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

272 / the world peace diet
tually all of us. We will collectively donate millions of dollars, for example,
to help just one animal if we know the animal’s story and our intelligence
and compassion have been awakened by our connecting with
this animal. The more we connect, the more we understand and the
more we love, and this love propels us not only to leave home, questioning
our culture’s attitude of domination and exclusion, but also to
return home, speaking on behalf of those who are vulnerable.
The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. When we lift the
veil and see the suffering our food habits cause, when we connect with
the reality of the defenseless beings who suffer so terribly because of our
food choices, our indifference dissolves and compassion—its opposite—
arises, urging us to act on behalf of those who are suffering. A primary
danger is that we might leave home but not return; that is, we could
awaken to the harmfulness inherent in our culture’s commodification of
living beings but fail to bring this awakening to our culture by becoming
a voice for these beings. If our understanding isn’t articulated in
ways that are meaningful for us, it can become imprisoned within us
and turn sour, becoming cynicism, anger, despair, and disease. This
doesn’t serve us or anyone else.
We all have unique gifts we can bring to the most urgent task we
face at this point in our human evolution: transforming our inherited
dominator mentality by liberating those we have enslaved for food. The
crucial elements are adopting a vegan lifestyle, educating ourselves, cultivating
our spiritual potential, and plugging in to help educate others.
The spiritual revolution needs all of us, whatever our religious beliefs,
ethnicity, class, or other variables may be. Every one of us has a piece of
the puzzle to contribute, and our overall success depends on each of us
discovering our talents and passion and persistently contributing them.
Victims, Perpetrators, and Bystanders
As we go vegan and begin to live much more lightly on the earth, we
may also start to realize how powerfully we’re affected by the omnivorous
eating habits of the vast majority of our fellow citizens. Our freedom
as omnivores to eat almost any non-human being we’d like limits
others’ freedom in many ways. For example, we find rivers and lakes