When we are drawn toward a plant-based way of eating, it is in no way a limitation on us; rather it is the harmonious fulfillment of our own inner seeing. At first we think it’s an option we can choose, but with time we realize that it’s not a choice at all but the free expression of the truth that we are. It is not an ethic that we have to police from outside, but our own radiant love spontaneously expressing, both for ourselves and for our world. Caring is born on this earth and lives through us, as us, and it’s not anything for which we can personally take credit. It is nothing to be proud of.
To awaken from the cultural trance of omnivorism we need only remember who we are. We have neither the psychology nor the physiology for predation and killing, but due to the culturally indoctrinated mentality required by our daily meals, we eat like predators. We become desensitized, exclusivist and materialistic, forgetting that we are essentially consciousness manifesting in time and space. As consciousness, we are eternal, free, and benevolent.
While it’s easy to become discouraged in the face of the immense cultural inertia that propels the continued practice of eating animal foods, it’s helpful to realize that it carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. At the rate it’s ravaging our planet’s ecosystems and resources—and our sanity and intelligence—it cannot last much longer. These may very well turn out to be humanity’s last days of eating animals.