By Christopher Tydeman

After my last movie review, I ended with a passionate interest in the environmental impacts of factory farming. I spent some time doing some research and found a documentary titled, Meat the Truth. It curiously asks why Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, neglected to mention that the biggest contributor to greenhouse gasses is due to the full scale farming of animals for food. Feels a bit inconvenient when you are a cattle rancher and have friends in high places. Though, to be fair, I have read he is advocating for less meat in our diets due to the connection of food production and environmental impacts.

 The film illustrates this connection with interviews of scientists and current and former ranchers. It also uses a LOT of analogies which are hard to wrap your head around sometimes. What I did come away with are a few important points. It takes a considerable amount more resources to produce one pound of meat in relation to one pound of wheat. The methane production from cattle is off the charts. The amount of land needed to grow feed is increasing, which means less trees. There is no defined management system of the waste produced, which is WAY more than what we humans produce and we have an extensive waste management system.  This waste then pollutes our water supply.

 This impacts us and our planet. You don’t have to be an agricultural scientist to see that. From a spiritual place, this is disheartening. Not only are we maiming and murdering hundreds of thousands of animals each year, we are aiding in the degradation of our planet. How have we closed our hearts to this? A part of us, or even more than one, has been formed to adapt to the status quo. Not to question, just accept. I am not judging this part of us. It has done so for its own need for survival. I feel for this part.  It is hard as hell to go against the norm when you just want to be accepted.

 So this part uses “reason” to fight against what is truly reasonable. To fight for an industry of death even though our very nature is an industry of life. It is an awakening to feel the lie that this part has had to agree to just to feel accepted. It is painful, but when this part gets to be felt, it can let go of the postulating. It can feel what is real and true in our soul. It is a new frontier of compassion and sacred activism to stop the barbarism and destruction.

SoulFullHeart feels life as all-connected. What we do to the animals and our planet, we do to ourselves energetically. Each choice we make reverberates in the web of life and the Divine. I choose to love myself and in turn love all life. I don’t eat meat anymore. I feel the spiritual price and it is too great. I transitioned to a vegan lifestyle for physical, emotional, and spiritual health. The main thing I got from this movie is that one small change makes an enormous difference. This leads to other small changes which have even bigger results. We can damn near change the world by just taking small steps to changing what we eat. And a part of me says…that’s pretty fucking cool!

Christopher Tydeman has been embracing the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life off and on since August, 2010. He is a SoulFullHeart facilitator and healing arts facilitator at SoulFullHeart retreats.

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