20-year vegetarian

I posted this entry on my personal website but I thought I would also post it here because I wrote it to share with you. (Since you asked, here is the answer!)

In July of 2008 I will have been a vegetarian for 20 years.

As I come to this milestone anniversary, I consider my original intentions and relay some of my experience. In many ways I am not the same person I was 20 years ago, yet I have remained vegetarian all the while. I am constantly asked why I am vegetarian so I thought I would write it down.

Becoming a vegetarian was not due to a concise decision to stop eating meat as much as it was a natural step on my path toward enlightenment. How could the product of a passing spiritual phase have withstood 20 years living in a carnivorous society?

I was raised in a wholesome environment that offered regular exposure to country living, including hunting and farm-raising various animals for food. I grew up with the experiences of shearing sheep, milking cows, collecting eggs and even the slaughter of pigs and cattle we considered our pets. I’m cool with the lifestyle yet I’ve made a distinction between the Animal and the Plant kingdom for my personal diet for twenty years.

I was born a ’spiritual’ person. I was raised following a religion and even became an ordained reverend ~ lol, no kidding! After leaving home, I diligently studied philosophy, theosophy and religion. By the time I was 20 years old, I was actively pursuing various forms of mental and physical yoga. I had moved to California and was living in the land of open-minded people and the land of fresh produce! Each day was a spiritual experience which I can remember to some degree but today I am far from the person I was back then.

My passionate studies of Chakras and the Human Energy system, including the practices of Kabbala, Raja, Hatha and Kundalini yoga, led to a expanded awareness which accepted a vibrational value to all matter, including thought. Yes, at times I had an awareness of the vibrational qualities of all things including ‘things’ such as negative thinking. I was very in touch with myself and made an effort to participate in actions which were free from negativity.

My original reason for becoming a vegetarian was to avoid the negativity involved with consuming the denser vibrations associated with eating animals. It isn’t solely the meat that is the source of the negativity. There are several heavy vibrations involved with the eating of meat, including the thought that in the final moments before slaughter adrenaline races through our soon-to-be food and we end up ingesting fear. “You are what you eat.”

The rate of nearly one million confined, genetically selected, antibiotic-stuffed chickens killed per hour seems like gross exploitation to me.

Cattle ranching a rainforest in South America potentially depriving humanity of untold cures from plant medicine as well as destroying earth’s most precious assets seems unnecessary to me.

Fast-food corporations doing whatever they can to lower standards and raise profits had just gone so far beyond my childhood experiences of gathering a supply of meat that I could no longer participate.

The reason I’ve given for the past 20 years is, I choose not to participate.
I do not eat animals nor lend my resources to the industry.

I am not evangelical about my own behavior. I don’t care what you do.
Sure I have a leather belt and many shoes made from hide. I eat eggs and drink milk, sometimes from farmers who automate and unfavorably manipulate their cows but if you think about the results of my behavior for the last twenty years, I think we can safely estimate I have not eaten:

5 duck, quail and pheasant
10 deer, elk and bison
30 cows
75 pigs, sheep and goats
500 fish
1000 chickens, geese and turkey
3000 shrimp, shellfish and crustaceans. (mMmm, lobster in butter…delicious)

When I imagine all of these animals in one place, I am rewarded with a sense of happiness which I do not consider when making my choice to continue being a vegetarian. The fact is, I have made a difference. Like I’ve said, it is a personal choice. I really don’t care what goes on around me. I have chosen not to participate for my own benefit and there is a positive benefit to the animals and the earth as a result. In this aspect I make less of a carbon footprint.

There are so many “conversations” to continue writing about being a vegetarian for 20 years but I will end this entry now with a mantra: To my honorable teacher, I give reverence ~ Om Sri Gurubhyam Namahas.

Nature is my church.