Food Glorious Food

Family diningAround twenty years ago there were just one or two food-related programmes a week on the telly. Switch on today and you’re lucky not to be confronted by a beef sirloin or a plate of lamb shanks. With the proliferation of celebrity chefs, reality shows and graphic advertising, the public’s appetite for food has become a cultural obsession. The western mind has made a god of food and, through the multiplicity of choice, is rarely content with the natural produce of the earth. But being a false god, the overall effect has been negative, manifesting in recent times as an insatiable hunger for extreme culinary sensations and increasing food-related disorders. So what is going on?

Human beings have become emotionally attached to food in varying degrees. From its basic necessary function, the consumption of food has developed alarmingly out of balance in many adult people as a substitute love and a distraction from the fundamental pain of existence. The attachment to food is established from the moment of birth through the life-sustaining milk from the mother’s breast. The exchange of incipient love from one life form to another affirms the instinctual desire of the infant to carry on in an alien world and is registered as something deeply desirable and pleasurable. The opposite effect of hunger and associated feelings of isolation is registered in the same way but as a negative impression as something to be avoided and feared. Thus the consumption of food is the introduction of the pain and pleasure of existence.

Humanity’s relationship with food has paralleled the progression of western civilisation. From nomadic hunter to farmer to the industrialisation of food supplies, the sacred connection between man and the earth has all but disappeared. The manufacturing process and packaging of food in these deeply materialistic times unsuspectingly contributes to stress and the reduction of the quality of life. Amazingly, the food that is consumed contains not only the nutritional substance that fuels the physical body but an invisible psychic energy that has an effect on the way that people function in their everyday lives. A diet based primarily on processed ‘fast food’, as well as not being particularly healthy in the physical sense, creates a distorted and jagged psychic field within the subconscious. The most common effect of a junk food diet manifests in the individual as a restlessness and need to be mentally active. Most young kids and teenagers become dependent on electronic gadgets and their computers with the help of their favourite food and snacks. Heavily processed food laden with chemical additives is a product of the progressive drive of the world and, in particular, electromagnetism generated through electrical energy. However, a diet based exclusively on pure organic or untreated produce is also likely to have an adverse effect. This is because the immune system that supports the chemical balance of the physical body may be less able to resist new viruses arising due to the changing atmosphere of the modern age.

It is mostly woman who is vulnerable to food disorders. Man being the projective principal is more able to disperse his emotionality in his many interests and distractions in the world. His taste for food (like his sexual drive) can be more easily satisfied as an immediate gratification before he moves on to do something else. Woman identifies in a different way with food than man since she is closer to the womb of life; and whatever enters her body is more akin to love and the feeling of completeness she yearns for. Obesity, anorexia and every other food-related disorder manifests as a reaction to the loveless world and separation from the original state of being. In broad terms, obesity manifests primarily through an emotional aberration whilst anorexia manifests through a similar trauma but through the mental function of the mind.

A baby born with obese parents is likely to be itself obese. The presence of an obese gene may be able to be proven scientifically but, in reality, the newborn baby picks up the unhappiness of the parents, together with a portion of the emotional disorder of the rest of humanity. An obese person’s relationship with food is an unconscious desire to fill the void of unhappiness through the consumption of earth matter. The filling of the void with food temporarily satisfies the craving, not for pleasure but to nullify the pain of existence – through increasing the mass of the body to cushion the effect of the world and replicate the planet’s cosmic serenity. An anorexic displays the same desire pattern for original union and love, only as a polar opposite to the obese person. An anorexic is repelled by the expanse of matter, fearing it will suffocate or extinguish their love. The subconscious impulse is to dissolve the form and control the vehicle (the body) thereby reducing their existence to a minimal participation with the external form or mass. Anorexic people reduce their mass or weight of the form to pass through the forces of the world as ghosts, manifesting at the behest of their desire patterns to participate in their affairs as they please.

There are two primary forces in existence based on the positive and negative values of expansion and contraction. The bridge or power that retains everything in its correct size and literally stops matter from engulfing the sense-perceived universe is the moment or power of now. This is the divine point of consciousnesses that is unwavering and never moves. Obesity is a modern symbol of the expansion of the original eternal moment and anorexia the contraction of that same moment. The body of humanity and the condition of the world is symbolised through the times. Just as it is almost impossible to digest the constant deluge of information and data without mental fatigue, so it is with the digestion of our food. There’s a blockage in the pipes and its name is time or past. So where is our relationship with food taking us?

In the future, food disorders will manifest as new and disturbing phenomena. Obesity and anorexia will continue as polar opposites in human form, symbolising the eternal paradox of the original moment. Cannibalism, although not currently fashionable, will be the new food craze that will take the culinary world by storm. This will manifest as meat processed to have the shape and appearance of human body parts. In generations to come the masses, having been fed on a diet of flesh-eating zombie movies, will have the opportunity to experience something approximating the real thing. Rather more distressing will be secret gourmet clubs (which, incidentally, already exist) that consume human flesh. Teeth whitening and the proliferation of images of grimacing celebrities are further symptoms of the externalisation of the false god in existence. Cannibalism is an extension of the greed, sexual frustration and emotional attachment to food. Long ago when tribal people ate their enemies, it was a ritual of honouring them through a sacred act of inner worship to the one life force or spirit. This time around, the cannibalistic impulse will be self-gratification and the ultimate food disorder. The diabolical self, having externalised, will literally feast on itself and discover, perhaps, the terrible consequences in time.

Lance Kelly 2013