“DIET AT THE DAWN OF THE AKASHIC AGE ”

                                    “Beyond Illusion Project”

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                      “DIET AT THE DAWN OF THE AKASHIC AGE ”

 

The Program

“Diet at the Dawn of the Akashic Age” presents the outlines of a more empowering understanding of our world based on comprehending the far-reaching implications of our food choices. Food is our most intimate and telling connection both with the natural order and with our cultural heritage. But it is increasingly clear that the choices we make about food today are leading to environmental degredation, enormous human health problems, and unimaginable cruelty toward our fellow creatures.

     Yet, the world is changing. The transition from the mechanistic worldview to one that recognizes the interconnectedness of all life is upon us. It is the dawning of the Akashic Age. The chief engine of the coming changes is the growing global understanding of nonlocality and the development of practical applications for it, including our diet.

     “Diet at the Dawn of the Akashic Age” offers a set of universal principles for all people of conscience, from any religious tradition, that show how we as a species can move our consciousness forward – allowing us to become more free, more intelligent, more loving, and happier in the choices we make.

     The good news is, we don’t need to re-invent the wheel. Lemuria, is the oldest and most spiritual civilization in our planetary history. The Lemurian diet, backed up by the evidence-based science of today, can be the guidepost for our diet at the dawn of the Akashic Age.

 

The program “Diet at the Dawn of the Akashic Age” will awaken you to extremely valuable truths, facts, as well as prospects such as the following:

·         The “alchemical miracle” of food: the fact that the food we eat becomes us

·         The implications of applying the practice of avoidance and denial in our meal choices

·         The roots of the cycles of violence that have terrorized people both historically and today

·         The psychological consequences of herding animals for the individuals, their families, and the society at large

·         The origins of our herding culture, what we call today Western civilization, and its mentality

·         The value of cultivating mindful awareness of the consequences of our food choices

·         You’ll understand the nature of intelligence in the broadest and deepest way

·         The implications for our food choices of the truth of our interconnectedness

·         How our food habits are the result of conditioning and indoctrination by the most powerful forces in our world (our parents and family)

·         The fact that our human physiology functions better when we live in harmony with the other animals of this earth

·         The metaphysical forces at work in food consumption

·         The implications for the human consciousness of our herding cultures producing reductive scientific and religious systems, as well as reductive and predatory economic systems

·         The disastrous environmental impact of confining animals for food

·         Some culturally induced objections to eating a plant-based diet we nurture

·         The consequences eating animals has, not only for the unfortunate creatures in our hands, but for us as well

 

(Sessions: 22)

 

Agenda

 

Meeting 1. Introduction

“Diet at the Dawn of the Akashic Age” presents the outlines of a more empowering understanding of our world, based on comprehending the far-reaching implications of our food choices. It offers a set of universal principles for all people of conscience, from any religious tradition, that show how we as a species can move our consciousness forward – allowing us to become more free, more intelligent, more loving, healthier, and happier in the choices we make.

     In the first part of the seminar our priority is an exploration of the profound cultural and spiritual ramifications of our food choices and the mentality underlying them.

 

PART A. Our Meals: The Hidden Key to Understanding

Meeting 2. Food’s Power

Food is not only a fundamental necessity; it is also a primary symbol in the shared inner life of every human culture. Every day we all make food choices or they are made for us. The quality of awareness from which these inevitable food choices arise – and whether we are making them ourselves or they are being made for us – greatly influences our ability to make connections. This ability to make meaningful connections determines whether we are and become lovers and protectors of life or unwitting perpetrators of cruelty and death.

     Looking deeply into food, into what and how we eat, and into the attitudes, actions, and beliefs surrounding food, is an adventure of looking into the very heart of our culture and ourselves.

 

Meeting 3. Our Culture’s Roots

Though it is not as obvious to us today as it was to our forebears a few thousands years ago, our culture is, like theirs, essentially a herding culture, organized around owning and commodifying animals and eating them. For the old herding cultures, confined animals were not just food. They were also wealth, security, and power. The mentality of domination characterizing the culture into which we were born thrives on seeing and emphasizing differences and ignoring similarities, because this is what enslaving and killing animals requires us all to practice. It is obvious if we look closely that many of the root assumptions and activities of the ancient herding cultures still define our culture today.

     The revolution that is demanded by our yearning for peace, freedom, and happiness must provide a new foundation for our culture, moving it away from its herding values of oppression and disconnectedness toward the post-herding values of respect, kindness, equality, sensitivity, and connectedness. Above all, this revolution must change our relationship to our meals – our most practiced rituals – and to our food, our most powerful inner and outer symbol.

 

Meeting 4. The Nature of Intelligence

The suppression of awareness required by our universal practice of commodifying, enslaving, and killing animals for food generates the “built-in mental disorder” that drives us toward the destruction not only of ourselves but of the other living creatures and systems of this earth. Our culture encourages us to be omnivores. “Eating everything” has become dan apt description of our culture as it consumes and ravages global ecosystems.

     All of the nested wholes – systems, planets, communities, people, animals, plants, cells, and so forth – are possible because they partake of the universal intelligence operating through and within them. This intelligence is their ability to make connections that are meaningful to their existence, and that serve their purpose. Intelligence is specific to all self-organizing systems, and that all have a unique purpose, that their intelligence is suited to fulfilling. When we forcefully remove any animal from her natural life in order to confine and manipulate her for food, we systematically thwart and frustrate her innate intelligence.

     The most universal spiritual teaching, found cross-culturally in virtually all the world’s religious traditions, is based on the truth of our interconnectedness. It is presented in what we refer to as the Golden rule (to do unto others as we would have them do unto us), and as the law of cause and effect (that whatever we do unto others will rebound to us).

 

Meeting 5. Inheriting Our Food Choices

The earliest and most basic connections we have with our parents are around food and eating. We could not survive without the food our parents gave us, a tangible and consumable expression of their love and caring for us. As we incorporated their food, we partook of them and their values and their culture. We like to think we’ve arrived freely at the belief that we need to eat animal products and that it’s natural and right to do so. In fact, we have inherited this belief. We’ve been indoctrinated in the most deeply rooted and potent way possible, as vulnerable infants. The price we pay for unquestioned indoctrinated and inherited beliefs is enormous if we are to mature spiritually and morally, and if we are to nourish within us the seeds of intelligence, compassion, and freedom, we must practice questioning the underlying assumptions of the family and culture into which we were born. In Buddhism, this is called “leaving home”.

 

Meeting 6. The Intelligence of Human Physiology

We are meant to live in harmony with the other animals of this earth because we’ve been given bodies that actually function better without killing and stealing from them. There is no nutrient that we need that we cannot get from non-animal sources. Both medical studies and the obvious examples of healthy vegan people we see around us tell us that eating animal products is unnecessary and in many ways is actually detrimental to our health.

     Our bodies thrive on a conscious plant-based diet, and this diet is infinitely more compassionate to animals and people and more environmentally sustainable than eating animal foods. Any and all of us can adopt a healthy, low-cruelty way of eating today and need never look back!

 

Meeting 7. Hunting and Herding Sea Life

Water is our planet’s universal solvent, and the whole range of environmental contaminants we produce ends up eventually in our rivers, lakes, streams, and aquifers, leading to the increasingly severe pollution of our oceans. To eat animals who live in our earth’s waters is to eat our own noxious pollution, concentrated many times. The more toxic agricultural and industrial runoff we produce, the more toxic the flesh of water – duelling creatures become.

     Fish who die with great resistance, have a more bitter taste because of the lactic acid that remains in their muscles. In eating fish, we eat the lactic acid the fish produce in their death-throes, and the fear – induced adrenalin and other hormones. In unwisely eating fish because of an imagined benefit, we bring into our body a host of toxins and cause suffering and negative effects that far outweigh their potential benefit.

     In exterminating the fish from our waters, we are destroying the earth’s system for cleaning the waters. Fish clean the waters of toxins and impurities. They can be seen as the earth’s kidneys, absorbing contaminants into their flesh.

 

Meeting 8. The Domination of the Feminine

Two large categories of animal products that we eat even though they are not food for humans are dairy products and eggs.

     Cow’s milk is a substance designed by nature for baby cows, not for humans. The enormous and continuous abuse to which dairy cow mothers are subjected makes their milk extremely unhealthy for humans. Dairy cows concentrate not only the toxins that are sprayed on the grains and hay they eat, but also the more concentrated toxins that have accumulated in the rendered body parts of the animals they are forced to eat as well. All this accumulates in their milk. Dairy products, particularly butter, cheese, cream, and ice cream, are clearly unhealthy and dangerous to eat, especially for children and pregnant or nursing women.

     As with dairy products, when we buy eggs we instigate theft and violence against horribly abused females and contribute to environmental contamination, social pathology, and disease. Chicken eggs are toxic for humans in the manner of all animal products.

     Liberating and honoring the feminine principle is perhaps the most pressing task in our culture’s evolution toward peace, sustainability, and spiritual maturity.

 

Meeting 9. The Metaphysics of Food

Beyond this physical level of biomechanisms such as hormone levels, toxins, and nutrients, there are metaphysical forces at work that though ignored are nevertheless operating. Metaphysical toxins – i.e. the concentrated vibrations of terror, grief, frustration, and desperation permeating these foods – are invisible and completely unrecognized by conventional science, yet they may be even more disturbing to us than physical toxins because they work on the level of feelings and consciousness, which are more essential dimensions of ourselves than our physical vehicle. By purchasing or ordering animal products we directly cause misery and sow seeds of despair and cruel violence.

     Food, like all apparently physical matter, is energy and vibration and is a manifestation of consciousness, and though it is important to prepare, eat, and share food mindfully, it’s important to look more deeply than this, to the actual source of our food. Matter, energy, and consciousness are inseparable, and the cruelty unavoidably embodied in animal foods is a potent and unrecognized toxin, damaging not just to our physical health, but to our emotional and spiritual health as well.

 

Meeting 10. Reductionist Science and Religion

Science and religion are fundamental institutions in our culture that embody many of our highest ideals and contribute to our lives and well-being in a wide variety of ways. Science and religion have undoubtedly brought benefit to us, but they have strongly contributed to war, destruction, and misery as well. It seems that those seeking to improve and heal the world through scientific or spiritual development have not addressed the obviously violent and predatory mentality required by our food choices. That’s because besides our universal resistance to admitting complicity in the cruelty of our meals, there is another factor operating: the reductionism promoted by many Western scientific and religious institutions that works to keep crucial connections invisible. It’s helpful to realize that conventional science and religion are in actuality strikingly similar in their underlying assumptions. They are two proud sons of the herding culture, and they both tend to reinforce the reductionist mentality required of those who inhabit their father’s culture.

 

Meeting 11. The Dilemma of Work

It is not only animals who suffer in factory farms and slaughterhouses. The people who must do the awful work of confining, mutilating, and killing farmed animals also suffer. Slaughterhouse and factory farm work is ugly and terribly stressful, emotionally, mentally, and physically. Violence, cruelty, and insensitivity breed more of the same. They are vibrations that affect consciousness, and it is not just the workers, but their families, friends, and ultimately all of us who are affected by what we force them to do by our market demand.

     Returning to the garden of abundance, innocence, and natural blessedness has always been seen as the goal of religious yearning in the West. The fall came when we began commodifying animals. We can resurrect our work from defiling slavery to joyous participation. The path simply requires that we give the same opportunities to the animals who are at our mercy: release them from slavery and grant them freedom to once again fully participate in the unfolding of their unique purpose and consciousness.

 

Meeting 12. Profiting From Destruction

It would be difficult to conceive of a more wasteful, toxic, inhumane, disease-promoting, and destructive food production system than our farmed animal industry. The major environmental problem with eating animal foods is that these animals must eat, and eat a lot. Besides the obliteration of vast areas of forest, animal agriculture is responsible for the destruction and degredation of virtually all our prairie grasslands. These complex and beautiful ecosystems once supported a wide variety of plant and animal species. The annihilation and disruption of forests, prairie grasslands, and arid regions to grace and grow feed for slaughter-bound animals is not only a destruction of biological diversity and intelligence but has other serious repercussions as well.

     Our institutions reflect the mentality required by our omnivorism. The transnational corporations profit from animal food consumption, as do the big banks, which have made the loans that have built the whole complex and demand a healthy return on their investments.

 

Meeting 13. Some Objections Answered

The ideas presented in this seminar, though not complicated or particularly difficult to understand, have long been invisible and almost impossible to articulate because they directly contradict the hidden assumptions of our herding culture. Their ramifications, if contemplated, discussed, and acted upon, are enormously subversive to the status quo. The vegan commitment to consciously minimize our cruelty to all animals is so revolutionary in its implications that it is often dismissed because it triggers cognitive dissonance and deep anxiety. We have been so ingrained with the herding mentality since birth, that even those of us who consider ourselves to be quite progressive aren’t typically prepared to question the exploitation of animals and humans that we cause by our food choices. So we suppress our natural compassion not only by practicing disconnecting but also by the practice of nurturing some culturally induced objections to eating a plant-based diet.

 

Meeting 14. Evolve or Dissolve

Eating animals has consequences far beyond what we would at first suspect, not only for the unfortunate creatures in our hands, but for us as well. Our actions reinforce attitudes, in us and in others, that amplify the ripples of those actions until they become the devastating waves of insensitivity, conflict, injustice, brutality, disease, and exploitation that rock our world today.

     We will only survive and thrive if we recognize the central power of our meals to shape our consciousness. Food is eaten and becomes the physical vehicle of consciousness, and consciousness chooses what to incorporate into itself from itself.

     Evolution is the essence of life. All being is evolving, growing, transforming, and so the urge to evolve permeates our being. Evolution implies not only change but transformation. We as a culture, we must shake the old stagnation and comfortable disconnections out of our minds and bodies, embrace the evolutionary urge within us to awaken compassion and intuitive wisdom, and live our lives in accord with the truth that we are connected intimately with all living beings.

 

PART B. Lessons from a Living Lemuria

Meeting 15. The Magical Land of Lemuria

Lemuria is a time period within our planetary history. The memories of Lemuria are ‘embedded’ or ‘written’ into the ‘software’ of all that is us, programmed into our DNA. In this session we talk about the Lemurian civilization and, more importantly some of its customs, lifestyles, with an emphasis on the Lemurian diet. Lemuria existed ‘before’ the fall. Within the true reality, there is no time, as in a linear sense. The future, present and past do not sit upon a continuum but are one moment. There was no ‘before’ because that higher dimensional reality fabric was not expressed linearly. Lemuria is therefore a never-ending reality. The ‘you’ that you ‘were’ (or are, or will be) that lives within the Lemurian times can be communicated with and indeed merged with. There has never been in our history of our planet Earth, a better time to connect with our Lemurian self than right now. The reason for this is because we are ‘going back’ (or going forward, depending on perspective) to the higher dimensional reality fabric. Our reality will be much like Lemuria with the cohesive experience garnered and gathered through the many soul incarnations we have had since.

 

Meeting 16. Diet in Lemuria (A) – Back to the Garden

One of the reasons you are incarnated upon this planet is for discovery. That explorer’s journey is the discovery of self and this includes your health and how to live in the healthiest, possible way. Tips, tools and guides can be given but ultimately the journey into self is yours. That’s because there is only self and that self is you.

     On a general level, a ‘compassionate’ diet is the most appropriate diet for an ascending individual. There have been many communities and cultures who have followed appropriate and optimum nutritionally sound and spiritually activating diets. Diet plans followed by traditions of Ayurveda, macrobiotic, the Essenes and several Eastern societies.

     Yet if we really want to look at a pure society that has existed upon our planet, we can turn to the Lemurian civilization.

 

Meeting 17. Diet in Lemuria (B) – Coconut Charge and Pumpkin Power

We move through each of the foodstuff that would replicate the original Lemurian diet: fruits, vegetables, sea vegetables, nuts and seeds, root vegetables, beans, herbs, and grains.

 

PART C. Science Updated

Meeting 18. The Power of the Food on Your Plate (A)

For our ancient ancestors, life was a daily struggle for calories. In times of almost constant malnutrition, food was probably defined as any edible substance, animal or vegetable, that they could get their hands on. At a basic level, humans are still wired to seek out calorie-dense foods.

     Doctors have known that food is tightly linked to health and disease since the dawn of modern medicine. Hippocrates taught his students that diet was the most powerful tool of all in maintaining health and treating disease.

     You might find surprising to learn that meat, dairy and eggs are not needed for a healthy diet. The science clearly shows that a global shift to a plant-based diet would have major benefits. We can live longer and healthier lives by minimizing our intake of processed foods, added oils and animal products, and by choosing healthy plant-based options first.

 

Meeting 19. The Power of the Food on Your Plate (B)

Evidence-based dietary advice has become an incredibly important part of a conscientious doctor’s medical practice. In a society where poor diet causes more illnesses than alcohol and drug abuse combined, it could be argued that food should be a mandatory part of the conversation every time you meet a doctor. In this session we offer ten food-focused prescriptions that must be given to every person seeking to improve their health.

 

Meeting 20. Healthy Body

A high-quality diet is a key requirement to becoming a successful athlete. Many athletes focus almost exclusively on protein, but this is just one aspect of an optimal diet. All plants contain protein. Strict vegetarians consume more than enough protein per day simply by eating more food.

     The foods you choose to fuel your body can be extremely powerful. A plant-based diet reduces inflammation, promotes healthy weight loss and can even reverse type 2 diabetes. The science suggests that it may even help to increase your athletic performance. When it comes to building a healthier body, it’s plant-based all the way.  

 

PART D. Living the Revolution

Meeting 21. Living the Revolution

The ripples that radiate from our choices to eat foods from animal sources are incredibly far-reaching and complex. The spiritual and cultural revolution that calls us must begin with our food. Food is our primary connection with the earth and her mysteries, and with our culture. It is the foundation of economy and is the central inner spiritual metaphor of our lives. There is no way to overstate the magnitude of the collective spiritual transformation that will occur when we shift from food of violent oppression to food of gentleness and compassion. The key to veganism is that it is lived. No one can be vegetarian in theory only.

     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 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.

 

Meeting 22: Discussion – Q&A

“MINDFUL EATING”

 

“Beyond Illusion Project”

 

“MINDFUL EATING”

Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food

 

 

The Program

Nowhere are the elements of the human condition we call unawareness, addiction, and delusion more poignantly and tragically manifested nowadays than in widespread disregulations and disorders in our relationships to food and to eating. These pathologies of imbalance are driven by many complex factors in society itself.

     The art of mindfulness can transform our struggles with food – and renew our sense of pleasure, appreciation, and satisfaction with eating. Drawing on recent research and integrating my experiences as a life coach and counselor, this on-line seminar/workshop is a wonderfully clear presentation of what mindfulness is and how it can help with food issues.

     Mindful eating is an approach that involves bringing one’s full attention to the process of eating – to all the tastes, smells, thoughts, and feelings that arise during a meal. Whether you are overweight, suffer from an eating disorder, or just want to get more out of life, this program offers a simple tool that can make a remarkable difference.

 

During this program you’ll learn how to:

·         Tune into your body’s own wisdom about what, when, and how much to eat

·         Eat less while feeling fully satisfied

·         Identify your habits and patterns with food

·         Develop a more compassionate attitude toward your struggles with eating

·         Discover what you’re really hungry for

 

If you give yourself over wholeheartedly to the practices described during the workshop, you will be thanking yourself for recovering your life and for enjoying the blessings of food in ways that feel liberated and delightful.

 

(The webinar/workshop consists of 30 sessions)

 

Meeting 1. Introduction

This program addresses an increasingly widespread and unnecessary form of suffering. Our struggles with food cause tremendous emotional distress, including guilt, shame, and depression. Our eating problems can also lead to debilitating diseases and even to premature death.

     The problem is an increasingly unbalanced relationship to food. One of the primary causes of this imbalance is a lack of an essential human nutrient: mindfulness. Mindfulness is the act of paying full, nonjudgmental attention to our moment-to-moment experience. This program explores how we can use mindfulness to free ourselves from unhealthy eating habits and improve our overall quality of life.

 

Meeting 2. What Is “Mindful Eating”?

This program has been developed for all those who would like to improve their relationship to food. Whether you have a moderate tendency to overeat, or whether you are struggling with obesity, bulimia, anorexia, or other such problems, this program is for you. Most programs and techniques for changing our eating try to impose change from the outside. Mindfulness brings about change from the inside. A natural and organic process, it occurs in the manner and at the rate that fits us. It is the ultimate in natural healing.

     This program is about learning mindfulness while eating. Mindfulness is a skill that any one can develop.  Through mindful eating we can learn to be present when we eat. Mindful eating is a way to reawaken our pleasure in simply eating, simply drinking. Mindful eating replaces self-criticism with self-nurturing. It replaces shame with respect for your own inner wisdom.

 

Meeting 3. EXERCISE: The Basic Mindful Eating Meditation

Our journey begins with an essential mindful eating exercise. We will experiment with bringing our full awareness to eating a very small amount of food. Many of the other exercises in this program rest upon this one.

 

Meeting 4. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (A)

Infants and young children have an intuitive sense of what and how much to eat. Over the course of a week a baby will eat just right, as if prompted by an inner nutritionist. Babies are tuned in to the messages from their body. This is a skill, an inner listening, that we all were able to do at one time but forgot as we grew older. Food begins to serve many purposes. The once straightforward relationship between hunger, eating, and satisfaction of our childhood becomes tangled up in all sorts of thoughts and emotions. The business of eating has become a primary focus, an over-the-kitchen-counter medicine for the many pressures and anxieties of our busy lives. Our eating has become driven by many different forces, many kinds of hunger. Mindfulness with eating begins at the beginning with hunger. There are several kinds of hunger, so before we work on mindfulness during eating, we need to become aware of what urges us to eat.

 

Meeting 5. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (B)

People generally decide how much of a given food they will eat based upon feedback from the eyes. The eyes also have the power to override the mouth. Even the experts can be fooled by the eye. At a party they served themselves and ate significantly more ice cream, without being aware of it. If they were given larger serving scoops and larger bowls. The power of the eye hunger can be turned to good use. People wishing to eat less should use smaller plates or bowls and smaller serving utensils. The mix of colors and shapes satisfies eye hunger, the variety of tastes and textures satisfies mouth hunger, and the balance of nutrients satisfies cellular hunger.

     Our eyes do get hungry. What satisfies eye hunger? Beauty. To satisfy eye hunger we have to ask, what is beautiful?

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Eye Hunger (CW, HW:1, HW:2)

Exercise: Creating a Feast for the Eyes (HW: 3)

Exercise: Feeding Eye Hunger without Eating (HW: 4)

 

Meeting 6. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (C)

Smells exert a primitive and potent effect upon the subconscious mind. Our ancestors depended upon their sense of smell to locate food and to distinguish friends from enemies in forests or the dark of night. What we call the “taste” or “flavor” of a food is almost entirely the smell of the food. Without smell all the subtlety of flavor is lost. Food becomes something you have to eat because your body needs fuel. Nose hunger is satisfied by fragrance.

Exercise: Becoming Mindful of Nose Hunger  (CW:+HW:1)

Exercises: Feeding Yourself with Fragrance (HW:2, HW:3)                                                                                                        

 

Meeting 7. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (D)

Mouth hunger is the mouth’s desire for pleasurable sensations. What constitutes pleasant sensations in the mouth varies from person to person. What your mouth experiences as pleasant depends upon factors such as genetics, food habits in your family of origin, cultural traditions, and conditioning, which means the association of certain foods with other pleasant or unpleasant experiences.

     To satisfy the mouth’s hunger for sensation, it isn’t enough to put food into the mouth, chew it, and swallow it. If we want to feel satisfied as we eat, the mind has to be aware of what is occurring in the mouth.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Mouth Hunger (HW:1, HW:2)                             

Exercises: Feeding Mouth Hunger  (HW:4, HW:5)

Meditation: Tongue Practice (CW+HW:6)

 

Meeting 8: The Seven Kinds of Hunger (E)

What signals does you stomach give you when it’s hungry? For some people hunger is an empty feeling in the abdomen, an emptiness that demands to be filled. Others experience constriction, as if the stomach is trying to grind up food that isn’t there. It’s good that we perceive “hunger pangs” as unpleasant. If we didn’t, we might starve to death. The notion that the stomach tells us when we must feed it is not correct. We actually tell the stomach when to be hungry, through our eating habits. If we ignore sensations of hunger, we’ll get in trouble. We have to walk the middle way with hunger This means to be aware of signs of hunger in the whole body, not just the hunger signals from the stomach.

     What satisfies stomach hunger? The right amount and kinds of food.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Stomach Hunger  (HW:1, HW:2)                                      

Exercise: Staying Aware of Stomach Hunger during a Meal  (HW:3)

 

Meeting 9. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (F)

When we were infants, we were tuned in to the signals from our body that told us when to eat and when to stop. Given a choice, we had an instinctive awareness of what foods and how much food our body needed. The body has its own wisdom and can tell us a lot about what it requires if we are able to listen. But as we get older we become deaf to what our bodies are telling us we need.

     If we are to return to a healthy and balanced relationship with food, it is essential that we learn to turn our awareness inward and to hear again what our body is always telling us about its needs and its satisfaction. To learn to listen to cellular hunger is the primary skill of mindful eating.

Exercises: Becoming Mindful of Cellular Hunger (XW+HW:1,  HW:2, HW:3)                             

Exercises: Asking the Body What it Needs  (HW:4, HW:5)                                                        

Meeting 10. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (G)

Mind hunger is based upon thoughts. It is influenced by what we take in through eyes and ears, the words we read and hear. Thousands of cookbooks provide food for mind hunger. Thousands of diet books provide food for mind hunger. Mind hunger is often based upon absolutes and opposites: good food versus bad food, should eat versus should not eat. We have learned to choose our foods by the numbers – calories, carbs, fats, price, whatever – relying more heavily on our reading and computational skills than upon our senses. As a result, we have become, in the midst of our astounding abundance, very anxious eaters.

     The mind is always changing its mind. One day it puts us on a strict diet, the next day it convinces us we need another dessert. The mind also contains the inner critic, a voice that criticizes us no matter what we eat or drink.

     The mind is truly content only when it becomes quiet. When the many and contradictory voices around eating are still, when the awareness function is dominant over the thinking function, then we can be fully present as we eat. When we are filled with awareness, we become filled with satisfaction.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Mind Hunger  (HW:1, HW:2, HW:3)                                       

 

Meeting 11. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (H)

People talk lovingly of foods they ate for family holidays, foods their mother made for them when they were ill, foods eaten with people they loved. The particular foods are not as important as the mood or emotion they evoke. Hunger for these foods arise from the desire to be loved and cared for. The memory of those special times infuse these foods with warmth and happiness.

     People eat in an attempt to fill a hole, not in the stomach but in the heart: We eat when we are lonely. We eat when a relationship ends. We eat when someone dies, taking food to the home of those who are grieving. These are the ways we try to take care of ourselves and others. But food put into the stomach will never ease the emptiness, the ache in the heart.

     We cannot depend upon others to fulfill our desire for intimacy. We cannot depend upon food to satisfy our heart hunger. What must nourish our heart is intimacy with this very moment. We can experience this intimacy with anything that presents itself to us, people or plants, rocks, rice, or raisins. This is what being present brings us to, the sweet and poignant taste of true presence. When this presence fills us, all hungers vanish. All things, just as they are, are perfect satisfaction.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Heart Hunger  (CW, HW:1, HW:2)                                      

 

Meeting 12. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (I)

Most unbalanced relationships with food are caused by being unaware of heart hunger. No food can ever satisfy this form of hunger. To satisfy it, we must learn how to nourish our hearts. We will not find full satisfaction in food, no matter how delicious, if we do not nourish the heart on a daily basis. Conversely, when we are mindful with eating, a feeling of intimacy and connection will arise. Then any food can nourish the heart.

     When we eat and look deeply into our food, we are in the company of many beings: the plants, animals, and people whose life energy was poured into the food on our plate. Each time we eat, we take in the life energy of countless beings into our bodies. These beings literally become us, our blue or brown eyes, our soft lips, our hard white teeth, our loving heart. To awaken to this miracle that occurs in our own bodies day and night, even for a few moments each day, can give us new joy, and new energy. If we eat with our mind open and aware, we can experience our intimated connection to these many beings, and our loneliness dissolves.

Exercise: Satisfying Heart Hunger   (HW)

 

Meeting 13. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (J)

Now you are becoming aware of the seven hungers. Three of the seven tend to be more problematic in our lives than the others. They are mouth hunger, heart hunger, and mind hunger. These forms of hunger often cause us to overeat – but only when we remain unaware of them and of how to go about satisfying them.

     Now that you’ve explored the seven types of hunger, you can develop an essential skill of mindful eating: assessing the level of each kind of hunger whenever the desire to eat arises. In order to know which kind of hunger we are feeling, we can make it a regular practice to ask the question, “Who in there is hungry?”

Exercise: Who Is Hungry in There? (HW audio)

 

Meeting 14. The Seven Kinds of Hunger (K) – Review

This session is about reviewing the Seven Kinds of Hunger. Furthermore we discuss your experiences of the very important exercise of the previous meeting, titled, “Who Is Hungry in There?”

 

Meeting 15. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (A)

Another important aspect of mindful eating is becoming more aware of the eating habits and patterns we’ve developed through our lives – what is called our conditioning. Like Pavlov’s dogs, humans also form connections. When we receive positive rewards, we are more likely to continue a behavior. When we receive negative feedback, we are less likely to continue a behavior. Food itself is intrinsically neither good nor bad. We learn “good food” or “bad food” through experience.

     Most of the habit patterns we create in childhood are harmless and fade away. Ideally, as we mature we become more flexible and are able to recognize conditioned patterns of behavior and free ourselves from them. Many reactive patterns, however, are deeply held. They remain hidden and constrain us. How can we detect that an old conditioned habit pattern has been activated? There are several clues. They are idiosyncratic eating, anger, overwhelming desire, and going unconscious.

 

Meeting 16. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (B)

How can we work with unconscious conditioning in order to unwind ourselves from its painful embrace? Awareness is the key. Our desire to be awake, to see clearly how our blind spots make us and others suffer, has to be stronger than our desire to live on automatic pilot. It’s not a simple, once-made-always-kept decision. It’s a decision we will face again and again.

Exercises: Becoming Aware of Conditioning around Eating  (CW:1, CW:2, HW:1, HW:2)                

 

Meeting 17. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (C)

One particularly strong area of conditioning has to do with binging and dieting. In this mode of dieting one “voice” in your mind takes over and puts you on a diet. It talks to you about the rules, the should and should nots. Sooner or later you get tired of being constantly nagged by this voice and change occurs. Another part or voice takes over. You flip out of the iron grip of strict discipline and into the indulgence of eating what you want, and a lot of it. Flipping between fasting mode and feasting mode, also called “yo-yoing”, becomes a way of life for many people. It is a frustrating, exhausting, and demoralizing way to live. Who wants to live their life as both perpetrator and victim of an unending internal battle? How can we bring ourselves to a sense of ongoing trust with food, to find peace in body and mind when we eat? If we look at these impulses, we find that they are rooted not only in our personal life experiences but in our collective human history.

 

Meeting 18. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (D)

The session is dedicated to two exercises we do during the meeting.

Exercise: Becoming Aware of Reactive Patterns around Food  (CW:1)

Exercise: Becoming Aware of Food Cravings, Fears, and Anxieties  (CW:2)

 

Meeting 19. Exploring Our Habits and Patterns with Food (E)

Another important aspect of exploring our eating habits is to look into our cravings for what we might call “the big three”: sugar, salt, and fat. They are an unholy and very profitable trio. The fast-food industry depends upon our insatiable desire for these three: the soothing taste of sweetness, the tangy taste of salt, and the deep-fried taste and creamy texture of fat. When eaten in excess, they play a role in many diseases. They have an addictive quality. In addition, sugar, fat, and salt all have a powerful effect upon our mind states.

Exercise: Food and Mood    (CW)

 

Meeting 20. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (A)

Mindfulness is a skill that can be learned. The ability to be aware already lies within us. This ability usually lies dormant, accessible only in moments of clarity that we might call “peak moments”. But we can learn to cultivate mindfulness, whether in eating or in any other aspect of our lives. In this unit we’ll explore six principles that will help us to cultivate mindfulness as we eat. In this session we explore how we cultivate mindfulness by eating more slowly.

Exercises: Hot to Slow Down Your Eating and Drinking

Exercise: Make a point of pausing  (CW:1)

Exercise: Drink slowly (CW:2)

Exercise: Fletcherize  (HW:1)

Exercise: Put down the fork or spoon (HW:2 audio)

Exercise: Eat with the non dominant hand  (HW:3)

Exercise: Eat with chopsticks   (HW:4)

 

Meeting 21. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (B)

The next guideline for mindful eating has to do with how much we eat. The concept of “right amount” comes from the Buddhist teaching, according to which “right” means appropriate, beneficial, leading to happiness and freedom. Mindful eating is ethical action. A country that consumes more than its share of the world’s food is a country composed of people who are ignorant of the suffering that results when we are not aware of “right amount”.

     Up to the age of five, children have a well functioning “appestat”. They eat until they are no longer hungry and then stop. After the age of five children begin to rely on the amount on the plate to tell them how much to eat. They lose awareness of their appestat. Many adults have ignored the signals from their appestat for so long, they have no sense of when to stop eating. Zen masters recommend eating until you are two-thirds full. Then we would drink some water.

Exercise: Taking in the Right Amount  (HW audio)

 

Meeting 22. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (C)

Another way to cultivate mindful eating is to become aware of the energy equation. Food is energy. It is actually sunlight, which is converted into plants and then into animals. How does the energy flow in? By eating and drinking. When we eat, we are taking in the energy of sunlight. When we live our lives, we are releasing and spending that energy.

     If we want to lose weight, there are only two ways to do it. We have to decrease the energy flowing into our body or increase the energy flowing out.

Exercise: Working with the Energy Equation  (HW)

 

Meeting 23. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (D)

When we offer the hungry voice in our mind a sliced peach drizzled with honey instead of a hot fudge sundae, we are making use of an essential mindful eating practice, that of mindful substitution. When we become aware that there are many voices in our minds – some that are needy, restless, and frightened – we should honor and care for these energies and voices in the thoughtful and deliberate way a good parent notices and cares for a young child. The point is to take good care of our self.

     The practice of out-of-sight, out-of-mind is quite effective because anything we don’t reinforce will lose its strength. It is a principle of conditioning. If we do not think, speak, or initiate action around something, the force of that thing will eventually wither. This involves active substitution, not forceful resistance, for what we resist can become perversely persistant.

Exercise: Mindful Substitution  (HW:1)

Exercises: Mindful Fasts   (HW:2, HW:3)                                                              

 

Meeting 24. Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (E)

When our relationship to eating and food is out of balance, it is easy to be overcome with negative emotions. Our mind becomes full of the voices of conflicting thoughts and emotions, and it is hard to do anything in a deliberate and straightforward way. How can we get some distance from these voices and steer the bus of our life down the road of our choice?

     The first step is to start a regular meditation practice. Meditation helps to settle and quiet the mind, to create some space around the inner voices. We can begin to sort them out, to hear what individual voices are trying to tell us. Actually these inner voices are trying to help us. They carry useful information, but when they become too powerful and neurotic, their potential for destruction outweighs their intent to assist us.

     An essential aspect of mindfulness is to see through these voices, to not be caught or fooled by them. Fortunately, there are several ways to work with them when they get involved with our eating.

Exercise: Basic Meditation Practice   (CW:1, HW:1)                                                

Exercise: Mindfulness of the Inner Critic   (HW:2)

Exercise: Acknowledge the Inner Critic and Let it Go  (HW:3)

Exercise: The Computer Model   (HW:4)

Exercise: Loving-Kindness: A Spiritual Antidote (CW:2, HW:5)                                 

Exercise: Expanding the Field of Loving-Kindness  (HW:6)

 

Meeting 25: Six Simple Guidelines for Mindful Eating (F)

As people begin doing the mindful eating exercises and begin making these six guidelines part of their daily lives, some questions naturally arise. Here are some of the most common questions, along with my answers and suggestions. You can contribute with yours for further discussion.

 

Meeting 26: Cultivating Gratitude (A)

It is ironic that in countries where food is abundant, disharmony with food and eating is most common. Somehow, when we have too much, something happens to our sense of gratitude, and when we lose touch with gratitude, we become increasingly dissatisfied with our lives.

     Not only food, but most of us take our bodies and our good health for granted. In fact, we don’t actually experience ourselves as “healthy” until we fall ill. We may not be aware of our irritation or anger at our body, but the body is aware of it. If an illness or disability lasts or becomes chronic, then we can be bathing our body continually in the negative energy of our distress. An atmosphere of love and kindness is essential if living beings, including children, pets, plants, and our own bodies, are to thrive and reach their highest potential.

     There are practices, however, that will uncover, at the center of our being, a humble and natural feeling of gratitude for our food and for our underappreciated bodies.

Exercise: The Basic Body Scan Meditation (CW, HW:1)                                            

Exercise: The Soft Butter Meditation  (HW:2 audio)

Exercise: Mindfulness Meditation on the Body with Gratitude  (HW:3 audio)

 

Meeting 27. Cultivating Gratitude (B)

When food and drink are abundant, it is easy to take them for granted. When we take them for granted, it is easy to stop paying attention to what is on our plate or in our mouth. When we stop paying attention, we stop smelling and tasting. We might as well be eating cardboard. Cardboard is not very satisfying to eat, so we try eating more. 

     How grateful would you be for a slice of bread if you had to weed and plow the field, sow and raise the grain, grind and sift the flour, and cut and burn the wood in order to bake one loaf? These days we don’t have to perform these many labors before we can eat a piece of bread, but someone does. When we cultivate a remembrance of these innumerable someones, our natural sense of gratitude begins to reawaken.

     Through mindfulness, we can look more deeply into everyday things. It is an aspect of wisdom not to be fooled by superficial aspects of things, even of the most ordinary things, things that we encounter many times a day. Food is one of these.

Exercise: Looking Deeply into Our Food  (CW)

Exercise: Loving-Kindness for the Beings Who Brought This Food  (HW)

 

Meeting 28. Conclusion: What Mindful Eating Teaches Us (A)

When we make mindful eating a regular part of our lives, we benefit in many ways. Not only do we find greater balance and satisfaction with food, we can also discover some of the deeper lessons and teachings that flow out of mindful eating.

·         It’s OK to be empty

·         Desires are inexhaustible

·         Desire is impermanent

·         Eating can be a sacred activity

Exercise: Experiencing Emptiness in the Body and Mind (HW:1 audio)

Exercise: Watching Desires  (HW:2)

Exercise: Discover your “Dharma Gates”  (HW:3)

 

Meeting 29. Conclusion: What Mindful Eating Teaches Us (B)

Discussion on your HW of meeting 28.

 

Meeting 30. Summary – Review

In this program we’ve explored a great deal of information and practices. This meeting is a quick review of the essential points. It might be helpful to return to this list from time to time, as you work to make mindful eating part of your everyday life.