Mindful Eating for Magicians: My Conscious Eating Routine

 

Despite their similar names, conscious eating and mindful eating aren't synonymous. While conscious eating does involve mindful eating (since it is not enough to impregnate one's food with a positive trait and then eat it mindlessly while watching television), one can also eat one's food mindfully without impregnating it with a positive trait beforehand. Thus, although someone who is practicing conscious eating is also practicing mindful eating, someone who is practicing mindful eating is not necessarily practicing conscious eating. I think the best way to describe the relationship between the two practices is to say that mindful eating, while a spiritual practice in its own right, is also an aspect of conscious eating. 

But although mindful eating is only one aspect of conscious eating, it is a very important aspect of conscious eating. Therefore, given how essential conscious eating is in the astral work of Step 2, I thought I would share my conscious eating routine, which I designed to support the mindfulness aspect of this practice whenever I eat dinner. This isn't an example of the "eating rituals" people with OCD sometimes devise to manage their anxiety (e.g. arranging the food on their plate a certain way or cutting it up a certain way). Instead, it's a way of bringing an element of awareness, patience, and gratitude to my meals. The reason I only use this routine for dinner is that I am usually a bit pressed for time when eating breakfast or lunch. Anyhow, here's the routine. 

1. Recite the Angelus. In Questions and Answers, Bardon states that "a student should honor, respect, and love his teacher." Mary is my teacher, and reciting the Angelus before each meal is one way I show honor, respect, and love to her.

2. Read a chapter of Thich Nhat Hanh's book How to Eat. This book is composed of many short chapters. Each one takes only a minute to read and is one or two bite-sized paragraphs long.

3. Briefly contemplate the teachings contained in the chapter you just read. 

4. Say a short prayer to God thanking him for the meal you are about to consume and presenting him with a request or two inspired by the chapter you just read. 

5. Impregnate the food with whatever positive trait you are currently trying to develop or strengthen (for me it is usually either patience or compassion). 

6. Eat mindfully, ignoring the irrelevant thoughts that arise in your mind and believing with full conviction that the food you are consuming is the trait you impregnated it with.

Let's use the first chapter of How to Eat as an example to illustrate the sort of things I might contemplate or pray for during the third and fourth steps of this routine. In this chapter, Nhat Hanh mentions that cultivating mindfulness can be done while doing the same things we always do. In other words, we don't have to change what we do, but how we do it. Every day, we walk, we sit, we perform tasks at work (unless it's a weekend), and we eat. We don't need to do any of these things more or less, but we do need to do them in a focused manner. When we eat, we shouldn't be thinking about work. When we are working, we shouldn't be thinking about eating. While discussing the simple action of taking a bite out of an apple, Nhat Hanh writes, "If you're thinking of work while you chew, that's not eating mindfully. When you pay attention to the apple, that is mindfulness."

So after reading the first chapter of the book, I would take a moment to think about how wonderful it is that I can cultivate mindfulness regardless of what I am doing, and how important this is for my spiritual evolution. I would also reflect on how good I am at remaining mindful during the various periods of my day in order to figure out where and how I can improve. Then, I might say a prayer like the following. 

Lord God Almighty, thank you for providing me with this meal, this opportunity to develop patience and cultivate mindfulness. Please help me remain mindful while eating by supporting me in my endeavor to keep my mind on my eating and prevent myself from being carried away by thoughts irrelevant to my eating. Please also help me remain mindful during any other activity I do, so that I may make progress in the mental aspect of my training, advance along the magical path, and more effectively carry out your will. Amen. 

Some people use the same prayer when saying grace every day for years on end. Since the prayer I say every day is always inspired by whatever chapter I read that day, and since I read a different chapter each day, I don't use the same prayer. The ninth chapter of How to Eat is about taking a breath after you sit down to eat instead of diving into your food right away. If this is the chapter I read before eating, I might say a prayer like this. 

Lord God Almighty, thank you for providing me with this meal, this opportunity to develop patience and cultivate mindfulness. Please help me become proficient at using my breath to center myself in the present moment. Please also help me remember to take a mindfulness break every now and then, especially when I am busy, so that I can breathe and appreciate the miracle that is breathing. Amen.

Some people eat while watching television. This is obviously a bad idea for anyone trying to practice mindful eating, and therefore for anyone trying to practice conscious eating. The tenth chapter of How to Eat points out that some people eat with their physical television turned off but with the television of their mind turned on. While turning off one's physical television is a good start when it comes to eating mindfully, one should also endeavor to turn off the television of one's mind as well. In other words, we shouldn't have a mind that is tuned to work-related stations, relationship-related stations, or politics-related stations while we eat. Instead, our mind should be resting in the present moment and with our food. If I read the tenth chapter of How to Eat before eating dinner, I might say a prayer like the following. 

Lord God Almighty, thank you for providing me with this meal, this opportunity to develop patience and cultivate mindfulness. Please help me keep my mind from becoming tuned to channels filled with broadcasts unrelated to my eating. Please teach me how to turn off the television of my mind so that no broadcasts come between my mind and the present moment while I eat. Amen.

One of the chapters of How to Eat is actually about washing dishes. Sometimes after I eat, I will read that chapter before washing dishes. In the past, I would also say a short prayer while eating whenever I found myself having trouble remaining mindful. However, these days, having practiced meditation every day for many years, remaining mindful for the twenty minutes or so it takes me to eat a meal isn't an issue, so I don't find myself praying while in the middle of eating as often.

Going through this conscious eating routine takes more time than just mindlessly shoveling food into your mouth as fast as you can in order to get to your next task more quickly. I used to do that, by the way. In fact, at one point, as a result of being so busy, I would eat in such a rushed manner that it was more like I was inhaling the food rather than eating it. But once I improved my time-management skills (and I still have a lot of work to do in this area), I was able to free up enough time to eat properly. Even if I don't go through this full routine at breakfast and lunch (I leave out reading/contemplating a chapter from How to Eat, but still recite the Angelus and say grace), I at least eat mindfully and bite by bite.