Food – Nourishment that comes from physical food (on a plate).
Primary food – This provides nourishment to us at a spiritual level. The elements of our primary food are an inspiring career, a spiritual practice, a regular and enjoyable physical activity and relationships. These feed our soul and our hunger for living. When we are fully nourished with all the elements of our primary food, we thrive and our actual food stays secondary, providing support to be healthy and do the things we love.
Everything we consider as nutrition is really just a secondary source of energy. Have you ever been passionately in love? Do you remember what it was like when you were a kid? Everything is exciting, your feelings of exhilaration is enough to sustain you. You forget about having your food because you are too excited playing with your friends outside till you are reminded to have your food. Have you ever felt depressed? Has your self esteem ever been low? Even sometimes in good times, we come home and often look into the refrigerator for something to eat when all we really want is a hug or someone to talk to.
We can be eating the healthiest meal everyday of our lives but if we are not happy with our job or our relationships and don’t have any spiritual practice we will always be lacking something. The more we are happy with our primary food the less we depend on secondary food. This is also true the opposite way. The more we fill ourselves with secondary food, the less of primary food of life we will receive. Your food, your physical activity, your mental clarity or awareness all have to be in sync and they work together to bring balance and harmony. All spiritual traditions encouraging people to fast do so partly to let individuals have time to reduce secondary food, thus allowing for a greater awareness of primary food.
We need to nourish ourselves on a holistic level, to feel vibrant. Our spiritual practice can be anything that we connect with through our religion, meditation or even prayers. This gives us mental clarity. Our physical body needs to move regularly so we do yoga, cardio, strength or run. We spent most of our lives working or building a business and if it is not something we enjoy doing then we will constantly be going in a vicious cycle. It could be ending a relationship that’s not serving you or one another, taking a leap in career or even signing up for a marathon or meditation practice. Changes need to be made which can sometimes be intimidating but facing the fear and moving out of your comfort zone is essential in order to evolve.
As Osho has said – When we create nourishing lives for ourselves, that is the highest form of religion.
