Why The Food You Eat Is So Important For Spiritual Connection

“To keep the body in good health is a duty, for otherwise we shall not be able to light the lamp of wisdom, and keep our mind strong and clear.”  ~Buddha

So how does this all link to our practice of meditation? The answer is simple. We are not eating real food anymore. The problem we now face is an overabundance of chemically laden products masquerading as foods, and a system that makes it difficult to acquire quality plant food, which is what we require most. We are eating “food like products” that our biology does not recognize, which results in a state of physiological stress that keeps us trapped in the primal aspects of our physical body and unable to transcend into that infinite stillness of meditation.
“If we fail to give our beloved nervous system the critical nutrients it needs to function optimally and remain calm, we can become stuck in the primal, reactive way of living, unable to transcend into higher levels of awareness.”

To truly grasp the role of nutrition in our ability to enter deep meditation, we must first understand what is happening in the brain and nervous system, it is after all our interface with the world around us.

The Neocortex is the part of the brain where enlightenment becomes possible. Where we want to journey to during meditation. It is the area that facilitates creativity, learning, imagining our future and experiencing our interconnectedness.

This part of the brain is hardwired to experience unconditional love, see the beauty in the world and allow us to discover who we truly are and our place in the universe. It houses the pineal gland which secretes DMT, the spirit molecule that essentially allows us to feel connected to all living things.

The limbic brain is where instinct and emotion converge. Also a primitive part of the brain, it analyses environmental signals and assigns the experience to one of our 4 fundamental programs, The 4 F’s: Fear, Feeding, Fighting and Fornicating. The Limbic Brain becomes more active when we rely on processed grains and sugar. It is this area of the brain where habitual living and obsessions with sex, food and mind dulling things like alcohol and television occurs. It is also where patterns of emotional withdrawal and aggressive behaviour stem from.
So now we have an understanding of our basic operating systems, but how do we get to that elusive Neocortex and experience deep meditative states? The answer doesn’t lie in a trendy fad diet or supplement, it lies in the wisdom of our distant ancestors, the earth keepers of our deep past. The only place we can really trust to look. To those who’ve thrived on our planet for thousands of years, in harmony with nature, and with a connection to Source and a reverence for life beyond anything we see in our modern day.
“Don’t eat anything your great-great grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. There are a great many food-like items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food.. stay away from these”  ~Michael Pollan

Our ancestors considered food to be a sacred offering to the temple, the perfectly designed house that is the human body. They appreciated food, as it was a gift offered up by Mother Nature to be assimilated and used to build the temple out of the most pure and sacred substance on earth, the earth itself. If we fail to adopt eating practices with this kind of reverence and continue to eat toxic foods mindlessly, we will struggle to bridge the gap between the limbic brain and the neocortex and remain living in lower states of awareness.

The Neocortex needs “NATURAL FATS” to operate at its best, especially DHA, a form of omega 3 fat found primarily in seafood. If these fats are not present in the diet, the Neocortex will just struggle along and maybe produce the occasional brief revelation but never any profound lasting insight. It’s not only omega 3 that is important however, the saturated fat that we have been so afraid of for the past 5 decades is a crucial nutrient for our nervous systems also. Every nerve in our body is insulated with a substance called Myelin, which is constructed from the fats in our diet.

The neocortex does NOT operate well under stress, in fact it will be essentially inaccessible and hand over control to the limbic brain. This may seem like a good survival mechanism but the problem is that the limbic brain developed during a time when the only stressors we had were the occasional “saber tooth tiger” chasing us or a long-lasting famine. It is not designed to cope with the bombardment of things competing for our attention in the modern world, and it cannot tell the difference between the saber tooth tiger and the 100grams of sugar you just ate with a bowl of ice-cream.

In summary, the neocortex can restrain the four F’s of the limbic brain and allow us to have meditative and transcendental experiences, if we give it the nutrients it is crying out for and avoid the nutritional stressors that shut it down. The following dietary principles are the most sure-fire way to nourish your nervous system and Neocortex:

•  Abundant omega 3 fats especially DHA and EPA, which come exclusively from animal foods such as fish, oysters, grass fed beef, free range eggs.
• • Sufficient saturated fat from coconuts, raw cacao, eggs, ghee, grass fed butter and grass-fed animals.
• Clean, pure, filtered, fresh water. 70-80% of our physical body is water.
• Magnesium rich foods such as green leafy vegetables, nuts, seeds, raw cacao etc. Magnesium is an absolutely essential mineral for the nervous system.
• Minimal stimulants such as caffeine.
• Intermittent fasting and remaining in a state of “lightness”. Digestion comes at a huge energetic/metabolic cost. Eating a nutrient dense but calorie sparse diet allows this energy to be dispersed elsewhere in the body, such as the brain and nervous system.
• At least 80% of the diet consisting of nutrient dense, mineral rich plant foods with emphasis on dark green leafy vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, sprouts, seaweeds and fermented foods.
• Eating foods in their whole and natural state.
• Daily consumption of fermented/probiotic rich foods such as Sauerkraut, Kim Chi, Miso, Kombucha, Kefir etc. as well mushrooms, which are super nourishing for the nervous system.
• Limiting pasteurized dairy products.
• Avoidance of synthetic/man made “foods” such as additives, preservatives, artificial (ridiculously neuro toxic) sweeteners, margarines etc.
• Avoidance of refined sugar and refined carbohydrates (white breads and pastas etc.) that are nothing more than pharmaceutical foods/empty calories.
• Avoiding the overconsumption of factory farmed animals and processed meats. These animals are slaughtered in fear and kept sick their entire lives by being fed foods that are unnatural to them and being injected with hormones and antibiotics (which end up in your body). Always aim for grass fed, organic animal products. There is a long-lasting myth that in order to be enlightened you must be vegetarian. I used to also have this belief, until I was challenged to tell a Native American or aboriginal elder that they are less spiritual for eating animals. They have a connection to spirit beyond anything we can even fathom.

I hope you have found this information somewhat enlightening. To help you grasp just how important the food we eat is to our spiritual practice I will leave you with the truest definition of the word nutrition , one that you have unlikely herd before. Nutrition comes of the Latin word “nux”, which means “light”. So nutrition is literally nothing more than the “processing of light”. Quite an important thing to consider if “EnLIGHTenment is something you wish to experience.