Know Thyself -- Chicken Lickin'

When I decided to stop identifying myself as a Christian, I dropped the habit of praying over my food, mostly because this was a habit forced upon me without an explanation. "Just believe" is no longer an option for me. Now, I have to know why.

I was watching a DVD on Native American shamanism when a priestess explained that prayer over food actually changes the physical ions in the food, making it more nourishing to the body. She explained that there is a measurable difference of the ions before the prayer and after the prayer. She demonstrated her traditional type of prayer which consisted of specific hand movements over the food. Christians can compare this to bowing their heads and folding their hands.

I began to give more credence to praying over my food. I still didn't desire making this a habit again because I didn't want to pray the way I was taught as a child -- "In Jesus' name." Just to explain a little bit, I no longer believe that I need a mediator to talk to God who lives right inside of me.

I had already been studying how electrons and subatomic particles respond to thought. What the priestess confirmed for me was that our ancestors and the ancients of original cultures already knew and had developed their cultures around the knowledge of subatomic cooperation with creation through thoughts and rituals. This is why the spiritual practices of indigenous cultures seemed so strange to Europeans who, never having heard of unseen physical matter, forced their version of Christianity on the world.

In cooperating with the Universe on a subatomic level, indigenous peoples had developed spiritual practices that supported abundance, peace, and harmony -- the opposite of Westernized Christianity, which is based upon scarcity, force, and submission. The result was that wherever Europeans went in their quest to "discover" the world, they found lush abundance which was thousands of years old. What this means is that in my attempts to reject Christianity out of anger, I deleted a habit that should have been allowed to remain. Praying over food, in whatever spiritual system you practice, is necessary for continued abundance, peace, and harmony.

One day, in my quest to understand why I love eating chicken that I know is full of hormones, I had an epiphany. The rationalization I gave myself for eating the chicken was economics. It's cheap chicken, pumped into black neighborhoods and sold at prices we can afford. The real reason I eat the chicken, I discovered through meditation, is that I believe in limitations. My epiphany was that, after seeing some of the ways I use a belief in limitations and how that use is a direct reflection upon my choices, I also understood my power to change my beliefs.

In not praying over my food, I could not see how much I hated the food I was eating. It tasted good, but in knowing that it wasn't healthy, I had come to hate it. I wasn't eating what I wanted to eat. I was subconsciously doing the opposite of prayer, I was cursing my food and I didn't even know I was doing it.

Since my economics did not allow me to change my food, I asked the Universe how I could change my attitude so that I loved what I was eating. The answer was to honor the life of the food before it was processed and ask the ions to purify both of our spirits. I never thought about the brutal life that chickens, other animals, and plants must undergo before they reach my table as food. It's horrible. I can also offer a prayer to change the industry so that the food comes to us in a healthy state.

So, in changing my attitude, I hope to be able to change the food and the food industry through prayer. Now, all I have to do is reestablish prayer over my food as a habit. But, I know I can do this.