If you’re down for this topic, no matter if you’re eating meat or you’re a fruitarian, I invite you to read this text with true empathy. I’m trying to picture a conscious approach for a vegan diet. Before you continue try to create the feeling inside of you of neutral curiosity, patience and compassion and think about the fact that we are ONE – one big human family. This way, discussions can be based on love and understanding. This is fundamental. And something else up-front: Let’s be aware that everyone is on their own path, and whatever that means – its 100% perfect the way it is.

YIN YANG

The reason why erasing all animal products from your food list is getting more and more popular, is directly connected to the fact, that more and more people are turning conscious and walking their path to the truth. Our world is on a turning point, if you’re seeing it or not, its a fact, which is – if your eyes are aware and open – undeniable. Though politics and the economy go crazy all over the world, there’s this other force which wakes people up (yin-yang: everything stays in balance).

Now you’re asking what becoming conscious has to do with a special diet. Let me unravel it for you: becoming aware of the fact, that first, there’s a “power” (spirit, universe, higher force, etc.), which is everything and everywhere, is the basic plane. Secondly, you realise you’re guided and there’s a higher self waiting for you to connect with. This two planes are only possible by thirdly, realising that all is love. Love is the answer to everything existing and happening and its way more than a crazy hippie sentence – it’s the fundamental truth.

DIET

Once one can identify with this truth, he or she realise that by loving, hate or ignorance are a matter of the past and you heart expands. By that we come closer to the matter of diet. Since diet is an important part of our day to day life, we must ask what the “right” diet looks like. To say it in advance: There’s not such a thing as the “right” diet, since nutrition is an individual thing. Still, some ways benefit you and this planet more than others.

So, once your heart opens (mind the passive turn, its not a process you can force), the understanding of love will at one point expand to all beings on this planet. At this point it feels so natural to include all living beings in this concept that it is literally easy to skip all dairy products, meat and fish and everything else attached to animal suffering out of your diet. There is no such questions like if I miss ice cream or pizza because the joy and pleasure I get from eating these products, never levels up with the conviction I have of being vegan.

LOVE

Turning vegan should be an easy-going process. Why? Because no matter the reason you want to go vegan, in the end of the day it comes from a source of love. Either it is the love for yourself and your body, which makes you realise that all animal products are bad for your health (watch Game Changers on Netflix and you understand), or it is the love for the environment and our mother earth which calls you to consume plant-based, or it is the love for all living beings on this planet which makes you stop supporting suffering and killing. 

Before I went vegan, I usually got annoyed by vegan people, vegan receipts or vegan food options. Like come on, if you eat nothing but plants and stuff then please do it quietly and don’t bother anyone else with it! Veganism is ultimately connected with activism or with convinced humans who see it as their life mission to turn you to a vegan too. That’s probably the view of many people reading this right now as well.

MORAL

Let me tell you something: A plant-based diet is connected to so much more, going far beyond a special food plan. And the reason why vegan activists are often seen as not understanding is because they are everyday confronted with the suffering of animals, way stronger than other people. They see videos, photos or in real life how animals get treated in slaughter houses, in what ways they get killed, how the industry promotes it and how people live after wrong believes. Emotionally it is very hard to endure. There is a reason why you only see happy, smiling cows on your milk carton and the slaughterhouse in your area is windowless.

Once you reach the point where you have compassion for living beings which can’t communicate in human languages, it is really hard to look away and not to act against cruelty and injustice. So vegans are more likely to confront their brothers and sisters about their food diet than a meat lover starts a discussion with a fish lover. You get me?

I once read a conversation between someone and James Aspey, a vegan activist. The man was saying that vegans are hated because they can’t keep it to themselves. James Aspeys answer was that if you saw people abusing children would you do something about it or do nothing at all. This is the level of compassion I am talking about. Vegans who opened their heart for animals see behind every consumption the suffering and pain of the animal connected to the dish. As much as vegans have to understand that everyone is in their own process and hate and aggressive messages are counterproductive, as understanding non-vegans should be for the urgent and intense message vegans put out in the world.

THINK NEW

Just because our cultures and traditions include meat, fish, milk, eggs or leather in our every day life you must question the validity. Like you have to think twice about politics, religion or medicine nowadays, the importance and awareness of your food choice is fundamental too. What you eat, is directly connected to our environment, to our water consumption, to our amount of waste products, to our rain forests and fresh water springs. It’s directly connected to your own health, to how long you’re going to live and how you look like. So much attention is drawn to the climate right now, but barely anyone talks about the biggest factor to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions: the meat industry.

You want to help make a change? Go Vegan. You want to live healthier? Go Vegan. You want to reduce the suffering of any soul on this planet? Go Vegan. Go talk more about it, go do your research, go challenge the opinion of a plant-eater. Let’s stay open and let’s keep spreading the love.