Food and Consciousness - just the beginning

This is the first step towards sharing in blog form the evolution of my passion for the aesthetics of food and my growing experience of how this is related to consciousness. Recently I started to see more clearly just how important this connection is to developing a third tier culture. I would like to use this blog to explore this more fully and invite anyone who is interested to email me at kmiller@enlightennext.org.

I have also begun to see how my experience growing up has influenced the drive to make sense of this fundamental dimension of being alive. I love eating, and preparing, food. The Eastern European side of the family has a reverance for food that borders on the sacred - eating traditional fare together is what bonds us together, physically and emotionally, and also historically, to our unknown and distant ancestors. I was given the impression that if we stuck to this simple, salt of the earth, true food, it would keep us on the right path and even insure that we made it to heaven! My deep admirarion for cabbage comes from this side of the family.

We also fished, hunted, and raised animals to put meat on the table and I became concerned with the ethics of eating at an early age. Sometime around the age of 4 or 5 something flipped in my kid consciousness. I went from being curious about what happened when I pulled the legs off spiders, to crying over every accidently squashed bug. This developed until, much to the confusion and bewilderment of my folks, I became a vegetarian at 15.

But not eating meat doesn't necessarily mean eating well. After years of various indulgences I found my physical and mental health slip sliding away. It was at this point that I discovered macrobiotics. Also known as macroneurotics in some circles, :), it was the first time I sytematically tried to understand food and it's effects. It had an immediate and recognizable effect on my health and well being. It also taught me a whole slew of techniques and principles for food preparation and cooking that have helped me to push a creative and exploratory edge for the last 25 years.

To be continued :)