How to Eat Mindfully

A belief in eating as a spiritual magic goes back to the dawn of time. Some tribes believed that eating the flesh or heart of an enemy gave you their soul and abilities. Cannibalism, in this light, was a spiritually elevating experience.

In our fast food culture, it’s often easy to forget where out food comes from and even why we really eat. But for many people, the acts of hunting and harvesting are acts of the soul as well as the mouth and stomach. Like the heart of an enemy for some, the ingestion of a single grain becomes an act of faith for another.

Obsession with diets, weight and food is a deep theme is modern Western culture. We seem to eat to fill holes in the stomach, but gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins in popular Christianity, just makes the soul more ravenous for true nourishment.

Eating, just as sex, is one of the ways we can either strengthen or weaken our true selves. We sometimes need to take our eyes off heaven and simply look at the end of our fork. Sometimes we see our soul dangling there as we literally eat ourselves into oblivion, devouring what is best in ourselves.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Fast one day a week. An alternative is eating one meal that day instead of two or three. Maybe donate cash you would have spent on food to a worthy cause, say, feeding the homeless.

2. A short prayer, blessing or even a silent bow before each meal. Thank your food as the Indians did.

3. Set an extra plate for dinner. This is an old Jewish custom. The extra plate is meant for the Messiah who might show up at any moment unexpectedly. If he or she doesn’t appear, someone else might. Feed them.

4. Once a week, eat an entire meal in silence, paying exquisite attention to the food and process of eating: color, taste, smell, swallowing, chewing and so on. Set a time limit as well, say twenty minutes. This is a daily practice in Zen Buddhist monasteries.

5. Visualize each piece of food as a form of communion in the Catholic tradition. Before placing it in your mouth, think of the qualities you desire it to share with you.

6. Prepare a traditional spiritual meal. During Greek Orthodox Lent, animal products are forbidden for the forty day period. Make some Greek Lenten food such as lentil soup. Other dinners that come to mind could be based on Passover Seder with unleavened bread, bitter herbs; Thanksgiving and so on.

7. Like Buddhist monks, eat every single grain from your plate or bowl. If you do this, you soon learn to take the right amount of food so you can eat it all. This makes your eyes the same size as your stomach.
   So if something’s been eating away at you, use these steps to bite back gently. Bon appétit!