This week’s exploration focuses on gratitude accompanied by an ever-deepening recognition of the gifts we receive every day from the beings with whom we share this planet. For this exploration, I invite you to remember that everything you eat was once the body of a living being. If that feels morbid to you, please keep in mind that our beautiful planet has organized its physical being to depend on both birth and death of all life forms. Without these dynamic processes, the creativity expressed in nature couldn’t continue to evolve, explore, or express itself in such abundance.
Many indigenous cultures automatically include deep gratitude to the beings they hunt and consume, a recognition of the profound gift that the life of the being they hunt offers to their survival and well-being.For this exploration, I invite you to include in your awareness all sources of nourishment, be they animal-based or plant-based. Whatever the source of the food you eat, it came from a life form. How is it to feel into that? For me, it elicits a profound sense of gratitude and connection to the life that lived as the orange, lettuce, or source of protein I take into my body. For me, it makes eating a sacred activity, one of recognition and a deepened sense of connection to my world.
Not only does this exploration invite you to be aware of the sacred gift that is the food that you are privileged to take in, but it also underscores the reality of interdependence and relationship you have with everything you encounter throughout the course of your daily activities. Honoring and thanking the gift of food is a way to actively recall and resonate with the presence of the Sacred that pervades and lives in and as everything around you. The invitation here is to deepen your experience of that Sacred presence—it also lives in and as you.
If you feel moved to share your experience as you move through this exploration, please post your comments and questions. We’re all in this journey together, and we are all each other’s sources of inspiration and learning.
Here’s an audio version of the written information below, if you prefer to listen to it.
As you listen, please press pause when you need additional time to do take in the practice.
And, please remember never to listen to recorded meditations when driving or using machinery.
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