Vegan is magic

523:

My ongoing, never-ending pursuit of the omnivore-mind continues to be frustrated. I never seem to grasp what it is. There’s some barrier between my mind and the ‘meat-mind’ which is stuck. I seem to have a very strong instinct that it needs shifting. And for that we might need a bit of magic, to help transform what’s on one side of the barrier to the other side - to transform the feeling-of-being-vegan from a mundane feeling into something special.

          I like to attach the word ‘special’ to the attraction of ‘being vegan’. But can I, or can you, ever succeed in projecting what it’s like to be vegan, to someone who hasn’t experienced it? Can what I say ever be picked up, by non-vegans? And if it can, can it be seen as an ‘attraction’ by them? (And not as a threat?).

          Attraction: for me, the magic is within the attraction. It lifts me up and puts me down in another world.

          Vegans are in another world in so many ways, by virtue of lifestyle. That ‘other world’ has a different frequency, so they say (but I don’t understand that) but I did notice something like that a long time ago - I noticed an almost magical quality come into my feelings ... when I started to look at food differently. Things became attractive that weren’t before. Accepting vegan food was total. Accepting what it symbolised was total too. Food wasn’t just the maker of taste sensation or energy or stomach-filling but responsibility.

          Food is a pleasure. It’s a taste experience, and there’s energy, etc, but it’s also driving a lot of activity. We take on deliberate actions like shopping, like preparing and cooking food. My decision, a vegan’s decision, comes from one thing about food, that it is specifically chosen for its ‘harm-free-ness’. To me, no other criteria is as important as that.

          My decision, and my daily reinforcement of it, is based on what I once considered an uncomfortable philosophy. Living by it turns it into something entirely comfortable.

          I didn’t realise that the magic of something so simple (in this case a plant-based-food regime) could make me so happy, happy enough to willingly re-make my one decision, every day. Now I can dance and eat at the same time, and always could ever since I let my membership of ‘The Killing Club’ lapse, indefinitely.

          Surely, the most happy feeling anyone can imagine is being in love, but isn’t that feeling just part of a whole family of feelings. The feeling of being in love is almost the same as not-hurting-animals-for-my-own-survival. And that set of feelings is possible for us in the West, because we are lucky enough to have the choice of what foods to eat.