Until two years ago, I ate meat and fish. Bread with mortadella for breakfast and lunch and animal proteins for dinner like most of the people
At a certain moments I doubted but still ate it because I didn’t know how to replace it. In my education a meal consisted of pasta/rice/potatoes with vegetables and meat.
But on the 30th of December 2015 I was standing in the supermarket with a package of Mortadella in my hand and suddenly a little voice said “WTF are you doing” I’ve put it back in the shelve and stopped eating meat.
Why did I stop?
Easy answer: It’s sad for the animals
The first seed is planted by this video. Little Luis explains it very well in this video:”We have to take care for them, not eat them”. Also the way they are treated at the farms and the butchers doesn’t make me very happy.
A little less easy answer: Why would I eat something i couldnt kill myself
Just before I decided to stop eating, I saw a trailer of the movie “Vleesverlangen” (Desire for meat), a Dutch movie where Marijn Frank is looking for the answer why she loves meat so much (here is the complete movie, unfortunately only in Dutch). This trailer alone was already enough to make a deep impression. The screenshot below is taken at the moment just before a cow is shot and shows everything. It made me realize that also I can’t even look at it neither, let alone do it myself.
The most difficult answer: we are all one
Everything has a consciousness and maybe we are all divine beings and connected to each other because we are all from the same source, the universal and pure consciousness. When you would have said a year ago that I would write it now, I’d declare you for crazy, but the yoga teacher training made me aware of this of this thought and feeling.
Like my friend L. said:”The way of Yoga, the way of being your True Self will make You an empath towards all lviing beings. We are all One! ”
Also taken taken in account in this aspect is also the care for the environment and the impact on the world of breeding meat. Eating meat takes a lot of resources of the world.
Other factors
The decision was made in one second but not totally spontaneous. It has been a long time in the corner of my mind that it’s “bad” to eat meat, but the desire and lack of knowledge made me do it. But because of the yoga, you’re more conscious of your role, start to live more healtier and get to know ahimsa, non violence. Also due to the yoga I became more stronger to follow my own heart and stand up for my own opinion (I care less about the question “What would others think?”)
And now
In fact there are three options: one day I will eat meat again, who knows. Only the person who doesn’t think and evoluate doesn’t change his mind. The other option is that I become vegan, so I skip also cheese and eggs. I don’t see it happen because I like it too much and don’t know how to replace it (especially cheese on bread), but hey I used that as arguments a long time also for meat. Most chanceful is that I continue like this in the future. No meat and skipping a bit more eggs and cheese.
Not to forget that I respect the opinion of choices of others. So my room mate is still eating meat and I’m totally okay with it, occasionaly I even prepare it for him. I can show others my way, but everybody his own path in life…
Read also: The relation between yoga and vegetariarism
