Fasting and Food
_I: So, atoms are the basic unit of matter capable of saving energy. As you said, particles have an energy charge that would be lost if they didn't join together to share this charge with others, thus creating a structure that leads to the formation of atoms, which in their constant need to find stability and savings, unite to form molecules. Molecules, in turn, form chemical elements, and these form the minerals and organisms we know in organic and inorganic matter. Life. And life continues with this cycle of saving, trying to assimilate the greatest amount of energy to ensure long-term stability. So life exists thanks to the search for atomic stability. Isn't it ironic that the diversity of life is thanks to evolution, which implies changing and losing energy in the process of transformation and adaptation to diverse environments, when life itself does not seek transformation but stabilization and remaining the same for as long as possible?
_AM: It's one of those paradoxes of the Universe. Yes. The key to Life is permanence, and to remain, one must change. The paradox lies in the fact that life seeks through all means to last the longest possible time, to survive. That is: to live beyond its means. But in a changing environment, where atoms lose energy and change, creating new chemical elements, generating earthquakes, climate changes, radiation, and so many other things; if life does not adapt, if it does not transform in harmony with that new environment, it will perish. Therefore, if it desires to remain, it must change. The factor of Permanence is related to Time, and the factor of Change is related to Space. A living being traverses both factors. To survive in Time, a living being needs to modify its Space, this is "to feed."
_I: Eating is the key to cellular life... Providing all the nutrients, minerals, chemical elements that cells need to keep functioning.
_AM: Unlike inorganic elements, organic compounds are flexible and mutable. We could say they are weak. Their chemical compositions are fragile, subtle, volatile; unlike silicon, iron, and many others. The interaction of chemical elements generates adaptability. Thus, organic beings need to constantly regenerate these elements, as in their constant modification, they often lose a large amount of them through segregation: sweat, excretion, activity. Therefore, to find stability in cells and to allow them to maintain their division and expansion functions, living beings need to obtain these elements from external organisms. There, to ensure permanence over time, they must secrete objects externally, through hunting, planting, harvesting, gathering, cooking, eating, drinking, and all the kingdoms in one way or another do this. Plants harvest nutrients from the earth by breaking through the earth's strata, converting carbon dioxide and light into starch and oxygen, into energy reserves. Animals, by eating, preying, hunting, grazing, do the same. And of course, humans. Producing or obtaining food is key to energetic stability in an organic body that is constantly transforming.
_I: This creates a circle of dependency... Doesn't it?
_AM: Yes. Energy is emotion, and therefore, everything that gives us energy will be related to an emotion. This is how humans project emotion onto food. Food comes from the Latin "alere," which means "to make grow." That is to say, the word does not directly refer to what is eaten, but to what is achieved with what is eaten. Likewise, the English word "Meal" comes from the Frisian word "mël," which means "moment," "occasion," which was transferred to the most important moment in a family's life when everyone comes together: mealtime. The temporal concept of a specific moment in time thus became the name for all meals. Once again, the concept of an action over time is what gives meaning to what you consume. The need to stay alive creates a vicious bond in the need to consume (from the Latin "com" and "sumere," meaning "to take it all").
_I: Both on a mental, emotional, and material level...
_AM: We've said that the Pancreas, generator of insulin, seeks to accumulate glucose to nourish cells through the blood, and the remains are stored as fats, accumulating them "just in case." Food, then, is what makes you grow. It is what you seek in the external world to stabilize your body, develop it, take potentials from the environment; what keeps you in contact with the outside world through emotion, bonds, family, sitting down to eat at the table, the memory of each favorite dish, its purchase, the harvest, the hunt... Every food contains an emotional energy weight for the soul, and a caloric energy weight for the body. This energy becomes part of your pattern, your structure, your being, it becomes part of your cellular stability, your fundamental elements.
_I: "You are what you eat"...
_AM: And you had never seen it so clearly. Everything you consume gives you an energy charge that stabilizes your being, in the same way that an electron gives its energy charge to a proton so that it finds its stability, its center. Everything you eat will become part of you, it will become your own being...
_I: Therefore, I must be careful with what I eat...
_AM: Of course, it will depend on from what level of consciousness you do it. If you are still in survival mode, your body will seek anything that feeds that cellular need, seeking the most ancestral records of survival in hunting and gathering. In the early periods of humanity, there was no knowledge of natural cycles of sowing and harvesting, and this was because human groups were solitary, small, and always on the move, nomadic, fleeing enemies and predators. There was no time to settle down, no security to do so. For a family to survive, it needed to eat whatever it found, collecting fruits or hunting. When hunting an animal, many things were secured to save energy: the bones served as tools, the skins as winter clothing, the meat could feed many for several days, something that the few fruits obtained could not achieve, especially in long winters or dry seasons. Thus, the survival base was based on carnivorous and omnivorous diets: eating meat or eating whatever was available.
_I: That would be from seeking records from the subconscious. And from the unconscious?
_AM: Culture. Once society exists, the settlement is formed, there is agriculture, storage has been learned, exchange is generated, and a certain stability is established, food ceases to be for survival and becomes emotional and cultural: sharing. Eating with others brings us closer to them, sitting down to eat unites family and friends, banquets flatter courts and kingdoms, and not sharing food is almost a show of contempt and betrayal. Not sharing is denying, it is making an enemy. Eating from the same plate implies trust in the other, a way of showing brotherhood and peace among peoples. Thus, eating becomes a way to find a sense of belonging, security, acceptance, of being part of something or a group.
_I: I've seen many people on the spiritual path become vegetarian or vegan not because they feel it in their soul or body, but because they need to be accepted as part of the group, and eating meat would make them feel rejected, like a betrayal of the clan or tribe's principles.
_AM: It's a human cultural issue, which takes time to clean up, as it is natural and ancient. Anyway, it's not necessary to do so.
_I: How?
_AM: Why do you want to clean up and become vegetarian?
_I: Hmm well, there can be many reasons, I mean it's important to become aware of what one does to the environment and what one does to oneself by eating things that harm us.
_AM: Yes, but that's a belief. You cannot train others to change their way of eating because you hinder their growth. Humanity's great mistake is excess, not what is eaten. Eating an apple from a tree or planting 1000 trees to harvest millions of apples to then eat one, that is the absurdity of humanity. Treating animals as products and raising millions of cows to eat one and throw away the rest because "it was too much," that is the absurdity of humanity.
_I: What you're saying is that everyone could eat whatever they want if the cycles, quantities, and true needs were respected.
_AM: Well, everyone needs something different to consume because each individual is different, and food is primarily emotional energy. You already know what "prohibiting" means in humanity.
_I: Yes... Start the black market, where there's a will, there's a way.
_AM: You forbid what you don't like, and you still haven't understood that it doesn't work like that. The key is Education, awareness.
_I: And there we have the third level...
_AM: Eating consciously does not imply looking outside and wanting to change the world, but observing what I eat, what I become, what harms me and I don't give up out of necessity. Consciousness allows us to see that we become what we consume, and if I want to be different, I must consume different things. Nutrition is the key to all the energy of my organic being, therefore, to truly transform my beliefs with their thoughts and my emotions with their bonds, I must transform my body with its nutrition. When I educate myself, the real cleansing of my being begins, and in the example, I can educate others.
_I: And how do I start that cleansing?
_AM: It's called Fasting. This Latin word comes from "ieiunum," which is another concept of emptiness, that "there is nothing." Thus, "Breakfast" implies setting aside the void and filling that space. In English, "Fast" comes from the Indo-European "duro, fixed, firm." Therefore, "Breakfast" refers to breaking with rigidity. In both languages, we can interpret that it speaks of something that is static, still, where nothing happens, and that nothing is broken, modified when something new arrives to change it. In terms of food, Fasting is the organic equivalent of meditation for the mind. Reaching that void not from scarcity but from the will to discover inner potential, awakens a new mechanism in the body, which seeks new ways to supply that energy. It obtains it from fat reserves, from breathing, from sunlight, from water information. But just as with the mind, meditating without ever having done active meditations is useless. For the Mind, finding the moment of full emptiness implies an adaptation to stop thinking, and this is achieved with active meditation, such as staring fixedly at patterns without expecting to create a work of art, or walking without a destination, or dancing to music without lyrics, or performing mechanical and repetitive actions. This prepares the body for what it means to clear the mind. Similarly, Fasting requires an exercise of consuming less and less food, little by little, with time, leaving the most important until last, until the point where you start repeating a routine of always eating the same thing. Until one day, you only need water. Thus, it begins by leaving breakfast first. Later on, lunch, and later in time dinner (early, not late). But just like meditation, fasting is not for a lifetime, but for moments of physical meditation. Thus, cells rest in their constant mitosis. Think of your body as a country that never sleeps with trillions of workers that never stop. Always generating and consuming without stopping. Fasting is like a huge vacation for all the inhabitants of your physical self, but nevertheless, one day they will have to return to their tasks.
_I: I understand, it's intermittent... So the body can relax. Maybe a few days a month would be okay.
_AM: Everyone will know how much, what, and how they need it. The important thing is to do it sometime because it is the moment when the body's mind can stop working to think, feel, look at the sky, contemplate life, relax. Detoxifying from food is detoxifying from information, it is finding silence and inner peace, dormant abilities to produce one's own energy. But above all, one without denying the other, they are understood as inevitable parts of life. Because a body that consumes without stopping, replicating its cells so many times, will exhaust itself more quickly and die soon. In contrast, a being that gives vacations to its cells, that lets them rest, is more likely to live longer. You need to eat to innovate, you need to nourish yourself to grow, but you need fasting to understand, you need emptiness to feel and be.
_I: Life, then, finds stability in the saving of energy obtained from what it eats, but it must spend that energy to discover what it can do with it. Nutrition and Fasting.
_AM: You are what you eat...