oppression and exploitation in the world and people’s behaviour around you, the mechanisms of defence and denial slowly become apparent too. Where you begin to see when people are using those same mechanisms of denial in other areas of life too.
Becoming vegan is so much more than stopping this violence and cruelty to animals. Its waking up, to see this world and the people around you, much more clearly. Which can be hard, because people are duplicitous, deceitful, and violent, and they are walking around in a trance of ‘I’m a nice guy’ or ‘we’re such a lovely kind family’. So for many people, first waking up is painful, the difficult bit is remaining awake, because its hard to see your loved ones and fellow humans, in this clear light. Hard to see the violence they are not seeing, and have them remain utterly in denial about it. Hard to keep your heart open, when its so painful to see.
But, the great things are, you are now living a more purposeful, honest, meaningful life. You are living with a clear conscience yourself. You’ve stepped out of that dark dance of denial, that awful feeling inside yourself, of knee jerk reactions and inner conflict. You’re just honest, and open now. You begin to just be honest in every area of your life, and find it such a relief to do so. Some people who really can’t handle that, drift away, but you get new friends….and they’re honest…. Honest! God, how I’ve longed all my life for people who could be that. Genuine, have integrity, who live their lives honestly moving in the direction of doing no harm wherever possible and living in a meaningful way. Other ethical vegans, on the whole, feel like family to me. So much is not needed to be said between us. I am not a ‘people person’, but vegans…now they’re a different breed, in a different space altogether. They aren’t split, fragmented in denial, duplicitous, tense from holding back from seeing their violence, aggressive from justifying it. They’re more at peace in themselves. All vegans aren’t perfect… of course…it’s a process of awakening and we’ve all come from the same place of well practiced denial. But vegans are trying, genuinely, and that’s a whole different energy to those rigidly fixedly in denial about their violence, and so many many other things in their lives.
As Jungian psychotherapy emphasizes, the shadow will be heard! This is why we eventually do to ourselves what we do to animals. The shadow is a vital and undeniable force that cannot, in the end, be repressed. The tremendous psychological forces required to confine mutilate, and kill millions of animals every day, and to keep the whole bloody slaughter repressed and invisible, work in two ways. One way is to numb, desensitize, and armour us, which decreases our intelligence and ability to make connections. The other is to force us to act out exactly what we re repressing. This is done through projection. We create an acceptable target to loathe for being violent, cruel and tyrannical – the very qualities that we refuse to acknowledge in ourselves- and we attack it. With this understanding of the immense violence towards animals that we keep hidden and the implacable shadow this creates, the existence of 50,000 nuclear warheads becomes comprehensible.
The shadow is the self that does the dirty work for us so we can remain good and acceptable in our own eyes. The more we repress and disconnect, the more inner disturbance we will carry that we must project on an outer evil force, an enemy or scapegoat of some kind, against whom we can direct our denied violence.
Will Tuttle – The World Peace Diet
So often…people read or hear about animal cruelty, and do what is described above. Its the ‘shooting the messenger’ syndrome. People don’t like to be told, to have their denial disturbed, and I’ve been accused of bullying, attacking, pushing onto others, being a fascist, even when speaking non judgementally, just sharing the information. Where some read the posts who are either vegan already or who are open in their hearts and heading that way, and say ‘oh those words are beautiful…or thanks that’s helpful’ At the very same time those still asleep and in denial will see those words as attacking, bullying, accusing them of being something terrible. Well, I am pointing out your behaviour, which is violent and unnecessary but if you are genuinely trying to be as kind as you can, you will just thank me for showing you where you can be more so. If you don’t want to see it, you’ll attack in all kinds of ways, rather than see your behaviour, and change.
Waking up to being vegan, not only do the blindfolds begin to come off to all kinds of other oppression and exploitation in the world and people’s behaviour around you, the mechanisms of defence and denial slowly become apparent too. Where you begin to see when people are using those same mechanisms of denial in other areas of life too.
Becoming vegan is so much more than stopping this violence and cruelty to animals. Its waking up, to see this world and the people around you, much more clearly. Which can be hard, because people are duplicitous, deceitful, and violent, and they are walking around in a trance of ‘I’m a nice guy’ or ‘we’re such a lovely kind family’. So for many people, first waking up is painful, the difficult bit is remaining awake, because its hard to see your loved ones and fellow humans, in this clear light. Hard to see the violence they are not seeing, and have them remain utterly in denial about it. Hard to keep your heart open, when its so painful to see.
But, the great things are, you are now living a more purposeful, honest, meaningful life. You are living with a clear conscience yourself. You’ve stepped out of that dark dance of denial, that awful feeling inside yourself, of knee jerk reactions and inner conflict. You’re just honest, and open now. You begin to just be honest in every area of your life, and find it such a relief to do so. Some people who really can’t handle that, drift away, but you get new friends….and they’re honest…. Honest! God, how I’ve longed all my life for people who could be that. Genuine, have integrity, who live their lives honestly moving in the direction of doing no harm wherever possible and living in a meaningful way. Other ethical vegans, on the whole, feel like family to me. So much is not needed to be said between us. I am not a ‘people person’, but vegans…now they’re a different breed, in a different space altogether. They aren’t split, fragmented in denial, duplicitous, tense from holding back from seeing their violence, aggressive from justifying it. They’re more at peace in themselves. All vegans aren’t perfect… of course…it’s a process of awakening and we’ve all come from the same place of well practiced denial. But vegans are trying, genuinely, and that’s a whole different energy to those rigidly fixedly in denial about their violence, and so many many other things in their lives.
Interesting conversation yesterday provoked thoughts of a previous post I wrote about veganism not being enough. Its made me consider today again, the responsibility we all have to help alleviate suffering in this world.
Ever since I can remember, from when I first ever thought… what am I going to do with my life, I’ve wanted to help. Around that time, late teens, I found out about the damage being done to the environment, and also became vegetarian after seeing something about animals on factory farms. Both issues troubled me deeply, but they felt so big, and I didn’t know what I could do to help. I wanted to do something big. I knew I could go and help poor people in other countries, and devote myself entirely to alleviate their suffering, but a part of me thought, yes but I want a much bigger impact than that on the world. I want to help animals, the environment and people, I want to make the biggest impact I possibly can. I need to find out how to do that.
It was only when I finally forced myself to watch a video called ‘From Farm To Fridge’ about 10 months ago, when finally I woke up and just got to work doing anything and everything I can to raise awareness for their terrible, mind blowingly horrific plight. It didn’t matter suddenly how small my efforts were, I had to begin then, not wait till I knew how to do something big and really effective. I had to begin then, to do whatever I can and develop my ability my knowledge and work towards becoming more effective in time. Just…begin.
I do understand that’s how we’ve all been conditioned to accept the suffering in the world and just get on with our own lives. But I think that's another layer of conditioning we need to wake ourselves from. Stop chasing dreams of romantic love or personal success and achievement, because that actually is only ever an illusion, its something sold to us by the same people who profit from the exploitation and murder of animals and destruction of this earth. It suits them to have us chasing those dreams, making them money and doing nothing to stop them doing that.
The real truth is the only way we will find the deep and lasting fulfilment we are looking for is when we are dedicated to becoming the most powerful forces for healing in this world we can be. If we are alive on this planet at this point in time, that’s what we came here to do. If we don’t feel that urgent call, I believe that’s another form of being spiritually asleep, being programmed, conditioned away from our deepest truth our highest integrity, our inner knowing.
If we shrank this world down for a second to look at this in metaphorical terms. I’m thinking of when as children we’d hang out and play in nature together. Say there was a group of us human friends and we could see that, over there in that corner of our play area, were animals being tortured and killed by demons, and we knew that evil demons controlled our world and were poisoning the way we think and act with only profit in mind, world destruction being the consequence, and in the other corner were people suffering psychologically and emotionally from living in this world where demons had control over the animals, and the human minds. We, the friends in the corner, who could see all this, would want, and feel that we each needed to be heroes and do all we could to fight the demons. Right?
If we were in our childhood gangs, playing this out in nature, on a smaller scale, we’d understand the bad guys had to be fought, the good had to win out, and we had to find superhuman abilities within us so that the demons didn’t control us too and didn’t destroy the world.
We need to wake up out of the selfishness we’ve indoctrinated in, and become the saviours of the animals and suffering people, and the heroes of this world. We need to do that now, before its too late.
Ever since I can remember, from when I first ever thought… what am I going to do with my life, I’ve wanted to help. Around that time, late teens, I found out about the damage being done to the environment, and also became vegetarian after seeing something about animals on factory farms. Both issues troubled me deeply, but they felt so big, and I didn’t know what I could do to help. I wanted to do something big. I knew I could go and help poor people in other countries, and devote myself entirely to alleviate their suffering, but a part of me thought, yes but I want a much bigger impact than that on the world. I want to help animals, the environment and people, I want to make the biggest impact I possibly can. I need to find out how to do that.
It was only when I finally forced myself to watch a video called ‘From Farm To Fridge’ about 10 months ago, when finally I woke up and just got to work doing anything and everything I can to raise awareness for their terrible, mind blowingly horrific plight. It didn’t matter suddenly how small my efforts were, I had to begin then, not wait till I knew how to do something big and really effective. I had to begin then, to do whatever I can and develop my ability my knowledge and work towards becoming more effective in time. Just…begin.
I do understand that’s how we’ve all been conditioned to accept the suffering in the world and just get on with our own lives. But I think that's another layer of conditioning we need to wake ourselves from. Stop chasing dreams of romantic love or personal success and achievement, because that actually is only ever an illusion, its something sold to us by the same people who profit from the exploitation and murder of animals and destruction of this earth. It suits them to have us chasing those dreams, making them money and doing nothing to stop them doing that.
The real truth is the only way we will find the deep and lasting fulfilment we are looking for is when we are dedicated to becoming the most powerful forces for healing in this world we can be. If we are alive on this planet at this point in time, that’s what we came here to do. If we don’t feel that urgent call, I believe that’s another form of being spiritually asleep, being programmed, conditioned away from our deepest truth our highest integrity, our inner knowing.
If we shrank this world down for a second to look at this in metaphorical terms. I’m thinking of when as children we’d hang out and play in nature together. Say there was a group of us human friends and we could see that, over there in that corner of our play area, were animals being tortured and killed by demons, and we knew that evil demons controlled our world and were poisoning the way we think and act with only profit in mind, world destruction being the consequence, and in the other corner were people suffering psychologically and emotionally from living in this world where demons had control over the animals, and the human minds. We, the friends in the corner, who could see all this, would want, and feel that we each needed to be heroes and do all we could to fight the demons. Right?
If we were in our childhood gangs, playing this out in nature, on a smaller scale, we’d understand the bad guys had to be fought, the good had to win out, and we had to find superhuman abilities within us so that the demons didn’t control us too and didn’t destroy the world.
We need to wake up out of the selfishness we’ve indoctrinated in, and become the saviours of the animals and suffering people, and the heroes of this world. We need to do that now, before its too late.
What I often find in the online vegan movement, amongst fellow activists is synchronicity occurring in our postings. I feel something brewing deep inside me, then I go online and find someone else has had the insight or reached the new deeper level of awareness, and written it in their own words. This process has led me to feel ther is some inner psychic airwaves we are all connected on, and there is something dawning, within all of us, simultaneously. Only we each have varying abilities to receive and transmit it. Some, the meat eaters, are just not hearing the signal at all. Others, the vegan animal rights activists, all seemed more finely tuned and are picking up the message simultaneously, and this online medium, this bizarre cyberworld shared mind is giving me the opportunity to observe the process, with some fascination, and much gratitude.
I love feeling connected to all you passionate animal activists, and also, I’m beginning to even feel oneness with and compassion towards the meat eaters who I no longer see as the enemy, I just see them as fast asleep. They’re walking around, talking, thinking, having an independent character…just, as far as empathy and compassion, and this inner intuitive psychic awareness goes…they are just not registering it, as if, they are asleep to that frequency. Though its unpleasant and painful to be around people causing unconscious violence to animals, who are also expressing much insensitivity and aggression in other ways, the oneness that we all are, the connection, is just getting clearer all the time. My heart opening unfolds as I feel and perceive this connection, and share the journey of awakening with you fellow gentle, open hearted, awakened ones. And learn to be patient with and kind to those who just don't get it yet.
These last few days even, the synchronistic event between us, seems to be certain amount of disagreement on various subjects amongst fellow vegan animal advocates.
I think this process of disagreement and debate can be cathartic, and useful. Maybe its inevitable and part of the process of us all looking more deeply at our values and ethics and continually opening to newer and broader horizons.
What I’m beginning to see though, is the difference between a closed, defensive stance, and an open one. I speak to people all the time, trying to convey a more compassionate truth, a deeper integrity we could be living with, and meet resistance often, slowly it is just becoming clearer, when people are defending, what that looks and feels like.
An open stance would be;
A relaxed open body language, willingness to look at the issue, a concern that there could be a way you were living disrespectfully or selfishly and a genuine desire to do all you can to move in the direction of becoming the gentlest most helpful person you can be in this world filled with suffering and horror.
A closed one would be;
A feeling of resentment for the subject being brought up, a certain preoccupation and inner wrangling within the self, a tendency to defend with rationalisations the way you currently are or how you currently see things, to justify and explain how things are, rather than being open to how they could be.
It would be great, to become clearer, on the mechanics of defensive behaviour, to have a shared language so we can all honestly see when we are doing that, and not be so impeded by that mechanism in our progress.
Perhaps, we could begin to notice when were are being defensive and say instead. ‘Ah, I notice I’m being defensive, I feel that tension within, the conflict about it, the hostility at the mention of the subject. Maybe there’s something I need to inquire more deeply about.’
You may come up with the answer that yes, you are genuinely happy with how you are, but if there’s discomfort, wrangling, justification…at all…it seems to me there is something your conscience, your intuition is asking you to look more closely at.
I love feeling connected to all you passionate animal activists, and also, I’m beginning to even feel oneness with and compassion towards the meat eaters who I no longer see as the enemy, I just see them as fast asleep. They’re walking around, talking, thinking, having an independent character…just, as far as empathy and compassion, and this inner intuitive psychic awareness goes…they are just not registering it, as if, they are asleep to that frequency. Though its unpleasant and painful to be around people causing unconscious violence to animals, who are also expressing much insensitivity and aggression in other ways, the oneness that we all are, the connection, is just getting clearer all the time. My heart opening unfolds as I feel and perceive this connection, and share the journey of awakening with you fellow gentle, open hearted, awakened ones. And learn to be patient with and kind to those who just don't get it yet.
These last few days even, the synchronistic event between us, seems to be certain amount of disagreement on various subjects amongst fellow vegan animal advocates.
I think this process of disagreement and debate can be cathartic, and useful. Maybe its inevitable and part of the process of us all looking more deeply at our values and ethics and continually opening to newer and broader horizons.
What I’m beginning to see though, is the difference between a closed, defensive stance, and an open one. I speak to people all the time, trying to convey a more compassionate truth, a deeper integrity we could be living with, and meet resistance often, slowly it is just becoming clearer, when people are defending, what that looks and feels like.
An open stance would be;
A relaxed open body language, willingness to look at the issue, a concern that there could be a way you were living disrespectfully or selfishly and a genuine desire to do all you can to move in the direction of becoming the gentlest most helpful person you can be in this world filled with suffering and horror.
A closed one would be;
A feeling of resentment for the subject being brought up, a certain preoccupation and inner wrangling within the self, a tendency to defend with rationalisations the way you currently are or how you currently see things, to justify and explain how things are, rather than being open to how they could be.
It would be great, to become clearer, on the mechanics of defensive behaviour, to have a shared language so we can all honestly see when we are doing that, and not be so impeded by that mechanism in our progress.
Perhaps, we could begin to notice when were are being defensive and say instead. ‘Ah, I notice I’m being defensive, I feel that tension within, the conflict about it, the hostility at the mention of the subject. Maybe there’s something I need to inquire more deeply about.’
You may come up with the answer that yes, you are genuinely happy with how you are, but if there’s discomfort, wrangling, justification…at all…it seems to me there is something your conscience, your intuition is asking you to look more closely at.
I’m fostering and trying to find homes for four kittens. Its hard. I remember when they first arrived here a week ago, these four tiny white and tabby faces, with deep black eyes, staring up at me, so helpless. How terrified they looked in the bottom of the carrying box they cowered in the corners of, too scared to move, big staring eyes…’What will happen to me at the hands of this giant?’ Written all over their faces. Over and over I recall that expression, their helplessness, as I scan well intended but mostly unsuitable people to take them into their homes. As I do I can’t help but recall too, the faces of the animals in factory farms, staring from their pits of hell, with the same expression.. ‘What will happen to me next at the hands of these giants?’ Can’t get that out of my mind, rightly so, for billions…billons suffer the worst possible things those giant’s hands could do to them, all around us, and I know that now.
Most people, don’t see the vulnerable in this world.
Once, it was like this for people too, children were sent down the workhouse, or seen and not heard. The elderly, the infirm, the insane, had no protection.
Mostly, now, we think we’re more safe and protected. But we’re not, not really. As I walked through London early on a Friday evening, towards a potential new home for these kittens, the streets were filled with people who don’t care, about anything more than self and appearances, their friends, their own interests, their lives, their story, I could see how little care, how hard this world is. I didn’t feel blame for people, I could see why they were in their trance. From every shop and restaurant window every possible space and way to advertise lured them in, dazzled and blinded them with ways to not care, for a moment’s pleasure.
Will Tuttle say’s, that all of this behaviour, all this cold hardness, begins, when we teach our children to eat animal foods. In order to eat another living being, we must extinguish our heart light. We learn to do something really twisted and sick, we make our heart light selective, excluding where it suits us, and so, somewhat artificial. We love some, and exclude, dominate exploit and even kill, others. All the while telling ourselves its ok to do that . We learn through this practice at every mealtime, that we can love, but just as easily, in a moment, turn it off and become a bully, a tyrant, a thief. It splits our consciousness, we become fundamentally wounded in our capacity for kindness and integrity. We can mask sweetness over a soul dead hardness. Or we think we can. But those who are awake, can see through masks, because they’ve taken theirs off. The light is on, and it is shining brightly on the both the kindness and integrity, and the cruelty, the fakery, the split fragmented insanity of this world.
I got home bearing all this in mind, as simultaneously all the responses from non vegans came floating through my mind. Men and women who just don’t care. ‘ I eat meat. ‘ ‘I like my meat.’ They say. ‘This is the way it is. What we do. Animals do it why shouldn’t we. Its in our nature.’ But as I thought of them saying these things, the words kept coming to me. ‘One day you are going to want this world to be kind.’
Maybe it will be the day you first send your child to school, and you know they head into a world that is anything but kind. You’ll want to protect them from the hard, cold children, who even at that young age are already well practiced at disconnecting from their hearts. Not their fault, they’ve just been made that way. But what if they were made differently, what if your child went to a school where what is taught is how to be kind, to nurture, to do no harm, what if all the children had ever eaten their whole lives, were foods which contained no domination and exclusion, but only thoughtfulness and compassion, so that, is what they’d become.
Maybe you don’t have children. So you still don’t care.
But you know, one day, you will be old. I slipped this evening as I was cleaning the floor and landed heavily on my hip. As I sat there nursing only a large bruise, grateful that I’m strong and healthy and relatively young, I contemplated with horror, a time when I might not be. Thankfully, being vegan, and doing exercise will keep my bones strong. But what of those who eat meat and dairy, which is why bones become weak and brittle, and why its so common for old people to fracture their bones easily. What of those who end up at the mercy of this unkind world in their old age. Even if I do take care of my health, I may end up in a hospital or hospice one day too. I’d honestly rather die, was my first thought. Be at the mercy, of humans, in this world. A fate worse than death!
One day, you are going to want to be in a kind world.
Creating that world, starts, with acting kindly to those more vulnerable than yourself, particularly to the animals you currently don’t see and feel about. If you can deny the pain and suffering you are causing through cruel ‘food’ choices, you help to create a cold hard world of insensitive people, who one day…without exception…all of you will be at the mercy of.
Most people, don’t see the vulnerable in this world.
Once, it was like this for people too, children were sent down the workhouse, or seen and not heard. The elderly, the infirm, the insane, had no protection.
Mostly, now, we think we’re more safe and protected. But we’re not, not really. As I walked through London early on a Friday evening, towards a potential new home for these kittens, the streets were filled with people who don’t care, about anything more than self and appearances, their friends, their own interests, their lives, their story, I could see how little care, how hard this world is. I didn’t feel blame for people, I could see why they were in their trance. From every shop and restaurant window every possible space and way to advertise lured them in, dazzled and blinded them with ways to not care, for a moment’s pleasure.
Will Tuttle say’s, that all of this behaviour, all this cold hardness, begins, when we teach our children to eat animal foods. In order to eat another living being, we must extinguish our heart light. We learn to do something really twisted and sick, we make our heart light selective, excluding where it suits us, and so, somewhat artificial. We love some, and exclude, dominate exploit and even kill, others. All the while telling ourselves its ok to do that . We learn through this practice at every mealtime, that we can love, but just as easily, in a moment, turn it off and become a bully, a tyrant, a thief. It splits our consciousness, we become fundamentally wounded in our capacity for kindness and integrity. We can mask sweetness over a soul dead hardness. Or we think we can. But those who are awake, can see through masks, because they’ve taken theirs off. The light is on, and it is shining brightly on the both the kindness and integrity, and the cruelty, the fakery, the split fragmented insanity of this world.
I got home bearing all this in mind, as simultaneously all the responses from non vegans came floating through my mind. Men and women who just don’t care. ‘ I eat meat. ‘ ‘I like my meat.’ They say. ‘This is the way it is. What we do. Animals do it why shouldn’t we. Its in our nature.’ But as I thought of them saying these things, the words kept coming to me. ‘One day you are going to want this world to be kind.’
Maybe it will be the day you first send your child to school, and you know they head into a world that is anything but kind. You’ll want to protect them from the hard, cold children, who even at that young age are already well practiced at disconnecting from their hearts. Not their fault, they’ve just been made that way. But what if they were made differently, what if your child went to a school where what is taught is how to be kind, to nurture, to do no harm, what if all the children had ever eaten their whole lives, were foods which contained no domination and exclusion, but only thoughtfulness and compassion, so that, is what they’d become.
Maybe you don’t have children. So you still don’t care.
But you know, one day, you will be old. I slipped this evening as I was cleaning the floor and landed heavily on my hip. As I sat there nursing only a large bruise, grateful that I’m strong and healthy and relatively young, I contemplated with horror, a time when I might not be. Thankfully, being vegan, and doing exercise will keep my bones strong. But what of those who eat meat and dairy, which is why bones become weak and brittle, and why its so common for old people to fracture their bones easily. What of those who end up at the mercy of this unkind world in their old age. Even if I do take care of my health, I may end up in a hospital or hospice one day too. I’d honestly rather die, was my first thought. Be at the mercy, of humans, in this world. A fate worse than death!
One day, you are going to want to be in a kind world.
Creating that world, starts, with acting kindly to those more vulnerable than yourself, particularly to the animals you currently don’t see and feel about. If you can deny the pain and suffering you are causing through cruel ‘food’ choices, you help to create a cold hard world of insensitive people, who one day…without exception…all of you will be at the mercy of.
The thing is. We never get away with it. Not ever. When you’re eating an animals flesh or secretions once you’ve had that cultural conditioning questioned, once you know you don’t have to eat their flesh to survive, you feel guilt and shame on some level. Even before you had that conditioning questioned, on some level, you knew. So often I hear that from new vegans. ‘I never realised how much it was effecting me, how much lighter I feel now, free of guilt that I never even was conscious I was carrying the weight of.’ (or words to that effect)
You always know when you do something which is not in line with your values, your highest integrity. It might be something as seemingly small as taking a stamp from the office which isn’t rightfully yours to use, or buying an item from a shop you know you got as a bargain at the expense of child labour in a sweat shop some other part of the world. It might be speaking in a way that is nasty, when you’re having a bad day, or choosing to go behind your partners back to betray them in some way, be dishonest when they ask you about it. Big or small, you never get away with it. You may get away with the act, but your conscience records it, and you carry the weight of it.
Waking up spiritually is about forgiving yourself for all these transgressions. You can’t lighten up until you acknowledge the crimes, every single one of them. Waking up spiritually is about determining not to ignore your conscience, and once you start listening to it there may be a backlog. It will present you with these memories as and when you can cope with them, and for each one you have to practice acknowledging, you took something that didn’t belong to you, you betrayed someone you loved, you acted unkindly, and simultaneously, without words, feel sorry and determine not to do that again, but forgive yourself. It all happens more as a feeling than anything you think. Though sometimes, it will involve actually apologising to people, mostly its just an inner deeply personal process, which occurs as your heart begins to open and heal.
Often compassion for yourself floods in too. Essentially it does. At the time you were genuinely unhappy, or weren’t acting from your highest integrity, you had needs that weren’t being met, you were tired, and like a child before naptime, an unhappy neglected child, you lashed out, took whatever you could in a grabby kind of way. Or simply, you didn’t know any better. Everyone around you was doing that too, so you followed their example.
But you were not following your conscience. And always, it was speaking to you. Always it was recording every single transgression.
Waking up to commit to doing no harm to animals begins a process, of self forgiveness, of letting go of the past, and starting anew. A process of making your conscience your best friend, learning to trust that inner sense, that feeling inside.
What is wonderful though…is when you begin to trust that feeling inside you, and act from there, there is a natural sense of happiness and wellbeing inside you possible, which doesn’t need anyone or anything to be happy. That feeling good about ourselves, feeling happy....this is our natural birthright.
It is stolen from us, when we are taught not to listen to our conscience. Taught to be unkind, to lie, to betray what we feel is right. When we are taught to fit in with a sick society, to exploit and kill without compunction. Instead we carry around this shame about ourselves, without fully understanding why.
Imagine, a whole culture of people cut off from their natural inner happiness, and consuming to try to feel better. Consuming things you sell to them. I do wonder sometimes, whether there is some dark conspiracy in this world. But whether there is or there isn’t. We need to, and we can, reconnect to our natural birthright of feeling joyful and complete, through being conscious and kind. When we feel that self worth, that inner happiness, we will stop all the destructive consuming. Which, never ever filled the void anyway.
You always know when you do something which is not in line with your values, your highest integrity. It might be something as seemingly small as taking a stamp from the office which isn’t rightfully yours to use, or buying an item from a shop you know you got as a bargain at the expense of child labour in a sweat shop some other part of the world. It might be speaking in a way that is nasty, when you’re having a bad day, or choosing to go behind your partners back to betray them in some way, be dishonest when they ask you about it. Big or small, you never get away with it. You may get away with the act, but your conscience records it, and you carry the weight of it.
Waking up spiritually is about forgiving yourself for all these transgressions. You can’t lighten up until you acknowledge the crimes, every single one of them. Waking up spiritually is about determining not to ignore your conscience, and once you start listening to it there may be a backlog. It will present you with these memories as and when you can cope with them, and for each one you have to practice acknowledging, you took something that didn’t belong to you, you betrayed someone you loved, you acted unkindly, and simultaneously, without words, feel sorry and determine not to do that again, but forgive yourself. It all happens more as a feeling than anything you think. Though sometimes, it will involve actually apologising to people, mostly its just an inner deeply personal process, which occurs as your heart begins to open and heal.
Often compassion for yourself floods in too. Essentially it does. At the time you were genuinely unhappy, or weren’t acting from your highest integrity, you had needs that weren’t being met, you were tired, and like a child before naptime, an unhappy neglected child, you lashed out, took whatever you could in a grabby kind of way. Or simply, you didn’t know any better. Everyone around you was doing that too, so you followed their example.
But you were not following your conscience. And always, it was speaking to you. Always it was recording every single transgression.
Waking up to commit to doing no harm to animals begins a process, of self forgiveness, of letting go of the past, and starting anew. A process of making your conscience your best friend, learning to trust that inner sense, that feeling inside.
What is wonderful though…is when you begin to trust that feeling inside you, and act from there, there is a natural sense of happiness and wellbeing inside you possible, which doesn’t need anyone or anything to be happy. That feeling good about ourselves, feeling happy....this is our natural birthright.
It is stolen from us, when we are taught not to listen to our conscience. Taught to be unkind, to lie, to betray what we feel is right. When we are taught to fit in with a sick society, to exploit and kill without compunction. Instead we carry around this shame about ourselves, without fully understanding why.
Imagine, a whole culture of people cut off from their natural inner happiness, and consuming to try to feel better. Consuming things you sell to them. I do wonder sometimes, whether there is some dark conspiracy in this world. But whether there is or there isn’t. We need to, and we can, reconnect to our natural birthright of feeling joyful and complete, through being conscious and kind. When we feel that self worth, that inner happiness, we will stop all the destructive consuming. Which, never ever filled the void anyway.
Is it just me….or is this comfortable numbness growing more and more surreal?
Reminds me of something I read once…some art piece which just said. ‘Why aren’t you screaming?’
We aren’t only numb though are we. We have all this painful neurosis too.
What’s yours?
Which form does your obsession with appearance take?
How you look physically?
How well you appear to be doing in your career?
How happy your family seems?
They are the main things aren’t they? How we look, how powerful we appear, how right we got it in the area of relationships and family.
Painful isn’t it.
Empty isn’t it.
Animals are our friends. While we kill them, and feel nothing, we will live neurotic, dead, miserable soul lives.
Doesn’t matter how we look on the surface. That, is the truth of our soul lives.
The only really happy people I’ve ever met, are those who are living consciously, kindly, and working every day to do the best they can to alleviate the suffering of others, living in a way that is helping make this world a better place. They’re the only honest people I ever met too.
Most people are passing time till they die, getting by, hoping they look ok.
What’s really ironic about all this, is, everyone knows what everyone else is doing and pretends not to see it. Never, ever talks about it.
In fact this ‘not talking about it’ seems to be the glue which holds most relationships together. A silent agreement not to look at the horrendous cruelty being inflicted on animals by ourselves or people around us, not to look at the planet sized elephant in the middle of the room, dying beneath our feet.
Just walk around, as normal, shopping, talking, reinforcing the obsession with appearances, whilst Rome burns right before our eyes.
I’m just wondering when, if at all, people will really start to acknowledge it, and step up to do something about it.
When there are global food crisis due to the extreme weather conditions, or when there is no water coming out of their taps. Do you think it will stop then, the fakery? Will people get real then?
Will it be too late then?
Eating animals, the practice of killing without compunction, has made us so emotionally numb to the consequences of our actions, that we have almost destroyed everything on this planet and soon, if we are not careful will have become extinct ourselves.
Its time to wake up now. Time to stop hurting animals, stop destroying this planet, and start living in ways that bring healing to this nightmare mess on earth which living unconsciously has created.
You know that. We all know you know that.
So lets stop pretending?
We’ll be so much happier. We’ll be real. We’ll be connected. We’ll be honest. We’ll finally, be really living.
Let’s go for it?
Reminds me of something I read once…some art piece which just said. ‘Why aren’t you screaming?’
We aren’t only numb though are we. We have all this painful neurosis too.
What’s yours?
Which form does your obsession with appearance take?
How you look physically?
How well you appear to be doing in your career?
How happy your family seems?
They are the main things aren’t they? How we look, how powerful we appear, how right we got it in the area of relationships and family.
Painful isn’t it.
Empty isn’t it.
Animals are our friends. While we kill them, and feel nothing, we will live neurotic, dead, miserable soul lives.
Doesn’t matter how we look on the surface. That, is the truth of our soul lives.
The only really happy people I’ve ever met, are those who are living consciously, kindly, and working every day to do the best they can to alleviate the suffering of others, living in a way that is helping make this world a better place. They’re the only honest people I ever met too.
Most people are passing time till they die, getting by, hoping they look ok.
What’s really ironic about all this, is, everyone knows what everyone else is doing and pretends not to see it. Never, ever talks about it.
In fact this ‘not talking about it’ seems to be the glue which holds most relationships together. A silent agreement not to look at the horrendous cruelty being inflicted on animals by ourselves or people around us, not to look at the planet sized elephant in the middle of the room, dying beneath our feet.
Just walk around, as normal, shopping, talking, reinforcing the obsession with appearances, whilst Rome burns right before our eyes.
I’m just wondering when, if at all, people will really start to acknowledge it, and step up to do something about it.
When there are global food crisis due to the extreme weather conditions, or when there is no water coming out of their taps. Do you think it will stop then, the fakery? Will people get real then?
Will it be too late then?
Eating animals, the practice of killing without compunction, has made us so emotionally numb to the consequences of our actions, that we have almost destroyed everything on this planet and soon, if we are not careful will have become extinct ourselves.
Its time to wake up now. Time to stop hurting animals, stop destroying this planet, and start living in ways that bring healing to this nightmare mess on earth which living unconsciously has created.
You know that. We all know you know that.
So lets stop pretending?
We’ll be so much happier. We’ll be real. We’ll be connected. We’ll be honest. We’ll finally, be really living.
Let’s go for it?
What’s so sad, is how we are so conditioned, programmed to behave a certain way, and we so fear the repercussions of speaking our truth, or acting in a way that challenges the status quo or what’s expected from us by those around us, that we have very little experience of authenticity.
The only thing we feel we have a choice about, sometimes, is food, which is why we are a culture obsessed with food, with our particular preference for foods. It’s the one area we feel we have some choice in. So that, when you suggest to someone that their food choices shouldn’t be only about them, only about their preference, but should consider kindness and suffering they inflict with their food choices onto others the standard response and knee jerk reaction is to feel and say. ‘Don’t tell me what to eat!’ People guard their freedom to eat ‘whatever I like’ as their last bastion of personal freedom.
Which perhaps it is. Perhaps you are enslaved in a meaningless capitalist system, and the only area you have any choice in, IS what you eat. But if you choose to eat kindly, the sick, corrupt, meaningless system of disconnection and violence and oppression, will begin to end.
We need to do unto others….as we would have done unto ourselves. Give freedom to the animals, and by living that way, we will find we begin to free ourselves.
Literally, the violence and oppression in this world, and the empty disconnected ways we live our lives, which is currently destroying this earth, is caused by this empty disconnected violent oppressive relationship we have to animals. We reap our karma instantly.
We can begin to reverse our karma, we can begin to really have control over our world, by going against this system of oppression with the radical act of kindness.
Nothing is more subversive to this current culture than refusing to continue to exploit and kill innocent defenseless animals. The whole agribusiness-medical-chemical-pharmaceutical-military-media complex….thrives on and is maintained by your consumption of violated oppressed animals.
That system will crumble, when you no longer choose to contribute to it. Please, use your food choice wisely.
The only thing we feel we have a choice about, sometimes, is food, which is why we are a culture obsessed with food, with our particular preference for foods. It’s the one area we feel we have some choice in. So that, when you suggest to someone that their food choices shouldn’t be only about them, only about their preference, but should consider kindness and suffering they inflict with their food choices onto others the standard response and knee jerk reaction is to feel and say. ‘Don’t tell me what to eat!’ People guard their freedom to eat ‘whatever I like’ as their last bastion of personal freedom.
Which perhaps it is. Perhaps you are enslaved in a meaningless capitalist system, and the only area you have any choice in, IS what you eat. But if you choose to eat kindly, the sick, corrupt, meaningless system of disconnection and violence and oppression, will begin to end.
We need to do unto others….as we would have done unto ourselves. Give freedom to the animals, and by living that way, we will find we begin to free ourselves.
Literally, the violence and oppression in this world, and the empty disconnected ways we live our lives, which is currently destroying this earth, is caused by this empty disconnected violent oppressive relationship we have to animals. We reap our karma instantly.
We can begin to reverse our karma, we can begin to really have control over our world, by going against this system of oppression with the radical act of kindness.
Nothing is more subversive to this current culture than refusing to continue to exploit and kill innocent defenseless animals. The whole agribusiness-medical-chemical-pharmaceutical-military-media complex….thrives on and is maintained by your consumption of violated oppressed animals.
That system will crumble, when you no longer choose to contribute to it. Please, use your food choice wisely.
How do you make vegan food interesting though? Asked a sincere, transitioning, meat eater today.
At the time I answered. ‘Well, mostly you coat meat in lots of spices and sauces to make it interesting, we just coat vegetables nuts seeds and other fake meats sometimes in those same herbs and spices. But mostly, vegans seem to really get into the whole natural foods, and not so much the fake products. You just get really into a different type of food.’
But all day I kept thinking – the most interesting thing to me about vegan food is the lack of killing and violence in it.
Also, kept pondering how bizarre it is, how meaningless our lives must be when food, when an interesting sensation on our tongue, has become more important to us than someones life.
Food is fuel! That’s it.
Ok, its nice to make it delicious, get into it as an art form, share it with loved ones at times. But something is very wrong when food has come to take such an important place in our lives.
Tonight, I couldn’t wait to get cooking dinner over so I could come and write. Not that I don’t enjoy this new creative way of cooking and the Kale which I love, with a whole selection of other vegetables I haven’t put together before, and fresh ginger and spices, turned into a colourful curry, with quinoa and chia seeds to pack it with healthy proteins and super nutrients. My dinner tonight is really yummy. With this big dollop of the blissfully creamy hummus that you just have to wonder…how do they make it taste that good? I’m really hungry, as its late….so it will be a sensual event as it slides down my throat.
But still…. its only fuel! Its only food!
Why…do people obsess about it so much?
Because their lives are empty, and meaningless.
There is a world, dying beneath our feet, animals and people suffering everywhere. Yet, all we are doing is sitting around, eating.
We go out to eat, come home to eat with our loved ones, get together to eat with friends. We are either watching what we eat, or overeating. When we feel down we eat to feel better. When we are bored we plan dinner later that evening or chat with people about what we ate last night.
That's really crazy.
When we deny the wonder of the animal’s life we’ve just taken, and deny the love we could feel for that animal, it is like taking a knife and cutting out our own hearts. The consequential numbness, renders us less capable of kindness and intimacy in our human relationships too. Then when we are thoroughly messed up from eating our animal friends, wounded in our capacity to love, we overeat and obsess over food, as a distraction from the emptiness and meaninglessness of our lives.
Insane.
In his book The World Peace Diet, Will Tuttle talks about how anthropologists study a culture’s food rituals in order to understand their cultural values. We pass down and program our children’s consciousness by the values we express in our food choices. So, if we dominate exploit and kill for food, those are the values we pass down through generations. If we were to cultivate organic vegan gardens and feed our children foods based on thoughtfulness, gentleness and compassion. Those would be the values we would create in this world, experience in all our other relationships, and pass down through the generations.
Food is so powerful.
The interesting thing about it is it’s the most interesting thing in the world, not, for the sensual pleasure we get out of it. But for the power it has to contain and spread the values of violence and domination or the values of compassion and peace in our world.
Which are you choosing?
At the time I answered. ‘Well, mostly you coat meat in lots of spices and sauces to make it interesting, we just coat vegetables nuts seeds and other fake meats sometimes in those same herbs and spices. But mostly, vegans seem to really get into the whole natural foods, and not so much the fake products. You just get really into a different type of food.’
But all day I kept thinking – the most interesting thing to me about vegan food is the lack of killing and violence in it.
Also, kept pondering how bizarre it is, how meaningless our lives must be when food, when an interesting sensation on our tongue, has become more important to us than someones life.
Food is fuel! That’s it.
Ok, its nice to make it delicious, get into it as an art form, share it with loved ones at times. But something is very wrong when food has come to take such an important place in our lives.
Tonight, I couldn’t wait to get cooking dinner over so I could come and write. Not that I don’t enjoy this new creative way of cooking and the Kale which I love, with a whole selection of other vegetables I haven’t put together before, and fresh ginger and spices, turned into a colourful curry, with quinoa and chia seeds to pack it with healthy proteins and super nutrients. My dinner tonight is really yummy. With this big dollop of the blissfully creamy hummus that you just have to wonder…how do they make it taste that good? I’m really hungry, as its late….so it will be a sensual event as it slides down my throat.
But still…. its only fuel! Its only food!
Why…do people obsess about it so much?
Because their lives are empty, and meaningless.
There is a world, dying beneath our feet, animals and people suffering everywhere. Yet, all we are doing is sitting around, eating.
We go out to eat, come home to eat with our loved ones, get together to eat with friends. We are either watching what we eat, or overeating. When we feel down we eat to feel better. When we are bored we plan dinner later that evening or chat with people about what we ate last night.
That's really crazy.
When we deny the wonder of the animal’s life we’ve just taken, and deny the love we could feel for that animal, it is like taking a knife and cutting out our own hearts. The consequential numbness, renders us less capable of kindness and intimacy in our human relationships too. Then when we are thoroughly messed up from eating our animal friends, wounded in our capacity to love, we overeat and obsess over food, as a distraction from the emptiness and meaninglessness of our lives.
Insane.
In his book The World Peace Diet, Will Tuttle talks about how anthropologists study a culture’s food rituals in order to understand their cultural values. We pass down and program our children’s consciousness by the values we express in our food choices. So, if we dominate exploit and kill for food, those are the values we pass down through generations. If we were to cultivate organic vegan gardens and feed our children foods based on thoughtfulness, gentleness and compassion. Those would be the values we would create in this world, experience in all our other relationships, and pass down through the generations.
Food is so powerful.
The interesting thing about it is it’s the most interesting thing in the world, not, for the sensual pleasure we get out of it. But for the power it has to contain and spread the values of violence and domination or the values of compassion and peace in our world.
Which are you choosing?
You see a juicy steak.
We see suffering, confinement, hours upon hours, days and weeks, months and years of imprisonment, abuse, denigration. We see the terror in their eyes, feel it in their heart, as they face the men the weapons the machines come to steal their miserable lives. We see with pity, how they fight with all they have, to defend their abused body, from its final brutal insult.
You see breast of chicken with melting garlic butter.
We see rows of chickens strung up, as they, stunned but still conscious begin to feel themselves being skinned and cut up alive. We feel the misery and hell of the overcrowded sheds they lived their ‘free range’ lives in. The pain in the ulcers on their legs, their lungs, their eyes, from living in piles and piles of toxic ammonia faeces. We feel the tragedy of birds who never knew the joy of the sun the fresh air, never flew to roost in the trees. We feel so sorry, so very sorry, and helpless, to stop their massacre.
You see a piece of your favourite cheese, or a melting topping on a pizza crust.
We feel the deep sorrow of the mother whose baby was stolen directly from her womb, we feel her helpless, wordless agonizing grief, inflicted over and over again, as she is forcibly impregnated, and forcibly stolen from, then stolen from again every day, by the machines hooked up to her breasts. We feel the chronic pain in her legs, the pain in her udders artificially forced to ten times their natural size. We feel the infections and sickness, she endured every day, on top of the compounded grief. We see her babies, one by one, bludgeoned to death, or shot as waste by products. We see their skin stolen for ‘calfskin gloves, wallet’s and other human cruelties. We see the babies who never tasted their mothers milk, standing hungry in an auction, to be bought by uncaring hands and brutal cold hearts. Stuck in a crate no bigger than their body and force fed foods which will make their flesh unatturally white on someone’s fork.
You see what’s normal.
We see a nightmare world of zombie flesheaters.
You feel nothing.
We, and the animals, feel it all.
We see suffering, confinement, hours upon hours, days and weeks, months and years of imprisonment, abuse, denigration. We see the terror in their eyes, feel it in their heart, as they face the men the weapons the machines come to steal their miserable lives. We see with pity, how they fight with all they have, to defend their abused body, from its final brutal insult.
You see breast of chicken with melting garlic butter.
We see rows of chickens strung up, as they, stunned but still conscious begin to feel themselves being skinned and cut up alive. We feel the misery and hell of the overcrowded sheds they lived their ‘free range’ lives in. The pain in the ulcers on their legs, their lungs, their eyes, from living in piles and piles of toxic ammonia faeces. We feel the tragedy of birds who never knew the joy of the sun the fresh air, never flew to roost in the trees. We feel so sorry, so very sorry, and helpless, to stop their massacre.
You see a piece of your favourite cheese, or a melting topping on a pizza crust.
We feel the deep sorrow of the mother whose baby was stolen directly from her womb, we feel her helpless, wordless agonizing grief, inflicted over and over again, as she is forcibly impregnated, and forcibly stolen from, then stolen from again every day, by the machines hooked up to her breasts. We feel the chronic pain in her legs, the pain in her udders artificially forced to ten times their natural size. We feel the infections and sickness, she endured every day, on top of the compounded grief. We see her babies, one by one, bludgeoned to death, or shot as waste by products. We see their skin stolen for ‘calfskin gloves, wallet’s and other human cruelties. We see the babies who never tasted their mothers milk, standing hungry in an auction, to be bought by uncaring hands and brutal cold hearts. Stuck in a crate no bigger than their body and force fed foods which will make their flesh unatturally white on someone’s fork.
You see what’s normal.
We see a nightmare world of zombie flesheaters.
You feel nothing.
We, and the animals, feel it all.
I’m tired, it’s late, and I feel frustrated. I wish I could reach inside every person on the planet and wake them up to care for animals. I wish that I could find the words the key the right energy, approach…whatever it is which will wake them from their apathy, disconnect, self absorption, rationalization and acceptance of violence.
I wish I could make people feel, as vegans feel, for the animals being abused and killed for food.
I wish every person who reads this message, would wake up and begin speaking up for those who have no voice too. Speaking to everyone around them about how we must wake up and begin to connect to our feelings, to see, to know, to understand and comprehend, to let into our hearts the diabolically horrific suffering everyone around us is inflicting on billions of animals.
How did killing become normal?
How did it become systematic? Intensified? So that living beings are seen and treated as things. Forced to live in their own feces on top of one another, pieces cut off them which don't fit, aren't convenient for the human system, tails teeth genitals just cut out with no consideration of pain whatsoever. Forced into such horrific conditions they are driven out of their minds, and constantly have to be pumped with antibiotics to survive the infections and illnesses which are chronically debilitating.
Please, help me to wake people up. Help all of us who are awake and helping, to wake people up. We need every single heart, and every single voice who hears us, to help us speak out for animals.
For every person who goes vegan, PETA reckon approximately 196 animals birds and fishes each year are spared lives of horrific suffering and brutal deaths at human hands. That’s 196 someone’s who are the centre of their life story as you are yours. Who feel the same suffering and worse than you would in those circumstances, because they haven’t the capacity to rationally understand why its being done to them.
Please, help stop this nightmare. Help the animals. Help stop the destruction of our oceans and earth and the heating up of our atmosphere which is all directly caused by animal agriculture.
I wish I could make people feel, as vegans feel, for the animals being abused and killed for food.
I wish every person who reads this message, would wake up and begin speaking up for those who have no voice too. Speaking to everyone around them about how we must wake up and begin to connect to our feelings, to see, to know, to understand and comprehend, to let into our hearts the diabolically horrific suffering everyone around us is inflicting on billions of animals.
How did killing become normal?
How did it become systematic? Intensified? So that living beings are seen and treated as things. Forced to live in their own feces on top of one another, pieces cut off them which don't fit, aren't convenient for the human system, tails teeth genitals just cut out with no consideration of pain whatsoever. Forced into such horrific conditions they are driven out of their minds, and constantly have to be pumped with antibiotics to survive the infections and illnesses which are chronically debilitating.
Please, help me to wake people up. Help all of us who are awake and helping, to wake people up. We need every single heart, and every single voice who hears us, to help us speak out for animals.
For every person who goes vegan, PETA reckon approximately 196 animals birds and fishes each year are spared lives of horrific suffering and brutal deaths at human hands. That’s 196 someone’s who are the centre of their life story as you are yours. Who feel the same suffering and worse than you would in those circumstances, because they haven’t the capacity to rationally understand why its being done to them.
Please, help stop this nightmare. Help the animals. Help stop the destruction of our oceans and earth and the heating up of our atmosphere which is all directly caused by animal agriculture.
Materialism.
Only valuing what you see, what you can prove is there. So that subtle things like feelings, soul, things which cannot be measured and quantified, become irrelevances.
In a material world we are taught how to acquire and own, mostly disregarding the consequences. Material success, what you earn, how well you can be seen to be doing in a world of appearances, is all.
How you feel, is denied most of the time. How much integrity you have, how kind you are, are rare exceptional qualities which are looked upon almost as idiosyncratic, as if that person just happened by some bizarre aberration, to have been born with a natural human goodness mysteriously inaccessible to most.
Our schools train us in the acquisition of knowledge, and power, understanding through science, how things work, the practical measurable provable details, and how to gain dominance over them. But not a great deal of attention is paid to how those beings we study feel, as we cut them open, cage and confine them in endlessly torturous ways for our scientific studies. Feelings and suffering, particularly of ‘other’ species, in a material world, are irrelevant.
We learn how to build the tallest sky scrapers, the fastest aircraft, and how to split atoms, we produce more flesh from genetically modified animals, and more milk from cows artificially induced to produce 10 times their normal amount of milk than ever before. There isn’t a time saving and convenience offering solution to the ordinary tasks of life we have not invented.
Yet, we stand on a planet, on the very brink of, total environmental collapse. We stand, in a world where the worst holocaust ever known exists all around us. Where animals are being tortured in the worst possible ways humans could conceive of as we profit from and gratuitously take pleasure in the taste of their flesh.
And we feel nothing.
I wonder what would happen, if, instead of the material world, we turned life on its head.
What if, in our schools, we were taught to focus on only things which couldn’t be seen instead?
What might the curriculum look like? What form might the daily classes take?
There would be a lot of stillness, and silence.
Qualities like kindness and compassion would naturally develop, though there would likely be specific exercises to develop them. Instead of learning how to gain power over the outer world, we might learn how to become intrepid explorers of the inner realms. Feelings, intuition, subtle energies flowing through our bodies would become our friends and clues along the way.
Knowing, the material was not what was important, we would spend a lot of time doing things which made us just feel good, enjoying the feel of nature on our skin, movement, sensuality, relating to the world around us with consciousness, reverence and curiosity. We wouldn’t be so entirely focused on how things work so much as that they exist at all, we’d spend much time feeling the wonder of life in all the myriad ways and forms it manifests in such beauty and grace around us.
I think we’d spend a lot more time hugging, and a lot more time just sitting still, experiencing in the stillness realms of consciousness which we currently have no idea even exist.
Likely, that 90% of the brain which currently lay’s dormant, would spring into life. But we’d be too busy enjoying it to be obsessing over measuring it all the time. Certainly, we’d never even dream of killing another living being to cut him open to see how he works. That kind of insanity would be left behind in the dark ages.
We would never enslave or exploit a living being for any purpose. That would hurt our hearts too much. We wouldn’t be able to bear it. It would go against everything we were, our deepest most heartfelt sensitivity to life all around us, simply would not allow that to happen.
We would never grab at things, take as much of we can without even valuing any of it. We would know we had everything inside us, we would see the paradise all around us and know that relating in loving ways to all life, was enough.
Because we were relating with kindness and compassion, we would always feel our connection to everything and everyone in the universe and feel ourselves as one. Our felt experience of knowing that, would render trying to prove that scientifically, ridiculous
So lets get moving with this new world creation thing. I’d start now, I am starting now, to live my life in accordance with these values and this way of being.
It starts with being vegan, with making more conscious purchases. But it soon begins to lead to a watershed of heart opening changes which naturally follow in every area of your life.
Only valuing what you see, what you can prove is there. So that subtle things like feelings, soul, things which cannot be measured and quantified, become irrelevances.
In a material world we are taught how to acquire and own, mostly disregarding the consequences. Material success, what you earn, how well you can be seen to be doing in a world of appearances, is all.
How you feel, is denied most of the time. How much integrity you have, how kind you are, are rare exceptional qualities which are looked upon almost as idiosyncratic, as if that person just happened by some bizarre aberration, to have been born with a natural human goodness mysteriously inaccessible to most.
Our schools train us in the acquisition of knowledge, and power, understanding through science, how things work, the practical measurable provable details, and how to gain dominance over them. But not a great deal of attention is paid to how those beings we study feel, as we cut them open, cage and confine them in endlessly torturous ways for our scientific studies. Feelings and suffering, particularly of ‘other’ species, in a material world, are irrelevant.
We learn how to build the tallest sky scrapers, the fastest aircraft, and how to split atoms, we produce more flesh from genetically modified animals, and more milk from cows artificially induced to produce 10 times their normal amount of milk than ever before. There isn’t a time saving and convenience offering solution to the ordinary tasks of life we have not invented.
Yet, we stand on a planet, on the very brink of, total environmental collapse. We stand, in a world where the worst holocaust ever known exists all around us. Where animals are being tortured in the worst possible ways humans could conceive of as we profit from and gratuitously take pleasure in the taste of their flesh.
And we feel nothing.
I wonder what would happen, if, instead of the material world, we turned life on its head.
What if, in our schools, we were taught to focus on only things which couldn’t be seen instead?
What might the curriculum look like? What form might the daily classes take?
There would be a lot of stillness, and silence.
Qualities like kindness and compassion would naturally develop, though there would likely be specific exercises to develop them. Instead of learning how to gain power over the outer world, we might learn how to become intrepid explorers of the inner realms. Feelings, intuition, subtle energies flowing through our bodies would become our friends and clues along the way.
Knowing, the material was not what was important, we would spend a lot of time doing things which made us just feel good, enjoying the feel of nature on our skin, movement, sensuality, relating to the world around us with consciousness, reverence and curiosity. We wouldn’t be so entirely focused on how things work so much as that they exist at all, we’d spend much time feeling the wonder of life in all the myriad ways and forms it manifests in such beauty and grace around us.
I think we’d spend a lot more time hugging, and a lot more time just sitting still, experiencing in the stillness realms of consciousness which we currently have no idea even exist.
Likely, that 90% of the brain which currently lay’s dormant, would spring into life. But we’d be too busy enjoying it to be obsessing over measuring it all the time. Certainly, we’d never even dream of killing another living being to cut him open to see how he works. That kind of insanity would be left behind in the dark ages.
We would never enslave or exploit a living being for any purpose. That would hurt our hearts too much. We wouldn’t be able to bear it. It would go against everything we were, our deepest most heartfelt sensitivity to life all around us, simply would not allow that to happen.
We would never grab at things, take as much of we can without even valuing any of it. We would know we had everything inside us, we would see the paradise all around us and know that relating in loving ways to all life, was enough.
Because we were relating with kindness and compassion, we would always feel our connection to everything and everyone in the universe and feel ourselves as one. Our felt experience of knowing that, would render trying to prove that scientifically, ridiculous
So lets get moving with this new world creation thing. I’d start now, I am starting now, to live my life in accordance with these values and this way of being.
It starts with being vegan, with making more conscious purchases. But it soon begins to lead to a watershed of heart opening changes which naturally follow in every area of your life.
They are unhappy, they are tense. Their relationships are filled with conflict.
This bursts through, glimmers out from beneath the surface façade.
The tension is getting worse. Their empathy is getting less.
Yet still they continue.
Since I woke up to what’s happening to the animals, and learnt to see the damaging effect eating other animals is having on every aspect of our lives, I’ve tried to tell them.
They at first got defensive, then got nasty, then shut down completely.
We never talk about it now.
But always its there between us, every time I see them. They know, now. Yet still they eat.
They do it shiftily, guiltily, turning away. They do it angrily, resentful of being told.
They didn’t want to know they can be more kind. They wanted to carry on pretending they were kind.
I had a dream last night about one of them, which summed it up perfectly. She was angry with me for staining her favourite old couch, the one which she had been given by someone she loved, at a time when she felt loved. There was only one thing in the world she felt she couldn’t bear to have ruined is that comfortable old couch which she returns to for comfort over and over again.
This is a woman who eats dairy, and eggs, and told me she doesn’t want to know about the day old chicks who are ground up alive, or stuffed into carrier bags in all egg production. It was too painful to hear….too much of me to tell her. I was the problem. Not her eating the eggs or dairy…that, was perfectly ‘normal’. This is a woman who shut down completely, or tried to, in her body language, tried to shut her heart when I told her…..but the cow and the calf are separated and feel such grief. Calves are just killed as waste by products, or stuck in a veal crate no bigger than their body without their mum. They are all living really agonized lives and dying brutal and terrifying deaths. Her body language said, ‘I’ve shut you out, I’m not listening, I’m not even going to respond, I feel such disdain for all this.’ Her mouth made the odd cynical comment about….’why don’t we just euthanize ourselves.’ Meaning….we can’t possibly consider this suffering we do….we are human, and therefore cause suffering all the time.
But I see that she knows full well on every level the suffering she causes, and that she can stop causing it. I know that she just doesn’t want to leave that comfy couch. She’s spent her whole life working really hard to fit in, not cause problems, doing what the world expected of her. Her only pleasure in life, her reward, her addictive comforter is that couch. Her one bastion of personal freedom….and to suggest she gives that up….is like. ‘I have nothing….my whole life I’ve had nothing, for me….except food…now you want to take this away from me too!’
So, I understand her reasoning, her deep loss of her own life, through her choices, through the pressures, to go along with the status quo, instead of discovering authenticity. I understand that by taking the path of least resistance, and being good rather than being difficult by being her true self, and facing the challenge of that, before….I understand, she’s lost out on a lot in life and that all she’s had to comfort herself, is food.
But what about the horrific physical suffering of these other living beings? If she’s uncomfortable stuck at her desk, in that relationship, in that family, how does she think the cow feels, with chronic pain in her legs from standing constantly on concrete floors, with painful infected udders swollen ten times their size…..constantly. Doesn’t she remember how uncomfortable it was to breastfeed her own child, when her own breasts were swollen. Can she not envisage the agony of spending her whole life in that condition, only amplified ten times, in a concrete cell, with chronically painful legs. Not, to feed her loved and adored baby, but to be sucked dry by machines which pinch and hurt and give electric shocks sometimes to her desperately painful breasts.
Can she not figure out, that her own happiness, means getting up off the comfy couch, and listening to her deepest truth and acting with integrity, taking the slightly more challenging path in the short term, because in the long term, then she herself will be really free too. Can she not see that her own enslavement, and the cows, are intertwined. The system she feels pressured to produce in, and pressure she puts on the cow to produce are one and the same. The doorway, out of that, is to live with honesty kindness and integrity then her world around her will transform, and as more and more people do that, the whole world around them will transform. As they release the animals from slavery the corrupt systems of exploitation and lack of integrity which they themselves are caught up in, will begin to crumble.
No matter how difficult it is to be the one who goes vegan first. No matter how it will bring up challenges in all her relationships to be different. No matter what an effort it is to choose kindness and empathy, over selfishly comforting herself. Can she not see, what she’s doing? What she must do, to make this world a better place.
I think she can. She sees very well. She’s never, ever going to be happy until she stops doing what she’s doing to those cows, to those hens. Bitterly, resentfully, she clings on to that illusory freedom to ‘eat what she likes’….but sooner or later, she’s going to realise that is just not making her happy, and there is only one path which will. The path of compassion, kindness, integrity, and authenticity.
This bursts through, glimmers out from beneath the surface façade.
The tension is getting worse. Their empathy is getting less.
Yet still they continue.
Since I woke up to what’s happening to the animals, and learnt to see the damaging effect eating other animals is having on every aspect of our lives, I’ve tried to tell them.
They at first got defensive, then got nasty, then shut down completely.
We never talk about it now.
But always its there between us, every time I see them. They know, now. Yet still they eat.
They do it shiftily, guiltily, turning away. They do it angrily, resentful of being told.
They didn’t want to know they can be more kind. They wanted to carry on pretending they were kind.
I had a dream last night about one of them, which summed it up perfectly. She was angry with me for staining her favourite old couch, the one which she had been given by someone she loved, at a time when she felt loved. There was only one thing in the world she felt she couldn’t bear to have ruined is that comfortable old couch which she returns to for comfort over and over again.
This is a woman who eats dairy, and eggs, and told me she doesn’t want to know about the day old chicks who are ground up alive, or stuffed into carrier bags in all egg production. It was too painful to hear….too much of me to tell her. I was the problem. Not her eating the eggs or dairy…that, was perfectly ‘normal’. This is a woman who shut down completely, or tried to, in her body language, tried to shut her heart when I told her…..but the cow and the calf are separated and feel such grief. Calves are just killed as waste by products, or stuck in a veal crate no bigger than their body without their mum. They are all living really agonized lives and dying brutal and terrifying deaths. Her body language said, ‘I’ve shut you out, I’m not listening, I’m not even going to respond, I feel such disdain for all this.’ Her mouth made the odd cynical comment about….’why don’t we just euthanize ourselves.’ Meaning….we can’t possibly consider this suffering we do….we are human, and therefore cause suffering all the time.
But I see that she knows full well on every level the suffering she causes, and that she can stop causing it. I know that she just doesn’t want to leave that comfy couch. She’s spent her whole life working really hard to fit in, not cause problems, doing what the world expected of her. Her only pleasure in life, her reward, her addictive comforter is that couch. Her one bastion of personal freedom….and to suggest she gives that up….is like. ‘I have nothing….my whole life I’ve had nothing, for me….except food…now you want to take this away from me too!’
So, I understand her reasoning, her deep loss of her own life, through her choices, through the pressures, to go along with the status quo, instead of discovering authenticity. I understand that by taking the path of least resistance, and being good rather than being difficult by being her true self, and facing the challenge of that, before….I understand, she’s lost out on a lot in life and that all she’s had to comfort herself, is food.
But what about the horrific physical suffering of these other living beings? If she’s uncomfortable stuck at her desk, in that relationship, in that family, how does she think the cow feels, with chronic pain in her legs from standing constantly on concrete floors, with painful infected udders swollen ten times their size…..constantly. Doesn’t she remember how uncomfortable it was to breastfeed her own child, when her own breasts were swollen. Can she not envisage the agony of spending her whole life in that condition, only amplified ten times, in a concrete cell, with chronically painful legs. Not, to feed her loved and adored baby, but to be sucked dry by machines which pinch and hurt and give electric shocks sometimes to her desperately painful breasts.
Can she not figure out, that her own happiness, means getting up off the comfy couch, and listening to her deepest truth and acting with integrity, taking the slightly more challenging path in the short term, because in the long term, then she herself will be really free too. Can she not see that her own enslavement, and the cows, are intertwined. The system she feels pressured to produce in, and pressure she puts on the cow to produce are one and the same. The doorway, out of that, is to live with honesty kindness and integrity then her world around her will transform, and as more and more people do that, the whole world around them will transform. As they release the animals from slavery the corrupt systems of exploitation and lack of integrity which they themselves are caught up in, will begin to crumble.
No matter how difficult it is to be the one who goes vegan first. No matter how it will bring up challenges in all her relationships to be different. No matter what an effort it is to choose kindness and empathy, over selfishly comforting herself. Can she not see, what she’s doing? What she must do, to make this world a better place.
I think she can. She sees very well. She’s never, ever going to be happy until she stops doing what she’s doing to those cows, to those hens. Bitterly, resentfully, she clings on to that illusory freedom to ‘eat what she likes’….but sooner or later, she’s going to realise that is just not making her happy, and there is only one path which will. The path of compassion, kindness, integrity, and authenticity.
Today, I’ve returned again and again to the harbour of friendship and beautiful loving vibration of this vegan community.
It’s a war zone out there.
I’m being attacked by someone I can’t get away from, because even though I don't say outright to her anything about animals anymore, when I first woke up, I told her what was happenign to them and now just by my presence, she is reminded that she could avoid being cruel if she wanted to. The idea that she loves to have about herself, that she's a kind good person, is dislodged somehow, in a way which irritates her beyond belief.
Its so ugly, the energy of defensive meat and dairy eaters. Its cold, rational, heard hearted, callous, vicious all paraded around as if its oh so normal, and we vegans are just taking things to extreme’s, being sentimental, being overly ‘pure’ in our intentions. Don’t we realise, it’s a cold hard world and we’re meant to be cold and hard too. We’re meant to just accept torture and killing as unavoidable and carry on contributing to it along with the rest of them.
How dare we demonstrate, that its actually very easy to avoid causing that horrific suffering to other animals.
How dare we inconvenience them with the suggestion they are choosing violence simply because they like the taste of it on their tongue.
So, I can allow them to get me down, to pull me down to their miserable level. Or I can take refuge in thoughts of you, loving vegan friends and animal rights comrades, and know in my heart that no matter what the vileness and hostility of the opposition, no matter what we face, we are speaking the compassionate truth.
Veganism, is the only kind way.
It’s a war zone out there.
I’m being attacked by someone I can’t get away from, because even though I don't say outright to her anything about animals anymore, when I first woke up, I told her what was happenign to them and now just by my presence, she is reminded that she could avoid being cruel if she wanted to. The idea that she loves to have about herself, that she's a kind good person, is dislodged somehow, in a way which irritates her beyond belief.
Its so ugly, the energy of defensive meat and dairy eaters. Its cold, rational, heard hearted, callous, vicious all paraded around as if its oh so normal, and we vegans are just taking things to extreme’s, being sentimental, being overly ‘pure’ in our intentions. Don’t we realise, it’s a cold hard world and we’re meant to be cold and hard too. We’re meant to just accept torture and killing as unavoidable and carry on contributing to it along with the rest of them.
How dare we demonstrate, that its actually very easy to avoid causing that horrific suffering to other animals.
How dare we inconvenience them with the suggestion they are choosing violence simply because they like the taste of it on their tongue.
So, I can allow them to get me down, to pull me down to their miserable level. Or I can take refuge in thoughts of you, loving vegan friends and animal rights comrades, and know in my heart that no matter what the vileness and hostility of the opposition, no matter what we face, we are speaking the compassionate truth.
Veganism, is the only kind way.
Excerpts from Will's blog.... powerful ! Am still reeling from them. 'Time To Wake Up', indeed.
We are called to understand that animal agriculture is not only the driving force behind the many crises we are facing, but is also the driving force behind the underlying mentality that both causes these crises and is unable to effectively deal with them. On the surface level, eating animal foods is the primary contributor to forest and ocean destruction, species extinction, climate destabilization, resource depletion, genetic pollution (corn, soy, and cotton, the main GMO crops, are used mainly as feedstock), air and water pollution, disease, hunger, sheer violence, and yet even these obvious and critical connections are minimally made and discussed in either the mass media or the alternative media, or in popular culture.
The deeper level is virtually completely invisible: that eating animal-sourced foods is the primary contributor to the way of thinking and being that creates these problems. For example, what is the mentality required of a culture that routinely kills and eats 75 million animals daily (very conservatively) as we do in the U.S.? It is precisely the mentality that devastates the landscapes we inhabit, ecologically, culturally, psychologically, and spiritually
......
We have today an unprecedented opportunity to transform our culture and ourselves by recognizing, living, and sharing the truth that we can all thrive on plant-based diets. Acting on this realization, we can launch a new human awareness rooted in and expressing compassion, health, inclusiveness, and freedom. Out of the ashes, a new world yearns to be born, and needs every one of us to contribute by going vegan, understanding why, and spreading the word.
We are all inherently wise, compassionate, powerful, and creative, but we’ve had the faculties of our hearts and minds slammed so hard by a violent culture that we have succumbed to complacency and gullibility. Let’s no longer be tools in the hands of violence. Let’s wake up, grow up, and act up, and live and spread the unyielding truth of our interconnectedness, and freedom and peace for all.
Image Choosing Compassion Over Cruelty page
We are called to understand that animal agriculture is not only the driving force behind the many crises we are facing, but is also the driving force behind the underlying mentality that both causes these crises and is unable to effectively deal with them. On the surface level, eating animal foods is the primary contributor to forest and ocean destruction, species extinction, climate destabilization, resource depletion, genetic pollution (corn, soy, and cotton, the main GMO crops, are used mainly as feedstock), air and water pollution, disease, hunger, sheer violence, and yet even these obvious and critical connections are minimally made and discussed in either the mass media or the alternative media, or in popular culture.
The deeper level is virtually completely invisible: that eating animal-sourced foods is the primary contributor to the way of thinking and being that creates these problems. For example, what is the mentality required of a culture that routinely kills and eats 75 million animals daily (very conservatively) as we do in the U.S.? It is precisely the mentality that devastates the landscapes we inhabit, ecologically, culturally, psychologically, and spiritually
......
We have today an unprecedented opportunity to transform our culture and ourselves by recognizing, living, and sharing the truth that we can all thrive on plant-based diets. Acting on this realization, we can launch a new human awareness rooted in and expressing compassion, health, inclusiveness, and freedom. Out of the ashes, a new world yearns to be born, and needs every one of us to contribute by going vegan, understanding why, and spreading the word.
We are all inherently wise, compassionate, powerful, and creative, but we’ve had the faculties of our hearts and minds slammed so hard by a violent culture that we have succumbed to complacency and gullibility. Let’s no longer be tools in the hands of violence. Let’s wake up, grow up, and act up, and live and spread the unyielding truth of our interconnectedness, and freedom and peace for all.
Image Choosing Compassion Over Cruelty page
Oh God. I just heard the most awful thing.
I spoke to a healer, who works over the phone. He does distance healing and can help you with insights about relationships or other issues. I called him to try to understand a woman I know about the difficulties in our relationship since I woke up vegan.
She has power issues, he said.
We then clarified that she’s feeling consumed with guilt about my veganism, and her non veganism.
Also though how terribly unhappy she is and how addictive and out of control she is.
Thankfully, the healer turned out to be vegan and this was a relief because years ago when I last spoke to him the issue didn’t come up. I was worried I’d turn to him again now and find that although he’s a healer, and psychic, somehow he still wasn’t vegan. But he was, and he explained something to me about the energetic level of people’s addiction to animal products.
They’re adrenalin junkies, he said. Then told me that he has a friend who he visits in the north of Scotland (we’re in London) and when they drive from the airport to her house, they pass this place where the cows are all lined up waiting to be slaughtered. He didn’t have to explain as we were both quite psychically in tune on this call. I felt the terror of those animals through him as he remembered his experience. As this terrible feeling was communicated to me, he said. ‘When people eat animals they are eating that adrenalin coming from the terror as the animal is killed.’
I’ve heard this before, in a rational scientific way explained to me. How we consume that adrenalin and on a physical level, it is bad for us, and that we consume the fear and then experience that in our own souls. But hearing it this way, I felt the reality of what is happening. I felt the literal terror of all the poor innocent billions of animals we do this to.
When I think of this too, when he was telling me this, into my mind came the rigidly unconscious, swaggeringly resistant attitudes of meat eaters. I could see the adrenalin in them. See their unconscious addiction to power, to the power to do that to animals if they like. I can’t explain what I see and feel right now, but the addiction to power is what its all about. Literally, the power, the right, to kill. But that’s also an unconscious literal addiction to the terror adrenalin of our victims.
I know some people will consider this psychic mumbo jumbo nonsense. But if they coud wake up and see on an energy level, they would know its true.
I spoke to a healer, who works over the phone. He does distance healing and can help you with insights about relationships or other issues. I called him to try to understand a woman I know about the difficulties in our relationship since I woke up vegan.
She has power issues, he said.
We then clarified that she’s feeling consumed with guilt about my veganism, and her non veganism.
Also though how terribly unhappy she is and how addictive and out of control she is.
Thankfully, the healer turned out to be vegan and this was a relief because years ago when I last spoke to him the issue didn’t come up. I was worried I’d turn to him again now and find that although he’s a healer, and psychic, somehow he still wasn’t vegan. But he was, and he explained something to me about the energetic level of people’s addiction to animal products.
They’re adrenalin junkies, he said. Then told me that he has a friend who he visits in the north of Scotland (we’re in London) and when they drive from the airport to her house, they pass this place where the cows are all lined up waiting to be slaughtered. He didn’t have to explain as we were both quite psychically in tune on this call. I felt the terror of those animals through him as he remembered his experience. As this terrible feeling was communicated to me, he said. ‘When people eat animals they are eating that adrenalin coming from the terror as the animal is killed.’
I’ve heard this before, in a rational scientific way explained to me. How we consume that adrenalin and on a physical level, it is bad for us, and that we consume the fear and then experience that in our own souls. But hearing it this way, I felt the reality of what is happening. I felt the literal terror of all the poor innocent billions of animals we do this to.
When I think of this too, when he was telling me this, into my mind came the rigidly unconscious, swaggeringly resistant attitudes of meat eaters. I could see the adrenalin in them. See their unconscious addiction to power, to the power to do that to animals if they like. I can’t explain what I see and feel right now, but the addiction to power is what its all about. Literally, the power, the right, to kill. But that’s also an unconscious literal addiction to the terror adrenalin of our victims.
I know some people will consider this psychic mumbo jumbo nonsense. But if they coud wake up and see on an energy level, they would know its true.
This is Darwin.
Darwin is such a big and very male soul. He is the alpha male and protector and guardian of this house. If his rabbit friend is in one room and his cat friend is in the other, he positions himself in the middle, by the front door, the best watch out post for both. The most satisfying and moving thing about my relationship with Darwin, is how I’ve been able to restore his dignity. Actually, no that’s wrong, I mean respect it, he never lost his dignity, no matter how he’d been treated. He preserved it by keeping a healthy strong dislike and disdain for his human captors which he expressed every way he could. He let them know he loathed them so much that they just wanted him out of there. What a strength of presence! He escaped his prison by sending his captors sheer force of venomous energy.
They were nice enough normal enough people, they’d been kind compared to many captors. He had a run attached to his cage and so wasn’t cooped up in a tiny space all the time. Only, he was still cooped up, and alone and they hadn’t neutered him. He had the biggest balls. Would you cut off a man’s balls? Really, it was that hard for me to do it. But he couldn’t breed, here, and it was driving him nuts to have all that energy and no way of expressing it. Imagine having all that testosterone (do rabbits have that too?), all that male energy, and no partner, no mate, no way of expressing it, shut in a box alone for two years. He was furious.
When he first arrived he was hilarious, in his efforts to let me know how much he loathed humans. I would get up to go to the other room for something and he would come and piss right where I’d been sitting. Which is funny, in a way, but he did literally take every opportunity to piss, poo and chew his rage for months. I just knew though, why. I can understand animal’s anger at human’s treatment of them. Eventually though, he must have vented it all, or perhaps getting neutered helped, or getting a rabbit companion he adores. But he’s happy now. He even lets me stroke him quite often. I go over and just sit next to him and he comes up and nudges me with his nose then goes back to what he was doing.
They love their freedom, he and his rabbit mate. They never get shut in their hutch, but if I’ve shut the door of the room they are in for awhile for any reason, when its open again they come for a good run around the flat as if to reclaim their freedom. To know its still there.
But what I’m continually struck by is the respect the majesty of his presence evokes, its this dignity, that for all his small form, he really is a strong, protective, alpha male energy which all the other animals and I feel and love. You know like when you meet someone, a human, who has this quality of presence which is just sort of naturally superior, refined, dignified, but not arrogant, just strong… I can’t explain it. But you feel honoured, to be around them and slightly in awe of them because of it. Well that’s what he’s like. That much soul and uniqueness of character….in a rabbit. Animals continually show me my own ignorance, to have ever seen them as ‘only an animal’ to have ever lost this ability to live in awe and reverence for other species. We miss so much. We miss the whole world because of that.
I look at him sometimes, and think of those poor rabbits in vivisection labs, with the cold hearted rational scientists seeing them as nothing, as objects whose suffering is not to be considered as they torture them in the name of power and dominion over nature.
Or I look at him and think of all the rabbits who were bought as pets, who get left alone in a hutch, caged, rarely let out, when they are let out they are treated like toys, their inner soul never respected, or even noticed.
It’s a sad cold world when we lack empathy for animals. It’s a sad cold world which begins when we shut off our empathy to those animals we consider ‘food’, and it spreads out as a lack of empathy disease into all other areas of life.
Lack of empathy is the cause of every avoidable suffering that exists on this planet, and is about to bring us as a species to extinction, after we’ve destroyed everything else along the way.
Reconnecting to empathy, begins by considering the food choices we make and never switching off our hearts, shutting down our empathy, in order to exploit and harm other living beings. We lose our resepct for all nature and cut out our own hearts when we do that.
Our choice of food can open our heart, or close it. One path continues the path of hell and total destruction on this earth, the other, is the solution.
Darwin is such a big and very male soul. He is the alpha male and protector and guardian of this house. If his rabbit friend is in one room and his cat friend is in the other, he positions himself in the middle, by the front door, the best watch out post for both. The most satisfying and moving thing about my relationship with Darwin, is how I’ve been able to restore his dignity. Actually, no that’s wrong, I mean respect it, he never lost his dignity, no matter how he’d been treated. He preserved it by keeping a healthy strong dislike and disdain for his human captors which he expressed every way he could. He let them know he loathed them so much that they just wanted him out of there. What a strength of presence! He escaped his prison by sending his captors sheer force of venomous energy.
They were nice enough normal enough people, they’d been kind compared to many captors. He had a run attached to his cage and so wasn’t cooped up in a tiny space all the time. Only, he was still cooped up, and alone and they hadn’t neutered him. He had the biggest balls. Would you cut off a man’s balls? Really, it was that hard for me to do it. But he couldn’t breed, here, and it was driving him nuts to have all that energy and no way of expressing it. Imagine having all that testosterone (do rabbits have that too?), all that male energy, and no partner, no mate, no way of expressing it, shut in a box alone for two years. He was furious.
When he first arrived he was hilarious, in his efforts to let me know how much he loathed humans. I would get up to go to the other room for something and he would come and piss right where I’d been sitting. Which is funny, in a way, but he did literally take every opportunity to piss, poo and chew his rage for months. I just knew though, why. I can understand animal’s anger at human’s treatment of them. Eventually though, he must have vented it all, or perhaps getting neutered helped, or getting a rabbit companion he adores. But he’s happy now. He even lets me stroke him quite often. I go over and just sit next to him and he comes up and nudges me with his nose then goes back to what he was doing.
They love their freedom, he and his rabbit mate. They never get shut in their hutch, but if I’ve shut the door of the room they are in for awhile for any reason, when its open again they come for a good run around the flat as if to reclaim their freedom. To know its still there.
But what I’m continually struck by is the respect the majesty of his presence evokes, its this dignity, that for all his small form, he really is a strong, protective, alpha male energy which all the other animals and I feel and love. You know like when you meet someone, a human, who has this quality of presence which is just sort of naturally superior, refined, dignified, but not arrogant, just strong… I can’t explain it. But you feel honoured, to be around them and slightly in awe of them because of it. Well that’s what he’s like. That much soul and uniqueness of character….in a rabbit. Animals continually show me my own ignorance, to have ever seen them as ‘only an animal’ to have ever lost this ability to live in awe and reverence for other species. We miss so much. We miss the whole world because of that.
I look at him sometimes, and think of those poor rabbits in vivisection labs, with the cold hearted rational scientists seeing them as nothing, as objects whose suffering is not to be considered as they torture them in the name of power and dominion over nature.
Or I look at him and think of all the rabbits who were bought as pets, who get left alone in a hutch, caged, rarely let out, when they are let out they are treated like toys, their inner soul never respected, or even noticed.
It’s a sad cold world when we lack empathy for animals. It’s a sad cold world which begins when we shut off our empathy to those animals we consider ‘food’, and it spreads out as a lack of empathy disease into all other areas of life.
Lack of empathy is the cause of every avoidable suffering that exists on this planet, and is about to bring us as a species to extinction, after we’ve destroyed everything else along the way.
Reconnecting to empathy, begins by considering the food choices we make and never switching off our hearts, shutting down our empathy, in order to exploit and harm other living beings. We lose our resepct for all nature and cut out our own hearts when we do that.
Our choice of food can open our heart, or close it. One path continues the path of hell and total destruction on this earth, the other, is the solution.
Today I saw a dead rat in the road. My first instinct was to go to them, and second was….its a rat! The conditioned response to a rat, inside me at least, was a sort of revulsion because I’d been taught they are dirty disease ridden etc. But I overrode that instinct and went with the first one, and picked the little body up and carried him to the side of the road. I lay the sweet little creature down on some soft earth covered in pine needles under a tree. Up close he wasn’t at all revolting, he was really sweet and soft brown fur which was as clean as could be. Adorable tiny little rat feet, soft round ears and long pointy face, he was beautiful. Still warm and I had to keep checking for a heart beat as he must only just have died. I felt so sad as I stroked him and willed his soul to heaven. Must have been heading off for his lunch, on a familiar route, and just wasn’t quick enough, didn’t see it coming.
In my head there were parental voices, and rational people saying. ‘Well this is just it, the process of life and death.’ All breezy, implying I was being sentimental to even stop and care. But this was as sad to me as if a human person died in the road. This rat person, had a family, friends, maybe, even if this was a lone rat, the was someone, who was born, months, or years ago, and has a soul a personality, as we all do. If I’d have lived with this rat I’d have come to discover his unique character.
I remember my friend had a pet rat years ago. Roo the rat, had an open cage in the corner of the room with a notice on it which said, ‘House of Roo.’ I wasn’t afraid then of Roo the rat, as he’d been introduced to me as a pet. One day Roo had been very ill, and my friend was panicking and fearful and I could see that this panic was affecting Roo and making him feel worse. So I took Roo and lay down with him in the middle of my chest and just held him and stroked him and loved him for ages till he felt better. Then a month or so later, I came in very late from a night out and I was having a real panic attack, feeling really frightened. As I lay there terrified, I heard these little feet come pattering across the floor, and up onto the bed, where Roo came and lay down in the exact same place in the centre of my chest, and he just loved me for ages, until I felt better.
After I had sat with the rat today for a while, I had to go into a big supermarket and it was chaos in there. The insensitivity in the energy of people, from the tough gangs, to the children screaming and trying to get attention from mothers who looked exhausted and baffled as to how to relate. The blank stares of the people around me. All of them, shovelling animal foods into their trolley.
I could see what Will Tuttle is saying in The World Peace Diet, that all of it, all the insanity and brutality, the insensitivity, the cold rational hard selfishness people display, the lack of ability to understand one another and make connections, all of it is directly caused by their switching off empathy to the animals they kill for food. Ok there are other reasons why people shut down their hearts and become cold unable to connect with others, but what could be more disconnecting from your heart than to practice killing without compunction three times a day. Which we all, know, on some level we are doing even if we don’t cut the animal open ourselves.
In a vegan world, the selfishness would be gone. Literally. Gone
In a vegan world, people would be living with the qualities of compassion and kindness, because they would be part of a species who had chosen not to harm wherever they could avoid it.
Imagine how different all our relationships, activities and expressions would be, if the intent to do no harm wherever possible, was our starting point, our guiding light.
How soon that would turn into, acting kindly wherever possible, acting with love simply because we enjoyed being loving.
How different our world would be.
But that world is never going to come into being, whilst we feed our children and remain addicted to foods which are violent and cruel, and inflict suffering and death
We have a choice, right now, on earth, to wake up and realise and choose kindness and compassion to all beings, to wake up to the joy of loving these beautiful innocent animals in our world.
Or we can remain addicted, unconscious, refusing to change, and we shall go extinct, likely, suffering the same we inflicted on other animals as we go. It will happen slowly, extreme temperature (as we inflict on animals in factory farm conditions), water and food shortages (as animal agriculture processes deliberately inflict on animals), we will suffer in various physical ways, and perhaps be subjected to terrifying conditions, probably experiencing either control and less personal freedom or brutality and violence ourselves (all we now routinely, unfeelingly, inflict on other animals).
That’s what we are heading towards, if we keep destroying the natural landscape, warming the planet up, all our systems breaking down and resources runing out.
If that’s what you are buying everyday, eating everyday, that, is what you are creating everyday.
Or, you can buy the solution, eat that everyday, by enjoying the organic vegan food which, once your tastes change over, is more delicious than animal foods ever were anyway.
Are we really causing all this suffering and destruction….because we like the taste of something?
That’s insane. To choose that, you must be suffering from some kind of mental illness, which seems normal because everyone else is crazy too. But to refuse to change, for food, seems a bit nuts.
In my head there were parental voices, and rational people saying. ‘Well this is just it, the process of life and death.’ All breezy, implying I was being sentimental to even stop and care. But this was as sad to me as if a human person died in the road. This rat person, had a family, friends, maybe, even if this was a lone rat, the was someone, who was born, months, or years ago, and has a soul a personality, as we all do. If I’d have lived with this rat I’d have come to discover his unique character.
I remember my friend had a pet rat years ago. Roo the rat, had an open cage in the corner of the room with a notice on it which said, ‘House of Roo.’ I wasn’t afraid then of Roo the rat, as he’d been introduced to me as a pet. One day Roo had been very ill, and my friend was panicking and fearful and I could see that this panic was affecting Roo and making him feel worse. So I took Roo and lay down with him in the middle of my chest and just held him and stroked him and loved him for ages till he felt better. Then a month or so later, I came in very late from a night out and I was having a real panic attack, feeling really frightened. As I lay there terrified, I heard these little feet come pattering across the floor, and up onto the bed, where Roo came and lay down in the exact same place in the centre of my chest, and he just loved me for ages, until I felt better.
After I had sat with the rat today for a while, I had to go into a big supermarket and it was chaos in there. The insensitivity in the energy of people, from the tough gangs, to the children screaming and trying to get attention from mothers who looked exhausted and baffled as to how to relate. The blank stares of the people around me. All of them, shovelling animal foods into their trolley.
I could see what Will Tuttle is saying in The World Peace Diet, that all of it, all the insanity and brutality, the insensitivity, the cold rational hard selfishness people display, the lack of ability to understand one another and make connections, all of it is directly caused by their switching off empathy to the animals they kill for food. Ok there are other reasons why people shut down their hearts and become cold unable to connect with others, but what could be more disconnecting from your heart than to practice killing without compunction three times a day. Which we all, know, on some level we are doing even if we don’t cut the animal open ourselves.
In a vegan world, the selfishness would be gone. Literally. Gone
In a vegan world, people would be living with the qualities of compassion and kindness, because they would be part of a species who had chosen not to harm wherever they could avoid it.
Imagine how different all our relationships, activities and expressions would be, if the intent to do no harm wherever possible, was our starting point, our guiding light.
How soon that would turn into, acting kindly wherever possible, acting with love simply because we enjoyed being loving.
How different our world would be.
But that world is never going to come into being, whilst we feed our children and remain addicted to foods which are violent and cruel, and inflict suffering and death
We have a choice, right now, on earth, to wake up and realise and choose kindness and compassion to all beings, to wake up to the joy of loving these beautiful innocent animals in our world.
Or we can remain addicted, unconscious, refusing to change, and we shall go extinct, likely, suffering the same we inflicted on other animals as we go. It will happen slowly, extreme temperature (as we inflict on animals in factory farm conditions), water and food shortages (as animal agriculture processes deliberately inflict on animals), we will suffer in various physical ways, and perhaps be subjected to terrifying conditions, probably experiencing either control and less personal freedom or brutality and violence ourselves (all we now routinely, unfeelingly, inflict on other animals).
That’s what we are heading towards, if we keep destroying the natural landscape, warming the planet up, all our systems breaking down and resources runing out.
If that’s what you are buying everyday, eating everyday, that, is what you are creating everyday.
Or, you can buy the solution, eat that everyday, by enjoying the organic vegan food which, once your tastes change over, is more delicious than animal foods ever were anyway.
Are we really causing all this suffering and destruction….because we like the taste of something?
That’s insane. To choose that, you must be suffering from some kind of mental illness, which seems normal because everyone else is crazy too. But to refuse to change, for food, seems a bit nuts.
I’ve been thinking about this inability humans have to delay gratification, how much that’s encouraged in our society.
Will Tuttle said something about the media infantilizing us. Which I think he means that, after the indoctrination to eat meat and dairy disconnects us from our soul, wounds our capacity to feel empathy and relate, once we are in that miserable wounded state, we are encouraged to buy buy buy. To meet our desires instantly, and live only to fulfill them. Like a spoiled child.
I’ve also been observing the strange phenomena of boredom. Particularly in children, but actually, in anyone, it’s a very unexplored topic. We accept boredom as ‘part of life’, but to me, that we live in a beautiful miraculous universe, and currently life on our planet is in crisis, there is so much suffering in many ways, to be bored, ever, seems to me to be a symptom that something is very wrong with what we call ‘normal’.
Again, its like Will Tuttle say’s, we are stunted in our spiritual growth, we haven’t even left the starting point, we’re held back by this lack of compassion and empathy from growing and developing as a species in meaningful ways, ways where we and our children would never be bored because we’d be too busy feeling empathy for and living in joyful relationship with the rest of the natural world.
We live in these incredible multidimensional receiving expressing bodies like some incredible space suit we’re born into, which we have barely even begun to explore being in or how to use. We’ve learnt how to dominate our bodies and force them to perform, sure. We’ve learnt how to scientifically dissect them to know how they work in some senses. But in terms of the subtler levels of our space suit is concerned, their capacity for feeling, sensing and communicating, we’ve hardly even begun.
We have minds and emotions and subtle things like intuition. We can meditate and focus on our breath till we experience ecstatic states of being, blissful consciousness. How can we be bored? With empathy we can tune into a bird and see for a moment through eyes that fly and know the wind under their wings. With empathy we can relate to these amazing creatures around us, we can learn to listen to our heart and and find ways of communicating with other species. If we really work at it, we can develop inner peace and higher sense perception, to the point where birds will come and land on us because they feel so safe, fishes will swim right along with us, tickling and playing with us.
How can we, be bored?
With empathy we can feel how other people are feeling too, and with intuition, know how to listen with sensitivity, and to respond with kindness.
When you know how to empathise, to connect with all the incredible beings in this world, boredom will be a thing of the past left back in the dark ages.
Boredom is the name we give to the state of being disconnected, empty, unaware, numb to the miracle of life within and all around us. Its what we feel when our capacity to empathise has been stunted and remains undeveloped.
Children who are taught to cut off from their feelings in order to eat animals who they would naturally love, are wounded in their capacity for empathy. We lose it right there.
This is not a side issue. The killing and eating and using of other animals, turning them into things we feel no compassion for no matter how we make them suffer. To practice this three times a day, fundamentally wounds our capacity for empathy. We simply cannot do both at the same time. We cannot feel empathic loving awareness of life, and kill and demean, exploit and use life at the same time.
This wounding in our capacity for empathy is what leads to us to turn animals into forms of entertainment, to amuse us, putting fish in bowls too small alone without any of their natural landscape, and see them swim around, interested for a moment, then forgotten. Left in their tiny lonely hell, and we notice nothing. This ignorance of other species wellbeing This lack of love, arises from the food ritual which cuts off our capacity for empathy.
That’s also how we can put a bird in a cage, or take a magnificent elephant and put cruel hooks in him to make him perform. Completely missing the dignity, grace and magnificence of this beautiful animal. Seeing him as nothing more than a moving image we get to move in certain ways through inflicting pain. Or see him as something to be hunted as a trophy, to kill this incredible being simply to take his tusks. That we can do that at all, comes from a lack of empathy, which begins and is reinforced by the disconnect forced upon us through eating other animals.
Its not a side issue.
Our lack of compassion, lack of ability to empathise, is the disease of the human condition, out of which all wars, all abuse of one another arises too.
To lay around bored, channel hopping on the TV, whilst all this is going on….is you, programmed by the disconnect forced on you through eating animals, it programs you to be numb, unfeeling to others suffering and go through life like a robot, unable to relate, unable to feel the natural joy of your being, and to recognise other living beings right to theirs.
Its killing you, killing this planet.
Won’t be long now, and you’ll have missed the opportunity to wake up and feel, wake up and live and explore the amazing body you are in, planet you are on, and love all the incredible other beings you share this world with. Soon it will be gone.
But, you still have time. If you hurry. Hell stops and life begins, when you stop killing animals, and start living with the intention to do no harm wherever possible. That very mantra, will begin the healing of your heart and the awakening to your soul.
Please try it soon.
Will Tuttle said something about the media infantilizing us. Which I think he means that, after the indoctrination to eat meat and dairy disconnects us from our soul, wounds our capacity to feel empathy and relate, once we are in that miserable wounded state, we are encouraged to buy buy buy. To meet our desires instantly, and live only to fulfill them. Like a spoiled child.
I’ve also been observing the strange phenomena of boredom. Particularly in children, but actually, in anyone, it’s a very unexplored topic. We accept boredom as ‘part of life’, but to me, that we live in a beautiful miraculous universe, and currently life on our planet is in crisis, there is so much suffering in many ways, to be bored, ever, seems to me to be a symptom that something is very wrong with what we call ‘normal’.
Again, its like Will Tuttle say’s, we are stunted in our spiritual growth, we haven’t even left the starting point, we’re held back by this lack of compassion and empathy from growing and developing as a species in meaningful ways, ways where we and our children would never be bored because we’d be too busy feeling empathy for and living in joyful relationship with the rest of the natural world.
We live in these incredible multidimensional receiving expressing bodies like some incredible space suit we’re born into, which we have barely even begun to explore being in or how to use. We’ve learnt how to dominate our bodies and force them to perform, sure. We’ve learnt how to scientifically dissect them to know how they work in some senses. But in terms of the subtler levels of our space suit is concerned, their capacity for feeling, sensing and communicating, we’ve hardly even begun.
We have minds and emotions and subtle things like intuition. We can meditate and focus on our breath till we experience ecstatic states of being, blissful consciousness. How can we be bored? With empathy we can tune into a bird and see for a moment through eyes that fly and know the wind under their wings. With empathy we can relate to these amazing creatures around us, we can learn to listen to our heart and and find ways of communicating with other species. If we really work at it, we can develop inner peace and higher sense perception, to the point where birds will come and land on us because they feel so safe, fishes will swim right along with us, tickling and playing with us.
How can we, be bored?
With empathy we can feel how other people are feeling too, and with intuition, know how to listen with sensitivity, and to respond with kindness.
When you know how to empathise, to connect with all the incredible beings in this world, boredom will be a thing of the past left back in the dark ages.
Boredom is the name we give to the state of being disconnected, empty, unaware, numb to the miracle of life within and all around us. Its what we feel when our capacity to empathise has been stunted and remains undeveloped.
Children who are taught to cut off from their feelings in order to eat animals who they would naturally love, are wounded in their capacity for empathy. We lose it right there.
This is not a side issue. The killing and eating and using of other animals, turning them into things we feel no compassion for no matter how we make them suffer. To practice this three times a day, fundamentally wounds our capacity for empathy. We simply cannot do both at the same time. We cannot feel empathic loving awareness of life, and kill and demean, exploit and use life at the same time.
This wounding in our capacity for empathy is what leads to us to turn animals into forms of entertainment, to amuse us, putting fish in bowls too small alone without any of their natural landscape, and see them swim around, interested for a moment, then forgotten. Left in their tiny lonely hell, and we notice nothing. This ignorance of other species wellbeing This lack of love, arises from the food ritual which cuts off our capacity for empathy.
That’s also how we can put a bird in a cage, or take a magnificent elephant and put cruel hooks in him to make him perform. Completely missing the dignity, grace and magnificence of this beautiful animal. Seeing him as nothing more than a moving image we get to move in certain ways through inflicting pain. Or see him as something to be hunted as a trophy, to kill this incredible being simply to take his tusks. That we can do that at all, comes from a lack of empathy, which begins and is reinforced by the disconnect forced upon us through eating other animals.
Its not a side issue.
Our lack of compassion, lack of ability to empathise, is the disease of the human condition, out of which all wars, all abuse of one another arises too.
To lay around bored, channel hopping on the TV, whilst all this is going on….is you, programmed by the disconnect forced on you through eating animals, it programs you to be numb, unfeeling to others suffering and go through life like a robot, unable to relate, unable to feel the natural joy of your being, and to recognise other living beings right to theirs.
Its killing you, killing this planet.
Won’t be long now, and you’ll have missed the opportunity to wake up and feel, wake up and live and explore the amazing body you are in, planet you are on, and love all the incredible other beings you share this world with. Soon it will be gone.
But, you still have time. If you hurry. Hell stops and life begins, when you stop killing animals, and start living with the intention to do no harm wherever possible. That very mantra, will begin the healing of your heart and the awakening to your soul.
Please try it soon.
I nearly lost my mind again recently. I became so angry with people. Why don’t they listen? It is such a simple thing. How can they not care? Then a healer friend told me I may have compassion for animals but I have lost compassion completely for people. He didn’t say it in an attacking hostile way, he meant it to help me. Maybe that’s why I was able to take it on board without offense. Whereas the way I’ve been pointing out to people what they are doing to animals, has been filled with judgement. Which is not helping me, or them, or the animals, he said.
Its true, I look a mess, I don’t care about my appearance, I carry the pain of the animals and the despair that people aren’t listening in my face and the stress of these last few months is so visible I actually look like a crazy person who will soon be locked up.
So then, the solution, I found, was to just switch off, to not care again. It was like I just gave up and thought ‘the hell with the animals’ this is killing me, let someone else deal with it, I’ll choose to do something more enjoyable and healthier for me. Oh to just get up in the morning and play with paints, or write some fiction, disappear into characters and life stories, human drama. Live a normal life. Forget the animals. I found myself looking in the mirror again and thinking of a trip to the hairdressers, and putting some make up on to feel attractive, feminine again. I could feel, as the numbness and lack of concern for animals descended what I know to be sanity, return with it. I could remember my friends and family with love. Imagine sitting around with them chatting about nothing in particular just enjoying their company.
Of course, it didn’t last long, and of course, I’ll never give up on the animals. But I realised, that’s what people are doing. I remembered, that’s where people are, that’s what its like. Numbsville. Where nothing is taken too seriously, life is a funny light hearted play where we joke about our minor life traumas and support one another through our bad ones. But what we never, ever do, is mention the horrific Armageddon we are inflicting on the animal kingdom, never mention the billions of animals in concentration camps all around us.
My healer friend said to me, your sledgehammer of truth is meeting an anvil of resistance you’re only reaching about 1% of people because of that and the rest are turning away.
He’s good isn’t he.
So I see the truth in what he say’s. But I never started out with this sledgehammer, never started out looking like a lunatic who badly needs a haircut. I started out gently.
Imagine you are one of those animals stuck in that hell, or one of those birds stuffed 5 to a cage squashed up against one another your entire life going out of your mind. Imagine you were the captor of those birds and the bird began speaking saying. ‘Please, its terrible in here, I’m going out of my mind, I’m terrified, everything hurts, I’m driven insane by this nightmare, please, let me out?’ The captor looks on coldly utterly unmoved. ‘You’re only an animal. We humans eat you. Its what we do. I’m the more dominant one. I’m the predator, you are the prey. Don’t tell me what to do. If I want to eat you I will.’
So the bird tried again and again, explaining every which way, pleading, explaining that somehow the captor has forgotten we are all living beings, has lost touch with the ability to feel empathy for our suffering. The bird went all into the history of how humankind got lost, and has become numb to life, to the suffering of others. The bird told the captor that it’s a lie you don’t need to eat our flesh or our eggs they’re only bad for you. New science shows that really, you only need to eat plant foods. Please, set me free.
But the captor remained unmoved, uninterested. ‘What are you makings such a fuss about, you’re insane, you’re a fascist to tell me what to do, nobody’s listening to you. People have always done this and they can do what they like. It say’s so in the bible…we’re meant to eat you. We are predators and natural omnivores, look at these teeth, that means we must be made to eat you. Stop pushing in my face all this crap about not eating you. I’ll do what I like.’
So the bird provided lots of evidence to show naturally the captor is a herbivore, and provided all kinds of scientific evidence to show that the eating of the birds and animals and fishes was harming the captor and destroying the earth, it was all a big mistake.
The captor still ignored him so all the bird could do is keep repeating, speaking from all the different things he was experiencing. Sometimes he pleaded, sometimes he described the details of the suffering he was experiencing, sometimes he became outraged and furious with his captors and raged against the bars screaming let me out you selfish, ignorant f**k, WTF is wrong with you, you are a monster, despicably cruel and I f**king hate you.’
I feel that all I’ve done this last few months is feel the animals pain and speak from there, in all these ways. I never started out with a sledgehammer. I started out trying to explain and plead to people’s sense of reason, and care, their human decency. I found that 90% of them are exactly like the captor I described above.
In the end, like the bird in the cage, or the pigs who suffer from PSS Porcine Stress Syndrome, I have begun to go out of my mind. Not, because I’m crazy, but because the animals, birds and fishes suffering matters as much as it would if it were you or I suffering. Because I live in a world of crazy people who consider it normal to be numb now, normal to think nothing of taking a life for pleasure.
I imagine once upon a time, for many hundreds of thousands of years, we respected life. My sense is something has gone terribly wrong this last few thousand years, since we have begun to ‘domesticate’ and ‘herd’ confine and kill animals on an ever increasing scale.
Our physiology is herbivorous, which must mean that for most of the time we’ve been on this earth we’ve eaten mainly plants and killed only when absolutely necessary in some kind of crisis. With regret, likely taking the oldest animals, with as much respect and sadness as the circumstances warranted. Only in this last few thousand years, the last couple of hundred even, have we begun so systematically killing what we liked and destroyed everything in sight. That’s not, as popular myth would have it, due to overpopulation, its due to the way we are living. There is enough food now to feed the planet twice over. Only 80% of it is being fed to cattle whilst more than a billion people starve.
You know all that. But most of you carry on in Numbsville, having a nice day, caught up in your human drama’s.
My healer friend said that compassion should be universal, that some humans just are not spiritually mature enough, not capable or ready to have compassion for animals. Maybe in their next life they will, he said.
But I can’t accept that. As a bird in a cage, and a pig in a pen, or veal calf who is desperately longing for his mum in cages no bigger than their bodies….can’t accept that. The idea we have to wait another hundred years till you get it, is too bloody horrific for words.
So I wrote back to him and said.
Ok, ok, so maybe their behaviour is down to ignorance and immaturity, but aren’t there times when children are just being naughty. We all remember that right…when we met a ‘naughty’ kid who suggested we get involved in something we knew we shouldn’t, but it felt like fun at the time and we just got carried away, until we were in something of a mania of out of controlness. Some part of you knew you were behaving badly but you were out of control, hysterical and having a whale of a time.
So, say it is spiritual immaturity and that people are spiritually like children. Don’t children need to be told quite sharply sometimes, pulled into line, given healthy boundaries. Given a bloody good shake is how I feel like treating people. They are like insane, selfish children, given a planet and all these beautiful animals to share it with, and they are just killing and destroying everything in sight, because they like the taste. No matter how the animals scream and squawk and cry out for mercy…they just keep carrying on.
At what point does it become justifiable to get really f**king pissed off with people? Without being called crazy
Its true, I look a mess, I don’t care about my appearance, I carry the pain of the animals and the despair that people aren’t listening in my face and the stress of these last few months is so visible I actually look like a crazy person who will soon be locked up.
So then, the solution, I found, was to just switch off, to not care again. It was like I just gave up and thought ‘the hell with the animals’ this is killing me, let someone else deal with it, I’ll choose to do something more enjoyable and healthier for me. Oh to just get up in the morning and play with paints, or write some fiction, disappear into characters and life stories, human drama. Live a normal life. Forget the animals. I found myself looking in the mirror again and thinking of a trip to the hairdressers, and putting some make up on to feel attractive, feminine again. I could feel, as the numbness and lack of concern for animals descended what I know to be sanity, return with it. I could remember my friends and family with love. Imagine sitting around with them chatting about nothing in particular just enjoying their company.
Of course, it didn’t last long, and of course, I’ll never give up on the animals. But I realised, that’s what people are doing. I remembered, that’s where people are, that’s what its like. Numbsville. Where nothing is taken too seriously, life is a funny light hearted play where we joke about our minor life traumas and support one another through our bad ones. But what we never, ever do, is mention the horrific Armageddon we are inflicting on the animal kingdom, never mention the billions of animals in concentration camps all around us.
My healer friend said to me, your sledgehammer of truth is meeting an anvil of resistance you’re only reaching about 1% of people because of that and the rest are turning away.
He’s good isn’t he.
So I see the truth in what he say’s. But I never started out with this sledgehammer, never started out looking like a lunatic who badly needs a haircut. I started out gently.
Imagine you are one of those animals stuck in that hell, or one of those birds stuffed 5 to a cage squashed up against one another your entire life going out of your mind. Imagine you were the captor of those birds and the bird began speaking saying. ‘Please, its terrible in here, I’m going out of my mind, I’m terrified, everything hurts, I’m driven insane by this nightmare, please, let me out?’ The captor looks on coldly utterly unmoved. ‘You’re only an animal. We humans eat you. Its what we do. I’m the more dominant one. I’m the predator, you are the prey. Don’t tell me what to do. If I want to eat you I will.’
So the bird tried again and again, explaining every which way, pleading, explaining that somehow the captor has forgotten we are all living beings, has lost touch with the ability to feel empathy for our suffering. The bird went all into the history of how humankind got lost, and has become numb to life, to the suffering of others. The bird told the captor that it’s a lie you don’t need to eat our flesh or our eggs they’re only bad for you. New science shows that really, you only need to eat plant foods. Please, set me free.
But the captor remained unmoved, uninterested. ‘What are you makings such a fuss about, you’re insane, you’re a fascist to tell me what to do, nobody’s listening to you. People have always done this and they can do what they like. It say’s so in the bible…we’re meant to eat you. We are predators and natural omnivores, look at these teeth, that means we must be made to eat you. Stop pushing in my face all this crap about not eating you. I’ll do what I like.’
So the bird provided lots of evidence to show naturally the captor is a herbivore, and provided all kinds of scientific evidence to show that the eating of the birds and animals and fishes was harming the captor and destroying the earth, it was all a big mistake.
The captor still ignored him so all the bird could do is keep repeating, speaking from all the different things he was experiencing. Sometimes he pleaded, sometimes he described the details of the suffering he was experiencing, sometimes he became outraged and furious with his captors and raged against the bars screaming let me out you selfish, ignorant f**k, WTF is wrong with you, you are a monster, despicably cruel and I f**king hate you.’
I feel that all I’ve done this last few months is feel the animals pain and speak from there, in all these ways. I never started out with a sledgehammer. I started out trying to explain and plead to people’s sense of reason, and care, their human decency. I found that 90% of them are exactly like the captor I described above.
In the end, like the bird in the cage, or the pigs who suffer from PSS Porcine Stress Syndrome, I have begun to go out of my mind. Not, because I’m crazy, but because the animals, birds and fishes suffering matters as much as it would if it were you or I suffering. Because I live in a world of crazy people who consider it normal to be numb now, normal to think nothing of taking a life for pleasure.
I imagine once upon a time, for many hundreds of thousands of years, we respected life. My sense is something has gone terribly wrong this last few thousand years, since we have begun to ‘domesticate’ and ‘herd’ confine and kill animals on an ever increasing scale.
Our physiology is herbivorous, which must mean that for most of the time we’ve been on this earth we’ve eaten mainly plants and killed only when absolutely necessary in some kind of crisis. With regret, likely taking the oldest animals, with as much respect and sadness as the circumstances warranted. Only in this last few thousand years, the last couple of hundred even, have we begun so systematically killing what we liked and destroyed everything in sight. That’s not, as popular myth would have it, due to overpopulation, its due to the way we are living. There is enough food now to feed the planet twice over. Only 80% of it is being fed to cattle whilst more than a billion people starve.
You know all that. But most of you carry on in Numbsville, having a nice day, caught up in your human drama’s.
My healer friend said that compassion should be universal, that some humans just are not spiritually mature enough, not capable or ready to have compassion for animals. Maybe in their next life they will, he said.
But I can’t accept that. As a bird in a cage, and a pig in a pen, or veal calf who is desperately longing for his mum in cages no bigger than their bodies….can’t accept that. The idea we have to wait another hundred years till you get it, is too bloody horrific for words.
So I wrote back to him and said.
Ok, ok, so maybe their behaviour is down to ignorance and immaturity, but aren’t there times when children are just being naughty. We all remember that right…when we met a ‘naughty’ kid who suggested we get involved in something we knew we shouldn’t, but it felt like fun at the time and we just got carried away, until we were in something of a mania of out of controlness. Some part of you knew you were behaving badly but you were out of control, hysterical and having a whale of a time.
So, say it is spiritual immaturity and that people are spiritually like children. Don’t children need to be told quite sharply sometimes, pulled into line, given healthy boundaries. Given a bloody good shake is how I feel like treating people. They are like insane, selfish children, given a planet and all these beautiful animals to share it with, and they are just killing and destroying everything in sight, because they like the taste. No matter how the animals scream and squawk and cry out for mercy…they just keep carrying on.
At what point does it become justifiable to get really f**king pissed off with people? Without being called crazy
Yesterday an old friend visited and what an effect she’s had. Since opening up to the animals suffering and beginning trying to communicate it to people I’ve really cut myself off and begun to almost view people as the enemy. Its so hard
not to, if you empathise with and feel you are on the side of the animals. If you take species out of this for a moment, imagining animals were a different type of human, or aliens, of equal worth, when you step into that perspective and see what people are doing to animals, how can people not become the enemy?
But this friend, is so ‘home’ to me, she’s someone who has always inspired such love, and in her presence I can only see all humans are innocent, no matter what they do. It was lovely to go home for awhile, this morning there’s this beautiful feeling of calm, love, peace, and yet sadness, because I also see that people are just so indoctrinated with this unquestioned arrogant right to use animals, literally with no consideration whatsoever. Accepting where they are at…I see how far they are gone…how hard to reach them its going to be.
Getting her mind to where I was at to see what I was saying, for her, was like travelling to some far distant land from where she currently is in her perspective. I could see her resistance to being with the pain of it too, because she likes to inhabit this lovely warm space, which she emanates for her friends family and children. Its hard not to just be there with her, to just sit and be warmed by that fire of switching off to all this suffering and being in our hearts with each other, with our own particular story.
We talked all about men, relationships past and present since we last met. In fact, that’s all we pretty much ever talked about, ours or other people’s relationships. Not without meaning, the theme was love, entanglements of various forms of oppression, justice and injustice but only in that very personal realm. The bigger picture, the animal holocaust, the crumbling ecosystem was invisible to us, as it is to so many people.
Its like there are these two different worlds, the animals, invisible, tortured, abused and used in every conceivable way, slaughtered in their billions, is one world. The suffering in that world not considered for a moment by the people in the other world. In the other world are people all caught up with themselves, their human drama, and everything else, all other life is just a backdrop.
We are insanely self-involved and have a complete inability to deal with the scale of the horror, or to challenge the comforting arrogant unquestioned assumption of our right to treat other species this way. It is the saddest most grievous bodily harm any living being has ever caused another. But after seeing my lovely friend be this way, and she’s so warm and loving and good in the human world, she’s just so completely blind to the animal world, and I wonder if its almost all some humans are currently capable of in their spiritual development.
If I went back in time a few hundred years it would have been normal in Medieval times, to gather in the town square to watch our neighbours tortured for days because of a minor misdemeanour. That was the level of spiritual and moral development we as a species were capable of then, and for many people the way they treat other animals is no more evolved than that.
How many people do you know who are stuck seeing life that way? Or worse, are so arrogantly assured of their right to treat animals that way, that with one swift mocking joke they dismiss the subject out of hand, or even flaunt their power over animal kingdom, mock you that they don’t care and they have the legal right to do that to animals on their side.
None of them are bad though…they are just insane… lost in some unfeeling dream. Which, if they carry on, is going to become a living nightmare, the horror they are inflicting on the rest of the natural world is about to come right back and hit people full force in their own lifetime.
not to, if you empathise with and feel you are on the side of the animals. If you take species out of this for a moment, imagining animals were a different type of human, or aliens, of equal worth, when you step into that perspective and see what people are doing to animals, how can people not become the enemy?
But this friend, is so ‘home’ to me, she’s someone who has always inspired such love, and in her presence I can only see all humans are innocent, no matter what they do. It was lovely to go home for awhile, this morning there’s this beautiful feeling of calm, love, peace, and yet sadness, because I also see that people are just so indoctrinated with this unquestioned arrogant right to use animals, literally with no consideration whatsoever. Accepting where they are at…I see how far they are gone…how hard to reach them its going to be.
Getting her mind to where I was at to see what I was saying, for her, was like travelling to some far distant land from where she currently is in her perspective. I could see her resistance to being with the pain of it too, because she likes to inhabit this lovely warm space, which she emanates for her friends family and children. Its hard not to just be there with her, to just sit and be warmed by that fire of switching off to all this suffering and being in our hearts with each other, with our own particular story.
We talked all about men, relationships past and present since we last met. In fact, that’s all we pretty much ever talked about, ours or other people’s relationships. Not without meaning, the theme was love, entanglements of various forms of oppression, justice and injustice but only in that very personal realm. The bigger picture, the animal holocaust, the crumbling ecosystem was invisible to us, as it is to so many people.
Its like there are these two different worlds, the animals, invisible, tortured, abused and used in every conceivable way, slaughtered in their billions, is one world. The suffering in that world not considered for a moment by the people in the other world. In the other world are people all caught up with themselves, their human drama, and everything else, all other life is just a backdrop.
We are insanely self-involved and have a complete inability to deal with the scale of the horror, or to challenge the comforting arrogant unquestioned assumption of our right to treat other species this way. It is the saddest most grievous bodily harm any living being has ever caused another. But after seeing my lovely friend be this way, and she’s so warm and loving and good in the human world, she’s just so completely blind to the animal world, and I wonder if its almost all some humans are currently capable of in their spiritual development.
If I went back in time a few hundred years it would have been normal in Medieval times, to gather in the town square to watch our neighbours tortured for days because of a minor misdemeanour. That was the level of spiritual and moral development we as a species were capable of then, and for many people the way they treat other animals is no more evolved than that.
How many people do you know who are stuck seeing life that way? Or worse, are so arrogantly assured of their right to treat animals that way, that with one swift mocking joke they dismiss the subject out of hand, or even flaunt their power over animal kingdom, mock you that they don’t care and they have the legal right to do that to animals on their side.
None of them are bad though…they are just insane… lost in some unfeeling dream. Which, if they carry on, is going to become a living nightmare, the horror they are inflicting on the rest of the natural world is about to come right back and hit people full force in their own lifetime.
I’m seeing things very clearly today, but not sure I can put it into words.
I see that we are born into a world in which we first experience ourselves as an individual, with individual wants needs desires and ego goals. Our world, our c
ulture as it currently is, encourages us to live for ourselves, seeking after security, success, a mate, families and friends, living for our own personal happiness. But none of those things ever ultimately satisfies a deeper need which drives all of us. A lot of our personal suffering…all of it…arises from seeking something we never find in these things. Also, there’s a fundamental dislike of ourselves which deepens and grows the more we live only for ourselves in this way, which is confusing, because we are taught to seek these things to find happiness, yet the very seeking for self makes us miserable.
What I see clearly today, though by no means am I there yet in terms of manifesting it in my life, is what the end goal for all of us is, where our real happiness lays.
Ok so real happiness, it seems would be to be living in ways which are not damaging or harming in any way. First of all, not damaging ourselves, by taking care of our bodies, minds and souls, through eating well, exercising appropriately, meditating, thinking kindly of self, but the underlying motivation for this must be not our own happiness, but to be ever more capable of being of service to the greater good of all. I see people being somewhere on a spectrum of selfishness, to selflessness, and only when they are ultimately selfless, paradoxically, will they come into the fullness of the expression of who they uniquely are. We don’t lose our individuality in the attempt to do our best for the good of all, the striving to do that makes us draw on our unique talents, to discover them even, our own particular way of helping in the universal story. We find ourselves, by no longer seeking to serve ourselves.
Not sure I’m making sense, but basically, if I listen to my conscience, it is always counselling me to take care of self, but also to live in unselfish ways, to love because people deserve love, not, because I want them to love me back. To help because people, animals and nature deserve to be helped, not because I want to derive anything for myself from these acts. To just be motivated outwards, in giving, as Will Tuttle suggests, we should try to cultivate tenderness and caring in even our smallest acts. The way we pick up the dishcloth to wash the dishes, to feel gratitude for and reverence for life and to live it respectfully in every way.
Its like all my life I lived looking to get…looking outwards, for me. Where I realise what will only ever make me feel fulfilled will to be living in ways that are devoted to the good of all.
How hard it is to achieve this ideal though! When we are in bodies which have sexual needs and needs to be hugged, and longing for connection with others, and our information systems have filled our heads with all kinds of false ideas about what love is, or what sex should be. Or when we feel powerless or bored, lacking direction with no real understanding of why we are here on this earth in these bodies, and our information systems teach us to try to feel empowered by achieving and owning for ourselves, by distracting ourselves with trivia, or competition or just more selfish pursuits. How many ways there are to get lost in the mire…driven by longings from within, which have been conscripted by wrong teachings from without. How hard it is to see through all this. Only, it seems, after having tried all the prescribed ways of achieving personal happiness and failing, do we eventually finally, hopefully begin to find the truth, that we are not here for ourselves, but here to be of service to the good of all.
Or only, when we are living on a planet which, we are forced to realise, cannot continue meet our selfish demands and that living this way is damaging our ecosystem beyond repair, which is a wakeup call for all of us right now.
Today though, why I’m writing this, is to share that from this perspective I see people with more compassion. I keep getting angry with people who are living in ways which are selfish and cruel. But I see today from a perspective of…oh…they’re just lost in the mire.
This vantage point today feels very akin to what I’ve read of the Buddhist philosophy which speaks of this world as people being lost in the maya, the illusion of separateness. Buddhists believe we as souls reincarnate over and over again to learn how to work our way out of the illusion of separateness. Which would mean we are all ultimately going to wake up and remember our oneness and seek to live in ways which serve the good of all, letting go of the idea of seeking for self.
Problem is, this human species don’t have much more time left. The way we are living, the way our domination and exploitation of other species and the Earth is taking us, is very soon to the destruction of all life on Earth. So, it seems to me like we all have to make this transition, to live selflessly in this lifetime. Or we all, at least have to take the first step on that journey this lifetime, by choosing veganism, a way of life based on the intent to do no harm wherever possible.
Maybe this 2012 shift is about that, the beginning of people realising that, and beginning of implementing that in our lives. If enough of us do it in time, then we go into a new paradigm based on peace and kindness. If we don’t…well life will end on earth, but I’m not sure what that means for our souls. No doubt we’ll find out one way or the other depending on our personal choices.
I see that we are born into a world in which we first experience ourselves as an individual, with individual wants needs desires and ego goals. Our world, our c
ulture as it currently is, encourages us to live for ourselves, seeking after security, success, a mate, families and friends, living for our own personal happiness. But none of those things ever ultimately satisfies a deeper need which drives all of us. A lot of our personal suffering…all of it…arises from seeking something we never find in these things. Also, there’s a fundamental dislike of ourselves which deepens and grows the more we live only for ourselves in this way, which is confusing, because we are taught to seek these things to find happiness, yet the very seeking for self makes us miserable.
What I see clearly today, though by no means am I there yet in terms of manifesting it in my life, is what the end goal for all of us is, where our real happiness lays.
Ok so real happiness, it seems would be to be living in ways which are not damaging or harming in any way. First of all, not damaging ourselves, by taking care of our bodies, minds and souls, through eating well, exercising appropriately, meditating, thinking kindly of self, but the underlying motivation for this must be not our own happiness, but to be ever more capable of being of service to the greater good of all. I see people being somewhere on a spectrum of selfishness, to selflessness, and only when they are ultimately selfless, paradoxically, will they come into the fullness of the expression of who they uniquely are. We don’t lose our individuality in the attempt to do our best for the good of all, the striving to do that makes us draw on our unique talents, to discover them even, our own particular way of helping in the universal story. We find ourselves, by no longer seeking to serve ourselves.
Not sure I’m making sense, but basically, if I listen to my conscience, it is always counselling me to take care of self, but also to live in unselfish ways, to love because people deserve love, not, because I want them to love me back. To help because people, animals and nature deserve to be helped, not because I want to derive anything for myself from these acts. To just be motivated outwards, in giving, as Will Tuttle suggests, we should try to cultivate tenderness and caring in even our smallest acts. The way we pick up the dishcloth to wash the dishes, to feel gratitude for and reverence for life and to live it respectfully in every way.
Its like all my life I lived looking to get…looking outwards, for me. Where I realise what will only ever make me feel fulfilled will to be living in ways that are devoted to the good of all.
How hard it is to achieve this ideal though! When we are in bodies which have sexual needs and needs to be hugged, and longing for connection with others, and our information systems have filled our heads with all kinds of false ideas about what love is, or what sex should be. Or when we feel powerless or bored, lacking direction with no real understanding of why we are here on this earth in these bodies, and our information systems teach us to try to feel empowered by achieving and owning for ourselves, by distracting ourselves with trivia, or competition or just more selfish pursuits. How many ways there are to get lost in the mire…driven by longings from within, which have been conscripted by wrong teachings from without. How hard it is to see through all this. Only, it seems, after having tried all the prescribed ways of achieving personal happiness and failing, do we eventually finally, hopefully begin to find the truth, that we are not here for ourselves, but here to be of service to the good of all.
Or only, when we are living on a planet which, we are forced to realise, cannot continue meet our selfish demands and that living this way is damaging our ecosystem beyond repair, which is a wakeup call for all of us right now.
Today though, why I’m writing this, is to share that from this perspective I see people with more compassion. I keep getting angry with people who are living in ways which are selfish and cruel. But I see today from a perspective of…oh…they’re just lost in the mire.
This vantage point today feels very akin to what I’ve read of the Buddhist philosophy which speaks of this world as people being lost in the maya, the illusion of separateness. Buddhists believe we as souls reincarnate over and over again to learn how to work our way out of the illusion of separateness. Which would mean we are all ultimately going to wake up and remember our oneness and seek to live in ways which serve the good of all, letting go of the idea of seeking for self.
Problem is, this human species don’t have much more time left. The way we are living, the way our domination and exploitation of other species and the Earth is taking us, is very soon to the destruction of all life on Earth. So, it seems to me like we all have to make this transition, to live selflessly in this lifetime. Or we all, at least have to take the first step on that journey this lifetime, by choosing veganism, a way of life based on the intent to do no harm wherever possible.
Maybe this 2012 shift is about that, the beginning of people realising that, and beginning of implementing that in our lives. If enough of us do it in time, then we go into a new paradigm based on peace and kindness. If we don’t…well life will end on earth, but I’m not sure what that means for our souls. No doubt we’ll find out one way or the other depending on our personal choices.
Today in Brighton around 300 people gathered together to march through the town and speak out for animals. Actually we shouted. Not in too hostile a way, but with passion. There was an energy to it, as though a group of people gathered t
ogether with the focus of their hearts and minds this way takes on a life of its own. I noticed the birds flying overhead again, as if they loved what we were doing. I went on a much bigger march in London a few years back, an anti war demo, and these huge flocks of pigeons from Trafalgar Square flew in these incredible synchronised swoops and circles in the sky above us as we marched, as if they were expressing nature’s love and great excitement that people were together for peace.
Today, passers by stopped in their tracks and people hung out of upstairs windows riveted it seemed, as if they felt the energy too. I wonder if it made them think about the animals they are eating in a new way. I hope so.
At one point we all stopped in the centre of town and the person with the loudspeaker talked about the reality of the violence and suffering behind people’s food choices. You’ll be glad to know that she spoke out for the mother cows who carry their baby’s in their womb for 9 months only to have them taken away and shot at a day old or sent to live in a veal crate alone, so people can drink their babies milk. She asked the important question. ‘How can this be right?’ Outside fast food restaurants we stopped and chanted even louder and the crowds of activists gathered in and held up their banners and packards to the window so that those inside could see images of the suffering behind their food choices. As we chanted, ‘Meat is murder! Stop the slaughter!’
Many people in those restaurants and along the way looked puzzled, and I’m sure many of them have never considered their food choices. All day I noticed children around me on the journey to and from the March, eating chocolate bars or wanting burgers. I wanted to say to the people around me on the train, I wanted to stop the life show for a moment and say ‘please, listen, you just don’t know, let me tell you the suffering you cause with what you see as innocent choices.’ But what I realised as I fantasised doing this, is that there has to be a right setting to offer this information to people, a connection made with them first. Otherwise we are just more noise, more craziness in the world to filter out. People have enough of that already.
Though we advocates feel such passion, which arises from the deep pain of empathy for the animal’s living hell, we must first recognise the power of social conditioning over people’s minds. I must recognise that. Its easy to get angry with people, that’s the first stage, but the next is, to really wonder how to get through that social conditioning to reach them. People are so desensitised, its like they’ve been conditioned to be insane. How, could we ever have thought it is ok to wear someone else’s skin? Ok historically maybe we needed to for warmth. But at what point did we start doing it for fashion, considering nothing of the living beings who died for us? At what point did stealing the babies, the milk, the flesh, the lives of animals become something we felt nothing about and do gratuitously for pleasure?
It kind of doesn’t matter how or why. The point is, to be living this unmindfully, this violently and carelessly, when now, we know, we never have to take the life of another living being for any reason, is insanity…. the insanity of ‘normal’.
It has far reaching consequences in our lives apart from the suffering we inflict on animals too. The very using of other living beings this way, makes us users in general. The superficial unmindful level we live at, in order to be coldly violent at mealtimes, leaves us in meaningless world where we are self-oriented and superficial, living in ways that are destroying all of nature.
On the train journey there, I was surrounded by young people on their way to a music festival. The chatter of ‘I’, the gossip of other people’s mundane life story was thick in the air. I remember being just like that, and yet I see now, that it could have been so different. I could have grown up say in a vegan community, where my whole sense of ‘I’ was brought up to be a responsible conscious sensitive caring part of a whole. My life could have been less selfish and more meaningful, only my social conditioning prevented it.
We don’t have time left for this to continue. Somehow, though its as hard as trying to turn the world backwards, or see through an invisible matrix, this insidious ‘normal’ which has a hold over everyone’s consciousness….somehow we have to learn to care, and to speak out to everyone and teach our children to make their every moment’s intention to do no harm wherever possible.
I believe we can do it, I just hope we do it in time.
ogether with the focus of their hearts and minds this way takes on a life of its own. I noticed the birds flying overhead again, as if they loved what we were doing. I went on a much bigger march in London a few years back, an anti war demo, and these huge flocks of pigeons from Trafalgar Square flew in these incredible synchronised swoops and circles in the sky above us as we marched, as if they were expressing nature’s love and great excitement that people were together for peace.
Today, passers by stopped in their tracks and people hung out of upstairs windows riveted it seemed, as if they felt the energy too. I wonder if it made them think about the animals they are eating in a new way. I hope so.
At one point we all stopped in the centre of town and the person with the loudspeaker talked about the reality of the violence and suffering behind people’s food choices. You’ll be glad to know that she spoke out for the mother cows who carry their baby’s in their womb for 9 months only to have them taken away and shot at a day old or sent to live in a veal crate alone, so people can drink their babies milk. She asked the important question. ‘How can this be right?’ Outside fast food restaurants we stopped and chanted even louder and the crowds of activists gathered in and held up their banners and packards to the window so that those inside could see images of the suffering behind their food choices. As we chanted, ‘Meat is murder! Stop the slaughter!’
Many people in those restaurants and along the way looked puzzled, and I’m sure many of them have never considered their food choices. All day I noticed children around me on the journey to and from the March, eating chocolate bars or wanting burgers. I wanted to say to the people around me on the train, I wanted to stop the life show for a moment and say ‘please, listen, you just don’t know, let me tell you the suffering you cause with what you see as innocent choices.’ But what I realised as I fantasised doing this, is that there has to be a right setting to offer this information to people, a connection made with them first. Otherwise we are just more noise, more craziness in the world to filter out. People have enough of that already.
Though we advocates feel such passion, which arises from the deep pain of empathy for the animal’s living hell, we must first recognise the power of social conditioning over people’s minds. I must recognise that. Its easy to get angry with people, that’s the first stage, but the next is, to really wonder how to get through that social conditioning to reach them. People are so desensitised, its like they’ve been conditioned to be insane. How, could we ever have thought it is ok to wear someone else’s skin? Ok historically maybe we needed to for warmth. But at what point did we start doing it for fashion, considering nothing of the living beings who died for us? At what point did stealing the babies, the milk, the flesh, the lives of animals become something we felt nothing about and do gratuitously for pleasure?
It kind of doesn’t matter how or why. The point is, to be living this unmindfully, this violently and carelessly, when now, we know, we never have to take the life of another living being for any reason, is insanity…. the insanity of ‘normal’.
It has far reaching consequences in our lives apart from the suffering we inflict on animals too. The very using of other living beings this way, makes us users in general. The superficial unmindful level we live at, in order to be coldly violent at mealtimes, leaves us in meaningless world where we are self-oriented and superficial, living in ways that are destroying all of nature.
On the train journey there, I was surrounded by young people on their way to a music festival. The chatter of ‘I’, the gossip of other people’s mundane life story was thick in the air. I remember being just like that, and yet I see now, that it could have been so different. I could have grown up say in a vegan community, where my whole sense of ‘I’ was brought up to be a responsible conscious sensitive caring part of a whole. My life could have been less selfish and more meaningful, only my social conditioning prevented it.
We don’t have time left for this to continue. Somehow, though its as hard as trying to turn the world backwards, or see through an invisible matrix, this insidious ‘normal’ which has a hold over everyone’s consciousness….somehow we have to learn to care, and to speak out to everyone and teach our children to make their every moment’s intention to do no harm wherever possible.
I believe we can do it, I just hope we do it in time.
Imagine what vegan Christmas would be like, in a vegan world.
We would have new songs and new stories we’d tell our children, of the time when vegan consciousness was born on Earth. We could still even call it Christmas, because didn’t Jesus say one day the Christ consciousness will dawn on Earth in all people? Isn’t Christ consciousness love gentleness and kindness?
In a vegan world then Christmas could be the celebration of the Christ consciousness being born in all of humanity, and the end of an era of extreme violence on Earth.
We could tell stories about how we suddenly realised that all bad things which had happened, wars, slavery, the abuse of one another, began when we started to use other animals as resources and kill them for pleasure, that this spiritually blinded us and cut out our hearts eye, disconnected us from our conscience.
The story would go that…seeing this we felt deeply sorry, and we stopped hurting the animals and began to love them again. As we did this our own hearts were healed.
There would be animal sanctuaries everywhere, as our central ritual and focus of life would not be consuming and using, but caring for animals and nature. So Christmas time could be a time of getting together with the animals in the sanctuaries and we would show them special acts of kindness and bring them festive treats, as a way of saying sorry for the terrible things we did to their ancestors in the past.
Christmas 3012 we could be teaching our children a story of how once upon a time around a thousand years ago we began to see ourselves as guardians of this earth and all our fellow creatures. How beginning to live this way made us happy finally because we stopped living for our own pleasure at the expense of others and began living with consideration and gentleness towards others.
Our Christmas ritual gatherings in the future could be not so much about getting together to consume, as getting together to celebrate and share with one another what we’d done that year for the good of all, which had best expressed our innate talent and abilities.
All that using our abilities to create wealth or impress, seeking for self not caring or even knowing who we harmed but living alone in our separate families tucking into the flesh of others who’d been abused and killed so cruelly, not caring that us doing that was polluting and destroying the Earth, and a billion people starved whilst they fed their grain to our cattle.
All that, would be a long ago distant nightmare which the vegan movement had brought to an end.
We would have new songs and new stories we’d tell our children, of the time when vegan consciousness was born on Earth. We could still even call it Christmas, because didn’t Jesus say one day the Christ consciousness will dawn on Earth in all people? Isn’t Christ consciousness love gentleness and kindness?
In a vegan world then Christmas could be the celebration of the Christ consciousness being born in all of humanity, and the end of an era of extreme violence on Earth.
We could tell stories about how we suddenly realised that all bad things which had happened, wars, slavery, the abuse of one another, began when we started to use other animals as resources and kill them for pleasure, that this spiritually blinded us and cut out our hearts eye, disconnected us from our conscience.
The story would go that…seeing this we felt deeply sorry, and we stopped hurting the animals and began to love them again. As we did this our own hearts were healed.
There would be animal sanctuaries everywhere, as our central ritual and focus of life would not be consuming and using, but caring for animals and nature. So Christmas time could be a time of getting together with the animals in the sanctuaries and we would show them special acts of kindness and bring them festive treats, as a way of saying sorry for the terrible things we did to their ancestors in the past.
Christmas 3012 we could be teaching our children a story of how once upon a time around a thousand years ago we began to see ourselves as guardians of this earth and all our fellow creatures. How beginning to live this way made us happy finally because we stopped living for our own pleasure at the expense of others and began living with consideration and gentleness towards others.
Our Christmas ritual gatherings in the future could be not so much about getting together to consume, as getting together to celebrate and share with one another what we’d done that year for the good of all, which had best expressed our innate talent and abilities.
All that using our abilities to create wealth or impress, seeking for self not caring or even knowing who we harmed but living alone in our separate families tucking into the flesh of others who’d been abused and killed so cruelly, not caring that us doing that was polluting and destroying the Earth, and a billion people starved whilst they fed their grain to our cattle.
All that, would be a long ago distant nightmare which the vegan movement had brought to an end.
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