Animal Liberation is Human Liberation

Welcome to Peace to All Beings. Until we liberate animals from human exploitation and violence, we cannot expect to have true freedom and peace for ourselves. We human beings can awaken to our higher consciousness and embrace a new paradigm of living in harmony, rather than in fear and domination. We can become "Homo Ahimsa," my term for a new nonviolent and kind human, but we must make that choice together. There is hope for our species--hope that we will not continue this war against animals and the earth. Together let us co-create a new culture and heal the wounds humanity has caused to the earth, to each other, and to the animals who share this world with us.

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Prison of Hope


This is my latest "Eating as Thought the Earth Matters" column for Sierra Club Planet Kansas, Winter, 2014, Issue

 

 Prison of Hope

After over twenty years of fighting to save the sacred Haskell/Wakarusa Wetlands in Lawrence, Kansas, the highway builders now have the go-ahead to destroy the precious and rare ecosystem  killing many animals in the process.  Dolphins off the Louisiana coast show signs of serious illness after the BP oil spill, and the oil companies just keep drilling, spilling, and killing.

We continue to fight the Keystone XL pipeline which would be one of the worst threats the earth and her wildlife have ever known.  Already, according to Sierra Club news, Canada is allowing the poisoning and hunting by air of wolves in preparation for tar sands sludge pipelines. A baby humpback whale was thankfully rescued from a fishing net pulled tight around her chest.  How many more are there who are never  rescued?

You and I could fill volumes with the tragedies befalling the earth and her waters, soil, animals, and plants every single day.   As we go forth into this new year of 2014, we are all looking for signs of hope. 

Looking for hopeful things, I remembered an experiment that was conducted at the Victor Valley Correctional Facility in Adelanto, California.  For a period of seven years inmates were given a choice between living in the “New Start” wing of the prison or a regular wing.  The “New Start” program which was chosen by 85% of the prisoners included bible study, anger management, job training, and a vegan diet.  During that time, California had a recidivism rate of 95% while Victor Valley’s record of recidivism dropped to 2%. 

Not only was the recidivism rate significantly lower for the vegan prisoners, their behavior in prison was atypical of normal prison life.  There was no evidence of racial tension, gang violence, or hierarchical behavior.  

Individuals committed to nonviolence toward all life choose not to consume animal based foods.  Conversely individuals who may not have made such a commitment but who are fed only plant based foods actually may become nonviolent. This makes sense on many levels—spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional.  Killing an animal requires violence, and the animal’s reaction of terror and pain fill his or her cells with adrenalin and extreme stress. 

Every day we hear of someone with great power making violent, destructive decisions against the forests,  oceans, and the places of peace we all cherish.  What if they, like the prisoners at Victor Valley switched to a vegan diet (along with anger management, of course)?  What if we all did?
In our 2014 prayers and visions for a healed earth this year, let us be open to all the possible ways to bring human consciousness away from its destructive tendencies and into its highest possible expression.  There are signs of hope everywhere, and the greatest hope of all lies in your ongoing willingness to speak truth to power and in the hearts of activists everywhere

A Prayer to Say at Meat and Dairy Counters in Grocery Stores

I sent this out recently to the Prayer Circle for Animals members
 
Prayer Circle for Animals Weekly Update
Please share with friends!!
Our prayers for all animals continue to circle the earth, to
uplift humanity's consciousness, and to bless the animals themselves.
 Thank you for joining people around the world who are praying this
prayer in many different languages but all with the same love:
"COMPASSION ENCIRCLES THE EARTH FOR ALL BEINGS EVERYWHERE
 
An Easy-to-Remember Prayer to Say at Meat and Dairy Counters
Recently, on our Prayer Circle for Animals FaceBook page (please join if you haven't already-see the link below), someone asked for a short, easy-to-remember prayer to recite when we are in a grocery store and are confronted with the meat and dairy sections. I am forever grateful to her for suggesting this. Once we have opened our hearts to the animals and seen them for who they are and felt their pleas for help, walking by these sections of death becomes traumatic.  We know we are passing the body parts and secretions of animals who had friends and families and who wanted to be free. 
 
To Help Us With The Grief We Feel
Yet everyone else seems to walk by unaffected by the carnage, and many are at the counters picking up pieces of bodies to take home to eat and placing the eggs and milk stolen from mothers into their shopping carts.  Once we have opened our hearts to animals, the sight of this can bring us figuratively to our knees with grief and anguish. 
 
"I See You And I Love You."
So here is the prayer that I hope will help us all.  I have been using it for the last week, and I've found it to be a great gift.  It is simply-"I see you and I love you." By saying "I see you," we are picturing not only the beautiful animal that they once were, but also the perfect, unconditionally loved and loving spirit that is and always will be that animal.  By saying "and I love you," we are acknowledging the precious connection we will always have to that animal--our sister or brother.
I hope this prayer helps you as much as it has helped me. And I believe it helps the animals as well.  When I say it, I feel a current of loving energy coming through me to all of them-they are being recognized, made whole in a way, memorialized, and loved.  The Light of the World flows through all of us to bless them over and over until that lovely day we see so clearly when all beings are free and compassion encircles the world. 
"One day the absurdity of the almost universal human belief in the slavery
of other animals will be palpable. We shall then have discovered our souls and
become worthier of sharing this planet with them." ~Martin Luther King Jr.

 
Thanks to all of you, compassion is encircling the earth for all beings.  Thank you for your devotion to truth, love, liberation and peace for all beings.

With Love, peace, and gratitude from Judy, and also Will, Madeleine, and the Circle of Compassion team.

If you haven't already done so, please join us at the Prayer Circle for Animals Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/groups/prayercircleforanimals
 

 
May all beings be happy.  May all beings be free.
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Please visit the website www.circleofcompassion.org often to see updates and special prayers, and also to join in our "A prayer a day for animals" which features a prayer for a different group of animals each day of the week. It is also a place to send ideas or prayer requests.   Please forward this widely so that we may continue to add more people to our ever-expanding circle of compassion.