Am I a vegetarian, or not?
So I was thinking about an article I read here on Steemit about being a vegetarian, and all of this came up.
I recently became a vegetarian. Not out of moral superiority but because I am a cancer survivor. At this point in my life I seem to have trouble simply, assimilating death. I feel that this is the reason I have trouble with it more than anything else, but my body just really tends to rebell, overall, when I eat it most of the time. I've gone back on this one several times, mostly falling back on an old craving for it or for something it used to fill. But I am honestly noticing that my body's overall function (and also as an Indigo - I feel that there is a connection) is shifting to vegetarian all on its own. Really good vegetables really DO take the place of meat for me now, a good portion of the time and I tend to prefer them when my system is in balance overall. I always think of savory roasted red peppers. Mmmm.
Recently though, I found myself dealing once again with some pretty serious anemia (or iron deficiency that affects blood supply or adequate blood cell count). It came up and I had a little bit of very good quality ground beef (er, ground cow) in my freezer that I had gotten for the non-vegetarians that live in my household. Red meat = a very good source of iron. I decided to give myself a break and eat it because I really did need it - the situation was pretty serious and I ignored it at first. I had been taking plant based supplements but they just were not getting me back out of the depletion as quickly as I needed.
The truth is, I love meat. I love food! And I am a very good and accomplished cook. Right before I felt forced to give up eating meat, I had mastered a specialty dish... authentic Mexican pork carnitas - I have a truly DELICIOUS recipe. It is so good I was requested to prepare it last year when I visited my father in Arizona! The trick is cooking the meat with fresh orange wedges and lots of Mexican Oregano. When all of the fruit is cooked off the orange peels, you know it is done. Or at least ready for the last phase of cooking which is to crisp it up in a very hot oven for about 20 minutes. I also LOVE gourmet sausage but it has to be made without dangerous and carcinogenic nitrites (preservatives). I found one batch that had been made with currant berries and I think, jalapeno peppers especially for Christmas one year, it was delicious.
So what had me writing this just now was the line from a song, going through my head -
'Barons of Suburbia' by Tori Amos, who is one of my favorite female artists.
The line is:
When it's all said and done we will lose a piece
to a carnivorous vegetarian
Barons of suburbia I have heard you pray
before you devour her
I found this amazing link when I was trying to place the song with the lines I was hearing in my head. Its the lyrics of the song and also some relevant explanations of the song by the artist:
http://www.yessaid.com/lyrics/2005thebeekeeper/05baronsofsuburbia.html
Including this quote:
"This song is about takers. We all know them, either as people we have to work with or friends we find out about eventually, and sometimes it's a real shock to realize that when push comes to shove, all these people really care about is what's in it for them. In the end they don't even pretend to care if you're okay. Not if you're okay, or if the friendship is okay, or anything else. Can somebody tell me what is wrong with the idea of a win-win? Why does somebody always have to bite the dust? Jeez. These days it seems as if it's getting harder and harder to get people on the team who really want to show that they value one another. People might say that they want to, but at the end of the day most of them care only about what they get out of it."
So back to talking, er, writing ... about being a vegetarian.
I believe this planet, my planet - the one I belong to - was intended to house a life structure of very little carnivorism at the top of the food chain. That is, mostly scavengers and mostly their purpose would be to help keep the balance of ... well, of simply cleaning up or managing the death of other organisms but more of the state of natural death rather than murder. I've written about my Indigo experiences, especially past life recall, at some length. One of these past life memories was I believe, that I was a school teacher for children of about third grade level in a time I consider 'Ancient Lemuria' ... it was a version of Earth where modern humans lived with and at the time of the dinosaurs. My 'degree' or specialty was science - biology, and the species that most caught my interest of study and expertise was Stegosaurus. You know, the one with all the beautiful plates on his back. Omnivorous, scavenger Stegosaurus is the state dinosaur/fossil for Colorado, USA ... where I was born and where I live today, by the way. No coincidence there. Also, I think one of the pathways to finding this trigger for me was my homeschooling of my own children in this life - my finding myself being the official 'teacher' once again, in my present life.
Colorado State Fossil
https://statesymbolsusa.org/colorado/dinosaur-or-fossil/stegosaurus
"Stegosaurus was designated the official state fossil of Colorado in 1982. Colorado is where the very first Stegosaurus fossil was found in 1876."
(I think I might even have a Stegosaurus photograph somewhere to place in this article, now that I think about it... I will go look for it after I get to a decent pause.)
edit ... No luck finding my copy BUT thanks to Google Images:
I kept seeing this guy on my hunt for pics in the image bank but I can't really place him (in Canon City, Colorado).
There he is... the one I was looking for, on Highway 50 on the way out of town toward Pueblo:
I saw this one in the image bank, look how pretty he is!
Here's the approximate location for Stegosaurus fossil finds... The Royal Gorge near Canon City, Colorado.
I just wanted to say... I feel that eating meat in and of itself is not necessarily wrong, but that I feel very strongly that our society should evolve enough to treat our food animals with love and respect, and be given a merciful end to their lives when our nutritional requirements have need. Have you ever heard of Temple Grandin?
Temple Grandin, Killing Them Softly at Slaughterhouses for 30 Years
"It didn’t happen overnight. By 1997, Grandin had been working for change in the industry for twenty years. Progress was slow. Then McLibel happened, a lawsuit where McDonald’s sued two animal rights activists over a pamphlet printed in England. The document accused McDonald’s of, among other things, animal torture. The lawsuit dragged on for seven years, costing McDonald’s $16 million, and was a PR disaster.
To refurbish its image, McDonald’s hired Grandin to devise a scoring system for slaughterhouses that produced its hamburger meat. “With the power of a big buyer, boy, we cleaned up things,” she recalls. “We did it with maintenance of existing equipment, non-slip flooring, and lots of repairs to facilities. We changed lighting, so cattle wouldn’t be afraid of the dark. We taught workers not to leave hoses lying around or jackets hanging from fences. Those are things that scare cattle.”
Over the next three years, McDonald’s helped Grandin usher in a wave of reforms, solidifying animal welfare as a new standard on any plant wanting to sell to the restaurant giant. Grandin trained a team of auditors who traveled the U.S., measuring things like: how loud it was in the cattle pens (mooing as a measurement of stress); the percentage of animals killed in one shot; and how many times a worker uses an electric cattle prod. She saw more change in that time than in her three previous decades of work.
“Things are not perfect, but I can tell you, compared to the bad old days, there’s been light years of improvement,” she says."
Also and this is important. I feel that the human species must evolve out of so much carnivorism, leave that karma to the dolphins, whales and sharks. Our planet simply cannot support a living system with so much murder and mistreatment of animals... and that goes for the dairy and egg industry as well. And not only because of the strain on the resources required to maintain such a system! I believe it is a privilege to have a magical symbiotic relationship with domestic animals that share their lives with us to give us these amazing gifts and that is how we need to see it. To appreciate them. To live on the old system of grain and agriculture as the basis of our food pyramid. Paleo diet is NOT the answer... it is in fact, a step backward in long term evolution. I feel we should eat far less meat of all kinds than we currently do, especially in the United States where we tend to consume more than our fair share of the world's resources. Do you realize that what you can feed one cow will feed many people? Also, less meat being raised for food is part of reducing our overwhelming carbon footprint on the environment.
U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists
http://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-million-people-grain-livestock-eat
"More than half the U.S. grain and nearly 40 percent of world grain is being fed to livestock rather than being consumed directly by humans," Pimentel said. "Although grain production is increasing in total, the per capita supply has been decreasing for more than a decade. Clearly, there is reason for concern in the future."
Here it is, the old food pyramid from junior high school Health class, for people at least my age:
Yes I know there are a gazillion articles out there that say this information is wrong, but I tell you; it is not. The idea is, the evolution of species is meant to develop from the planet's consciousness, not the human one. You might say that it comes down to the true image of God. That is, it is the planet itself that determines the flow and development of life upon it, not the species that inhabit it... the control or blueprint here for the living system belongs to The Earth. Not to the humans. Planet consciousness being the ultimate authority on a given world. Translation - we need to evolve in ways that benefit the planet, not ourselves to the exclusion of Her life. We are stewards. Balance is key.
So anyways. I am eating a little bit of meat once again. I've been through this a few times in the last two years, and I know that once my system has rebalanced itself in the short term, I will be back to a vegetarian diet once again.
Bon Apetit.
Images from Google Images and the quoted articles...
And my own stash if I can find the one I am thinking of...