Everything is Food

By Rohanna Salom


EVERYTHING IS FOOD

Literally. Also symbolically, metaphorically, historically, imaginatively. Everything is food. Really.

From time immemorial this has been taught in every center of spiritual learning. It is part of the most ancient shamanic traditions that go from Siberia and Patagonia to Europe and the steps of China. In the Vedas, the Hindu books that contain the spiritual descriptions of the worlds, the first phrase of the Rig-Veda is just the same: Everything is food. The rest is mythology, and so is the majority of the known history and science that mankind utilizes in his daily life.

Far and forgotten is the notion that as much as we eat, we are also eaten, mostly because that notion keeps one watchful and the present culture is a culture of comfort and prefers to keep it like that.

Susila Budhi Dharma is a book about food, and about what we truly eat when we eat anything, and who eats us and when. It is a surprising book. We mostly prefer not to know this things but truly, this makes some of the Hollywood horror movies pale in comparison.  Susila Budhi Dharma also has explanations on how this occurs although it says much more than that too. It is a book about worship, true worship, the gift of worship and then how to keep that gift.

It contains the description of the different worlds we live in. The true Human sphere is grand, expansive, huge, four dimensional and truly light and comfortable for a human. What happens is that due to the fact that we do not watch what we eat and mostly we do not acknowledge the creatures that we eat and we are not mindful of their offering themselves to us to be uplifted, we become negligent in our housekeeping and the expansive world of the human starts to get cramped and dirty and smaller and then, pretty soon it looks like a beast's den.

And that is not so bad. We like animals, but living like an animal is inferior to a human and we feel incomplete, insufficient, and bored. We lose the necessary incentives and understanding. Our deepest self, which gives us the symbolic meaning to our experiences, that connects some experiences with others, the knowledge that allows us to feel the Unity of Divine Love permeating through life, is lost and we feel left out. Yes, an animal does not feel left out, but we do because we reduce ourselves to a life of animals. We loose one dimension and we become three dimensional beings. We always feel insufficient.

And it gets worst. We continue to reduce ourselves because also, we do not acknowledge the life we take when we eat vegetables. And so, when the vegetable essences meet with our essences, we do not enter into worship with that union of each other, because we eat with no sense of Worship and without respect for all creation. We loose again one more dimension and we become two dimensional beings. Like plants, we do not move. Our world becomes very limited and anything annoys us and makes us feel insecure and fearful. The vegetable essences take over our inner feeling because we did not integrate them into our Divine Self. Our humanness looses it sense and mission and we have no Faith, no Compassion, and no capacity for Hope because we have reduced our human size to the size of a vegetable. Yes, vegetables by themselves feel fine and sing the glory of God all the time, but we as humans do not like to be two dimensional. It is too reduced for our scope and the millions of humans in this state suffer from terrible depression and indescribable irritating lives because they have lost their connection to the Divine and have lost their inner sense. Completely.

But it gets worst, because we, once down and lost, insist on unconsciousness, we go down to the muddle and sink to the smallest possible place for our higher souls and become one dimensional, taking the life of a material being. There is no movement, no freedom, no feelings, nothing. The life of stones in a human body. This whole planet and the entire physical universe belongs to the material world. We humans, even in this physical planet could keep the connections to the upper worlds, but if we lose them, our life gets extremely reduced and we might not know it at all.

This physical universe looks grand and is seductive but it never belongs to you. It belongs to Satan, the lord of the Material World. However, we are seduced to obtain its riches, but they will always escape and the humans in this world are subjected to an ever lasting chase that has no end, like a thirst that can not be satiated. The humans that have reduced themselves to a one dimensional size, have no peace, no rest, all desire and no satisfaction, no memory of themselves and no knowledge of it. Some call this hell.

This is food. All of it. To be able to recognize that anything that enters your body through your mind, your eyes, nose, ears, mouth and skin, is food, is of primary importance. It allows you to be able to determine who do you want to be food to, since it is in the inner life where you can choose who are you going to surrender to and be eaten by. We humans offer ourselves with our intentions to what we perceive as the best bet. If we are not conscious and careful we are eaten by the wrong thing.

When we surrender to God Almighty through the Latihan Kedjiwaan of Subud, we feel the eternal love and Union with the Inner Divine in ourselves. That is the way to know. Anything that does not feel pure, with that unmistakable purity  that when you experience it, you know without a trace of a doubt that it is Sacred, then you Know. Your own senses will tell you. There is no need to ask. But if you do not feel it, then continue with the rigors of your watchfulness and be careful when you think, when you eat, when you see, when you hear, when you touch and be grateful and acknowledge the creature you are seeing or touching or hearing, separating yourself from it with respect in the depths of your own personal latihan, your own worship.  From there, if you are respectful with yourself, they will leave you alone for you to be with your self, in worship.

It takes a while, but eventually you will be in Union with every creature, with every sentient being, and in a mutual act of forgiveness, you let them pass and they let you pass, meaning you let them be and they let you be. Everything has a place in Gods creation. There is no need to struggle. The latihan kedjiwaan of Subud is an exercise that takes you to the worship of God, inside of you.

Nowadays, the food that we call food is more contaminated than ever. The vegetables have often lost their vegetable souls and have become modified genetically into material beings in order to prolong their shelf life and also for market profit. Nevertheless, even though it is more difficult to acknowledge their being and even for the vegetable themselves it is more difficult to produce the encounter of their essences without our internal essences, because they do not longer recognize each other since they have been genetically modified, still, we have to accept them and accommodate them as we would accommodate a cripple child in our table. It will all come to pass.

Those that are playing so hard with nature will get correction, but meanwhile we pray, we worship, we are grateful for the food we have and we bless our food. We stand firm against the tendency that diminishes our potential with complete knowledge that we are not alone in this fight and that this too has been included in the plans of God.

Thank you
Rohanna Salom