Lister

@now is forever I think I get what you are saying. I agree, not everyone wants to be healthy. Veganism ultimately isn't about health, it's about a solution to a real problem we have. I've made the information here perfectly accessible to others that a whole foods plant based diet is the healthiest diet we have, so there is no excuse now to turn around and insist that we need to eat animals for health reasons. You can kill yourself eating a junk food vegan diet. That is a personal choice that everyone has. But at this point there needs to be serious questioning of whether we can now call eating animals a personal choice. Especially as animal agriculture is so detrimental to climate change. Something needs to shift or we are all in big trouble. I have seen some discussion that it's only a matter of time that veganism will be forced upon us anyway.

I think it's more to do with his 3rd tier stuff / "integral yoga".

Moving on from the non dualist spam...

Well this is the problem with Ken wilber. He's probably done a few trips in his life and is riding on the memory of it. All his work comes from his fantasy world, so so many people have debunked him now that it's become a bit of a joke in spiritual circles.

@purerogue Now, if you want to take me on this subject then I implore you to try. Gather everything you have got, because I have seen it all. Let's do it. If you can tell me in very clear terms why logic and science is fundamentally wrong and that we don't have a crisis on our doorstep then I'll consider it. But as far as I can see from yellow cognition is that relativism doesn't trump formal operational. It's just different and a different way to look at the same phenomena. Quantum mechanics does not debunk netownian physics. They are just different models. While you're wondering about quantum physics your arteries are still forming plaques and your body is dying.

This is your imagination. You have an idea of what it means to be a vegan (from past experiences interacting with vegans) and you believe that this is what you are seeing in me. This is completely obvious to me, because you have made a lot of baseless assertions that are nothing but aspect of your internal representation. This is not a should. I'm completely fine with people who eat meat. I'm talking about what is practical now in the relative world. The science we have in support of veganism is so overwhelming that I cannot ignore it anymore. If we dont act now we won't survive. Nothing will survive. The fact that you don't see this is extremely alarming, you sound like another person who wants to sit on the fence because you feel better doing that. There is no grey areas with this, this is what I'm saying. Even if by some miraculous reason that we did need animal products to survive it doesn't matter because we cannot physically do it with the physical laws we at bound to. We cannot sustain meat eating for coming on 10bn inhabitants. The healthcare system in the US is nearly bankrupt. This isn't a theory, it's real. You may not think this is your problem now, but believe me you will know about it soon enough and then if you haven't acted it will be too late. There is no reasonable argument against veganism. I have spent the last 4 year's vehemently arguing against it myself and have read every paper that meat eaters use to deny veganism and all of it is junk science and lies. The only thing I could do after all that study was submit to it, because it's the truth.

@purerogue I think what you're doing is making the personal incredulity fallacy. Which means that just because you don't understand something personally (science) you believe that it cannot make sense in and of itself. You're full of fallacies, ad hominems and hyperbole. Bring some solid reasoning and help let others decide what is true. Currently you're solid unhealthy blue pretending to be something they clearly are not.

Of course animals get cancer. Nobody here has said otherwise. I have made the accurate statement that big cats don't get cardiovascular disease eating meat. That's a true statement. There is no "grey area" with this lol. Grey areas are there, but the point of science is to find out causation - which is very black and white, it has to be. Purerogue, do you actually have an argument or are you just content calling everything black and white as if it's some kind of religious mantra? Because what you're doing here is attempting to go meta on my reasoning without providing reasoning for your meta analysis. Which says to me that you're a spiritual bypasser. And judging by your behaviour I'd say that is an accurate assumption to make about you. You have not provided anything except repeated some of Leo's mantras.

Please debunk it then. Bring me the reasoning and science. That's what this thread is for. Put your money where your mouth is. Act in a way that people will take you seriously. Currently I don't take you seriously at all, because all you have is baseless assertions. Let's go. Every opportunity I have to spread this information is welcome.

@purerogue Let me say it again, all of the 200+ patients on Dr. Essylstens programme either reversed their heart disease, or never had another conorary event. I don't know how else I can say it, this means that animal products are the only cause of heart disease. If what the carnivores say is.true, that grains and plants cause inflammation then why did all of the adherents to the Essylsten protocol do so well? If you can just sit with that for a while and read the studies yourself you will see that it's impossible that plants cause inflammation.

Yes it seems like a religion. Education is about presenting a narrative, we all sound the same us vegans, but we repeat the ideas in such a way as so that they can be assimilated easily. This should be obvious to orange at least. Not to blue it seems? This is marketing 101. It's not that the science is cherry picked, it's just that you have bad science supporting your meat eating. That has in part been funded and executed by the industries that feel threatened by this movement. You can go read read studies for yourself if you want. But I don't think you have the maturity and patience to stay on point. You have already taken yourself out of being taken seriously in this discussion, I doubt anyone reading would take your word because you have not provided any reasoning for your baseless assumptions. If you want to be taken seriously in life you must enter a discussion whole heartedly with the intent to argue all your points reasonably. You're just lazy and impulsive. If you can bring something other that your baseless conclusions based on confusion and ignorance of the science, then you will be taken seriously.

@DrewNows You have set up your last comment in such a way that I cannot quote from it. Whether you have done this deliberately or not is open to personal interpretation. I want to press on on at least one thing you said (for now). If you believe science is corrupted by bias, why are you reliant on your own 1st person perspective (thinking for yourself)? Surely thinking for yourself has inherent bias built in? Science has brought together the evidence that stretches up and down the whole hierarchy of evidence (pictured below). From high level meta analysis to basic causal mechanisms. All point in the direction that inflammation and high animal products consumption is linked to western chronic diseases. There have literally hundreds of thousands of studies that when taken into consideration as a whole (Yes we have exceptions to the rules, poorly designed studies, corruoted studies, industry funded studies) paint a clear picture of what e going on. Propaganda is designed to confuse us so.that we just throw our hands in he air, appeal to futility and decide to eat what we want. Then employ all kinds of blue mental gymnastics in order to justify that. Which is what you have done. You dont understand science or critical thinking. You contradict yourself on the most basic points. Your self awareness is practically non existent. I can only conclude that you're not in a position to speak about non duality because you havent even developed upto orange yet. So let me ask you again, why do you condemn bias in science and then in the next sentence condone personal bias when declaring that "I think for myself"? This is a glaringly obvious contradiction.

@Farnaby Seems that there are some "non dualist" get triggered by a conversation on veganism. Lots of attachment to meat eating, selective bias, relying on 1st person assumption only, word salad, contradiction. Make up your own mind based on what you see already in this discussion.

Not sure how to reply to this. I don't wish to offend you personally but this seems like word salad.

So basically you have no argument and resort to this when you are exposed as not knowing what you are talking about.

I have thought about this in depth and have been doing some work around this very issue. The fear I believe comes from the past when suffering happened as a consequence of being misunderstood and that had an impact of being a threat to my survival. In Abraham Maslows work he talks about baseline survival needs that need to be met before self actualization can happen. We evolved emotions as survival mechanisms, and if our survival has been threatened at some point during our development (by our need to be understood not being aknowledged for example) this creates a shadow self that unconsciously keeps pushing to be understood later on in life. Obviously we cannot change the past, but only learn to process the suffering that still bothers us now. So when I feel misunderstood I understand that the fear i feel now is only remembered suffering from the past and I just own, accept and process the suffering. Most people unconsciously enact the fear and try to get understood rather than understand why they feel afraid. This is probably why life can be challenging for us, as trying to be understood in adulthood is unrealistic and self defeating behaviour.

What do you think is left when unconscious attachment to personal preferences is no longer the case? The result is = the truth of you. You disclose your ignorance about what it means to be enlightened because you couldn't correlate non attachment to the conditioned ego with the authentic being. Like I said, I have no inner turmoil about the truth of what we should be eating. I have already stated (if you had bothered to contemplate my words) that science informs us, and that we cannot argue with science. Yes there are a lot of different "opinions" on the net about what to eat. And many GP will still say plant based veganism is extreme. But those opinions are divorced from the body of scientific evidence. The scientific consensus is that the western diet is a highly inflammatory diet that is causing most of the chronic illnesses. You're free to go by your own experience because of the conflicting opinions in the field of health, but the science is published and done and is clear. It's important to be able to interpret the science properly, for example the American 2015 dietary guidelines on cholesterol were adjusted because the American Egg board lobbied for it and deliberatly took one part of the abstract of a study out of context. Most of what you hear in the keto community is twisted lies. The point about low cholesterol is another lie taken from a study done on cancer patients where a correlation was found between their depression and their naturally low blood lipids. The keto community took that and used it as another justification for their diet in order to sell books. The two biggest researchers involved in keto are employed by a clinic who charge huge amounts of money for useless keto diabetes programmes that claim to be able to manage diabetes But also admit that they cannot fix glucose tolerance (cure deiabetes). Plant based diet has already been shown to cure diabetes already. No. Veganism will look like a religion to the blue structure because the blue structure is.about guilt. Guilt is turning unresolved childhood pain onto oneself as a learned behaviour as a consequence of social indoctrination. Veganism is not an identity, it's a consequence of being able to think properly having sorted out our internal problems. Most people after examining their values would have to go vegan. Again, it's very simple, would you prefer to spend your life in a cage unable to move? If not then why do you expect an animal to live like that just so you can have a bacon sandwich? You disclose that you haven't sorted out your internal issues. You clearly do support the abuse of animals if you consume their products. Think deeply about this for a while. If you buy meat, eggs and dairy you are financially and publically supporting an industry that exploits animals. Animals don't live by logic. But they are sentient. They feel pain, they can solve basic problems, they have emotions. You dont even need science to point this out. Do you have a pet? Does your dog express joy at being let out to run? Does it express anticipation when dinner is being served up? These are human traits also. These are mammals that share the same emotional bodies as us. All you need to do is take your sceptic goggles off an look at how things actually are. You will see (once you have done the inner work) that veganism is your only choice.

@SQAAD This is a really great topic and good timing because I have been thinking a lot about this recently. I think it boils down to unconscious behaviour (learned behaviour). Society as it is currently structured doesn't teach us what emotional intelligence is. Instead we are taught how to deny our feelings and focus on the apparent problem outside. I've noticed in myself that my mind has a tendency to blame a situation rather than go straight to the sensation and own it (accept it without projecting). Most of us think it's other people that are the cause of our feelings, but I think this is a misunderstanding of what our emotions are telling us about our past. I've noticed in myself, depending on what I missed out on in my childhood, I will tend to get upset at people who don't play into my need for belonging. I've noticed that once I'm triggered that it's very easy for the mind to start to devalue that perceived "enemy" and not understand the actual root cause of my upset. I think most people do this, we unconsciously look for others to fill that need that we missed out on, and depending on how emotionally availible the target is, we either value them greatly or devalue them. This dynamic is ubiquitous and probably why there is so much energy draining politics that run relationships. And this is why one of the traits of a narcissist or borderline is devaluation, because for these personality types the pain is so consuming that it's very difficult to be able to see the other as a person in their own right.

Nobody has said that enlightenment is about meaning or purpose. I said it's about disidentifying from our unconscious personal preferences. This entire discussion is not about meaning or purpose, it's about how veganism fits with non duality. Somebody mentioned a similar concept to divine purpose (the way things are because they are meant to happen). If you had been following the thread closely since the beginning and assimilating each person perspective then this would be obvious to you. But yet it seems we have another person bypassing the actual discussion on order to insert their assumptions. This is not true. It's a scientifically verified fact that human beings do not need animal products for survival. Again, if you had been paying attention and informing yourself then you would have recognized that we don't need animal products, and in actual fact it's animal products that cause western borne chronic diseases to happen at the rate they are happening. There is no grey area here, all the evidence is laid out in the videos I presented and anybody can go online and check Dr. Essylstens references themselves. Next to thousands of peer reviewed studies that show exactly what mechanisms in animal foods cause inflammation, there are clinical trials showing that plant based diets devoid of oils and processed foods actually reverse the progression of contrary artery disease, diabetes and some cancers. It's all in the literature. So if animal products are "needed" then why did all the end stage heart disease patients who adhered to the diet survive for more than 20+ years with not one conorary event? Why did parts of rural Japan and the other "blue zones" manage to survive and be more or less disease free on a 98% plant based diet? Are you saying that the 2% of animal products they ate actually kept them in good health to 100 years old and sometimes further? What about the adventist 2 vegans? The healthiest population of them all? How do you explain that they came out the healthiest of all the other dietary plans in the community? Animal products are not needed by anyone. We know what the problem is with these ex vegans, it's a gut microbiome disbyosis issue and genetic polymorphism issue that can easily be fixed with supplementation. If animal products are necessary then why were all of Dr. Essylstens 200+ heart disease trial patients all perfectly healthy on a whole foods plant based diet? Surely if animal products were really needed then at least one of these patients would have gotten sick. But they didn't. The body of evidence is so overwhelming now that healthcare organizations like Kaiser permananente in the states now advocate for a plant based diet as a way to prevent disease, rather than just treat it. I think the combined scientific community knows more than you about this subject. What are your credentials anyway? This is your assumption. Nowhere have I shamed anyone for eating meat. It's not about guilt, its about being consistent with onese self. Would you like to live in a cage where you cannot move your entire life? If not, then why are you making an animal do that just because you want a bacon sandwich? Its about the golden rule. All spiritual paths teach the golden rule. Only a person who has actually developed upto orange will resonate with what I'm saying. You have not reached that point yet. Your statement further solidifies your ignorance. Just watch the video I posted about factory farming and the fur trade. What you have done is read about anthropmorphising and believe that is the truth. We don't project anything onto animals, animals are sentient. This is scientific fact and consensus since 2012. Animals are no different to humans, even pigs have the basic consciousness of a young toddler. Lastly, animal agriculture is destroying our home, and if we don't act soon it's actually going to be your problem also. Because we created this, it was necessary for a time, but now we know better. Veganism requires real life research into what is true, not half baked assumptions about what we think is going on.

This is the prime example of a spiritual ego, using spirituality to defend its primitive egoic habits. Lions and tigers are cannibals, they don't get cardiovascular disease by doing what comes naturally to them. If what you're saying is.true, then most non dual spiritual models are wrong, because most of them have an ethical component built in. Don't conflate orthodox Christianity with non dual ethical components. They are not the same.

What you're describing is not enlightenment. It's a disorder. All you're doing is suspending value judgements in order to feel better. That's not enlightenment. What you don't understand is that there is a difference between healthy emotions, healthy empathy, healthy judgements and "suffering". Suffering means unconscious attachment to your preferences, thats all suffering is..Veganism isnt about perosnal preferences. Vegans aren't suffering, it's the animals that are suffering. Animals dont have the capacity to free themsleves from suffering. We are the species that are exploiting them. Why didn't you address the remainder of my comment? Do you prefer to cherry pick and misdirect the conversation so that you can avoid answering difficult questions? What would you do if someone broke into your house and tried to kill you are your loved ones? Would you let them because it's divine purpose, or would you act and understand that acting is also part of the divine purpose? Emotion is part of the divine. Duality is the divine. Disengaging emotions is not enlightenment, it's a trick. If divine purpose is to eat animals, is it not also divine purpose to save animals? So what is it to be? What is the divine purpose of the universe? Because we have a duality here, don't we? How You resolve that? And why are you on the meat eating side of the divine purpose? Why aren't you on the animal rights side of the divine purpose? If both are not a problem then surely you are ok with going vegan? Your position makes no sense.

@EternalForest Go watch a few Jordan Peterson videos, then you will see how green is well established in the West.

Ok to the rest of your comment, I want to target in on one aspect I don't mean to offend you personally, but what I've just pointed out makes no sense whatsoever. You say that everything is supposed to be as it is, but you don't have access to everything that happened. You only have your own limited point of view that you see. But that aside, if everything is supposed to happen then animal rights and veganism is "supposed" to happen also. It's just not "supposed to happen" for you because you are a meat eater and what is supposed to be divine purpose is only divine purpose for you personally = eating animals. This is why i don't call this kind of self deception enlightenment, it's just a way to stop the mind from struggling with difficult real world situations. No problem, everything is divine purpose. No relative right or wrong. No struggle. Nice and peaceful and easy, isn't it?

Millions of people have died and fought for our species to have the basic right to sit in the comfort of our own homes, with opportunity, with freedom of speech to say what we want and practice any spiritual practice we want without fear of persecution or fear of being burned at the stake or mercilessly tortured and murdered because we are owned by some egoic tyrant. Has the time not come to extend those same rights toward other species? What are these animals to you? What do they mean to you? Are they just objects or are they sentient beings? Does being enlightened really mean that we become ok with being tortured, raped murdered and mutilated by our "owners" so that they can have the enjoyment of a bacon sandwich? Doesn't the joy of "being" come from within? If so then what pleasure does an enlightened being need from eating an animal product? Animal products are now recognized as not being essential for health, so at this point eating animal products is just mindless murder. Does an enlightened being really ok with mindless pointless murder for the sake of an external sense pleasure that lasts a few seconds?