Eating meat.

Wescli Wardest wrote: This is probably going to sound odd to some people. I believe that eating meat is vitally important to the individual’s spiritual wellbeing. :ohmy: ......

But hey, that’s just my thoughts on the whole thing.

I definitely understand your point of view here...even if I don't agree with it.

I think it is more about finding where we belong in that circle of life. I don't think it is as cut and dry as many see it. I also don't see how slaughtering an animal will help me in anyway spiritually, as I understand the process all to well. That is just not the journey that I am on, but I do agree that some would truly benefit from getting an up close and personal look at what they consume, both animal and plant.

Everyone's spiritual journey is different and will change as they grow. The circle of life is something I understand, as well as the impermanence of all things. Others though would benefit from going deeper into their own place in this life and where they stand within the circle. For some it doesn't really interest them because they already know where they stand and what their part is in this circle of life (cue Lion King song)

Personally I'm more interested now in my connection with living beings, not whether I consume them.

I do not eat meat, note that I do not have any reason to so... Vegetarianism seen from an esoteric point of view, meat consumption has a negative effect on body vibrations in relation with mind connection and mental well-being. This is one of the reasons that many Hindus do not eat meat. The idea of meat altering the body vibrations is never scientifically proven, I think. Not sure if it is actually required but a lot of people these days want everything being proved somehow. :dry: So according to the European Academy of Nutritional Sciences, vegetarians have a massive health advantage, if that counts, when using a proper and balanced diet.--> X

Codex wrote: meat consumption has a negative effect on body vibrations in relation with mind comncection...]

Strange... I have been eating meat all my life and it's had nothing but a positive life affirming effect on my "body vibration" in relation to my "mind connection". :blink: :whistle:

If your body vibrates for any reason, please, please, do seek medical attention as soon as possible. If a new habit or diet you formed or are trying to form has a reinforcing effect on your body's vibration, please, immediately return to the previous diet or abandon your new habit and consult with a medical professional before taking any further measures.

Mm.. I am sorry :blush: I guess I have chosen my words not so well, I did not mean it literally. Vibrations like in frequency of sound waves, each being, each object, actually everything connected with the Force itself has its own electromagnetic /energy frequency at cellular level. This is a more spiritual approach to vegetarianism I guess. Some 'groups', if I may call it like that, have it as an requirement because of it. Others follow it because it is part of their religion, these days it is most often seen in the main stream health trends even though it has been around longer...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency

https://www.exploremeditation.com/energy-vibration/

https://www.astoundingelements.com/food-for-a-higher-consciousness.html

https://reikirays.com/18306/food-vibration/

Okay... So sounds are pressure waves. That means they are scalar functions p(x,t) of time t and no fewer than one spatial dimension x that satisfy https://mathurl.com/m96rkbw.png (someone thought it'd be a great idea to always replace http links with https links even if it breaks them). As you can see, this is a second order PDE and solutions to it will have some symmetries, and one of those symmetries will be a periodicity in time t. That means that there exists a single constant T such that for every x and every t the statement p(x,t) = p(x,t+T) is true. The frequency of the sound is then defined as f=T^-1. The description of course also fits waves in water or the waves moving along a string or the flagging of cloth. Now before I go on to summarize electromagnetic waves, for which I feel far less qualified, have we thus far been talking about the same thing? Because if not - and please, if you can find it within yourself, forgive me my incoming harshness - perhaps we should make it clear that when you use latin sounding long and pretty words the men in the labcoats say, you are doing it only to sound like there is something to the woo, not because what they talk about and what you talk about has anything in common.

I don't think there is anything wrong with eating meat personally...
I just want to minimise my consumption to 'now and again' as oppose to every meal, as some do.
(I have been vegetarian a couple of times, for a few years, stopped the last time when we had kids...(lots of reasons, won't go into here))

I simply don't agree with the factory farming approach and treating animals as lesser beings... (not to mention the environmental consequences)
I try to stick to Free Range, Outdoor Reared, Wild Game... etc
I feel happier on all levels that an animal may have lived a decent, reasonably long life before ending up on my table... and I thank them.
Some people find hunting cruel... but hunting for food has to be the most environmentally friendly way to eat meat....
I also believe that you should not be eating meat if you are not prepared to kill it...
Supermarkets detach the concept of 'animal' from 'food' ... How many people really make the association?

I feel happier on all levels that an animal may have lived a decent, reasonably long life before ending up on my table... and I thank them.

Like they had a chance to get their first kiss and see their kids graduate?

I don't know if there's any evidence Goats have the same expectations of the future as many people, whether he dies today or dies tomorrow is probably not a huge concern to him.

(I agree, broadly speaking, in humane treatment, and wild game has always seemed "fairer" to me (fairer in that insofar as it's of interest the kangaroo or deer more or less lived according to it's own whims, not fairer in that they get armoured vests and can shoot back))

Apparently square brackets make things disappear.

[(you'll never find the bodies)]

I also believe that you should not be eating meat if you are not prepared to kill it...

I'm willing to kill it.
Just not every time, I have other things I do (often because other people don't want to do them)
And if the person doing the killing for me wants to put a fence up so they're not spending half a week chasing a cow across the outback, well I suppose that's fair....and if they want to build machine that helps them get the meat processed so they don't have to spend hours hacking away with a knife...well who am I to argue?....


Is there a particular point where it becomes unacceptable? Where is the balance between "using our abilities" and, I don't know what you want to call it? "losing touch with the universe" ?

We could take schoolkids on excursions to the abattoir? or include making a cowhide rug in liberal arts degrees?

Figment wrote: I definitely understand your point of view here...even if I don't agree with it.

I think it is more about finding where we belong in that circle of life. I don't think it is as cut and dry as many see it. I also don't see how slaughtering an animal will help me in anyway spiritually, as I understand the process all to well. That is just not the journey that I am on, but I do agree that some would truly benefit from getting an up close and personal look at what they consume, both animal and plant.

Everyone's spiritual journey is different and will change as they grow. The circle of life is something I understand, as well as the impermanence of all things. Others though would benefit from going deeper into their own place in this life and where they stand within the circle. For some it doesn't really interest them because they already know where they stand and what their part is in this circle of life (cue Lion King song)

Personally I'm more interested now in my connection with living beings, not whether I consume them.

I have no issue with that. Nor should anyone else I would think. We do not all have to agree. One point of these discussions is the exchange of ideas and experiences.

Maybe I am just one of those that benefits from the experience? Let describe my life with animals a little. I love them. I have several pets that were all rescues. I have spent lots of time and money and emotional ups and downs trying to help strays, the sick, the hungry, the dying.

One of my outbuildings that I had scheduled for demoing this year, I discovered a buzzard had made a nest in it and is rearing young. So I left the building and take care not to disturb them or have them disturbed.
I spent years of my youth between a farm and a ranch, caring for animals and playing with them.
I am also a hunter. Year before last, I watched four different herds move for countless hours and never took a shot. Lots of pictures though! They are amazing creatures. I did harvest two deer and a hog this last year though.

But the point is, these are not just random animals I have never seen before or know nothing about. Most of them we have named and become familiar with, watching them grow. And when I eat things that I have watched and cared for, even plants, I feel a very deep connection and profound appreciation and gratitude for the sacrifice they made on my behalf. A meal that comes from your efforts and you know the parts of it intimately, the hands that prepare it, has a much more fulfilling experience. It doesn’t just fill my belly, but it in itself becomes a spiritual experience.

For people that have not experienced that, it is hard to explain. Like being touched during a sermon or something like that. If that makes any sense.

I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. Just giving a description that might offer a better explanation. So that it might be better understood.

I was raised a vegetarian but the reasons didn't make sense to me so I rejected it. Vegetarianism was a health fad a long time ago and that fad was adopted by my parent's religion as kind of doctrine. Over time it morphed into another one of those things religious conservatives use to feel superior. But being that we were Christians it didn't make sense to me.

Jesus ate fish. Fish = meat. Not to mention that Jesus was a Hebrew and all Israelites were required to eat the passover lamb. Lamb = meat.

That seemed like a contradiction that couldn't be undone by any church press release. Not only did Jesus eat fish but he fed it to well over 5,000 people (according to legend).

The church's doctrine concerning vegetarianism seemed to be based on a lot of assumptions. My gut instinct was that everything we eat simply needs to be balanced. I believe too much of anything is bad. The way humans are, we like to put labels on everything and say it is either good or bad. The truth is too much of anything is not good.

Then there's the ethical question. Should we kill animals for food? How do we slaughter them humanely? These questions are good to consider. Even if you're not personally doing it one should consider how the life of the animal is taken. On the other hand, I realize that we protect certain animals from the wild in order to eat them. If we weren't going to eat them we wouldn't protect them and they would most certainly be eaten by natural predators. So the idea that we would be "Saving them".... I don't think that is true at all. Many of them would never even be born because grandpa bull was taken down by a mountain lion. The only difference is that there are now less mountain lions.

And when it comes to survival of the fittest, the main animals we've selected for meat are probably artificially saved from going extinct because cows.... aren't much more than walking meat factories. These animals eat a ton of vegetation that could be consumed by other animals. They contribute 70 and 120 kg of Methane per year which is 23 times worse than C02.

And just because an animal exists in nature doesn't mean it was somehow destined to exist or has any right, as a species, to exist. That sounds mean but everything evolves for its own individual needs; which other life forms find a use for. If no use can be found then they're not contributing to the ecological society at large.

I absolutely love how the Native Americans treat life and how they honor the animals they hunt (those that still do). That, for me personally, would be an ideal way to honor the lives of animals we sacrifice for food. A mountain lion isn't exactly going to say grace before its meal and one can imagine being eaten by such a predator extremely painful. Life is something that must be lived while you have it. This goes for animals too. There are animal species that live only weeks and some that live for only days. They don't complain about that but I bet they would still run or hide from a predator the same way that we would. We're not so different.

Sometimes our ideas of being civilized are more about fulfilling the belly of our own ego, rather than a pro-nature imperative. I like to think that everything I eat, whether plant or animal, goes on living inside me; as we are all a composite of billions of tiny life forms. Every cell and every micro organism that lives inside me would be incorporated into the body of whatever consumed them. And for most of us our final predator are worms which feeds the soil, which feeds the herbivores, which feed the carnivores, and so on.

That is the great circle of life.