The more forcefully we ignore something, the more power it
has over us and the more strongly it influences us. Taking a clear look at the
foods produced by modern methods and what we have been conditioned to accept,
we find misery, cruelty and exploitation. Therefore, we avoid looking deeply at
our food, if of animal origin, and continue to float in that big river in Egypt
(da Nile).
This practice of avoidance and denial, applied to eating,
carries over automatically into our entire private and public life. We know,
deep down, that we cannot look deeply anywhere. If we do, we will have to look
deeply into the enormous suffering our food choices directly cause.
So, we learn to stay shallow and to be willingly blind to
the connections we see. Otherwise, our remorse and guilt would be too painful
to bear. We, therefore choose to ignore and remain ignorant and inattentive to
the pain and suffering our eating causes.
Being unwilling and unable to see, confront, and take
responsibility for the hidden ocean of horror we condone to those who are
sentient and vulnerable as we are, we remain hardened and blind by choice. We
choose to be blind when we shop for, prepare, and eat the flesh of other
creatures. Becoming insensitive to the pain that we cause daily to defenseless
animals, we also become insensitive to the beauty of the creation that we
oppress and disconnect ourselves from at every meal.
The desensitizing of millions of children and adults, on the
massive scale that consuming millions of tortured animals daily requires, sows
countless seeds of human violence, war, poverty and despair. These outcomes are
unavoidable, for we can never reap peace, joy and freedom for ourselves while
sowing seeds of harming and enslaving others.
We may speak of love, kindness, freedom and a more gentle
world, yet it is our actions, especially those that are habitually practiced,
that determine what future outcomes we and others will experience. The cycles
of violence that have terrorized people, both historically and today, are
rooted in the violence of our daily meals. Though animals cannot retaliate like
other people can, our violence toward them retaliates against us in the form of
heart disease, cancer, arthritis, constipation and more.
By confining and killing animals for food, we have brought
violence into our bodies and minds. Our meals require us to eat like predators
and thus see ourselves as such. We cultivate and justify predatory behaviors
and institutions that are the antithesis of the inclusiveness and kindness that
accompany true spiritual growth.
Because cruelty is inescapable in confining, mutilating, and
slaughtering animals for food, we have been forced from childhood to be
distracted and inattentive perpetrators of cruelty. As infants, we have no idea
what “vealâ€, “turkeyâ€, “eggâ€, “fish†or “beef†actually are, or where they come
from. We don’t know what horror is visited upon helpless creatures in order to
create the easily available concoctions being spooned into our little teething
mouths and developing consciousnesses.
In time, we accept this indoctrination of denial and cruelty
as normal and our meals become rituals of distraction and repressed sensitivity
and guilt. The price we pay for this is the dulling of our innate intelligence
and compassion.
Aloha!
Sources:
www.routledge.com
www.psychologytoday.com
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