Spiritual Teaching about Food

I have much to tell and have had a rough time with persistent problems with my muscles. Pretty intense pains at time that make walking even a few steps a frightening prospect. No fun.

But the biggest news is some discouraging findings that I am still digesting before I share here. I need to get some perspective.

I need to under react.

So here is something about two of my favorite topics: food and spirituality. Something else to divert my attention

From http://daatelyon.org/2012/03/manna-food-from-heaven/#more-1888 by Rabbi Yoel Glick.

When Swami Vidyatmananda, a westerner that had joined the Ramakrishna order was a probationer, he went to India to visit the headquarters of the Order. One day, he decided to leave the ashram in the outskirts of Calcutta and go into the city for the day to do some shopping. When he told his superiors his plans, one of the swamis inquired as to what he would do for food while he was there. He told the swami that he would simply go to a hotel to eat (thinking to himself that he could get a good western-style meal that way). The swami responded to his idea by suggesting that it would be better if he went to the order’s ashram in the city for his meals and offered to phone them for him. The swami then went on to explain that the members of the Order avoided eating in hotels and restaurants because of the low spiritual vibration of the food there.

“Food not prepared with devotion, not prepared with the idea that it is to be offered [to God] in the shrine – but just devised impersonally for making money by people with their minds full of gross thoughts – can adversely influence your spiritual growth.”

In one of his teachings, the Baal Shem Tov asks the question: the body receives nourishment from the food we eat but from where does the soul receive its nourishment? The answer that he gives is that the soul receives its nourishment from the Divine spark that is in everything; for everything in the world has been made by God and therefore is filled with His Spirit.

When we eat, it is our bodies that take up the physical nourishment that is in the food. However, if we recite a blessing with intention before eating, and turn our minds towards God, then it is our soul that receives nourishment from the Divine spark that is enrobed in the material form of the food.