(11-08-2015, 01:18 PM)Monica Wrote:(11-07-2015, 09:04 PM)anagogy Wrote: People create unwanted circumstances all the time. Animals do it too, but people have a hard time accepting that. They are evolving beings too. We choose our experiences but we don't choose theirs because we don't offer vibration for them.
Their soul minds know precisely the conditions of their incarnation (albeit in a group consciousness format)..
I don't disagree with that. But again, it's irrelevant in regards to attempts at justifying harming them. Whether they chose it on some level or not is completely irrelevant, just as whether the rape victim's subconscious reasons for attracting rape don't provide justification for an STO-oriented entity to rape her.
What I see is a misattribution of blame here. Most people's intent is not to rape and kill animals (though some are). Their intent is to eat food that will strengthen and nourish their bodies and the bodies of their families, and whoever they share it with (I personally don't agree with the idea that everybody can happily thrive on a vegan diet -- bodies are unique and run different fuel at different levels of efficiency). Perhaps in the realm of causation there was a certain amount of suffering involved in the actualization of that intent. And perhaps not. No one can really know that. It's an assumption, like many things in life. The average person who goes to the store to buy protein is not directly involved in some perceived negativity involving the animal. You would say they are contributing to the suffering of animals, and supporting the factory farming industry (and I know Diana thinks this is a "no brainer" question), or in other words, indirectly involved.
Everybody knows there is big room for improvement in factory farm conditions. Just as there is room for improvement in third world countries.
But did you know that some of the poorest countries in the world are the happiest, despite not having modern conveniences, and living by what many westerners would consider to be deplorable conditions? Why is that do you think? Why would they be content with less? If you were to pluck one of us out of our world and plop them into theirs we would probably hate it, yet here they are, happy as clams. Perhaps it is because they are content with less, because they haven't yet asked the universe for more.
Let's engage in a thought experiment: If animals used for consumption were raised in pristine conditions, and experienced no suffering or pain, not even when they were slaughtered, would you still have a problem with them being consumed for food? And if so, why? Is an instant death after a good life worse than getting sick or disabled by old age and eventually slowly dying? Is the issue suffering, or eating meat? Do you realize that if you got rid of the livestock farms you despise so much that you would simply be killing the animals in a different way, as in, they simply would never exist in the first place, because they wouldn't be bred? Their lives might not seem worth living to you, but would you deprive their 2nd density souls the opportunity for incarnation experience?
Also, if meat eating is so wrong, how do you reconcile the plethora of spiritual teachers in our world that eat meat? Do you just assume they are all frauds?
Eckhart Tolle eats meat, Louise Hay eats meat, Esther Hicks eats meat, Darryl Anka eats meat, Adyashanti eats meat, the Dalai Lama doesn't eat meat, but if he's traveling apparently he will. Hell, even Carla ate meat. And these are just the ones I can name doing very little research. There are probably a lot more. How can people with such seemingly spiritual insight and orientation be completely blind to this if it is the anathema to compassion from your perspective?
Again, I'm not saying there is not room for improvement in how livestock are treated (but then, don't fall into the conceptual trap of assuming all livestock are treated badly -- that would be ignorant. I've known lots of farmers that treat their livestock extremely well). Do you recall when Ra said you cannot judge the polarity of an act? There is no act that cannot be compassionate. Even using animals for food. I think people erroneously anthropomorphize animals, and then proceed to assume how a human would feel under a given set of conditions. The 2nd density animal kingdom has similarities to 3rd density, but are VERY different, and to assume that most people simply don't care whether they cause suffering because they eat animal protein is presumptuous in the extreme.