Thursday, April 26, 2007

Experiment Post ("Metapost")

Life-Dancing with others: Welcoming My Friend Tusti

Well, however it will ultimately work out, this blog experiment has reached a pretty momentous point right now in that I am finally being joined on-line by someone who is committed to entering with me into the experiment of Healthy Culture and the Identity-Politics of Individual-Personhood that this blog constitutes.

Tusti (this is the name i-p chooses to be known by on this blog) is the Friend and Life-Dance partner who I am going to meet and probably live with in Liverpool England in May or early June of this year. We have corresponded and sort of “fell in love” with each other on-line and over the phone, and I am going to England so that we can begin the process of consensing on the details of our Living Friendship and Life-Dance together as whole individual-persons (rather then as primarily citizens-of-the world as has been the case so far).

On the one hand, the whole thing is an experiment in healthy culture, and its probably good that we have had so much distance between us since it helps us to stay out of habitual ways of relating in terms of (Gender, Race, Nationality etc..) which, no matter how much we may theoretically agree on the need to transcend them, are nevertheless going to be the Default tendency in that we are both born into the dominant culture of apartness. One the other hand, it’s clear that nothing can really begin until we actually are physically together.

It would be misleading for me to try to present us as some kind of monolithic “united front”. That would be starting off in the spirit of the very “Public/Private” culture of phoniness that I think we both seek to replace with a culture of truthfulness and Individual-Personhood. The fact is that there are a number of pretty big issues between us even at this stage in our relationship and even with the considerable degree of understanding and consensus we have been able to come to about things by phone and computer; I think we both know that there are going to be serious challenges to us sustainably coming-together in a healing way, not only because of outside pressures but because of our own issues.

One of the issues, which (like all of them) is both a great opportunity and a great challenge, is issue of veganism and in general the issue eating, killing and dying: Tusti is the vegan with whom I had the discussion I quoted from in the previous post, while I am still more or less confirmed in my own leaning toward raw instinctive/intuitive omnivorous-ness.

There is another main issue so far, but that I will leave to Tusti to introduce here if i-p chooses.

The biggest issue for me how ever is that of us coming to terms in relation to our Integrative.

Our Integrative

For what has yet to be fully consensed to and worked out between us is the Integrative of our relationship. Although we have both, in the course of our friendship so far, cursorily acknowledged our understanding of our own “piece of the Lie”, mutual insight into the details of what this is, just how it manifests, and how our friendship will be structured so as to challenge that in each other, is not as clear as it needs to be. Without such insight and such a conscious plan, the Integrative intention of the coordination our own healing with that of each other and the world can't happen because healing itself cannot happen unless sickness itself has been both fully acknowledged, understood, and taken into account.  In certain traditions, this sickness, this “piece of the Lie” that we all have is called "the Shadow", and in others I am familiar with it is called the Chief Obstacle. In addition to calling it a persons “piece of the lie”, I also just think of it as ones own sick culture. By whatever name, if it is not consciously acknowledged and addressed in the dynamics of a relationship, than it itself will be what is running the relationship, which will then no longer be a Living Friendship at all but the everyday collusion, mutual distraction and mutual exploitation that passes for friendship in a sick culture.

As I say, Tusti and I have not fully done this work which we both think will be somewhat easier to do in person, at least in some ways. In other ways, physically coming together has its own difficulties, especially in an urban situation in which busy-ness is the order of the day and time and energy for such patient and somewhat delicate exploration, presumably scarce. I am not sure what we will do about this. I am beginning to think that our original plan of me staying at an intentional community in the countryside and her coming out to visit and rest from city life makes more sense than any more immediate form of living together, since there is likely to be more time in the slower pace of country life to give such matters the attention that they deserve. On the other hand, decisions and understandings reached in such relative calm might not reasonably be expected to stand up against the adverse environment of city life. Perhaps things can be arranged so as to alternate between deciding things in the country and testing them in the city.

At any rate the challenge of coming to an Integrative shared understanding is hopefully being helped even now by my formally discussing of it in this introduction.

As Two Individuals

It occurs to me that our integrative challenge as Individuals could be understood both individually as well as personally. Individually it could be understood as a dynamically healthy and flexible coming-together of Inner Animals, Inner Children and Inner Adults, and Inner Elder, keeping in mind that distinctions of this kind are only relative and that “dysmutuality” between us in any one area will inevitably involve dysmutuality in each of the others as well. Personally, it could be understood in terms of our roles as Family-members (the province of the inner animal), Neighbors (the province of the inner child), citizens-of-the-world (the province of the inner adult) and “Souls”, (the province of the inner elder). I think I will chose to use the language of the Individual before using that of the Person in the what follows, as this entire blog is usually presented more from the personal/horizontal rather than the Individual/vertical point of view and that point of view is as relevant to this development as the horizontal/Personal one.

To the extent that we both suffer from sick culture as Individuals, Tusti and I are both in various states of “inner apartness” and dysmutuality, between and within our own Elders, Adults, Animals, and children. In order to come together in a healing way it is important for us both to get some Idea of how the culture of Apartness manifests in each of those aspects of our Individuality specifically, and also as a whole

The Elder:

The Idea that the voice of the inner elder (which is the Intuition) could be wrong may sound odd to some, but it is clear to me that reliable access to our higher selves is erratic at best and that intuition can be distorted by beliefs and fears of apartness, if not at its point of ultimate origin, then at its point of reception into our consciousness.

Fear based intuitions, imaginings, and metaphysical positions can be expected to periodically emerge between myself and Tusti and in fact already have to some extent…The process of coming together about what parts of our own and each others belief systems may be more reflections of “our piece of the Lie” is beginning with a mutual listening to each others world-views and beliefs that is taking place in various ways; Tusti has read my blogs for example, and I am currently reading a book that she has found to be very influential for her spiritually called “Bringers of the Dawn”. This example is just one part of what will be an ongoing conversation between us regarding ultimate things and issues of “Faith”.

Ultimately it will be our sharing a Primary Faith in Togetherness that will enable us to persist and grow (though friendly discussion of whatever disagreements we may have in these areas) into a shared expression of Living Truth. I do not think that this will happen solely because of what we are doing together (or even alone) as elders only but as a result of our inner and outer dance as Adult, Children, and Animals as well…

The Adult:

As Adults, I think that the culture of apartness often manifests in the kind of "Us and Them" Identity politics which is for me a kind of junk food people feed their inner Adult in lieu of practicing healthy Culture. Although we both seem to agree in principle on the idea of “Taking off ones Uniforms” there are ways in which we can both fall into this kind of thinking and I have a sense that Tusti's social situation discourages the kind of “coming out” as an individual-person that would be a sign of growing out of such factional childishness. Like, sports and like war, the temptations of being involved in any kind of sally of  an “US” against a “Them” (and it doesn’t matter what groups play those roles), is extremely tempting, if only because the experience of the more meaningful adventures of Healthy Culture are relatively absent for comparison. For the ordinary “foot soldier” in such social or political movements, the temptation is mostly the false sense of solidarity and outer belonging that comes at the expense of the ability to be really in touch with and so express, oneself; at the level of the “leaders” and “war-mongers” in whatever area, that temptation is of course augmented by the attention and ego gratification of having followers etc…

Besides dealing with the familiar political manifestations  of this sort of factional Identity-Politics, Tusti and I will have to deal with it in terms of gender, but I want to treat of how I see this challenge separately later since my views of it have changed somewhat.

The Child:

Like everyone else born into the dominant culture, both Tusti and I have our emotional wounds and longings which are entangled in various kinds of dysmutuality and unfriendly relationships with other aspects of our selves. Sometimes the inner adult uses a certain kind of anesthesia or distraction to numb itself to the existence of the child’s pain and longing for wholeness, sometimes the child itself is numbed with drugs, sweets, or sex  in ways that, besides being only  temporary in there effects, also do damage to the animal of the body as well. Often the inner Elder is involved in this through adherence to some conscious or unconscious fear-based belief (whether in religion or science) in terms of which such inner apart-ness is rationalized.

For Tusti and I, coming together in a healthy way emotionally means listening to each others stories and memories as they relate of our emotional wounds and supporting and challenging each other to move past the need for the anesthesia that numbs our own full experience of them. Again, as Individuals actually work as a whole, the progress we make in the culture of living friendship on the level of emotion will both depend on and itself have effects on, the other levels as well; for example, religious as well as political dogmas of apart-ness are to a great extent reinforced by and founded on emotional wounds that fester from neglect of attention and friendship.

 The Animal:

The Inner animal is of course involved in all the rest of the individual’s existence and typically suffers most directly from the effects of the various forms of anesthesia which, as sufferers from sick culture, we use to maintain a regime of Apart-ness within ourselves. Often we cannot even be properly aware of our bodies or of the life-energy (chi) that flows through and informs them until the inner animal is detoxed to some extent at least.

This is part of the reason for fasting in general and in particular the fast that is involved in the Vision Quest (which is more comprehensive in that it is a fast from artificial distractions of all kinds, not just food). Such detoxing and de-numbing of the body also happens positively through the ingestion of good and minimally processed (callesthetic) food via things like instinctive nutrition. The door of awareness opened by such practices can be widened or narrowed by the practice or non-practice such things as Chi Gung and Taoist/Tantric Sexuality, when practiced in the light of healthy Culture.  In non-Tantric culture of sexuality for example, (and I don’t mean just the sexual act) the body and its potential energies of evolution (both in terms of the individual and of the Species) is typically wasted in vain and temporary glory of the ego and its alienated assumptions. 

So far as challenges between my self and Tusti go as Animals, the main thing seems to be the reality of the extent to which a relatively apartness-ruled and anesthetic modern medicine has already injured our bodies and taken them hostage through regimes of drugs and fear-based and addictive therapies.

Tusti’s and my practice in befriending our bodies will likely be some combination of taking in more that is healthy in terms of substances, energies, practices, and—as our bodies grow stronger—weaning ourselves away from any dependency on the relatively mal-esthetic substances and treatments of most modern medicine.   

As Individual-Persons in this Blog.

So far I have shared some of the challenges to the healthy coming together that Tusti and I, by our willingness to become Life-Dance partners, are committing to face as individuals (as I said, I have done this here mostly because the “Individual” meaning of coming-together in a healthy way as "The Individual" per se, has not been gone into so much on this blog). Of course we exist as Persons as much as we do as Individuals, and this Blog is about part of how we will try to integrate that more horizontal aspect of our life-dance to the more vertical one of our dance with each other as individuals.

Since the concern of the inner adult is usually manifesting outwardly in terms of the role of Citizen-of-the -world, the main point of our sharing some of our life-dance through this blogs is not only to learn and teach the kind of culture and practices through which our (Tusti’s and my) individual culture of Apartness can be transcended and even turned into account in the service of the Healthy Culture of Togetherness between us, but it is how this can happen as well on the macro level, between political and social factions on all levels of scale.

This is one of the reasons why our differences and seeming contractions of character are so valuable. The more we find ways of transcending those differences through the practice of healthy culture, the more relevant our discoveries and practices will be to others beside ourselves. The experiment of this blog in particular (as opposed to our Life-Dance in general) then becomes one of having a structure that can be meaningful and useful in the largest possible context.

Specifically, what I am proposing for this blog at this stage in its evolution is the following:

Tusti will begin (when and if she has inner consensus to) posting about i-p's life and i-p’s own individual-personhood in the 5 venues.  Then the listening, supporting  and challenging part of the experiment will come in the comments, which will be a record of our attempts to respond to each other in a way that is an appropriate mix of these three attitudes under the circumstances, and in a way that feeds and nourishes as much of the individual (elder, adult, child, and animal) as is possible  and appropriate online.

 The comments part of this blog will then become a running dialog about the issues in the venue of the post to which the comment responds.

For example After I post this Tusti might respond with comments of Listening, comment of support, or comments of challenge:

1: The Listening comment

 (These would be questions of clarification, or summaries of part or all of what someone has written so as to be clear that i-p understands. This will also reassure me  that the Tusti listening. Of course I will respond to such questions and summaries.

2: the supporting comment

These would we statements that support to some degree what I have written that would further it and/or complement it in some way.

3: the challenging comment

These would be comments that challenge, to the point of expressing out right disagreement with, what I am saying.

I don’t really propose that our comments and responses need to be so rigidly classified in practice. It might make more sense just to respond naturally and to use the 3-fold model of a friendly response that appropriately balances Listening, Support, and Challenge, to temper, for example a response that would otherwise be too one-dimensionally challenging (and thereby fail to express and cultivate Living Friendship even if ones point is legitimate). At the same time a reply that expresses a degree of support that is not really felt is in the long run unfriendly to both ones-self and the other. And of course a neglect of proper listening takes away the foundation for any healthy form of agreement or disagreement.

The point is that whether or not we end up using the fully formal structure that I have outlined here, the conversation that is going on between Tusti and I in the comments will hopefully involve listening, supporting and challenging, both as content and as subject matter.

I think it’s necessary to add here that, listening, supporting and challenging, where they only take place outwardly, would just be another form of one-sidedness and apartness. So comments on the posts of this blog are also susceptible of analysis from the subjective point of view as well, which implies the understanding that a truly friendly post will come out of a concern for appropriate inner Friendship;  inner listening, supporting and challenging as well as that which goes on outwardly between us. A liberal use of “I” language (even broken down into “my elder, my child, my adult, my animal”, speaking for each in turn) is a welcome way of expressing that this inner friendship is going on even while the outward statement is being made). Other forms of language are also invited of course, when they seem appropriate.

Finally, all of the above is just MY vision of what this experiment is to be online, and it remains to be seen how much Tusti will agree with what I have written. As I have already said, I have no interest in presenting us as some kind of United Front and this very post is itself susceptible to modifications deriving from the Living Friendship process of Inner and outer consensus between Tusti and myself, so take all of this as just a conversation starter about what things will be like on this blog. Look for her comments and the ensuing conversation here as well.

I have said that I don’t want to present a of phony “public” united front as existing between Tusti and I, but I am certainly gambling on the idea that we are a least united strongly enough in a common faith in, and will toward, inner and outer Togetherness, so as to be able to pull this whole thing off at all. I must be honest  enough with my self to admit that even this is something that remains to be seen. Motives are often mixed; outer circumstance might triumph; catastrophe could loom; I could find myself homeless and heart broken on the streets of Liverpool trying to stay alive and stave off suicidal depression until my miserable return flight to Twin Oaks etc...etc…anything is possible, but I feel that the whole thing is worth the risk and that, like any good experiment; something valuable, something worthy of thanks and gratitude can be learned no matter what the result…

And of course, in the best case scenario, what we are doing will become a model for Healthy Culture and part of a Cultural Singularity that will make a better future for our own and succeeding generations of beings on this planet…Its Living that we are doing; Living is trying really, really trying, and that is what we are doing. With Audacity, Truthfulness, with Trust and Faith and good humor to spare; how can that fail to be more worthwhile than the alternative of miserable surviving...and what a great and good story it is to be in…!

So with that I will end my take on this new development in my experiment and welcome unconditionally, and with much Love, my Friend Tusti, both into my Life-Dance and into this Life-Dance Log…

Welcome my Friend,

Welcome and Thanks…

Piankhy

{note:  just a reminder that I am trying out or “I-p” or “I-P” ( which is pronounced "eye-pee" and of course stands for “Individual-Person”) as the a gender-transcending and trans-species substitute of He or She etc. I know it sounds funny, but all such innovations sound funny until you get used to them.}

posted by: piankhy | 22:39 | comments (5)

Monday, April 23, 2007

Individual-Post


As an individual I don’t really feel I have been coming-together or “coming-apart” to any great extreme, though I do have certain problems in this area that I have yet of “confess to” on this blog (challenge). These days though, the prospects seem pretty good for the former on one area at least, as I have met someone who very much wants to come together outwardly (as Individal-Persons in the context of Healthy Culture), but also in such a way that we come together inwardly and Intimately as individual minds (inner adults), Hearts (Inner Children), Bodies (inner Animals) and Intuition (Inner Elders) involved in experiment in healing sexuality. Of course we both know that coming together as "Persons" is part of that as well, but the point for this part of my post is focusing on the Individual per se, and that means experiments in healing sexuality, and energy work (chi gung) among other things. As I said in a previous post, the prospect of meeting this person (which is much more certain now than before) has got me recommitted to the Chi Gung, Tai Chi, and Taoist sexual practices and also to experiments with them that would integrate (and to some extent transform them) into more of an expression of Healthy Culture.

But I also include eating as part of individual healthy culture as what we eat (as well as our attitudes toward eating) can bring us into togetherness with our "inner animals" or into a greater state of apartness from that part of ourselves, and so from our wholeness as individuals. I am a little worried about what the future holds so far as this goes, because I will be living with this person in the city for a  good while and I don’t know how I will really be able to eat as well there as here, where I am also sure the air is much better). Ironically, food wise, some part of me seems to want to prepare for my time in Liverpool by becoming a bit of a vegan, since I’ll probably not be able to get organic, free-range, and as-local-as-possible animal foods in the city (perhaps with the exception of fish).

The reason this is so ironic is because of the following discussion with my present and future Life-Dance partner (who wants to be called Tusti and who I will introduce more in another post. Tusti is a “Vegan” (as its understood in the common parlance of identity-diets) and shortly after we began our correspondence this February, we had a email discussion of our differing views about eating  that almost ended our incipient Life-Dance together. Sharing that whole episode in our friendship (which was pretty dramatic) would mean posting much more of our correspondence than I include here, but it seems more appropriate right now just to share my part in the main substance of it (which I have previously excepted and posted in various places as part of a citizen-of-the-world sort of gesture). Here is a copy of that post:

Discussion With a Vegan

“(I recently had a e-mail discussion with a vegan. (I tend toward mostly raw paleo-diets, instinctive nutrition, and Weston Price type stuff, which are not exclusive of meat as long as its not factory farmed). I thought I'd share some of our exchanges (or rather, mostly my part in them, since I don't really have her permission to include her words.)

The email she sent me was entitled "Speciesim" and in it this percent explained why she was a vegan and sent as an attachment various articles and the like about Deforestation, Desertification, Water Pollution, as well as an article making an analogy of Speciesim with Racism and of farms with Slavery (In what follows I do not comment on this analogy, which i think is valid in many ways but which does not really seem relevant to the eating of meat, since this is perfectly possible, (as is a certain kinds of farming) with out being speciesist in the least.) anyway, here is my reply to her:

"This is an interesting issue for me. I hope I can address in a way that is helpful. I have read, among other things, Beyond Beef" and "Mad Cowboy" (not the exact title) Fast Food Nation, among various other things and I share your concern and disgust with factory farming and If I lived in the city and/or could not get free range organic meat and eggs, or hunt, I would not eat meat at all. As it is I live on a farm where we raise our own organic, free ranging and I think (relatively) happy animals.

My experience of life on such farms and in the wilderness has given me a perspective on death, pain and other beings that is pretty similar to that of those indigenous peoples who have long since come to sustainable and non destructive terms with there environment. From such a point of view dying, killing, and eating are pretty much all part of the same phenomenon as living and we are all equals in this regard; I will die and be eaten one day just as I myself kill and eat. this is basically good since dying and feeding other life is just part of the normal "etiquette" and responsibility of beings in the natural world and is involved with, among other things, the need to make room for others beings to have their chance to Live. If, for example the "lions" every really "lay down with the lambs", than the population of lambs would just skyrocket and they would end up eating all the grass, bushes and tree bark, and this would eventually make things bad, even for they themselves, who would end up starving to death .

This realization and acceptance of the meaning of death helps to inspire real Life which for me involves another responsibility we all share; namely every creatures responsibility to really Live and not just survive; to find out what it came into the world to do and to try to do it before it dies. I seems to me that only when this other responsibility (which I think only humans have trouble with) is not fulfilled that eating, killing, and dying become fundamentally ugly and meaningless because living itself has become so. This situation is the norm in the modern world these days, which to me accounts for the whole existence of factory farming, as well as pesticides and many other things.

People in the city tend to be dissociated from real Life and real ecology in general and often give me the impression that they think that this "killing and eating/being killed and eaten" business, as well as nature itself, is not only disgusting but is well...avoidable or something. (I think many people unconsciously feel the same about their bodies--that they are disgusting and somehow avoidable). I think that the only reason some are happier eating carrots or soybeans (and soybean farms, by the way have surpassed cattle ranches as the reason for the destruction of the rain forests of South America) is because a carrot or soybean plant is suffering in a way that they would need special instruments to be aware of (such instruments exist--see the book the Secret Life of Plants) and so does not remind them of their own inevitable death. I don't think that this is the only factor involved of course and as i said, i would be a raw vegan myself--or as much of one as I could be--under certain circumstances.

I also think that the average persons body (a persons "inner animal"; the part of nature that we are most directly), is abused constantly by everything from chairs, to processed food (vegan or not) to a neglect and waste of its sexual energies and their evolutional potential. This everyday abuse and repression of the inner animal translates ineluctably in to similar abuse of outer animals and outer nature in general and it needs to be discussed as much as the latter.

As for farming, I see progressive farming as a kind of halfway house between our alienated city-life and the wilderness. Hunting and Gathering seems to me vary much more healthy than most forms of agriculture yet if domesticated animals (including ourselves) are ever going to get back to something like that, we will all have to be "bred" or "unbred" back to Wildness, probably over generations. Such a conception of farming would have the opposite intention as farms do today and such a farm would be run in a fundamentally different way, I intend to post something about this in my blog sooner or later.

To recapitulate, the real problem seems to me to be the culture of Apart-ness and the fear and alienation from the natural world (which also involves alienation from the spiritual world) and its cycles of birth and death that seem to be part and parcel of at least some so called civilizations, including ours.

I don't feel the need for righteousness about this whole thing though, or the need to condemn people who eat factory farmed meat, or pesticide grown food, our who abuse their inner animals (or inner adults, or inner elder, or inner children) in various other ways. Its all just part of sick culture and EVERYONE suffers from, is imprinted by, and is involved in, sick culture in one way or another--either by "crimes of omission" or " crimes of commission" and usually by both. Self-righteousness is itself an aspect of sick culture and only serves to polarize and divide people along lines of this or that one sided and one-dimensional claim to (ones own pet) virtues over against the others corresponding vises (the others virtues as well as ones own vises being ignored--or worse--denied completely, in the process). Such one-sidedness is the stuff of which Wars are made.

The only thing to do that is really healthy it seems to me to practice the culture of togetherness (which means to me to be addressing the root of the problem in a positive way) while at the same time acknowledging--yet minimizing as much as possible ones unavoidable involvement with sick culture Both inwardly And outwardly. Healthy Culture as, i see it, is a kind of cultural 12 step program, a process of healing rather than a static state of being healed (and so presumably "holy", and so presumably "holier-than-thou"). Its like going up an endless mountain in which the main difference between people is not how high up they are (every finite number is essentially the same distance from infinity) but whether or not they are going up hill, standing still (an only temporary option in this case) or going down. you know what I mean?"


The person next wanted to know how I feel when I kill an animal. This was my reply:

"Your question makes me think back on an experience of killing a goat in Hawaii at the Permaculture homestead I lived at there. The animal was old, blind, and had lost its partner a few weeks previous. I spent a lot of time identifying with the animal knowing that my own life is really suspended on the same fragile thread that its is, and that I have no more importance, nor really any more control over when and how I die than it does. I affirmed this to the animal itself many times and blessed and thanked it for its life affirming to myself and to it, the literal truth that I would "pay it forward" as the saying goes.

When I wasn't thinking about that, I was thinking about how to kill the animal as well and as quickly as possible. Sorry if I get graphic here but its pertinent to your question. I killed the animal with one stroke of a very sharp machete which took off its head completely except for a little skin. Immediately up to that moment all of my concentration was on doing the thing well--when the moment came--or a millisecond after, I felt relieved and glad that I had done it well.

What happened then was interesting in that I actually felt (or imagined) something like a light finger moving across my own neck, as if to promise or inform me that with this killing I had moved made it likely that my own death would come in a similar way. This, was--and is--fine with me, and I would much rather die in the way that I killed that animal than spending months and years in some miserable hospital hooked on drugs hating life and fearing death, or worse completely unconscious and unaware...(and also using up resources that are maintained at the expense of the murder of whole landscapes in the search for fuel to run power plants to keep my EEG machine going..)

I also felt, as I watched the animals last reflexive death throes, a feeling of responsibility and resolve to use the energy that I got for the animal well, for Life, in a way that had real meaning and heart. And also I wanted to use as much as possible of the animal and waste as little as possible. I helped skin and butcher the animal and I helped tan its hide among other things,

I feel the need to say for completion--even though it might gross you out even more--that we were all into primal diets and instinctive nutrition in that place and so we ate the animal raw, though letting some of the flesh age and dry at room temperature. Like many indigenous peoples, we considered it best to eat the organs as soon as possible. To this day the idea of cooking "meat" (or otherwise processing it and so disguising what it is and was, as well as the whole meaning of how it got to be on ones plate, is as disgusting to me as I imagine the idea of eating raw meat is to others.

As I say i my essay about health and nutrition, whatever the "health benefits" of eating like this (which you can learn about from googling "instinctive nutrition", or "primal diets", for me the reason to eat raw and intuitive/instinctively is not that it will help one live longer, but that it helps one stay close to Life itself, and that in inspires one to really Live at all. processing food and disguising it in various ways just perpetuates a regime of denial and alienation regarding some of the most essential aspects of our being in this world.

Anyway, since then I have killed or been involved in the killing of other animals, and the experience has been similar. When we kill a steer at Twin-oaks, I am usually there and help as I tend the steers as well (which just means checking on them once a week and giving them mineral salt). I am also usually the only one who feels the need to make gestures and affirmations of gratitude, equality, and well wishing for the soul of the animal as it continues on its journey.

That bit about the journey reflects my metaphysical beliefs about reincarnation, which I won't go into now as my feelings about living, killing, and dying relate to them, but do not really depend on me holding them.

Having shared this, I wish I could say that I always engage in the same feelings and gestures every time I accidentally kill a bug or intentionally pull up a carrot (or eat one that someone else pulled up). Its essentially the same situation and deserves the same respect in my opinion, but i have not yet reached the level where I always give these events--which only Seem less dramatic or important, or meaningful--there due respect. I am very much working on that--its one of the reasons I eat by myself and am always trying to make eating a more mindful and contemplative act.

Hope this was helpful in some way.

--Piankhy"

Anyway, one can see here the irony that (unless I can get some really good free-range, local etc..meat connection, I will be being  as much of a raw, organic vegan as I can in liverpool.

I worry a little about all of this though, because I don’t want to lose my perspective about the meaning of eating and become dissociated and in denial about it the way I feel many city (and even “country”) people are. Listening…Support

I also worry a little about not exactly being on the same page about this with Tusti (who very much understands where I am coming from and respects me about it, but still—for emotional reasons—seems pretty disturbed by the whole thing. Listening…

Tusti (like everyone) has her own issues regarding coming-together as an Individual especially I think as regards the “Inner Animal” of the Body, but I will let Tusti introduce these as part of I-P’s own Life-Dance Posts on this Blog.

{note: I am trying out or “I-p” or “I-P” ( which is pronounced "eye-pee" and of course stands for “Individual-Person”) as the as a gender-transcending and trans-species substitute of He or She etc. I know it sounds funny, but all such innovations sound funny until you get used to them.}

Welcome and Thanks





 

posted by: piankhy | 12:03 | comments