Art, Meaning, Green Living & Health

Recently a good friend and I have been dialoguing by email on the subject of diet. Formerly a vegetarian, she began eating meat again, feeling that it was best for her health. To her credit, she tries to obtain it from humane, local and grass fed sources. My view was and is that we need to really listen to the science that shows how we can thrive on plant-based diets and that the sustainability of the Earth itself really depends upon that. Not to mention the immense suffering factory farming causes to animals, even as it uses the minimal amount of resources.

My friend's shift to eating meat turns out to be a common story among once-vegetarian friends,  promoted by a series of high-protein diet fads in the past two decades (Atkins, Paleo, Zone, Body Type O, etc.) , controverting even the current healthy diet recommendations of the WHO and the USDA, primarily based on plant foods.

It has been a fruitful discussion. Most of all, it has become apparent that in  exploring this or any issue of importance, the starting place, and the ground we walk upon, is the state of mind in which discussion occurs.

If we proceed from egoic consciousness, full of images of self and other, our past conclusions and assumptions and fixed ideas, we will not see anything new. Nor can we truly draw upon a greater intelligence that binds together the interests of all living things and the Earth as a whole.

The challenge of humanity, as well as its blessing, seem to be our capacity for thought, memory and beliefs. While it has brought us a long way materially and technologically, it has also created huge, increasingly complex social and environmental problems.

Why is that?  

By its very nature, thought divides, separates, contrasts and compares:  my beliefs vs. yours, humanity vs. nature, good vs. bad, the interests of profit but not of the people, and so on.  We are each deeply conditioned to operate and think as though we were  separate, limited individuals, struggling to survive, to be right, to achieve, to think well of ourselves and our family/tribe/group of identity. 

This can be seen as a collective stream of consciousness we all share, even as we imagine ourselves to be separate entities. Once this consciousness was more tribal and more connected with Nature, the "Ancient Mind "described in the lovely new book, The Holy Universe: A New Story of Creation for the Heart, Soul, and Spirit," by David Christopher.   Now our human consciousness is almost entirely absorbed in the "Modern Mind," a  secular/technological/profit-based/dominating way of thinking that is bringing us to brink of environmental disaster, given our numbers.

What is most needed now, as we face any problem, is a comprehensive, whole system consciousness, what Christopher calls the  "Planetary Mind." Such a state seeks the highest good of all. It is a deeper intelligence behind all life and it wants to awaken in each of us, drawing upon yet transcending all the knowledge we have accumulated. 

To come together to solve our individual and collective challenges,  That includes all our prides, our accomplishments, our conclusions, our ideas that we know and the other does not, and even the whole construction of the me and the you, the us and the them. This takes being comfortable, daily, with not knowing. It takes a humility that is not a self image, but a genuine realization that the mind, as we know it,  is very limited and divisive.

Then, from a deeper well of stillness and the intelligence of Life itself, we can seek and along the way find solutions that are for the highest good of all, whether it's for our bodies, our families, our businesses, our nations or our planet.  

Wonderfully, the best solution for a given problem often helps to solve many other issues. 

For instance, learning how to eat without meat, dairy or eggs has widespread benefits, starting with your own  health (see videos by Drs. John McDougall, Dean Ornish and others), a sustainable and satisfying diet that with little effort can make you lean, fit and long lived.

But in addition to this, for every day you eat a plant based diet you save:

• 1100 gallons of fresh water

• 45 pounds of grain

• 30 square feet of pristine rainforest (=an acre a year)

• 20 pounds of C02

• a lifetime of suffering of one animal life  (98% of them in stressful and cruel factory farms shuttered away from our view).

Amazing, huh? I am so excited about the vegan diet lately precisely because it is one of those issues that works at so many levels on so many environmental and spiritual problems, offering us a beautiful way to live our values of integrity, compassion and kindness. It feels good, it tastes good, and it's more healthful. And it's downright joyful and enlightening to know that it accomplishes all of that.

So, for every problem we encounter, let us put aside our differences and our past conclusions and habits. Let us approach our issues with a beginner's mind that is open and caring. Then we will find the answers that work for all.

For more on this, watch the Environmental Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet and order or download the groundbreaking movie, Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret.