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Q: Premaji, is there a diet that can assist me to advance on the spiritual path? I’m overweight and I use smoking and coffee to lose weight.
– Paula ~ Minneapolis, Minnesota

A: There is much confusion in this era about food choices. Diet experts are arguing over whether we should avoid fats or eat all the fat we want. They can’t agree on whether or not carbohydrates are hazardous or important foods that should predominate in our diets. One expert mentions that protein is dangerous while another insists that we don’t get enough. The spiritual diet cuts through the confusion and provides a lifelong guide that will enable you to achieve health, weight loss, and spiritual evolution.

Diet, Spirituality, and Meditation

What makes a diet spiritual? Consider two points: Is your diet helping you in your spiritual practice? Does it support meditation? Is it one that is based on reducing pain and suffering in your personal world and the larger world in which you live?

Have you ever tried to meditate after a visit to Starbuck’s and a double serving of espresso? At lunch do you drink a can of soda? Or iced tea for dinner? The possibility of meditating when you are caffeine and nicotine wired is unlikely. Without meditation how can you feel the tranquility and harmony of spirit?

Effects of Caffeine and Smoking

For one month eliminate caffeine and smoking. Enjoy the effect of spiritual peace on your mind and body! As you exclude caffeine and nicotine you are decreasing your chances of lung cancer and heart disease. On a spiritual diet you examine how your food choices are adding to your personal and planetary well-being.

Are you practicing ahimsa (non-violence) when you eat? If you are eating animal products you must realize that an animal full of adrenaline and terror died for you to eat its flesh. You are what you eat! You are taking this suffering into your body. Science documents that all animal products as food choices lead indisputably to cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease, strokes, and diabetes. It’s difficult to feel the natural spiritual joy and exuberance if your body is riddled with cancer or other killer diseases.

Healthy Vegetarian Choices

Ask yourself this: is it spiritual to choose foods that will create pain and tragedy for you and your loved ones? In addition, every healthy vegetarian choice brings greater well-being and less violence to our planet by putting an end to the epidemic killer diseases and to the rampant cruelty in the animal industry. The healthy vegetarian choices are whole grains, legumes, fruits, nuts, seeds, and vegetables.

Every two seconds, a child dies of hunger on our planet. This is because most of the world’s grain is not food grain, but feed grain for cattle. Meat eaters have their beef at the expense of a starving child. Since you ate breakfast yesterday, 36,000 children starved to death. Think about this the next time you indulge in a steak. Why pretend to be spiritual if you are eating meat? 25% of the world’s population is malnourished. American meat eaters are the most overweight and sickest population in history.

Walk your spiritual talk, cherish life, and become a vegetarian.

With prema, from my heart to yours… Namasté!

This article was written by the author of:

The Initiation
by Prema Baba Swamiji (as Dr. Donald Schnell).

Info/Order this book.

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