In order to prepare our bodies for maximum receptivity to God's light and love, our motivation must be strong. We must want to love others more and to love God more. Out of this motivation comes attention to the characteristics of thought and feeling that promote receptivity to Divine energy.  Out of this motivation also comes attention to the characteristics of our bodies that enhance this receptivity.

With respect to emotions, it is easy to see how energies of anger, fear, or despair may block our full receptivity to light and love. In relation to thoughts, it is also easy to see how qualities of obsessive thinking, worrying, and trying to control things may stand in the way of forming attitudes of openness and trust. With regard to our bodies, however, most people are more prone to separate the physical from the spiritual. As a result, we need to become more diligent in seeing how we can help the physical rejoin the spiritual and become more receptive to God's light.

The goal here is not about beliefs but about embodying light. There have always been virtuous and spiritually advanced people who walked the Earth who transmitted ideas and teachings of great value to humanity. However, there have never been a large number of people who viewed their bodies as vessels for Divine light, and who, by their own choice, sought to create physical instruments for the healing of the planet.

That this is possible today is part of the time we are in, a time of advancing light and rapidly evolving consciousness in which both knowledge about spiritual development and the presence of a higher vibration of light allow those who choose to, to develop bodies which can be a healing force in the world.  By moving in this direction, we have the capacity to not only affect our own lives through our purification and healing, but the lives of others as well.

Within the physical domain, purification focuses on improving our consciousness regarding the substances we put into our bodies and the ways in which we care for our physical being.  This dual focus is reflected in our diet, in our habits of self-care, and in our determination to not ingest or use toxic substances that are not in harmony with the natural functioning of our physical organism.

In this context, there are many who still discount what is best for them physically in favor of what feels best for them emotionally, or seems best in terms of how they were brought up.  As a result, many put into their bodies things that may have a negative or limiting effect when viewed from the perspective of incorporating greater spiritual light. 

In relation to diet, the first issue that generally needs to be addressed has to do with eating meat and the shift away from an animal-based diet to a plant-based one.   What is described below are general principles that apply to human beings as a whole, however, that may find certain exceptions within individuals whose particular needs may supersede these general principles for shorter or longer periods of time.  The principles are a starting point for evaluating and regulating your diet, yet at all times consciousness and experience must dictate what is best for your body to meet your own unique physical circumstances. 

In beginning this discussion, let us consider that there are many reasons to refrain from eating meat, and one may feel more strongly about one but not about others. Some reasons are moral, and some are practical though stemming from a moral core.

The moral reasons are reasons of the heart. They have to do with our caring for animals as sentient beings - beings with a consciousness not that dissimilar from our own. Out of this caring comes a moral need to respect the life of animals - to not take that life because we are capable of taking it. The perception of animal consciousness allows us to observe that animals feel, suffer, bond with others, raise families, and learn. Though their form of thinking is more primitive than ours, it is apparent that they do think in some rudimentary way, and that they do, therefore, have a consciousness. Those who hold life to be sacred find reasons of the heart to not take that life, both out of respect for God's Creation and out of respect for the individual life of the animal itself.

On the practical side, there are many more reasons to refrain from eating meat. All result from the fundamental premise that you become what you eat.

1. When we eat animal parts or products, we lower our vibration and take on the spiritual vibration of animal life instead of the spiritual vibration of human life. This takes us away from the full expansion of spirit that is possible for us as human beings.

2. When we eat animal parts or products, we take into our consciousness the thoughts and feelings of that which we eat - both the more primitive, instinctual urges that animals have by their very nature, and the pain and suffering that they often experience due to the conditions under which they are raised. Eating the flesh of animals is not just a physical act. It is an act with emotional and spiritual overtones that relate to the vibration and consciousness of the life that we have taken into ourselves.

3. When we eat meat or animal products, we rely on this source of nourishment to support our bodies instead of a plant-based source of nourishment which could provide us with metabolized light as a result of photosynthesis. Metabolized light is the physical light of the sun already taken into the plant's internal structure to produce chlorophyll. This light, especially in concentrated forms such as chlorella, spirulina, wheat grass powder, or blue-green algae, allows us to raise the vibration of light in our bodies and makes us more available to the inflow of spiritual light.

The premise behind this phenomenon is that all of light is related in God's universe, all of light comes from the same source. Sunlight - the light that plants absorb and that we enjoy with our vision and with our bodies - is merely a lower frequency along a whole spectrum that connects the entire spiritual universe. The light of Creation spoken of in the Book of Genesis is the source of all light, physical light included. A light-based diet, therefore, joins us most directly with this 'ladder of light' so that we become more open to higher spiritual sources.

Throughout the ages, certain individuals and groups have tried to create a body that could contain more light and that could therefore house the highest degree of spiritual consciousness. The ancient Egyptians did this, as did many other cultures. Today, too, our spiritual goals require that we seek to create within ourselves a pure and holy space which God can enter. We seek this because we have an aspiration to live a sacred life on Earth, a life filled with God.  For this reason and in order to support this progression, we may choose to interest ourselves in bringing more light into our bodies. A body whose senses are dulled, thick, or deadened is less alive to the experience of life and to God-in-life. It is less alive both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. A body whose senses are clear, has the greatest opportunity for enjoyment of the present moment and of all that the present brings. Furthermore, only such a body can become an embodied source of light for others. This is an important fact for those who wish to serve the Earth.

Regarding exceptions, there are some people referred to above, whose commitment to service is deep and abiding, yet who cannot sustain themselves on a plant-based diet.  Where the body indicates this to be the case, it is often very clear that meat is needed to support the process of spiritual growth, rather than to detract from it.   Issues such as the need for physical grounding, the need to balance the flow of energy among the upper and lower energy centers, the need to reduce physical symptoms that increase in the absence of meat and decrease when meat is re-introduced into the diet - all provide reasons for following one’s inner guidance in relation to physical purification. Some people, for example, need to become more dense for period of time due to other imbalances that are being healed.  Some need meat in order to feel more a part of life on the physical plane.  The surest guide to follow is one’s own inner guidance that may be transmitted from the higher aspects of one's self through the mind, heart, or body.  Such guidance is increasingly available today and can tell us what our bodies need if we ask. 

Inner guidance in the form of intuition can also tell us about the life or vitality of the foods that we eat. We can know this with our minds, but knowing it through the body itself is a more certain guide to what enlivens our cells and creates more health for our physical being. 

Certain foods have more life, certain foods less. Some foods are so devoid of life that they may be described as anti-life. A food can be anti-life in one of two ways:

1) It can change the natural process of how our bodies function on their own when they are in good health and diminish this healthy functioning,

2) It can be a food from which the life has been extracted through over-processing or other alteration so that it is effectively lifeless or dead.

In the first category are foods that alter our metabolism, sleeping patterns, alertness, ability to concentrate, quality of emotion, ability to maintain an even keel, etc. There are many such foods in this category including refined sugar, coffee, and alcohol. Also included are toxic substances, even in small amounts, such as preservatives, chemicals, and pesticides that make the body work in ways that it is not accustomed to. Preservatives and chemicals found in many foods such as emulsifiers, artificial coloring, dyes, etc., introduce into the body trace elements of substances that are frequently harmful. This is true also of pesticides. These substances cannot be processed by our bodies because they do not naturally occur in our bodies and often their effect is extremely damaging, even if taken in small amounts.

Other foods are anti-life not because they are harmful, but because they lack life or are dead. Food needs to be fresh when eaten and processed as little as possible. Those foods that are over-processed in the course of canning, heating, or refining, have literally had the life boiled, pressured, drained, or compressed out of them. To love our bodies is to give our bodies foods that contain life, vital foods, foods that are natural and whole, rather than foods that are dead and lifeless.

Food preparation is also an important subject for those interested in creating a sacred body. The food that we eat, freshly picked from the Earth, is pure and nourishing the way God intended it to be to support our physical life. The food that we eat that comes to us through supermarkets, in bottles or cans, processed, or having traveled through many hands to get to us, is often much less pure and much less nourishing. Why is this?

Food that is prepared by loving hands, lovingly, does not add anything to the food that is difficult for the body to digest. Rather, it adds energy to the food that makes it more nourishing. Food prepared in haste, indifferently, or with anger or fear, without the desire to offer it as gift, incorporates into itself some part of the attitude of the person or persons preparing it. That is why food served to others and to oneself needs to be prepared slowly and peacefully, as if we were preparing a welcome for an honored guest. In offering this food to others, we need to offer it with love and a desire for their nourishment. This attitude maintains the pure, clear state of the food we eat and adds love to it.

In all types of learning including the learning of how to live a sacred life, we move by stages from one level of what we do not know to the next level of what we do not know. This is the nature of being a ‘learner,’ and we need to do this innocently, like children willing to stumble along in order to grow. As we proceed, we can adopt an attitude that seeks to meet the new without fear and without unwarranted expectations of ourselves. We can allow for mistakes being made, and slowly edge our way into a new reality. When we operate in this way, we need not despair when what is new is difficult to grasp, but instead can greet it with curiosity and enthusiasm, knowing that we will be helped to find our way as we walk into the unknown.

Related Article:

Developing a Sacred Relationship with Food

The Practice of Purity

Spiritualizing the Body

Article Section -  Purification