The World Peace Diet: Eating For Spiritual Health And Social Harmony

218 / the world peace diet
more common in our culture, especially among the millions of us who
consider ourselves deeply committed to spiritual growth, social justice,
world peace, religious freedom, and raising consciousness? Taking
responsibility for the violence we are causing others and ourselves
through our actions, words, and thoughts is never as easy as blaming
others for the violence in our world. Judging by the generally small numbers
who have actually gone vegan in our culture, it appears that this
commitment requires a certain breakthrough that has been generally elusive
because of the mentality of domination and exclusion we’ve all been
steeped in since birth. There is something about veganism that is not
easy, but the difficulty is not inherent in veganism, but in our culture.
Of itself, veganism is not a panacea, but it effectively removes a
basic hindrance to our happiness, freedom, and unfoldment. As a living
and ongoing expression of nonviolence, it is an enormously powerful
agent of transformation in our individual lives, especially since our culture
opposes it so vehemently. Living a consequent vegan life naturally
encourages us to awaken from the consensus trance that brings unquestioning
conformity and allows cruelty and slavery to continue. Refusing
to see animals as commodities, we are able to see through countless
other pretenses. And, as transformative as this is for an individual to
experience, it would be infinitely more transformative for our culture to
do so, and to evolve beyond the obsolete orientation that sees animals
as mere food commodities.
It is like being in a boat tied to a dock with a length of rope. As we
take off to cross to the other shore, we find that we make satisfying
progress for a while, until the rope runs out. After that, we continue
running the engine, but we can no longer make any real progress,
though we do create a lot of smoke, waves, and commotion, and move
perhaps from side to side or in circles. Until we realize that there’s a rope
holding us back and untie it, we’ll be unable to make significant
progress in our quest for the other shore. The boat of course represents
our life, the other shore the fulfillment of our spiritual, creative, and
intellectual potential, and the rope our culturally induced practice of
buying, abusing, killing, and eating animals. When we untie the rope,
we are free to go out across the waters and we may eventually reach