Karmic Muscle Group: Compassion and Relatedness
Today’s Exercise: Make A Food Offering
- Pick a meal that you will actually sit down and eat.
- Spend at least a full minute looking at the food and realizing that it is more than you really need.
- Take at least 20% of what you intend to eat and take it outside and leave it on the ground near a tree or in a quiet corner of a yard where animals can eat it.
- Make sure that you do not leave behind non-biodegradable debris such as cups or plates.
- Contemplate the condition of wildlife that is around you, even if you live in a city, and consider that the structure of your DNA and the DNA of other living things. It is very nearly the same and ultimately comes from the same origin.[hr]
Training Note:
We human beings are particularly adept at seeing anything that is not us as “other”. And yet, all living things have DNA and all DNA is remarkably similar in structure and function. This is true about plants and animals. Our ancestors were concerned about protecting nature and considered themselves to be part of it. In our digital world, we are becoming increasingly estranged from our planet and the other species with which we share the biosphere. This is a great source of ignorance and it could prove to be deadly for life on earth.[hr]
Karmic Benefits:
- Compassion: sharing the essentials of survival, i. e. food, with the rest of nature is a fundamental human activity, a communion if you will, that creates a bond. Understanding that we are part of a biosphere and not something other creates a substantial shift for most of us and puts us in a relationship that assists life instead of harming it. Making a life-giving offering actually causes life, even if only by feeding a small animal for a day. Giving life, instead of taking it, reverses our normal karmic process.
- Active Participation: Our separation from the biosphere is only in our heads. The majority of what we eat is DNA based life just like our own bodies. We live in biological system where we are supposed to eat and be eaten. Being conscious of this system changes our thoughts on what we eat, how much we eat and what we do to the world to get food. Actively participating in the this cycle with other life forms has us engage the biosphere instead of assaulting it.
- Sacrifice: Giving up part of a meal for the benefit of other living things creates very good karma. We eat way more than we need to begin with. By sharing our resources with other forms of life, we give up something that we don’t really need in order to contribute to something that we really do need. This puts our thinking in alignment with the real natural order of things.[hr]
Share Your Experience:
Leave a comment when you have completed the exercise.
