Meditative mealtimes-deciphering the messages in food

Food is a love-letter sent to us by our creator and we must learn to read it. To my mind it is the most eloquent, the most potent of love –letters for it says, “I love you and I am giving you life and strength’. More often than not, human beings swallow their food without reading the words of the letter, in which the Lord also says, “My child, I want you to be perfect. I want you to be like this fruit, to have a delicious flavour. For the moment you are sour, bitter and tough, you are not fit to be eaten. You still have a lot to learn. Look at this fruit: if it has reached maturity it is because it has been exposed to the sun’s rays. You must do the same: expose yourself to the rays of the spiritual sun and the sun will work to transform all the bitter, indigestible elements and  give you bright, beautiful colours into the bargain.’ This is the message the Lord sends us through the medium of food. You have not heard it yet, but to me it is quite clear. As we eat, our food speaks to us, for the food is condensed, concentrated light and sound. If your thoughts are always straying you will not hear the voice of light.

Light is never separate from sound: light sings, light is music. We have to learn to hear the music of light, for it sings, it speaks, it is the Word of God. You could say, too, that nutrition is a form of divination, for every being, every object emits certain radiations, and the diviner is one who picks up and interprets these radiations. Food has picked up radiations from the whole cosmos. The sun, the stars and the four elements have left invisible but no less real imprints on it; they have impregnated it with all kinds of particles, forces and energies. Food even bears the traces left by human beings who have worked in the fields and orchards or have simply walked through them. So food can talk to you about all its experiences: it can tell you tales of the sun and the stars, of angels and of the Creator. It can tell you about the entities which have cared for it day and night and filled it with special properties for human beings, the children of God…

Like animals, even unconscious human beings survive thanks to their food, that is obvious, but food taken in this way can give them only physical well being. It cannot help them to grow spiritually. In order to extract the most subtle particles from our food, we have to be fully conscious and awake, and over-flowing with love. When this is the case, our organism is so perfectly prepared to receive the nutritious elements that the food feels welcomed and willingly gives up all the treasures it contains. If you know how to welcome others lovingly, they open up, they are ready to give their all; but if you receive them ungraciously they close up. Put a flower out in the light and warmth and it will open and give up its scent, but if you leave it in a dark, cold room it will close its petals. Food also opens or closes depending on our attitude, and when it opens it gives us the purest, most divine energies.

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov     The Yoga of Nutrition