The Spirituality of Being Vegan – A Personal Sharing

June 28th, 2019

Originally published at kindearth.net and reproduced here with permission

Spirituality to me is a celebration of my love for sentient life. It’s an honouring of the interconnectivity of all things. More than that – it’s feeling the interconnectivity at the core of my being. It’s compassion. It’s love. It’s non-judgment. It’s a mystical, intangible life force that always inspires me to make the most loving and compassionate choice available. Spirituality ignites my soul, allowing me to dance, open my heart, free my mind and serve my life’s purpose.

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My heart guides constantly guides me to take the most loving and compassionate path in life, which also means that I embrace a vegan lifestyle (and have done so for over 24 years).

All For One And One For All

Not only is eating a plant-based diet good for the planet, our fellow animals, it also raises my vibration positively, so that I, in turn, can infuse a little bit more of the divine back into the world around me. It creates an awesome feedback loop, important for my spiritual evolution.

What is good for other sentient life, is good for me. Making compassionate choices works somewhat like a key to unlock a higher paradigm of unconditional love within me. It is a key on my journey back to whole and complete spiritual beingness.

A Profound Spiritual Awakening

In 1995 I had a profound, earth-shattering, spiritual awakening that changed my life forever.

I don’t know why it happened to me – perhaps just because my ‘time had come’. I’d been tormented by the relentless yearning to find meaning in a cruel world. As a very sensitive person witnessing and feeling the degradation of our planet and fellow sentient beings, I felt an intolerable pain; a primal scream. I wanted to die. I’d reached the bottom of the well of grief and it was barren, dry and empty. My world finally caved in. I wanted to give every cell of my being back to the universe. Everything I’d ever loved, dreamed of, hoped for ‘take it back – take me back – I want out’.

I finally gave up the fight and surrendered every cell of my being into the divine. I collapsed, unable to feel anything anymore. And then it happened!

Something extraordinary and unexpected took place…

A white light flooded my entire being, dissolving everything around me, consuming me entirely, radiating the whole field around me, until their was only white light. The universe disappeared. There was no me or you. No up or down. No this or that. The veil had fallen away and all that was left was one pulsating white light of pure unity consciousness. It formed everything, lacked nothing, whilst exuding a paradoxical formlessness. I was that, that was me and so was everything else! I experienced the soul of all other sentient beings, trees, creatures, people, all forms of life, all connected as one pulsating energy. All judgement fell away. Beyond words.

After an experience like that, everything changes! Everything was different. There were no boundaries; just an interconnectedness of all things. No concepts, no intellectual interpretation. I realised my place in the sacred flow of life. We’re all one, all connected.

Immediately after my spiritual awakening, I made instant changes to my lifestyle (including adopting a vegan diet). It became clear to me that a compassionate, plant-based way of eating was not only best for my fellow sentient beings and for Mother Earth, but also for my personal spiritual evolution.

Interconnectivity

Spiritually, we know that all are connected. We sense it, through every cell of our being. We can feel it in the depths of our hearts. It’s a whisper, inviting us to unfold into the fullness of our being, calling us ‘home’. There is a thread that joins us all together… plants, people, animals, and all sentient life. When we tug at that thread, we find that everything is connected.

What we do to another, we ultimately do to ourselves. At our deepest levels there is a yearning to become whole again and to honour all other sentient beings.

The Awakening Soul

Once our soul begins to awaken, we know in our hearts that all beings are worthy of love and compassion.

True love awaits within each of us, often dormant until stirred, like a hibernating seed, unaware, yet ever yearning for the moment to be set free.

Everything Is Energy

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe,”
a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings
as something separated from the rest,
a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and
to affection for a few persons nearest to us.
Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circle of compassion to embrace
all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

Spiritually we understand that everything is made of energy. In fact these days, even science confirms it. Everything consists of a particular vibration. Without vibrational energy, nothing would exist at all. Nothing escapes us. The choices we make in life alter our vibration accordingly, creating karma that either binds us to the density or sets us free.

You Are What You Eat

What we eat infuses into the cells of our body, which then affects our energetic vibration (physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually).

Eating plant-based food that has been grown naturally with care, nourishes our mind, body and spirit, raising our vibration. For a plethora of delicious plant-based recipes (created from a space of love) please go to my page here: Plant-based Recipes at Kind Earth

However, if we ingest animals (or their products) that have been in a state of pain or suffering in any way, we invite that vibration of turmoil into ourselves. That suffering literally becomes a part of us.

We’ve Lost Our Tribe!

So we know everything is connected…. yet, we’ve become indoctrinated (since the earliest of times) to believe that we are separate from one another. We’ve become fragmented and torn. Broken and disconnected. We’ve lost our tribe!

The illusion of separation has its grip so tightly on the ego that it fights vehemently for its own survival. The ego doesn’t want us to embrace our deepest compassion; for true compassion is about oneness and interconnectivity. True compassion means the death of the ego. Humanity has become destructive, causing great devastation and suffering for sentient life. The violence that is committed towards animals, has however, mostly been sanitised – carried out behind closed doors, protecting us from the blood-shed and horror.

How easy it is to deny responsibility when we don’t have blood on our own hands. Most of us stand behind a veil, believing that we are compassionate and loving beings, because we don’t inflict the torture ourselves. Or do we? We make that choice, consuming flesh and produce from our our fellow sentient beings, calling it food, distanced from the fact, that we are indeed responsible for the brutal deaths of billions of our friends every year. We know this in our hearts. Yet how many of us choose to ignore it?

Be Completely Honest With Yourself And Then Find Peace Within

Whether we consume animals and their by-products isn’t the issue. I am not telling anyone what they should or shouldn’t do. The issue is whether we’ve truly explored it. Whether we’ve really looked at what is going on. Whether we’ve truly owned our choices.

Watch a movie like Earthlings. Join the dots and be completely honest about how you feel. The important thing is that you make your choices from the heart. Don’t stay anaesthetised to what is really going on – make a conscious choice from your heart. True love is honest, transparent and takes full ownership of responsibility. If you can honestly feel the fear and embrace the suffering that your fellow creatures feel, with every fibre of your being… and still eat them (or their by-products), then you’ve made your choice. Be at peace with it.

The Spiritual Gift of Eating Compassionately

For me being vegan is about making the best choices I can, to honour the light within me, that is connected with the light within you… and all other sentient life. My spiritual journey would be incomplete without honouring my pull towards unity and oneness.

Eating compassionately is a spiritual gift. It not only raises our vibration, but it sends ripples of the deepest love out into our world. It connects us all.

Why I went vegan?

I created a video a while back to talk a little more about exactly why I went vegan all those years ago…

Please feel free to share your own story or ask any questions in the comments below.

From my heart to yours
Anastasia
(Previously known between 2005 & 2018 as Trinity Bourne – read more about that here: https://www.kindearth.net/my-birth-name-anastasia/ )

About the author:

Plant-based workshop leader, retreat chef, recipe developer and life coach Anastasia was born in England and is currently nomadic. After a profound spiritual awakening in 1995, she recognised that all things are deeply connected and adopted a lifestyle of compassion and respect for all sentient beings. With a deep affinity with Mother Earth she founded KindEarth.net a space dedicated to compassionate, heart-centred living, plant-based recipes, meditation and reconnection with nature. Having enjoyed a vegan diet for over 24 years, she has experienced optimal health along the way, publishing several cook books and developing a plethora of original high vibe recipes. Anastasia invites us all to rise up from our deepest depths, to honour our true calling and is always delighted to hear from others who resonate on this journey back to a higher paradigm of love and respect.