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

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cultivate intuition, recognizing that through compassion inspired by
intuitive revelation we develop spiritually and attain wisdom, inner
peace, and freedom.
The spiritual traditions also fundamentally agree that intuition is
fostered by a twofold discipline. One aspect is consciously cultivating
compassion as the primary motivation in our outer lives and living this
as ethical conduct. The other is practicing mindfulness, awareness, and
silent receptivity in our inner lives. The two are seen to reinforce each
other and lead to spiritual wisdom.
The first universal aspect of spiritual cultivation is compassion and
its reflection—ethical behavior. Religions are fundamentally concerned
with the ethics of human conduct. This is because they are repositories
of the spiritual impulse, which at its core connects us not only with the
infinite mystery that is our source, but also with all the apparently other
manifestations of this source, our “neighbors”—the human family and
all living beings. Authentic spiritual teachings must necessarily teach an
ethics of loving-kindness, because this reflects our interconnectedness
and the truth that what we give out comes back to us. It leads to the
harmony in relationships that is necessary not just for social progress,
but also for our individual inner peace and spiritual progress.
Compassion and ethical conduct are essential to the second universal
aspect of spiritual cultivation, inner silence and mindfulness. We
won’t be able to approach the state of relaxed, awake, and fully aware
receptivity that authentic living depends upon if we are armoring ourselves
due to acting in ways that are harmful to others. If we abuse others,
and then sit quietly to reflect, meditate, pray, become open, or deepen
our experience of inner serenity, we will find our mind invariably disturbed
and plagued with relentless self-oriented thinking. This inner agitation,
the price we pay for harming others, impedes our unfolding intuition,
which is born from inner stillness and compassion.
We can see that in general, the more a culture oppresses animals, the
greater its inner agitation and numbness, and the more extroverted and
dominating it tends to be. This is related to the scarcity of meditation in
Western cultures, where people are uncomfortable with sitting still.
Quiet, open contemplation would allow the repressed guilt and violence