Finding Bliss With Your Fork.

Following my bliss is a state of being that is aware, clear, happy, nourished, content, and spiritually healthy.

It means living in harmony with the Universe, being connected to my deepest self and having the ability to live out my true self. The easiest way I have found to make this happen is when I do two things: eat a balanced, intentional diet that doesn’t harm other living beings and cultivate myself with a daily spiritual practice.

A daily spiritual practice could mean meditation, joining a spiritual community or church, developing a yoga practice, doing breathing exercises, simply changing your attitude to be more giving and grateful, volunteering and contribution — a practice that allows me to be still and “check out” for a little bit each day to connect to my higher self. I feel that I grow even more when I’m part of a community with a student/teacher relationship. This allows me to gain more wisdom, get clearer about my purpose, and contribute to the betterment of others in the community.

Let us take a look at our dinner plate tonight and ask ourselves, “Am I feeding myself and my family in a way that nourishes our minds, bodies, and spirits?” Then ask yourself, are you truly happy? Do you feel a deep connection with the people around you, with your fellow human race, and planet Earth as a whole? When I eat well and cultivate my highest self with a spiritual practice I feel part of the greater scheme of the Universe. We are all interconnected and take part in the evolutionary process. Our thoughts, actions, and reactions create our world. If we want to see love and compassion reflected around us we must change our hearts and change the kind of foods we feed ourselves.

We face many challenges when making important changes in our lives involving the foods we eat. Our family, our doctor, our lifestyles, our government, our culture, and our emotions have a way of dictating what we feed ourselves. If we allow these things to influence and control the way we eat, we lose our ability to make wise decisions and truly nourish ourselves. When I made the decision to eat a plant-based diet, everything around me started falling into place, only after I added a daily spiritual practice to the mix. Love, compassion and gratitude began to spill over into every part of my existence. As I continued to cultivate myself with the support of my spiritual community I gained a greater understanding of how the world works and developed deeper relationships with everyone and everything around me. I started to feel bliss.

Maybe you’ve tried this vegetarian thing a time or two, and it just didn’t feel good or you couldn’t keep with it. Maybe you were doing it for the wrong reasons? As Anne Marie Colbin says in her amazing book Food & Healing, “vegetarianism works best when accompanied by a deeply felt spiritual commitment…our bodies seem perfectly able to extract and transform all the nutrients they need for maintenance and repair from plant products.” This means if we have a spiritual practice while eating a balanced plant-based diet, our physical body take care of themselves. How awesome is that?! This leaves more time to cultivate our spirit, find what makes us truly happy, and gives us the health we need to help others.

So  I encourage you to think about how your diet affects everything in your life. Sit and meditate on how you can change it to cultivate more compassion and feel more bliss.

Christy Morgan trained at The Natural Epicurean Academy of Culinary Arts, specializing in vegan, macrobiotic cuisine and holistic nutrition. As “The Blissful Chef” she teaches others how to make sustainable, plant-based, delicious cuisine that nourishes mind, body, spirit, and planet. She is a personal chef, teaches cooking classes, and gives nutritional counseling to those making the transition to a plant-based diet. Visit her at http://theblissfulchef.com.