Eating your Way to Enlightenment

On the journey to spiritual enlightenment, your steps bring you closer to
the universal truths. For many, the path includes meditation, yoga,
lifestyle simplification, experiencing the outer world in a more balanced
way, and growing more aware of your inner self. As awareness heightens, your
relationship with food will come into focus. And vice versa. As you change
your relationship with food, your awareness amplifies.
Many of the spiritual teachings from around the world recognize this
connection, and nutrition often plays a key role. For example, Rabbi Chaim
Ben Yitzchok (1749-1821), founder of the Jewish yeshiva system, which is
used to teach the religious texts the Torah, Mishnah and Talmud, wrote,
"Body and soul are united in the act of eating." He went on to say, "The
food we eat is actually a combination of both a physical and a spiritual
entity." In the act of consuming food, "the body is nourished by the
physical aspects, or nutrients, contained in the foods we eat; the soul is
nourished by the spiritual power-or sparks of holiness-which enlivens the
physical substance of all matter, including food." In ancient India those
sparks of holiness are known as prana, the universal life-force energy found
in all living things. Prana is the most basic nutrient for the body, and
foods with high amounts of prana give you more vital energy when you consume
them. These guidelines can assist you in eating your way to enlightenment.

Practice a plant-based diet
A plant-based diet is considered to be one of the main pillars of purifying
the mind and body, as well as a means of increasing the prana within.
Plants contain the highest amount of prana because they are closest to the
primary prana sources: sun, air and earth.

Therefore, a diet consisting of fruits, vegetables and grains provides the
greatest prana. Meat and animal products have lower amounts because the
energy from the sources of prana is secondary.

Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950), a sage of India, suggested that the most
important aid to meditation is a pure vegetarian diet. He quoted the ancient
Chandogya Upanishad, a Hindu scripture: "When food is pure, the mind is
pure; when the mind is pure, concentration is steady; when concentration is
achieved, one can loosen all the knots of the heart that bind us."

Consume local, organic food
Kirlian photography is believed to capture the image of an object's
lifeforce energy on film. Organic foods display a halo of emanating energy
that appears as a brighter, more intense and moving luminescence. When
compared to food grown with chemical fertilizers and pesticides, this
technology reveals that organic food has much more energy.

Fertilizers and pesticides, designed to enhance plant growth, actually
pollute the food and decrease the prana energy within it. Eating organically
allows you to steer clear of genetically modified foods, whose altered genes
no longer contain nature's divine blueprints. The better choice is heirloom
and other fruit and vegetable varieties found at your local farm market.
Locally-grown foods are fresher, and because they are properly ripened, they
again ensure a better energy source for your body.
Eat more "living" foods

"Living" foods, rich in prana, bring their vital essence into the body and
mind, helping to expand consciousness.
Living foods include raw and uncooked vegetables, fruits and grains,
naturally fermented foods or foods dehydrated below 118°F.

Freshly prepared raw fruits and vegetables with a high water content are
ideal sources of prana. High water content is important because, as first
demonstrated in images captured by Masaru Emoto, water can carry energy
vibrations of love and consciousness. As food is cooked, water diminishes,
thus decreasing the prana within the food. Foods degenerated through heavy
processing with chemicals and additives are robbed of nearly all their
prana.

Add love
Recipes sometimes list "love" as a secret ingredient-and truly it is! Adding
that extra "dash" of love in a meal prepared for family and friends adds
more essential prana. Home-cooked meals soothe and nourish the soul. In the
movie How to Cook Your Life, Zen master Edward Espe Brown described how
joyfulness, kindness and big-heartedness can be infused into food as it is
prepared.
Nourishing yourself spiritually does not come out of a package, it comes
from your heart.

Give thanks & eat consciously
Many cultures practice sacred rituals to honor that which has given its life
to provide sustenance. Expressing thanks for food was humankind's first act
of worship, honoring it as a gift of life from "above," and to acknowledge
the sacred gift of food. Saying grace, bringing focused attention and
practicing conscious eating- reveling in the smells, colors, tastes and
textures of the food- leads to a higher state of consciousness and helps
prepare your body to better assimilate the food.

Conclusion
Your body knows best. It is good to "check in" with it as you develop new
rituals. Be aware of how your body is feeling, and take note of its
responses by examining your energy levels and how your body feels. Eating
your way to enlightenment can be easy. Step one can be as simple as
consciously preparing one meal per week or incorporating raw foods into your
weekly menu.

In Conscious Eating, author Gabriel Cousins, MD, wrote, "Our food choices
reflect our ongoing harmony with ourselves, the world, all of creation and
the Divine." While you cannot eat your way to divinity, you can use food as
part of your foundation for awakening your awareness to universal
consciousness.

Transforming to a higher consciousness becomes much easier when you provide
your body with high-quality whole foods beaming with prana.

Ann Marie Bergman
am@crucialinsight.com

Shared with Love and Light, Rosalie xo