“Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him?” ~Pierre Troubetzkoy
Way back in 1989 I was driving from Nova Scotia to Florida following the I-95 and got caught in a huge traffic-jam somewhere in Georgia. I remember that it was very hot and the air conditioner in our motorhome came in real handy. As the universe planned it, in my opinion anyway, immediately in front of us caught in the same traffic-jam was a huge tractor-trailer packed (and it was truly “packed”) with cattle on its way to an abattoir, or in plain language, a slaughterhouse.
I don’t know how many cattle were in that trailer or even if they were all cattle or if they were all alive or not. But there’s one thing that has stayed with me from that day to this and that’s the mournful sound of tortured cattle crying for relief. As I sat there with the motor running and the air conditioner blowing cool air I began to think, I began to envision and I began to imagine.
When I was a kid in school I once heard a teacher talk about something that I have never forgotten. She told us a story about something called, The Black Hole of Calcutta. It was a dark and depressing story about a group of prisoners-of-war forcibly crowded into a very small space where many of them succumbed to heat, dehydration and suffocation. The story took up residence in the subconscious of my young mind and has remained there throughout the years. On the day I waited behind that tractor-trailer loaded with suffering animals, the story of The Black Hole of Calcutta came to the forefront of my thinking and reasoning as a comparison.
Even as a young kid I could imagine the horrible suffering those prisoners-of-war endured as they slowly succumbed to overheated conditions combined with a lack of water and oxygen. Even so, back then my young mind didn’t grasp the idea that humans could be inhumane and cruel to other humans. I just took it as another sad story of the horrible conditions of war.
But that day on the Interstate the woeful sound emanating from that trailer contained more than a sound of suffering for me, although that was certainly at the forefront. At the time, it simply did seem like the sound of tortured animals pleading for help and relief. But over the years since, I’ve realized that it was much more than that. That sound has played in my mind many, many times over the years since, until I realized the message it really contained.
In my imagination every once-in-a-while I have compared the two situations trying to understand the difference. Trying to understand why one would be recorded in the annals of history while many thousands similar to the other, which occur each and every day, are never given a second thought.
It has caused me to ask questions, such as, what causes humans to become so calloused, devoid of empathy and hard-hearted that they can torture other humans seemingly without any remorse or shame of any kind? And accompanying that question in my mind has been the same one concerning the torturing, killing and eating of animals.
It’s recorded in the KJV of the Bible in Luke 23:34 that as Jesus was being tortured and crucified he asked God to forgive his tormentors. He said, “Father Forgive them for they know not what they do.” In my mind that request raises questions such as, what was it they didn’t know? I’m sure they intellectually knew what they were doing physically; so again, what was it they didn’t know?
There has been more than one explanation given in attempts to answer that question, which I’m not going to get into. This post is about why I made the decision to stop eating animals. But that being said, I believe that people who eat animals and use dairy products can be compared to Jesus’ tormentors in the sense that they know not what they do. Please don’t misunderstand and conclude that I’m comparing ordinary people who eat animals with the Roman soldiers who tortured and crucified Jesus. I am not doing that except in the sense that they know not what they do.
Earlier I mentioned the message beyond the crying of tortured animals for help and relief that I felt was contained in the detestable sound that emanated from the trailer load of animals that day on the Interstate. In very simple terms the message came to me in the form of a question, which is; Why? From there it blossomed into a whole host of questions to which I could find no satisfactory answers. After 13 years of not being able to answer the questions satisfactorily I made the decision in 2002 to stop eating animals. That was 22 years ago this year and the only regret I have is not doing it sooner.
As that disgusting sound has subconsciously replayed itself in my mind over the years the “why” questions seemed to be included in it. Beyond the pleas for help and relief, It seems as though the cattle were asking; Why?
As time went on, that simple “why” question kept blossoming into a plethora of questions for me. They were questions such as: Why don’t people care about the suffering of animals? I believe it’s because they, like Jesus’ tormentors, know not what they do? It seems it must be that for I’m sure people wouldn’t torture animals or cause them to suffer if they knew what they were doing.
“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it…”
The above quote is mostly attributed to Albert Einstein but there are those who dispute its authorship and deny that Einstein said it. It doesn’t matter to me whether he did or didn’t say it, all that matters is the truth it contains and that truth cannot be disputed. The term “everything” doesn’t leave anything out and there’s no disputing the fact that everything “is” energy vibrating at specific frequencies. And there’s only one Source of energy, which is what most people refer to as God and which I prefer to refer to as Love; they are one and the same.
Therefore, whether it’s a human, a dog, a cow, a pig or a sheep they’re all aspects of the same Source vibrating at different frequencies. Their bodies are projections of those same aspects of Source manifested in physical form. In other words, every human or animal you see is a manifestation of the Creator, or better said, God is in everything you see. That’s why, as I see it, people who cause the suffering and killing of animals by eating their bodies and drinking their bodily fluids know not what they do.
I believe I made the decision to stop eating animals that day in 1989 on the I-95 as I was forced to listen to the sound of suffering and fear as they combined into the most awful pleading for help I had ever heard in my life. I realized I had a power within me that I could use to help some animals even if I couldn’t help the ones in front of me. It’s a power we all possess and it’s known as, the power of decision. I had the power to decide that no animal would have to suffer and die in order for me to eat. It took me 13 years to finalize that decision but I give thanks whenever I think of it that I finally did make it.
I stopped eating animals because I awakened to the realization that every meal I ate that contained animal products added to the abuse and suffering of the animals. I also realized that eating animal products is absolutely unnecessary for the sustenance of the human body. In fact, the less animal products the human body is fed the better it thrives. Even so, I did not stop eating animals for my health. I stopped because I wanted to do my small part to lessen the suffering of the animals.
I’m going to close this post with a quote by Ellen DeGeneres that portrays my feelings exactly: “I do it because I love animals and I saw the reality. And I just couldn’t ignore it anymore. I’m healthier for it, I’m happier for it. I can’t imagine that if you’re putting something in your body that is filled with fear or anxiety or pain, that that isn’t somehow going to be inside of you.”
Thank you for visiting this site. I am truly grateful.
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“Love is your safety. Fear does not exist. Identify with love, and you are safe. Identify with love, and you are home. Identify with love, and find your Self.” –ACIM
“Veganism is believing that an animal’s life is worth more than a sandwich. That’s it! That’s how simple it is.” –The Spiritual Vegan
LOVE IS THE ONLY HEALER 