You no doubt know people who struggle with making dietary changes-or maybe you, yourself, have found at one time or another that breaking up with a food or substance is very hard to do. Food affects consciousness in very powerful ways, and you have to be ready inside your head to take a step forward by shifting from one type of eating to another. We came to this earth to learn many things, to overcome all kinds of obstacles and to move forward. Food is an arena in which this evolutionary pattern is being played out in a spectacular panoramic way.
Food affects consciousness, and some people are not ready to move along. It can be hard for a six-pack, Nacho person to move to papayas and mangoes-not only because the tastes may be foreign, but there is such a drastic shift in consciousness that when they eat those new foods, some people might think they’re falling off the edge of the earth. They then hurry back to the old familiar feeling of their comfortable diets which allowed them to have the consciousness of the couch potato or the strong earth-bound man or woman. Now this is not to imply that there is anything wrong with this. In truth, “it is what it is.” We can put aside value judgments so that we’re compassionate enough to see the “perfection” everywhere.
Food & Consciousness
Hindus constructed a specific system of delineating the effects of foods on consciousness. They classified foods as tamasic food, rajasic, or sattwic. Tamasic food list are stultifying and heavy, such as overcooked food, alcohol or drugs. If you’ve ever yourself experienced or seen another pass out after a Thanksgiving meal, you can instantly see that the food was the equivalent of a ton of bricks on consciousness. Rajasic food makes you restless and overactive. It has a stimulating effect. Many people consider overly-spicy foods filled with onions and garlic to be irritating to the body and mind. Sattwic foods exert a calming and uplifting influence on us-as fruits and vegetables that are produced from blossoms and have a spiritual vibration. Truly, food carries vibration, as does every living thing.
Sattwic foods carry expanded amounts of prana or life force, also called Shakti or consciousness or The Force. You have to be ready for sattwic foods, as they can move you to a level of consciousness that might be a huge surprise to you, and you might feel ungrounded and like Alice in Wonderland-truly wondering which way is up and which is down. That’s why you might hear people say that they need their meatball pizza; it’s familiar and grounding to them and makes them feel safe in their own place in the universe. But when someone is ready, then beneficial life transforming shifts can be accomplished. You just have to watch closely for when that special readiness arises.
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