Intuiting the Mystery of Food
Hello Everyone!
I'm always on the look out for people who are just being "applied spirituality" in action. What does that look like?
Well, recently I've found Michael Pollan, author extraordinaire. The book of his that I am currently reading is In Defense of Food. Michael is a journalist by profession and a light being by birth. His area of focus is food, nutrition, and health. His Knowing is that something is very wrong in the US as he observes how sick we still are, what poor quality our food is, and his intuition regarding what's going on.
I felt an affinity for Pollan's writing as I listened in my car. He was voicing things that I have "felt" over the last 30 years. Couple Pollan's writing with Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, Animal, Vegetable Miracle.
I grew up in Ohio and Pennsylvania. While living in Ohio, my Dad always kept a garden. It was a significant garden of 1/4 acre at the back of our property in Brecksville, Ohio. I have clear memories of his working out there, shirt off and hoeing under the weeds. I got a penny for each Japanese beetle that I picked off the plants. My first lesson in organic farming. I remember the huge earth worms, the smell of the dark, rich soil and the bounty. The harvests were brought into Mom and Gram who either blanched to freeze or canned for the winter months. As time went on and my Dad was promoted and transferred, in each new home our first job (as I tagged along) was to put a fruit cellar into the basement.
While Dad was gardening or golfing, Mom and Gram took us on excursions into various rural areas of Cleveland. One such was to purchase maple syrup where they were tapping the trees.
When peaches came into season I can recall discussions on the amount to purchase: a bushel, a peck, three bushels. Peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries, corn, all these came from local farms and with never a thought that they were not pure, safe or wholesome, as in those days no local farmer used synthetic chemicals but the manure from his sheep or goats or cows. I can clearly recall when we moved to Canton, Ohio our property was across the road from the Fierstos farm. And in March and April, Mr. Fierstos would spread his sheep manure onto his fields. The odor was disgusting for about a week. But the vegetables he grew were delicious and nutritious.
It was such a good time, those days. For we rightly were able to trust our food. And more importantly, our food contained all the nutrition we required. We never were at war with our food. My Grandmother spend the better part of every afternoon cooking dinner which was eaten around the dining room table with linen. It was a gathering. The food was full of thought and love, made from scratch. Such delights as stuffed cabbage, home made breads and strudel, fresh vegetables or frozen from the garden.
It was a big deal when Canton got its first McDonald's up on Lincoln Way. Even then I think that the quality of McDonald's food had to have been better than it is today. Then one by one the fast food restaurants opened: Arby's and Carl's Junior. And over the years I noticed how the quality there increasingly diminished. I didn't question why this was so, I just stopped eating at them, because the food didn't feel good to me. That's it. It just didn't satisfy.
For awhile that was OK, because you could still find real food in the stores or go to a nicer restaurant and find good, real food. But eventually even that became scarce. Pollan has noticed the deeper cause: that industrialization of the food supply, itself, is the problem.
My inquiry has been running a parallel course. I began noticing my friends getting sick with weird auto-immune deficiencies. And then one day I was ill, as well. Until finally one day I stood at my refrigerator and couldn't see a single thing that I wanted to eat. I felt it the worst dilemma that I had ever experienced. Finally going to the pantry my eyes alighted on the one thing my stomach agreed to: organic chicken broth. This was serious.
What the heck was going on? My Godchip, my Self was warning me off the food. It took awhile for my human brain to catch on. I have always been an equal opportunity eater. An adventurous eater. I will try and enjoy all kinds of foods from sushi to steak tartar. But suddenly (or maybe not so suddenly) but cumulatively the things I would raise to my mouth, my inner Self would turn It's head away and say, "NO!" It was like I had an inner 2 year old with arms folded over my chest and threatening to spit out anything I dared put in. Serious business, to be sure.
Around this time I got my garden going again. Not large, but a few heirloom tomato plants, some eggplant, garlic and lettuces and spinach plus my ever present herbs. Thank heaven, for this is what I could notice not only that I could eat, but I was delighted with the taste. That first tomato was a culinary orgasm. And then my human mind caught up with my Godchip. It was the toxicity of the food in the stores and the lack of nutrition in the food It was alerting me to.
Then came the question of where to buy Real food and what would I eat. Meanwhile, of course, for my physical complaints, I had been going to my chiropractor who faithfully muscle tested me for this lacking nutrition and that lacking mineral. So there I was taking all these supplements. Double YEECK!!! And this is "nutritionism" as defined by Michael Pollan. I hated taking these supplements. It just - again - felt wrong. Why would I have to take all these nutritional supplements when it should be available in my food. What is wrong with this picture?
As we know, however, ask and it is answered. So the information for my human mind/reason and intellect started coming to me from authors such as Kingsolver and Pollan. I was relieved to know my Godchip was and is working perfectly guiding me towards those things good for me and revolted by those things not good for me. I think I was most stunned that a whole nation had walked off the food cliff. Is it not just good common sense to eat whole and to grow whole and natural?
When did this happen, but more importantly, HOW could this happen?
This happened because we individually and then collectively defer our authority to someone else.And how it happend was one incremental choice at a time to defer our Inner Authority to something external.
Pollan and Kingsolver allude to who and why these manipulations have come about; but WE FOLLOWED. I can recall when eggs were pronouced BAD, then butter, and wine. I watched while the lemmings first ran this way, then that way with each "scientific" decree. I thought then that was rubbish. And margarine over butter? How could something synthetic ever be better for you that the Real thing? I departed from science as authority, but I never thought I would be scant for choices in the market.
These are the outcomes when we individually and then collectively separate from our Godchip, our knowing, our Guidance Systems. How far we have separated from our Source, from Who We Really Are. Our Godmind for our Human Mind. Common Sense is what we know from our Godchip. For the whole of the industrial revolution we have been systematically talked out of Common Sense (God Mind) for the Human Mind and its flights and fancies.
We are as a species, the human species, a natural, organic part of this natural organic world. We are part and parcel of it. Our separation from this Knowing is at the root of this rupture. The human mind is our license for free will. We can and do create anything we can imagine. That's part of the fun here on planet Earth. The results of our creations are the information: does it feel good? Is it good? Do we want more of it or less? Choose again.
With respect to food, it is definitely time to choose again for the Health of it. And for the JOY of it. We don't even enjoy our food. How very, very, sad. This is quintessentially why the French are healthier and eat whatever they want. At least in this area, they are more "aligned" with Source (JOY) and out of their human minds. Good for them!
There is the mystery as to why whole foods organically grown feed and nourish our bodies in whole and complete ways as nutritional supplements cannot. It is LIFE. It is Source. And we haven't decoded that mystery, but it is just so. And we, thank Heaven, are part and parcel of that mystery. (http://www.michaelpollan.com/link.htm)
As more of us awaken to Who We Really Are and make new choices, several things will radically change: politics, economics and our inherent pleasure.
Thanks for reading!
Kath
I'm always on the look out for people who are just being "applied spirituality" in action. What does that look like?
Well, recently I've found Michael Pollan, author extraordinaire. The book of his that I am currently reading is In Defense of Food. Michael is a journalist by profession and a light being by birth. His area of focus is food, nutrition, and health. His Knowing is that something is very wrong in the US as he observes how sick we still are, what poor quality our food is, and his intuition regarding what's going on.
I felt an affinity for Pollan's writing as I listened in my car. He was voicing things that I have "felt" over the last 30 years. Couple Pollan's writing with Barbara Kingsolver's latest book, Animal, Vegetable Miracle.
I grew up in Ohio and Pennsylvania. While living in Ohio, my Dad always kept a garden. It was a significant garden of 1/4 acre at the back of our property in Brecksville, Ohio. I have clear memories of his working out there, shirt off and hoeing under the weeds. I got a penny for each Japanese beetle that I picked off the plants. My first lesson in organic farming. I remember the huge earth worms, the smell of the dark, rich soil and the bounty. The harvests were brought into Mom and Gram who either blanched to freeze or canned for the winter months. As time went on and my Dad was promoted and transferred, in each new home our first job (as I tagged along) was to put a fruit cellar into the basement.
While Dad was gardening or golfing, Mom and Gram took us on excursions into various rural areas of Cleveland. One such was to purchase maple syrup where they were tapping the trees.
When peaches came into season I can recall discussions on the amount to purchase: a bushel, a peck, three bushels. Peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries, corn, all these came from local farms and with never a thought that they were not pure, safe or wholesome, as in those days no local farmer used synthetic chemicals but the manure from his sheep or goats or cows. I can clearly recall when we moved to Canton, Ohio our property was across the road from the Fierstos farm. And in March and April, Mr. Fierstos would spread his sheep manure onto his fields. The odor was disgusting for about a week. But the vegetables he grew were delicious and nutritious.
It was such a good time, those days. For we rightly were able to trust our food. And more importantly, our food contained all the nutrition we required. We never were at war with our food. My Grandmother spend the better part of every afternoon cooking dinner which was eaten around the dining room table with linen. It was a gathering. The food was full of thought and love, made from scratch. Such delights as stuffed cabbage, home made breads and strudel, fresh vegetables or frozen from the garden.
It was a big deal when Canton got its first McDonald's up on Lincoln Way. Even then I think that the quality of McDonald's food had to have been better than it is today. Then one by one the fast food restaurants opened: Arby's and Carl's Junior. And over the years I noticed how the quality there increasingly diminished. I didn't question why this was so, I just stopped eating at them, because the food didn't feel good to me. That's it. It just didn't satisfy.
For awhile that was OK, because you could still find real food in the stores or go to a nicer restaurant and find good, real food. But eventually even that became scarce. Pollan has noticed the deeper cause: that industrialization of the food supply, itself, is the problem.
My inquiry has been running a parallel course. I began noticing my friends getting sick with weird auto-immune deficiencies. And then one day I was ill, as well. Until finally one day I stood at my refrigerator and couldn't see a single thing that I wanted to eat. I felt it the worst dilemma that I had ever experienced. Finally going to the pantry my eyes alighted on the one thing my stomach agreed to: organic chicken broth. This was serious.
What the heck was going on? My Godchip, my Self was warning me off the food. It took awhile for my human brain to catch on. I have always been an equal opportunity eater. An adventurous eater. I will try and enjoy all kinds of foods from sushi to steak tartar. But suddenly (or maybe not so suddenly) but cumulatively the things I would raise to my mouth, my inner Self would turn It's head away and say, "NO!" It was like I had an inner 2 year old with arms folded over my chest and threatening to spit out anything I dared put in. Serious business, to be sure.
Around this time I got my garden going again. Not large, but a few heirloom tomato plants, some eggplant, garlic and lettuces and spinach plus my ever present herbs. Thank heaven, for this is what I could notice not only that I could eat, but I was delighted with the taste. That first tomato was a culinary orgasm. And then my human mind caught up with my Godchip. It was the toxicity of the food in the stores and the lack of nutrition in the food It was alerting me to.
Then came the question of where to buy Real food and what would I eat. Meanwhile, of course, for my physical complaints, I had been going to my chiropractor who faithfully muscle tested me for this lacking nutrition and that lacking mineral. So there I was taking all these supplements. Double YEECK!!! And this is "nutritionism" as defined by Michael Pollan. I hated taking these supplements. It just - again - felt wrong. Why would I have to take all these nutritional supplements when it should be available in my food. What is wrong with this picture?
As we know, however, ask and it is answered. So the information for my human mind/reason and intellect started coming to me from authors such as Kingsolver and Pollan. I was relieved to know my Godchip was and is working perfectly guiding me towards those things good for me and revolted by those things not good for me. I think I was most stunned that a whole nation had walked off the food cliff. Is it not just good common sense to eat whole and to grow whole and natural?
When did this happen, but more importantly, HOW could this happen?
This happened because we individually and then collectively defer our authority to someone else.And how it happend was one incremental choice at a time to defer our Inner Authority to something external.
Pollan and Kingsolver allude to who and why these manipulations have come about; but WE FOLLOWED. I can recall when eggs were pronouced BAD, then butter, and wine. I watched while the lemmings first ran this way, then that way with each "scientific" decree. I thought then that was rubbish. And margarine over butter? How could something synthetic ever be better for you that the Real thing? I departed from science as authority, but I never thought I would be scant for choices in the market.
These are the outcomes when we individually and then collectively separate from our Godchip, our knowing, our Guidance Systems. How far we have separated from our Source, from Who We Really Are. Our Godmind for our Human Mind. Common Sense is what we know from our Godchip. For the whole of the industrial revolution we have been systematically talked out of Common Sense (God Mind) for the Human Mind and its flights and fancies.
We are as a species, the human species, a natural, organic part of this natural organic world. We are part and parcel of it. Our separation from this Knowing is at the root of this rupture. The human mind is our license for free will. We can and do create anything we can imagine. That's part of the fun here on planet Earth. The results of our creations are the information: does it feel good? Is it good? Do we want more of it or less? Choose again.
With respect to food, it is definitely time to choose again for the Health of it. And for the JOY of it. We don't even enjoy our food. How very, very, sad. This is quintessentially why the French are healthier and eat whatever they want. At least in this area, they are more "aligned" with Source (JOY) and out of their human minds. Good for them!
There is the mystery as to why whole foods organically grown feed and nourish our bodies in whole and complete ways as nutritional supplements cannot. It is LIFE. It is Source. And we haven't decoded that mystery, but it is just so. And we, thank Heaven, are part and parcel of that mystery. (http://www.michaelpollan.com/link.htm)
As more of us awaken to Who We Really Are and make new choices, several things will radically change: politics, economics and our inherent pleasure.
Thanks for reading!
Kath
Labels: applied spirituality, eating whole organic foods, Food, Michael Pollan, why
posted by Kath at
11:44 AM
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