As most of us did, I grew up in a meat eating house, not consciously questioning what I was fed. I was never one to look forward to the meat dish most of the time, but did often look forward to the vegetable side dishes.  They always seemed more tasty to me and certainly easier to chew.

A lot of times growing up, chewing meat would literally fatigue my jaws. I’d have to take short chewing breaks and then resume chewing the meat down enough to feel comfortable swallowing it. I didn’t know until later in life that this is because modern human consume mostly the muscle meat of the animal, which is chewy and nutrient deficient. Rather than eating what top predators thrive on which is the soft organs of the animal.

Until the age of 22 I had never even met a vegetarian. When I did finally meet one, this person told me that she simply chose not to eat meat, not for any moral reason but just because she didn’t like it.

In that moment it suddenly dawned on me that I myself could also make this choice. 

That I too could possibly be a non-meat eater, also known as a vegetarian.

This new awareness felt very comfortable and natural for my personality and biology.

This person quickly told me that she did not do it for ethical reasons. I thought that was an odd thing to point out, but kept listening. She said she just did it because she didn’t like meat.

It flashed into my own mind, in that moment what my own reasons for not eating meat would be.

The first thing was a very basic realization that I would not be eating animals anymore, that I would be free of this custom, this habit of humans. I love animals and don't and didn't want to be involved in their suffering through killing and consuming.

Animals have been my weakness, a devastating concern of mine, since my earliest memories of lying awake on winter nights worrying about farm animals, pets, wild animals, squirrels, rabbits, stray animals, how they could stand the brutal winters and lack of food they faced in their every day lives. How dogs that are left outside and lonely cope with their traumas. Their traumas were not absent from my child mind and are not absent from my adult mind.  I can't comprehend how so many of us humans can numb ourselves to the pain of our fellow earthling, no matter their species, we all have nervous systems, our suffering is the same. 

The second instant reason I was relieved to no longer eat meat was for my health. I knew meat was not doing anything for my health and body internally rejoiced at the thought of no longer struggling to digest animal fleshes.

Third, I sensed this decision had everything to do with my budding spiritual practice. I sensed that spiritual work and diet went hand and hand and that this was the first thing that had to go.

I was newly married and had a toddler son at the time.  We had certain meals we had always enjoyed.  Foods I would no longer be eating. Even though we still shared meal time and I enjoyed the side dishes as always. My husband at the time was not thrilled with my decision but not mad either.

I first cut out totally beef and pork, my least favorite meats and the meats we ate least of.

Over the next weeks and months I cut out fish and chicken and that was the end of my days eating meat. I was very ready to get this new diet of mine started and get this show on the road.

I read some books on vegetarianism and learned that most meat consuming human being die with approximately seven pounds of undigested meat in their intestines.  Meat trapped in their sometimes for months and years. Old meat. Meat stuck in the folds of the human intestines. Folds not present in the intestines of predatory species like lions, tigers, birds and such.

I continued to cook it for my husband and son. After the marriage ended, I continued cooking it for my son as he grew up. It was only 3 years ago when my son moved out of my home into his own place that finally, officially and irreversibly my kitchen became a vegetarian kitchen.

I had both support and a lack of along the way. An uncle of mine, my mom’s brother, told my mom, my vegetarianism was ‘just a phase’. I admired and loved him dearly but never got over the fact that he would make this remark, so lacking in insight.  Had he really known me, known my heart, acknowledged my heart and mind, he would have understood what a natural progression this was for someone like me.

My parents were supportive.  My mom learned to cook all kinds of different vegetarian dishes.

The society at large is both supportive and hostile. Modern awareness of the horrors of factory farming are hard for people to ignore and deny for the sake of their continued cognitive diss

Some questions:

Why had it not occurred to me until this moment that I could make the choice to not eat meat?

Conditioning. We are conditioned to think we need three meals a day and most of those meals include meat of some form.

Under the influence of family/social conditioning we literally forget to think for ourselves.

Why does the holocaust of animals, every single day, day in and day out, take place on this Earth, in front of our faces and we, collectively, don’t care. The majority of us don’t care about factory farming of animals, mass slaughter, animal rape and artificial insemination, trauma and suffering because why?

Because to most people, they are just animals.

To me, they are a species of people. With the same right to live and die, in their god given habitat.

Why do people continue to not just eat meat, but SO MUCH meat when even the medical industrial complex admits that meat causes cancer and heart disease?

Addiction.

I see the same atma staring back at me no matter what animal I am looking at. The same atma, or spiritual entity is being subjected to the nature matrix that surrounds and controls us all.  I feel sorry, pity for every one of my fellow beings trapped in this seemingly god forsaken realm we all find ourselves at the mercy of.  

That’s why I am a vegetarian.  Because we are all suffering a similar sentence and I feel no need to eat any of you.  You are a spirit in a meat body and I try through my own push for evolutionary growth to not sink downwards into the hells of flesh consumption and continued reincarnation into a realm that supports trauma such as the one we are in now. You are so much more than your Earth body, I have no desire to eat you. And I won't pretend to in order to fit into a flesh consuming matrix.