Our Earth and Animal Farming:
The Vital Need for Living Ahimsa

We are all faced with an opportunity. For those attuned to the new energy, a tremendous blessing to grow and evolve in harmony with the quickening of the Earth's evolution is available. Although not outwardly obvious, the power dynamic on this planet is shifting. It is truly a time for practitioners and those who know this as their Home. It is time for a healing with the Feminine to occur, and a time for all to reconnect with Mother Nature, and to live in harmony with her natural laws. With this increased energetic support there is an equally strong need to actively participate in this shift. It is no time to sit around waiting for the New Earth to arrive! We must become ever clear and awake on the inner, while recreating the destructive systems that provide an illusory support for living our everyday lives. Within our school we call this burning the candle from both ends. Becoming conscious means leaving no stone left unturned.

A quote by Mike Anderson, author, animal rights proponent, and supporter of a meat free diet, encompasses this cyclical destruction happening on the planet.

"As far as eating is concerned, humans are the most stupid animals on the planet. We kill billions of wild animals to protect the animals that we eat. We are destroying our environment to feed the animals that we eat. We spend more time, money and resources fattening up the animals that we eat, than we do feeding humans who are dying of hunger. The greatest irony is that after all the expenses of raising these animals, we eat them and they kill us slowly... and rather than recognize this madness, we torture and murder millions of other animals trying to find cures of diseases caused by eating animals in the first place."

Harold A. Mooney, professor of biological sciences at Stanford University says, “We are seeing land once farmed locally being transformed to cropland for industrialized feed production, with grasslands and tropical forests being destroyed in these land use changes, with resources feeding livestock rather than the humans who previously depended on those lands.” According to Henning Steinfeld of the FAO Livestock Environment and Development initiative, "Extensive livestock production plays a critical role in land degradation, climate change, water and biodiversity loss. For example, grazing occupies 26 percent of the Earth's terrestrial surface, and feed-crop production requires about a third of all arable land,” he said. Expansion of livestock grazing land is also a leading cause of deforestation, especially in Latin America. In the Amazon basin alone, about 70 percent of previously forested land is used as pasture, while feed crops cover a large part of the remainder.”

One does not need to search far to learn the negative effects of this unnatural system. The system creates a cascade of environmental problems that all affect the whole. It is one system and as soon as one simple thing comes out of alignment with the whole, it will eventually snowball into the remaining aspects of the Whole. For instance, cattle farming and its subsequent over-grazing of what used to be wild lands, native to a myriad of four-leggeds, not only removes a food source for the wild ones, but results in a loss of the protective plants that prevent soil erosion, which help to filter the water and hold soil together so that the contaminated water from these creatures doesn’t escape to clean water sources spreading the diseases that are inevitable to animals in confinement. The takeover of the wildlands results in the unnecessary deaths of wolves and felines who prey on the livestock, creating an imbalance in the natural ratio of these hunters to other wild prey animals such as deer, resulting in overpopulation.

This is a grain of sand on a beach of cyclical, unconscious two-legged ignorance, the effects of these systems reaching way further than even the most expert scientists have yet to discover. What we do know is that it is bad and that it has to stop. Nonviolence, or ahimsa, is far more than simply not killing animals, just as nonviolent communication is more than just not yelling at some one. It is subtle and extremely profound; requiring the depth of a yogi to see what is really being created through the ramifications of our lifeways. The two-leggeds are living a violent life in very subtle and not-so-subtle ways, yet it shows up in gross and profound manifestations.

There is no denying the benefits of a plant-based diet, sourced locally and grown organically. The shifting from an animal based diet to a plant based diet is a result of living a life of refinement. This is the natural evolution for a yogi, as one begins to source elemental strength from pure consciousness alone, rather than the flesh of another creature. Plant foods, especially raw foods help to purify the channels and remove gross and subtle blockages from the body, better supporting one in practice. There is no once size fits all way to be or eat, but the fact is participating in systems like what I touched upon earlier, is participating in the death of the natural world.

The need to switch to a plant based diet is very important for the healing of the planet. More than just simply eating a plant based diet, the need for eating locally grown food that is grown organically and as part of regenerative system that supports the growth and health of the environment is paramount. The Earth has suffered and needs systems to rebuild the wild ecology and native lands.

Eating animals is simply not necessary to survive or even thrive. Countless beings thrive on a vegetarian diet. The idea that we must eat meat or the prey animals like deer would stack up dying from not being eaten is simply a reflection of the imbalance the two-leggeds have created, eliminating free, wild lands that house the proper ratios of predator creatures that keep that balance in the first place. If we stop removing wild animals and selling out there land to Big Ag and insane animal farmers, then we could reestablish the native life and bring balance back.

Please meditate deeply on this.

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