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            Not all cultures have been so cut off from their true feelings about food as ours is today.  Many Native American tribes had a deep awareness that they were a part of what they ate – e.g., the buffalo.  They lived with the buffalo, followed the buffalo, prayed to the buffalo.  They were one with the buffalo, and thus to them eating was a sacrament.  Modern Native Americans maintain that same attitude of reverence towards maize.

            But in America today we mine food, extract the nutrients out of it, strip it, rape it, and throw it away.  What little nourishment for the spirit is left in food by modern agricultural and processing methods is completely destroyed by the way we eat it.  We use food in a most disrespectful manner – stuffing it in gluttonously whether we are hungry or not, whether it tastes good or not, whether we really want it or not; and then we waste food as if to piss on it.  Like sex, we have turned eating from a joyous, spiritual act into a source of great shame.

            An infant doesn’t conceive of his food or his mother as something separate from himself; he doesn’t feel more important than his food, and therefore doesn’t feel disconnected from it.  When an infant eats, he mingles with his food:  he touches it, gets to know how it feels.  It’s pretty, it satisfies his hunger, it makes him happy.  But when an infant first sees adults eat, it makes him feel shame.  This is because we adults don’t identify with our food – it’s as if our food is not a part of us, as if what we are putting into our mouths is something foreign to ourselves.  We attack our food as if it is separate from us, and it is the act of eating which allows us to use it.  We bite it off in huge mouthfuls like ravenous hyenas, chew it and swallow it with gulps of contempt.  We come together in great rituals like Thanksgiving and Christmas in which we engage in orgies of gluttony and wastefulness to jointly validate our shame, all the while calling it glory.  And that lie makes us even more ashamed; so we lie about that one too, and call it glory.  And so on.  And nobody will look at what they are really feeling, because if being pigs has brought us glory, why look at what pigs we are?

            The reason why saints can survive on so little food is because they’re not attacking it, squeezing the life out of it, so it takes very little to sustain them.  The Native Americans are able to survive on a diet of pretty much nothing but corn because they love the corn, and the corn loves them back, and they’re able to live from that love even though from the point of view of nutrition they should slowly starve to death.

            While it is true that the original light fiber energy in food can be vitiated by disrespect anywhere along the line – in handling, processing, cooking, or eating – it is also true that light fiber energy, being more flexible than vitamins or proteins, can be restored to food by respecting it and treating it as sacred – by ritualizing the activities connected with it.

            First of all, it’s important that you should raise at least some of your own food, even if all this means is a couple of pots of herbs or jars of sprouts grown on a window shelf.  Try to throw in at least a pinch of home-grown herbs or sprouts into every meal you cook (not necessarily every dish, but every meal).  Visualize yourself casting fibers of light into the food as you add your home-grown herbs or produce.

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