Diet for spiritual growth

Feasting, fasting, and faith--three components of religious and spiritual tradition since humankind recognized the existence of forces greather than they, and surmised that some form of ritual worship or prayer might be heard by the gods.

Food is one of the greatest issues in today's culture; be it weight-loss diets based on calories, fats, or carbohydrates, an influx of genetically altered foods, or a world-wide focus on famine relief, questions about the supply of nourishment for the human race fill the media.

The topic takes on a different slant in a modern world of technology, however; no longer are humans intimately associated with the earth and the natural process of growing through the seasons. Today's concerned consumer needs to deliberately focused on what they are buying to eat, where it comes from, how it was grown, and how their own body transforms it into energy.

Recognizing that our bodies, mind and spirits are undeniably interconnected leads to the understanding that what we do to one aspect of our greater selves will impact the others. A logical next step is to treat our bodies, including our diet, in a way that will affect the way we think and support our spiritual growth.

•Ancient Ayervedic principles from India suggest that certain kinds of foods nourish different emotions or insights.

Some vedic food guidelines:

--Food should be as fresh as possible, and should make your mouth water.

-- Food that is more than 72 hours old supports negative energy blocks and should be avoided.

--Vegetarianism is good, but not everyone is spiritually evolved enough to embrace it.

--These foods support mental clarity:

-Yogurt

-Sugar

-Walnuts

-Green Vegetables

-Fruits(sweet)

-Rice (Basmati)

-Coconut

--These foods nourish the body, but are too heavy to be good for spirituality:

-Milk

-Proteins

-Wheat, Corn, Barley etc.

-Vegetables which grow under the earth

-Lentils

-Spices

-Fruits (citric)

• A study of Chakra power in the Eastern philosophy uncovers dietary suggestions to enhance each of the seven major energy portals.

Recommendations include putting a focus where it's needed but maintaining an overall balance, for instance not letting oneself be spacey and ungrounded while fasting to become more spiritual.

--First chakra, for grounding and stability: Protein, red foods

--Second, for creativity, fluidity, change: Liquids, orange food

--Third, for strength, integrity, humor: Carbohydrates, yellow food

--Fourth, for breath and unconditional love: Vegetables, fresh greens

--Five, for clear communication: Fruits, especially blue

--Six, for mental clarity: Coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar (mood altering)

--Seven, for pure spirituality: None, fasting

• Vegetarians follow a meat-free diet either for their own well-being or out of respect for other creatures on the planet, or both. Not every vegetarian consciously chooses the lifestyle as a spiritual path, but some do, and say that the more they refuse to nourish their own bodies at the expense of another living being, the more they become more in tune with nature and natural law.

Meditation, yoga, and other practices that aim to integrate body, mind and spirit become easier, less of a struggle to Westerners who choose to avoid meat and meat products.

Heintz Grotzke, in the preface to Spiritual Food for the New Millenium, wrote:

"Food for human consumption not only needs to feed the human body, but also the human spirit. Human thought cannot comprehend the spirit if it is fed with contaminated food. It seems so logical and clear, though for the majority of people is still hidden in fog."

• Fasting, a time of abstaining from all solid foods, has held an important part in spiritual discipline from the earliest times. While it's fallen from favor over the past few decades, may religious practices have traditionally endorsed fasting as a form of physical chastisement, a way of punishing the human body for having "base emotions" and "earthly desires." This approach to fasting holds that the "body" portion of our existence is inferior and needs to be severely restricted in favor of loftier, more "spiritual" aspects.

Today, fewer people embrace the idea that in order to fully grow in Spirit, one must debase the physical body. The trend is more toward integration of body and spirit, with honor for both. Still, fasting holds an important place for those who wish to fine tune the connection between the spiritual and the physical.

After fasting, a person's mind is more clear, they say, and the extra-sensory perception more keen when the digestive system is not drawing so heavily on the energy supply.

Also, an intelligent faster becomes more conscious of how they are using food and what they are putting into their bodies after the fast ends. They don't want to lose the lean and light feeling that comes with minimal or no food, and they've worked very hard to purify their inner workings -- they'd like to stay as nutritionally clean as possible. Also, many of them profess a stronger awareness of the value of whole, fresh foods and the way that all life on the planet is inter-dependent.

• Feasting together as a part of community nurtures the ties that humans need to feel connected and integrated socially. The church social or potluck supper, the coffee hour after Sunday services, a wake or a funeral dinner also bring energy to spiritual growth. The gathering of a like-minded community, centered around the sharing of food, brings people together in a way that few other things can.

Kahlil Gabran's Prophet spoke these words about eating as spiritual nourishment:

Would that you could live on the fragrance of the earth,

and like an air plant be sustained by the light.

But since you must kill to eat, and rob the

newly born of its mother's milk to quench

your thirst, let it then be an act of worship.