Issue 24 - NOV 2012       Back to newsletter | to TOS website

Insights through service
 

.

Many TOS members have found that their service to others has brought with it a deeper understanding of themselves, of relationships and of the theosophical principles that inspire their service.

In the fourth article in this series, TOS member, Gracia Fay Ellwood shares an insight into working alongside people with seemingly opposing viewpoints to one’s own.
 

When I began to explore the issue of the oppression and suffering of animals, especially farmed animals kept for their products and killed for food, I had for some years been a member of a spiritual denomination that emphasises mystical oneness and the presence of the Divine in all persons, values similar to those of the TS. Like the TOS, the group has a history of opposition to violence and of social action on behalf of the oppressed.

I became a vegetarian in 1985 after participating in Far Horizons camp, one of the beautiful summer gathering places of Theosophists in the USA. I studied the animal issue for several years, increasingly convinced that I had to share what I was learning with other members of my religious group.
  I learned that the great majority of animals were kept in such dreadful conditions that they suffered miserably all their lives as well as at their terrifying and violent deaths. I learned that eating animal products can trigger chronic illnesses like coronary heart disease and certain cancers; that raising vast numbers of animals for their flesh and milk was contributing substantially to global warming, pollution, water shortages, deforestation and the like. I learned that because of the crowded and unsanitary conditions in factory farms, the meat, milk and eggs were often tainted, sickening or even killing those who consumed them, and fostering antibiotic-resistant microbes which were setting up humans and animals for out-of-control plagues of frightening proportions. I also learned that the system leads to grain and other food resources being so unjustly distributed as to increase hunger and death among the people of developing countries.

 


These evils are similar to those that our denomination has stood up against over the years. So I was confident that when I followed the proper procedure of forming a committee to study them and to inform other members, their sense of compassion would be aroused, and they would agree that justice requires that we stop supporting this destructive system by ceasing to buy and eat its main product, meat. I did this in mid-1992. Nineteen people attended the first committee meeting; we put books and other materials in the group's library, and we began in various ways to report our findings to them. After several years of such activities, we proposed that our group experiment with making a couple of its ‘potluck’ (buffet-style) meals meat free.

Many people said nothing, and some sympathetically supported us, but to my astonishment, some spoke up against the experiment and the whole concern. The terrible suffering and destruction the system causes to animals, humans and the planet were ignored; they said things like “That would violate our liberty”, or “Don't make rules for us”, or “If a new person came to a potluck bringing a meat dish, I would feel upset.” One person even refused to acknowledge that what happens in slaughterhouses is violence! The denomination doesn't practice voting; when doing business, members seek to reach a kind of consensus, which means that one or two determined objectors can scuttle any proposal. Our group was thus (officially) unwilling even to experiment with a vegetarian potluck. As time went on, other proposals met much the same fate. Occasionally one or two members even made personal attacks on members of the committee

I felt stunned. When this resistance unfolded I had been a member of the denomination for 16 years, and was strongly convinced that we were always on the side of the oppressed, the defenceless and the victims of violence. That they would ignore the victims and support a heartless system which violated almost everything we had traditionally stood for made me feel that the roof of my spiritual home had fallen on my head. But I did not see how I could terminate my membership and go elsewhere; probably the same situation would crop up in other churches or spiritual groups, and in any case, I was still committed to the principles of the oneness of all beings and of compassion which these decisions of the group had trampled on.

Some months later I found a kind of solution; I did not leave the denomination, but my spouse, Robert and I joined Krotona in Ojai, about 90 miles distant, where the long-term vegetarian atmosphere was comforting. This move gave me a chance to gain perspective on what had happened and to heal. The process was also helped by the presence in Ojai of a small worship group of my denomination, which I soon joined. Several people here were vegetarians; no one objected to our occasional potluck luncheons being meat free. The same was true of the dinners that for several years we served once a month to homeless people.

Probably the most important factor in my coming to understand my fellow travellers on the path was reading a book by Carol J. Adams entitled, Living Among Meat Eaters. Adams proposes that people who oppose vegetarianism with hurtful words and actions are in fact blocked vegetarians, decent folk who become anxious when someone's nonviolent diet stirs a vague awareness that something terribly wrong underlies their own. They then project their disquiet upon the vegetarian in defensive or hostile ways rather than facing up to their own inner conflict. This basic idea caused me to see the resisting members of my former group in a new light. However, the light wasn't really new, because it was in keeping with the view I (and they) had always held, that all of us are, at our deepest level, one with the Divine Spirit. They were indeed compassionate, as I had originally assumed, but in this particular respect they were closed off to their true selves at present. Eventually they would break through their blocks, and bring their diet into harmony with their hearts – in either the present lifetime or a later one.

Robert and I still travel back each month to attend the meetings of the Animal Kinship committee, which not only continues to function after 20 years, but has come a long way. Among other activities, we distribute literature, sponsor an online journal and are now creating a vegan cookbook. The present chair of the committee is an excellent cook, who together with supporting friends has made many a vegan dinner for members of the group (and sometimes for homeless people in the area). Several of the resistant members have moved away, and many new people have come in. Thanks mostly to experiencing these delicious, ahimsa-based meals, members now know that vegetarianism does not mean being deprived – just the opposite! As a result, the atmosphere in the group has changed greatly, and resistance is much lower. Vegetarian and even vegan potlucks are held from time to time, and many people come.

 
I have come to see the apparent enemies of animals and of vegetarianism as potential friends who in time will open their hearts to the suffering of farmed animals, just as they have undoubtedly already done in other areas of their lives. They have things to teach us too; we need to remember that we are all still growing, and that the Spirit can speak through any one of us to any other. Instead of responding to the hostility some of them showed with hurt and hostility of my own, I can now respond in peace, and work with increasing confidence that the spirit of love will in time prevail.

"Let us take the adventure that is sent us." – Sir Thomas Malory

  Back to newsletter | to TOS website