Dogma's Role In Healthy Eating And Spirituality
October 22, 2009 by Akemi
Don’t be like a religious fundamentalist with your diet. Always consult your current body, not the dogma. — my recent tweet
I’ve devoted three posts exploring the best way to eat for our physical and spiritual health:
Meat Eaters vs Vegetarians In Spirituality
Eat For Your Health And Spirituality
Detox Your Body And Mind
In this post, I want to sum up the discussion. We are still talking about foods, but the point is our relationship with foods, or the way we choose to eat. And the way we choose to live in general, including our spiritual journey. (Photo credit)
The objective of any spiritual and religious paths
First, let me explain why I’m so passionate about healthy eating because some of you may be wondering, “Hey, I thought Yes to Me was a spirituality blog. . .”
Well, there are only two objectives in any spiritual and religious paths:
- To establish direct contact and communication with divinity (whatever name you use for that divinity)
- To realize that divinity is really within oneself.
All other objectives such as the search of the meaning of life, one’s own purpose in life, or the relief from pain in life (the biggest being the loss of the loved ones and fear of one’s own death) naturally follow when you achieve Objective #1. And Objective #1 leads to Objective #2.
Now do you think physical health would help establishing communication with God? Surely. Not that a sick person cannot communicate with God. In some cases, health crisis may even promote spiritual awakening. But if you want sustainable relationship with God, better health is certainly desirable. Trying to communicate with divinity while you are feeling so distracted with pain, your mind is cloudy and cluttered, full of fear, anxiety, anger, and resentment is like trying to tune in to the radio signal with an old cranker radio. You may be able to (and won’t you be impressed when it happens!), but it’s hard.
So it really pays to take good care of ourselves.
And as we get experienced with this divine communication, we realize everything is within us. God ceases to be some kind of third party, or even the second person. You start to remember you are God incarnated in the physical body.
Gee, don’t you want your body to show the glory of God as it is?
However, it’s possible we get sidetracked with the physicality and become materialistic. As we nurture our physical body, we also want to remember physicality is only one side of the coin, that we are a spiritual being in physical body.
I’m not eating healthy (and exercising and doing other healthy habits) just to be at my optimal weight (whatever that may be).
I’m not eating healthy just to avoid health problems.
I’m pursuing my best physical health for my whole being, including spirituality.
The role of dogma
When our spirituality is underdeveloped, it helps us to have a clear guideline of what to do and what not. This is the role of religions and their dogmas. For example, many religions recommend meditation and other similar practices of quiet time. They even call meetings at their religious houses to do this meditation and reflection so that people won’t miss it. Without these teachings, many of us would just miss it due to our everyday busy-ness.
Our spirituality, however, has grown to the point that we don’t need strict guidelines any longer. Each one of us can have direct contact with God and get advice from our spirit guides.
Certain religions still help many people. And even when your spirituality is well developed, if you find the guidelines work well with you, there is no reason you need to abandon them. So if your religion works for you, good for you.
But if it doesn’t, don’t bend over for it. Rather than following the dogma, consult your own inner guides. Develop your own spiritual way.
Likewise, if a certain way of eating — raw, vegetarian, vegan, Ayurveda , etc. — works for you, great. But if it doesn’t, don’t bend and twist yourself to fit into the dogma. Consult with your own body.
You are in the flow
Energy flows, so you are in a constant flow of changes. What worked for you three months ago may not work for you today. Change of the seasons and other aspects of your lifestyle and health can all affect your best way to eat. If you travel, the location affects you, too.
So you want to stay flexible, and let me repeat: consult with your own body (and with your spirit guides if possible) about the best way to eat. Or best way of anything. Don’t get stuck in dogma and judgment.
I was pretty amazed when my spirit guides recently told me to incorporate a little bit of eggs into my diet. (Very moderately, like one boiled egg a few times a week.) I checked what Skinny Bitch had to say about eggs. (I reviewed this book in this first article about healthy eating). It spends less than one page about eggs, saying that eggs of a sick chicken has condensed toxins and therefore no good for our health. Certainly. But what about organic eggs?
The book doesn’t have any point against organic eggs, even though it points out various problems of organic meats and dairies. It says animals raised organically are slaughtered in the same slaughterhouses with other animals, which treats animals really badly. It’s killing after all. And cows are sucked up with their milk with ongoing sucking machine, like a torture. Plus, humans are the only animals that drink milk after infancy — the nutrition of dairy is no good for adults. But eggs? Yeah, it has some saturated fat, so if weight and cholesterol are health problems for you, you may want to be careful. I don’t see any logical problem in eating good organic eggs of healthy hens, however. Still, the authors of Skinny Bitch accuse eating any animal-based foods and recommend vegan diet.
Dogma. It can guide you or bind you.
Conclusion
So use dogma as a guideline to get started in healthy eating, or anything. But don’t get trapped in dogma. Nor in anti-dogma, which is just another dogma. As you grow in experiences, learn to rely on your inner guides. Get out of the duality value system.
By the way, after writing this post, but before posting it, Lisa the mommy mystic posted an interesting article about dogma and anti-dogma dogma. She draws from her experience in parenting, so especially for the moms among you, I highly recommend checking out her post.
Do you have any questions about optimal diet? About dogma or anti-dogma? Please let me know in the comment. Thank you.
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On dogma and anti-dogma, I suppose we can sum it to say that stuff like spirituality or meditation or practice or knowledge or effort is necessary to see that it is not. Different things work of different people–in the end, Awareness is unoccupied.
On maintaining a healthful weight, I am writing a book about losing weight based on giving up control. Much of the problems in our bodies, including weight gain, has to do with limiting beliefs.
Great article, thanks.
Kaushik´s last blog ..Innocence…
Thanks for the shout out! Interesting we were on the same wave length. I love the way you connect spirituality and the body here, because I do think too often spirituality is presented as a way to transcend or escape the body. But it is all just different waves on the spectrum right? Physical, emotional, mental, spiritual – it’s all energy, it’s all us. I made the mistake of ignoring care of my body at one point in the past, and it brought everything downhill, so now I do try and really pay attention. And Iappreciate your thoughts in this series, and it has made me rethink some things. As you say, deal with the body you have now.
Lisa (mommymystic)´s last blog ..The Anti-Dogma Dogma, in Parenting and Spirituality
Kaushik,
I read Sondra Ray’s “The Only Diet There Is”. It talks about things like your are saying, that foods have power only so much that we give them.
Good luck with the book!
Lisa,
Right, and if someone is using spirituality as a way to escape the physical, then the question is: Why? What is so wrong about the physical body and physical life? The disdain surely affects other aspects of our lives, including the spiritual life.
And yet, I do know it’s so hard for us to really embrace our physicality.
Ah yes, dogma and anti-dogma dogma. Two sides of the same coin.
What you say is good. Someone with no clue about healthy nutrition needs somewhere to start and so they probably need to look to some sources of guidance originally. The same with someone looking to begin on the path of spiritual practice. They go to someone considered by others to be an expert of sorts and they tell them to do this or that. They do it and stuff happens. It’s a start but doesn’t need to be the whole story.
On the pathless path to the unconditioned it seems counterproductive to become conditioned. Unfortunately the things we do early on tend to found treasured beliefs that end up dictating which way the path must go. And then we try and dictate which way other people’s paths must go. What a mess. Right and wrong is in the ocean of our own mind. As is physical and spiritual.
I feel that if we can’t first be a physical human animal it is unlikely we can ever become something higher. I could say more but its just, like, my opinion
Stephen
Stephen´s last blog ..Why Eating Less and Exercising More is Not the Answer for Fat Loss
Stephen,
I agree how essential our physical bodies are. We have the bodies for a very good reason. We didn’t want to stay as spirits – we chose to incarnate.
If you check Lisa’s post that I linked to, you’ll find basically what you are saying how our ego starts to dictate the situation and make a mess. (We are on the same page– how wonderful)
I will check that post out.
On the importance of the physical body I don’t think it could be said clearer:
“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha
Stephen´s last blog ..The Balanced Existence Store is Open!
I’ve noticed that most thoughts about diet are about what we shouldn’t eat. Is it better to focus on what we should eat, like LOA for food?
Hunter Nuttall´s last blog ..10 Questions And Answers On Ambidexterity
Stephen,
Great quote! Thank you for sharing.
Hunter,
Absolutely. We are best guided when we think in positive terms, like what we want to eat. The only cautionary note is that, sometimes, our addiction dictates what to eat, not our awareness. In such cases, we want to stay away from the target of our addiction and detox ourselves.
Good points Akemi in this post.
I can totally see how joining a certain lifestyle can lock one into a certain way of being. And I am sure we all know people who swear by things being one way and that is it.
This is why even though I use the label “vegan” – I am sure some vegans would disapprove of me having honey sometimes per se.
Ultimately today, I know what works for me and why I made the decisions I did. For me, like for you, it goes way past healthy eating and the environment. While those two are very important to me, ultimately the spiritual connection between my body and soul was the deciding factor in many of my decisions – I wanted to incorporate the purity of our Earth into my body as much as possible. It is known for example that a raw apple has a higher vibrating frequency than an apple pie.
As far as you and the eggs, if you can find a local farm where the chickens walk around freely and lay eggs as they choose, I personally don’t see anything “wrong” with that. The farm I used to go to last year was awesome like that, but as winter came, the chickens naturally stopped laying eggs, I stopped eating them and never found a need to go back next spring. But who knows what the future may bring.
Hmmm… I wonder what my spirit guides would be saying to me. I really, really want to connect with them better, and because it is a loving intention within me, I know I will. It is now only a matter of time. So far I love the feelings I get from them
Evita´s last blog ..Taking Bold Steps to Live Fully
Hi Evita,
Yeah, labels of any kind works only so much. You are pretty much vegan, but the pure vegan make raise their eyebrows when they find out you are licking honey. They don’t understand how much you love the bees. Or how about leather shoes, etc? I guess real vegan wouldn’t wear them. . .
When I drive out of town, I see lots of cows and sheep freely roaming in the meadow. I haven’t noticed chickens because I’m on freeway, but I guess there are lots of happy hens, too. I’m not sure how long or how much eggs I’d eat, but for now, that choice works for me.
[...] is different from one person to another, and it changes within the same person. This is why dogmatic approaches such as “We must never eat any animal products.” fails. Yes, eating plant-based diet is [...]
Het Evita and Akemi,
About the labeling thing, instead of “vegan” you could say, I eat only plant derived food. I don’t think saying “I’m vegan” saves time though. Because people will ask you to explain what you mean anyway. That goes for any label really. It’s a good thing. I don’t I want to connect with the person directly, not the label they use to describe themselves (and others)?