an argument for optimum diet that is not vege vs omnivore

[omcasey]

If I seem blunt and arrogant it is because I am very solidly planted in 3D.

While I understand mind over matter, I almost never see it realized. So I try to follow the rules of this reality as best I can. I also know that the reality handed to me by society is not true.

To stop at any juncture in our own unique stage of learning

What you are describing is belief, which is where I totally agree with you. Belief can hamper growth. But, no matter how much we can manipulate "reality", we are still bound by guidelines. It is well to know what the actual grid of unmoving reality is, and work within the spaces of what is actually malleable. I guess the trick would be getting to know which is which.

Pickle,

From my own point of perception, learning occurs through experience, so I might suggest what I am talking about is this; where we are in our own evolution of experience. The idea, I think, is to acknowledge the evolution is taking place, that life and one's life experience is not a static/fixed thing but moving us each through a set of very precise avenues [often seen as food, sex, sleep and self perseverance] into ever greater understanding.

If where a person is in their understanding of food, perhaps in relation to their [own] state health, involves the consuming of animal products then this is where they are in their evolution of experience.. It is not that they are ignorant, or cruel, or in any way doing anything wrong. I feel it important to see this. And to not impinge on the free will choice of this one and others in a similar state of development by forcing where we are in our own state of development on them.

We have a very fine example of this non-impingement of free will in the Ra dialogues with Don/Carla/Jim. It is the area in which I find respect, and peace of simplicity in Iyengar's response to his student's queries to "what shall we eat?".. A yogi's practice of ahimsa [non-violence] is a decided and often quite confusing stage of their learning. Rather than attempt to remove them from where they are in their own understanding, as many teacher's do, Iyengar said "If it makes you salivate, eat it."

This left his student's unharmed, precisely where they were in their own evolution, to learn as they would through their own direct experience of what they brought into their bodies. It gave them permission to be where they were, and to learn from here, rather than prematurely attempt to be somewhere else. I find it to have been a great service. It certainly made a huge impact on me. Simplicity is often like this. And in his own peace, he could rest in the certainty that salivation in the mouth meant digestion and assimilation of the experience was most likely. I don't eat everything that makes me salivate, but when a food does, I too rest in the peace of a similar understanding, and I remember Iyengar, and send gratitude, for the choice left squarely in my own hands, where it belongs.