Feeling stronger in our self

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Personal self-development, on ‘my road to enlightenment’ or my ‘quest for happiness’, isn’t only my journey through life but my place in the lives of others, too. Otherwise it gets too self indulgent. To feel successful, I’ve got to be able to convince me of myself, and that’s where veganism is important. It’s code of practical compassion lets us empathise with another person’s situation, from which we can start to think about others before thinking about our self. If that sounds idealistic, it’s not. Most of us do it, nearly all the time. We are mostly NOT self indulgent and not uncontrollably tempted. And what’s more, if we ever have a reason to not self-gratify, we’ll take it, because we all want to think of ourselves as stronger than temptation.

That’s of course how practising vegans want to see themselves anyway, by including animals in our sweep of empathy. Which brings us back to yesterday’s blog about the ‘terrified lamb, whose throat is about to be cut’. Which brings us back to the obvious need to observe vegan principles in life. When you decide to become vegan you have to see it not as a restriction but as a liberation, not as an abstention but a taking up of something better. And part of that ‘better’ is something beyond self-interest. For sure, food-wise it means healthier food, but ethics-wise it means something compassionate, some act of empathy.

Surely, if we want to improve ourselves, it comes down to doing the right thing, even difficult or inconvenient. The leap forward in self-improvement is energy balancing, helped by our food generating good energy and the ethical component of what we buy preventing energy draining from bad conscience. But once that’s sorted, confidence grows. The biggest self-development-feeling comes knowing our resolutions can be made and will be kept. We feel all the stronger for that.