The first purpose of the food we eat is to provide us with the best possible fuel needed for our interior and exterior work. The second purpose of food is to remind us that whatever we’re given to nourish ourselves with should always be taken in with a measure of gratitude. The third, and last, purpose of food is for the pleasure it can provide. Having these prerogatives out of order — as they now are all around the world — is not only the chief cause of most of the physical misery visited upon the individual human body, but also serves as one of the driving forces responsible for mounting global suffering.
There is no question that the kind of food we eat, as well as our relationship to it when we eat it, has an impact upon our organism. The body is a factory capable of producing extraordinary product. However, junk in — junk out. The body breaks down, and the mind loses its capacity to consider even its own condition. Breakdown follows at all levels.
Eating a healthy diet and doing proper exercise is essential for allowing maximum possibility inwardly. The more awake we become, the more consciously we eat. As we really work at being more aware, we begin to contact (and be contacted by) higher energy. As these awakened energies infuse us, the body is tested, and it needs to be prepared to be strong. Unconscious appetites keep us from developing a love for the one relationship that can actually fulfill our need for love, security, happiness and peace.
Eat consciously and watch what happens. If you’ll do that, you will know what you are supposed to eat. Whole, fresh, living (preferably organic) foods — vegetables, fruits, and grains — are the most nourishing diet. Eat as healthy as you possibly can, not for the sake of some image of yourself, but for the purpose of increasing your ability to be quiet and whole.
Don’t punish the body with the stomach’s desires. Overdo nothing. If you’ll take care of yourself and be alert to yourself, you’ll see that the appetites are stronger. Don’t be discouraged! Strangely enough, it is our awareness of our own reluctance and resistance to truthful principles that speeds us along the way. The wrong parts of us seize our discoveries, and in an effort to get us to turn back, flaunt this falseness.
So, work at developing your love for truth. Why does that have anything to do with diet? Because you become devoted to whatever it takes to make your body, mind and heart more receptive to the spirit that you love. At that point you don’t want to sit with a body that’s uncomfortable to you — not because the body is uncomfortable, or because you think about yourself as having an unpleasant body, but because the body itself is interfering with your ability to deepen your relationship with the truth. Then you stop eating foods that upset you, because you don’t want that. And when you go to bed at night, your body rests naturally because you have allowed the truth awakened in you to begin to shape you.
The only way for us to know there is a world above us (that would perfect us) is if we will put ourselves in relationship with its powers through practicing them. There is an integration that takes place when we practice what we love. As we work to embody these higher powers in our life, we are united with them.
Never let darkness, dismay — any of the things that attend the mind — be your guide. If you are sincere in your wish, and willing to work with practice to embrace principle, to discover what is necessary to put you in relationship — in alignment with — a higher order, you will gratefully enter into a whole new level of understanding about the true purpose of your life and all that sustains it.
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