All,

(By the way, after having been urged by numerous board members
to return, I have decided to acceed to their requests. I shall
ignore the ranting of those who continually deprecate my person).

A common complaint registered here on the board is issued
by certain type "O" individuals practicing some spiritual practice
which discourages the consumption of meat. It is always my
assumption that these people are protesting because they believe
it to be unethical to kill. My response is always the same; that
it is an unfortunate fact that life feeds upon death, there is a food
chain, and, anyway, who is to say that the life of a carrot is less
precious than that of a cow.

However, it occurs to me that there is another reason why some
spiritual practitioners would embrace vegetarianism. We might call
it the energetic argument for vegetarianism. It seems that quite
a large number of mystics in various traditions have advocated
vegetarianism because,according to them ,it is conducive to reaching
a "higher" state of consciousness while meditating. I seem to
have read some explanation for this...something along the lines
that the vibrational quality of meat was too slow because of its density
and this disturbed meditation.

Some years ago, I read an anecdote by Jack Kornfeld, a well-known
Buddhist. He told the story of some man who had been a little
too ardent in his spiritual practices. He was doing a meditation
session led by Kornfeld and began to get really spaced-out and
seemed to be losing touch with reality in a big way. Kornfeld
fed him meat in order to "ground" him.

My point is that meat tends to ground, and for that reason might
in fact interfere with the mystic's quest. Then, too, there are
some fairly well documented stories of some people (the nun,
Therese Neumann for one) who survive for years without eating at all.

Of course, my argumetn can be contradicted. The Tibetans
eat almost nothing but meat!

My question is this. Have those of you practicing a spiritual
discipline noticed that meat eating has an impact upon the
quality of that practice?

-Thomas Seay