Living in Peace through Receipts, Part 1

Preface.

I wrote this piece back in 2014 when I was a new and very passionate vegan.  Whether or not you are a vegan, you probably know what this word means and surely there is someone in your life that is off the deep end PETA that makes sure that everyone knows what they do and do not put in their mouths.  Perhaps that person was me back in 2014!  Since then I have practiced strict veganism, I have practiced the Standard American Diet (SAD), and then something that falls in between.  Now again, here in 2016, I am working to make my lifestyle vegan again.  I have no regrets about the times I've not practiced it and the things that I chose to do.  In my next piece, "Living in Peace through Receipts, II", I'll elaborate.  Before you read this blog I wrote years ago as a fired up herbivore, I'd like to discuss why I'm bringing this blog back and encourage people who have no interested in replacing cheese for cashews to continue reading.

As we all know, times seem very dark, if you are watching CNN, scrolling through your Facebook feed, or reading the newspaper.  From the horrific terrorist attacks all around the world, to the police brutality and police shootings that have been recently tearing our country apart.  Just like when I was first vegan, I think it's important and natural for people to be fired up about issues they are passionate about.   The communities who have lost loved ones, weather they are black, blue, male or female, have a right to feel intense emotions, to gather peacefully, and establish movements for change.

I learned a very valuable lesson about how to successfully make a change back in 2014.  Take a look at this blog and see how I learned about my own power to change, the approach I took, the changes I made, and my end result.  If you are passionate, heated up, and wanting to make a change in any subject, this blog is especially for you.


August 2014

Living in Peace through Receipts

This presentation, for you, this message that you have given me the opportunity to deliver, was inspired by Dani Motez and Marney Healey.  If you are friends with me on Facebook or receive studio emails, certainly by now you’ve discovered that I am a vegan.  But thanks to the help of Marnie and Dani, I learned that posting on the internet about why it’s wrong to exploit animals wasn’t very effective.  It didn’t feel very effective.  It may have even been counterproductive, because the result didn’t help any animals and it didn’t make me feel any better about this drastic problem I had discovered.  

About 7 months ago I became a vegan.  Meaning, I do my very best to not eat or purchase products that involve killing or harming an animal.  Even though things like milk and wool don’t require the death of the animal, often these practices are cruel and unusual.  Something certainly none of us want to be a part of.  

When I tried vegan I wanted to be more flexible.   It worked.  I stuck with it, and rather quickly I began to encompass vegan philosophy into my life.  As a vegan, I feel closer to “God” than ever before, and I experience God’s essence regularly though the presence of animals and plants.  (Nature.)  I’ve told you all stories in class.  I will tell you one of those stories here in this lecture.  

After just a few weeks of being back on the Vegan bus I'm able to execute this split like never before.

Along the way I began following vegan activist groups (PETA for example, Mercy for Animals) and began to discover more, mostly through disturbing images and videos.   I follow quite a few activists for things like women’s rights and the environment, which make me sad and angry, but never have I felt such pain when I was exposed to the brutality our animals experience every day.  I grew firm in my vegan beliefs, which brought me gratitude among all this sadness.  It feels great to know that I do everything in my own power not to participate in the abuse of animals.  Then the gratitude turned into passion.  If everyone sees this, if everyone knows, surely everyone will help stop the violence too.

So I began to share grim images of what animal exploitation looks like.

Click here to Read more about Banksy's Rendition of Cruelty to Animals

I discovered the Beagle Freedom Project not too long ago, but quickly after I did I realized I was only doing a fraction of my part.  Here, animal testing was brought to my awareness.  And I warn you, this is violent, this is heart-wrenching, but this is happening.   Companies that we know and trust, SJ Johnson, (the family company), products from Chlorox Bleach to cigarettes, are being tested on animals for little to no reason.  I knew animal testing existed.  But I didn’t know; I couldn’t have imagined such a sick and twisted place.  I pictured a rat, a nasty old rat, maybe once a year being slathered in sunscreen and yes, tortured and killed.  But soon I was to discover that even that grim image I had created in my mind looks like a fairy tale compared to the truth.

Rats, bunnies, monkeys, birds, cats, and dogs, are being tortured and killed in the name of animal testing every single day.  Over 80,000 dogs a year are tortured and killed with products like Drano, dish liquid, even pet food!  And the breed of choice among animal testing is the beagle because of its willingness to trust and its docile temperament.  

I wanted everyone to know the appalling truth. I posted pictures of this nonsense, this pain, along with an aggressive status with a lot of F words and capital letters.  I’ve never felt so betrayed, so angry, so disgusted or sad with my country, with the entire human race.   I will never forget taking a shower after teaching a few classes and feeling so helpless, so filthy, so full of shame and rage as I checked every single label and found out it was tested on animals.  My soap.  My face wash.  My Aveeno lotion.  Aveeno?!  Dove?!  REALLY??  I cried for a good hour.  But then, like any good yogini would I searched for a solution.  Retail therapy my friends.  I went straight to veganessentials.com and bought the whole shebang.  New toothpaste, new shampoo, new everything cruelty free!  It was surprisingly inexpensive, but none the less a splurge I charged on my credit card.  After all, this was an emergency!

The retail therapy gave me a quick sense of relief, but the rest of the day, I thought, was hopeless.  I was tired.  I was angry.  I was sad.  And, I was signed up to go to a sling yoga class with Bowser, Ann Marie, and Marnie.  I almost didn’t go, but with a little nudge from Emily, I went along as we’d planned. 

I was quiet.  Which as you all know, is unusual.  Marnie and Ann Marie had seen my post, and I think Marnie made an attempt to make me feel better about the state of the union, and failed.  All I could hear was excuses for these people, excuses for why the way things are the way they are, things that sounded so selfish and so…wrong.  I decided to say a few words, words that clearly stated that I didn’t agree, did the yoga class, and went home feeling only slightly better than before.

The next day the cloud of doom still drifted above my head.  Feeling angry, exhausted, sad, I believed that I had discovered the devil.  Satan.  I remembered reading the Stand by Stephen King, where one of the characters warned that Satan walks the earth.  I thought to myself, surely, these people, are evil; so evil that they must be a product of not God, but Satan.  How can it be?  Who wakes up in the morning, puts their white lab coat on, heads down to the “office” and mutilates dogs?  Who puts the clamp on the kitten’s head that squeezes, crushes bones…who cuts them open with no remorse for their suffering?  Who can do this and believe they are not beast from hell?  And then returns home to their family and just gets on with their life?  Satan was the only thing I could think of.  Satan is something that has never, ever scared me in my life.  Of course the movie the Omen scared me, Stephen King’s books scared me, but it’s just pretend.  These are just stories.  This was absolutely real.  The good guys are losing the battle, the devil is consuming the earth, and there will one day be no good left in the world.  My hope was lost.

southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Satan

Marnie texted me and wanted to stop over and give me something.  Oh great, my guru wants to come over and tell me that everything is ok and make excuses as to why this exists.  I took a deep breath in and sighed a big, depressing sigh, and brought her into my dining room where we sat down for a chat.  

Marnie looked happy and held something in her hands.  It was a gift; cruelty free hand soap for me, and for the entire studio.  It wasn’t surprising to see Marnie doing something kind.  It wasn’t surprising to see Marnie doing something kind for me.  And it’s always touching when she does but this time was different.  I felt that flame of hope in my heart, just moments ago smoldering away into ashes, get a tiny bit warmer.  It was just hand soap, but it was just enough to give me the love I needed to sit down, talk it out, and open my mind. 

Marnie and I began talking.  She told me that the Facebook post I made upset her.  She told me I have a “Big presence and it has a big effect on people around me.”  I was sort of surprised.  I know that I am good with people but I never really considered my “presence”.  So seeing an aggressive post or hearing aggressive words from me, who has a big presence, will alter the energy, in an aggressive, sad, negative way, of others.  We all know that.  No one likes a Debbie Downer or a stick-in-the-mud.  But me?  A Facebook post?  I didn’t deny that it could be true.  I just sort of sat there and looked at that; my presence and its effect on people. 

But everyone has to know.  Everyone has to know!  I explained to her that if I don’t post this, how are we going to change anything?  I didn’t know I was bathing in blood for years!  My explanation soon turned cynical.  I told her how I felt, my explanation for why this even happens on our planet.  I began to tell her how I felt that Satan was real, it existed, and it’s all around us.  Words came out of my mouth that didn’t even feel real, they were so disparaging and hopeless.  But before I could go on, Marnie began to cry. 

She cried because I was in pain.  She cried because these people, these people who I considered products of a demon I didn’t even believe in, were in pain.  And then finally after two days, I heard what she was saying.  Full of tears, short on breath, Marnie said something like:

“Can you imagine how sick these people must be?  In their minds, to do things like that?  What must it be like to live inside their heads and suffer and feel pain?”

Something clicked.  I heard that.  I contemplated that for a single moment and immediately felt empathy.

“These people are sick and they are living in fear…there is no evil there is just fear.”

I never believed in Satan.  Now, I think my definition, my explanation, for Satan is different.  Just as my relationship with God has changed.  It’s not WHO they are, it’s WHAT they are.

Yoda always said, “Fear leads to the dark side.”

This is the second and certainly not the last blog of mine where Yoda's teaching has made an appearance.  For a little green Muppet, he sure does have some good philosophical stuff.

I just sat there, I can’t remember if I was in tears or not.  It was clear, I was in the moment, and I saw a new perspective on my emotional state of emergency. 

These people ARE sick.  I DO have power, which is my energy, my “presence”, on the earth.  There is EVIL BECAUSE THERE IS FEAR.  Just as Yoda says! 

The room grew quiet.  It felt still.  Then I felt better.  And then I thanked Marnie.  Ok, there’s a little bit of peace left inside of me.  There’s a little bit more room; more reason, to grow.  We hugged it out, and my contemplative meditation on the State of the Union continued.

I felt a strange sense of comfort with this new idea that people who do evil things like animal testing, are sick in some sense.  They are afraid in some sense.  The fear is driving them to do something evil.

For the rest of the afternoon I traced back fear.  Fear in people, fear in civilization, that created evil. With each step I took observing, all the way back to primitive people.  Then I looked again.  I traced it all the way back to the present.  Every single "evil" thing I could think of was inspired first by fear.  

The important thing is, that helped me to find my peace.  It helped me to explain this fear, bring truth to the subject.  Forcing me to look at it with no judgment.  At the end of my revelation, I felt completely overwhelmed by God.  Absolute joy.  Bliss.  No fear.  Completely present.  I was laughing to myself, my smile was ridiculous.  It was time to go teach a class.  I headed out the door.

My walk to work is quite short.  But it was so beautiful.  I felt my purpose.  I felt all life’s purpose.  I felt like God was pouring out of me.  I my presence had to have been colossal.  I was nearly to the studio, and just because, I don’t know why, I looked up.  The first thing I saw was this Mourning dove on a telephone line.  It was looking straight at me.  I looked back into her black vibrant eyes and felt emulsified with the divine.  I walked closer and she kept turning her head, kept her eye lock, her drishti and I walked below her.  I turned my head over my shoulder, and the dove turned her head, her chest, all the way around as she gazed straight into my soul.  I laughed.  This genuine, laugh that wasn’t funny, but I was just so happy.  I was so overcome with love and joy I laughed and turned my head to look forward, and there was my studio. 

My artwork of Mourning Doves.

I couldn’t wait to tell my students, to tell my family, to tell everyone what had just happened.  But when I took the podium I was at loss for words.  I realized that I wouldn’t be able to just “tell them what happened” right there during class.  So I just taught class.  I corrected students.  I witnessed again my instant source of inspiration all around me.  I looked out the window and saw flowers, bunnies, birds, and sun.  We had a great class.  And I went home with my secret, enjoying it for myself then, and sharing it now. 

Coupled with meditation on the source of evil, realizing that I have a “presence” is why this lecture is even happening today.  Since then, I do not post (and I rarely look at) extreme violence towards animals (or anything).  I think that this exposure is important and I’m so thankful that organizations like the Beagle Freedom Project and PETA exist.  This is hard work, meaningful work, and a meaningful battle to fight.  But once you know, you know.  When Marnie spoke of reality on the way to that yoga class I didn’t hear her; I couldn’t hear her.  Sometimes, like me, and how I always do, you have to get a big crack from the universe stick, and it hurts. But now I know.  So? 

We lead by example.  Now, instead of posting images that I know exist, of violence, of ferocious and unfortunately true images, that have an energy that impacts me, I do things that positively combat the situation.  I can’t stop huge cooperate companies from enslaving animals for primitive ritualistic abuse from this habit.  (Right now.)  But, I can check every single label of every product I buy.  I can’t convince every person that begin a vegan is “the right way”, but I can share my delicious vegan recipes and talk about how it impacts my own life.  I can’t drag every single person by their hair into the yoga studio and make them practice until they “see”, but everyone can see physically, mentally, and spiritually how practicing yoga for years has changed me.  And it’s positive.  Every single thing proactive I can do to combat this terrifying and disturbing issue, is positive.  And if I have a big presence, and images have a big presence, and YOU have a big presence, I really can change the world!  We really will change the world. 

"Be the Change You Wish to See in the World

Marnie did it just by buying me some soap. 

That very same day that Marnie brought me soap, Ann Marie not only brought me soap but she brought me holistic, inexpensive and home made soaps for my house and for my bathroom. 

Which sparked my passion to resolve the question of Dani Motez.  “What if you are struggling financially, can’t afford to buy all green/cruelty free products, but you still care?” 

Because that’s a pretty big issue with just about EVERY problem in this country, directly effecting the wellness and health of our people.

Today, I have created you some simple, strategic, and convenient solutions with no negativity vibes involved.  Veganessentials.com was a great little splurge, but for those of us who can’t always splurge I’ve created a few simple lists.  One list, a list of all cruelty-free brands you can find at major retailers, is simply all products that are cruelty free.  Included are some brands you might have trusted.  It was frustrating and shocking, but the easiest and most positive solution to solve it, is to finish up your stuff and never by it again.

This whole presentation, this whole situation that happened and is happening to me, makes my jaw hang open with aw and hope.  I see these connections, these chain reactions, that are so simple, and so much more powerful than an aggressive retaliation.

Here's me in Standing Bow back in 2014 after my peaceful epiphany.  After spiritual awakenings, my postures always seem to reflect - more space, less pain, beauty inside and out.

Marnie bought me soap.  Ann Marie made me soap and gave me recipes.  Now I made this blog.  Maybe you will try to keep peace on your receipts.  Or maybe you’ll share a homemade gift or recipe.  What if you notice your skin feels better, you have more money, your leg is almost locked in a split, because you have a new sense of awareness, you have a presence; it’s POWER that will be more mindful, more true, and more compassionate.  I’m so thankful that I didn’t have to drag any of you by your hair to read this blog today.  I’m so thankful that my presence here at the studio (now here online!) is known, and you all inspire me to keep it pure and to keep it positive.  And it’s so easy when that’s all I ever get in return.  Thank you all for reading this blog, Namaste.

Students and Readers, please feel free to add your favorite cruelty free recipes in the comments of this blog!

So in application to today's current events, #BlackLivesMatter, #BlueLivesMatterr, #AllLivesMatter, if we really want to change anyone's opinion, it's not going to come from shoving violence down another's throat.  And when you do see extreme violence happening, think of the absence of love in these people's lives.  Do I think it's important that we are aware of the violence?  Whether it be towards other human beings, the environment, or nature?  Yes, absolutely.  But if we really want to change anything, it can't happen with more violence.  Ask Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Ask the Dalai Llama.  Ask Jesus.  These great leaders will forever remain in history not for blood and fear but from peace, reason and love.  

Now, back to the Vegan part of this blog...

Back in 2014 I did some research on cruelty free products that were generic brand, and I was delighted to discover that Up and Up from Target was all cruelty free.  Just to be sure, over the weekend I went back out into the world with the cruelty cutter app and have discovered that now this brand is no longer cruelty free.  In fact, there are barely any options that are cruelty free that are just regular, every day brands.  It was a little depressing, but yet, comical.  "Great, how am I supposed to prove any point about going cruelty free when I can barely find anything that's not in a fancy holistic, $10 dollar bottle of mouthwash to help people create more peace on their receipts?"

Next week, after my readers have some time to digest this lengthy and emotional blog, I will release "Living in Peace through Receipts, II".  Here I will share my experience about being off and on the vegan wagon, have a short list of regular cruelty free products, the app in which you can check products you buy, recipes for home made products and my experience on whether they actually hold up in comparison to big brand products, and delicious, satisfying vegan dishes to try at home.  If you have vegan recipes, whether they be edible, hair and skin care, or cleaning products please feel free to share them with me directly or leave in comments of this blog!