Spiritual Cookery

[Guest guest]

Spiritual Cookery

 

"I then asked (Dr. Steiner),

`How can

it happen that the spiritual impulse,

and especially the

inner schooling, for which you are constantly providing

stimulus and guidance

bear so little fruit? Why do

the people concerned give so little evidence of

spiritual experience, in spite of

all their efforts?

Why, worst of all, is

the will for action, for the

carrying out of these spiritual impulses, so weak?'

 

"Then came the thought-provoking and surprising answer:

`This is a problem of

nutrition. Nutrition as

it is today

does not supply

the strength necessary

for manifesting the

spirit in physical life. A

bridge can no longer be built from

thinking to will and action.'"

 

– Ehrenfried Pfeiffer, from the

introduction to

Agriculture –

Eight Lectures by Rudolf Steiner

 

We all

know that "you are what you eat"; and many of us are becoming aware that this

maxim has a spiritual as well as a physical dimension. We know we simply feel better when we eat

well – when our bodies, rather than our minds, dictate what we should eat or

not eat. Many of us have experienced a

complete change in attitude and outlook on life by simply changing our diets. Whole bodies of thought, such as the Jewish

kosher laws and macrobiotics, have evolved to stress the spirituality of food,

to emphasize its sacredness.

 

The

"spiritual quality of food" is not a metaphor:

food contains a light fiber energy which is as important to our

sustenance as vitamins and proteins, but which is not susceptible to chemical

analysis. And just as the vitamin and

protein content of food can be diminished by processing or overcooking, so too

can the light fiber content of food be diminished by disrespect.

 

Light

fibers are actually the same things as good feelings. When we feel good, we literally glow. When a food plant or animal feels good, it

glows. Even when it is killed for food,

the glow remains as long as the killing was done with respect; that is, with a

sense of connectedness and gratitude rather than mechanically.

 

A farmer

puts the glow into his plants and animals by treating them with respect – by

respecting their feelings. Practically

all farmers farm for the love it; they sure don't do it for the money. They feel joyous as they ride their tractors

up and down their fields, and that good feeling is communicated to the soil and

plants. Similarly, most dairy farmers

not only address their cows as individuals, but they also develop quirky

personal relationships with them.

Therefore, from a light fiber point of view, our vegetable and milk

supplies are still relatively safe. Most

egg farms, on the other hand, are run like Auschwitz, and that's what makes

eggs poisonous to eat (not their cholesterol).

 

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.

 

Next,

bless your key, staple ingredients – salt, flour, sugar, honey, etc. You can ask any spirit helpers you are

presently using to do this for you:

Jesus or Mary, Krishna, nature spirits, etc. can all do the job for

you. Just take them a pound of sugar,

salt, or flour; address them in whatever form you are accustomed to; and ask

them to please bless your ingredients.

If you don't have a spirit helper, just take the ingredients to the

summit of the largest or most imposing mountain or hill in your immediate area;

take the mountain spirit a token portion of something special you have cooked

yourself as an offering; and ask him or her to please bless your ingredients. Don't worry about whether you are doing it

right: if you are doing it in good

faith, you're doing it right.

 

Keep your

sacred, blessed ingredients apart from the regular ones, but whenever you

refill the sugar bowl, salt shaker, flour bin, etc. add a pinch of the blessed

ingredient, and imagine that you are putting light fibers in with the

pinch.

 

Observe

that you must never be in a bad mood when you cook, nor must you eat food

cooked by someone who is in a bad mood, or even an indifferent one. A burger from a McDonald's where the

employees are a light, happy bunch has more light fiber energy than a plate of

organic brown rice from a vegetarian restaurant where the cook is bored or is

angry at the manager.

 

You can

easily tell when food has bad vibes. It's

not that it tastes bad per se; rather, it feels wrong or out of place in your

mouth – there's no incentive to chew it and swallow it. Whenever you get a feeling like this about

something you are eating, spit it out.

Don't swallow it, even to be polite.

Much processed, convenience food "tastes" like this – bland, insipid, effete, enervated – but

people get so used to this kind of food that they can't tell the difference any

more. They just assume that feeling

lousy all the time is how you're supposed to feel, and they cease to

notice that it is their food which is bringing them down.

 

Finally,

talk to your food. Thank it as if it

were alive and could understand you. Not

long conversation, just a simple acknowledgment that you are aware of being in

the presence of a sentient being who is worthy of your respect, who died for

you, and from whom you wish a favor. You

wouldn't ask a human being for a favor in a surly, disrespectful manner; on the

contrary, you would ask humbly and respectfully, and feel gratitude for the

favor when granted. And that is how you

must address your food: take small

bites, chew it slowly and mindfully, eat in silence paying attention to the act

of eating, and never eat until full.

 

(excerpted from Magical Almanac ezine, MagicalAlmanac

2001 by Bob Makransky. All

rights reserved).

 

More of Bob Makransky's articles are posted at: www.dearbrutus.com

 

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