A Gentle Disclaimer
This reflection is not intended for everyone.
This reflection challenges some deeply ingrained beliefs surrounding food, culture, tradition, and our relationship with other sentient beings.
I do not ask that you agree with my conclusions.
I ask only that, if you choose to read further, you do so with the willingness to reflect rather than react.
Take what resonates. Leave the rest.
Today I found myself reflecting upon something that had very little to do with one individual and everything to do with the human mind—its conditioning, its blind spots, and its extraordinary ability to normalize what it has inherited without ever pausing to question it.
I came across an interview with a well-known public figure.
Much of the conversation revolved around deeply human experiences.
The loss of a beloved parent.
The emotional transformation that followed.
The gratitude felt towards a loving spouse who patiently accepted those changes.
As I read the interview, I found myself genuinely moved.
Anyone who has lost a parent understands that kind of grief.
Anyone who has been blessed with an understanding life partner knows how precious such support can be.
Then, almost in the same breath, the interview mentioned that the individual had left one profession to expand a successful poultry business.
I paused.
Not because there is anything unusual about running a business.
But because I suddenly found myself wondering about something far deeper.
Every single day, countless chickens are separated from their mothers and their families.
Most spend their entire lives in confinement.
Eventually they are slaughtered, processed, packaged, and sold.
Their lives end so that human beings, including perhaps ourselves, may satisfy appetite, convenience, tradition, or profit.
As I reflected upon this, I found myself confronted by a striking paradox.
The same human heart that feels grief so intensely for the loss of a parent, a spouse, or a child can often remain unaware of the suffering endured by countless other conscious beings whose lives quietly become part of what we celebrate as a "successful business."
That realization led me to an uncomfortable question.
Is this hypocrisy?
Or is something even deeper taking place?
When suffering belongs to us, it feels immense.
Sometimes it even feels as though the world itself has come to an end.
When loss enters our own family, it transforms our lives.
When someone we love dies, we naturally expect the world to understand our grief.
Yet when equally conscious beings are separated from their mothers and young, cry out in terror, struggle desperately to survive, and ultimately have their lives taken against their will so that they may become products on our supermarket shelves, we often call it industry.
Or commerce.
Or business.
Or food production.
Or simply,
"the way the world works."
As I continued reflecting, I realized that perhaps the real question was never about one individual at all.
The emotions expressed in that interview were genuine.
They deserved to be honoured.
The question that fascinated me was something much deeper.
How can a heart be so deeply connected to its own grief, yet remain largely unaware of the grief experienced by countless other sentient beings?
Perhaps the answer is not hypocrisy.
Perhaps it is not even malice.
Perhaps it is conditioning.
One observation from my own life has continually humbled me. Many of the people I have personally known who consume mostly non-vegetarian food have also been among the kindest, most generous, and most selfless human beings I have ever met. They are often the first to rush forward when someone needs help, the first to comfort a stranger in distress, the first to donate, volunteer, or stand beside another human being during difficult times.
This has taught me something important.
The issue, at least in my experience, is usually not an absence of empathy.
Rather, it is that our empathy has been unconsciously conditioned to operate within certain boundaries.
Most of us were raised in cultures where some animals were introduced to us as companions, while others were introduced to us as food. From childhood we inherited cultural norms, family traditions, dietary habits, and social values that quietly taught us which lives should be cherished, which should be protected, and which could simply become products for our convenience, appetite, or profit.
Long before we were old enough to examine the ethics of it, we had already inherited those categories without a chance to choose for ourselves.
Most of us never consciously chose where our compassion should begin and where it should end.
The remarkable thing is that this conditioning is often so complete that we no longer even recognize it.
Our own emotions feel vivid, undeniable, and deserving of understanding.
Yet the emotions of billions of other sentient beings, their fear, their attachment to life, their longing to remain with their families, rarely enter our moral awareness because we were never taught to see them.
As a result, the suffering of certain sentient beings became normalized, not because we consciously wished them harm, but because we had been taught, from childhood, that this was simply necessary for survival, part of our culture, or "just the way things are."
Perhaps this is why I hesitate to judge people.
Instead, I find myself questioning the conditioning that shaped all of us, including myself.
For if our capacity for compassion is already present, then perhaps the real journey is not learning compassion, but expanding its boundaries through awareness, reflection, and conscious choice. Perhaps the question is whether we are willing to extend that compassion to other sentient beings who cherish their own lives just as we cherish ours, recognizing that what separates us is often not the sanctity of life itself, but the imbalance of power, vulnerability, and our ability to determine their destiny.
Just before writing these reflections, my mother shared with me, for the very first time, an incident from my early childhood that had never before been discussed because I was barely two years old at the time.
She recalled that one day she was frantically searching for my elder brother, who, as a mischievous little boy, had a habit of wandering away from home. While asking around, she happened to enter the small hut of the building's watchman, a Nepali Gorkha, to ask whether he had seen him.
What she witnessed inside left an indelible mark on her memory.
The watchman, his wife, and their child were preparing a meal.
Lying on the floor was the severed head of a dog while the family cleaned the flesh from its bones for cooking.
My mother stood frozen in horror.
Only then did she realize why certain stray dogs from the neighbourhood had mysteriously disappeared.
After my mother shared this story with me, I asked her,
"Mom, you've never told us about this before. Why did you never mention it?"
She smiled quite matter-of-factly and replied,
"Is this even an incident worth discussing?"
Her answer surprised me.
To her, it had simply become another forgotten memory tucked away in the countless experiences of a lifetime.
To me, it became one of the most thought-provoking stories I had ever heard.
It also made me wonder how many remarkable experiences our parents quietly carry within themselves, memories they never think to share because, to them, they seem ordinary, insignificant, or long forgotten.
Perhaps every elder is a living library, holding countless untold stories, lessons, and moments that quietly shaped their lives but may never be passed on unless someone pauses to ask.
Hearing this story decades later was deeply disturbing.
It reminded me that what one culture regards as food may be viewed by another as an unimaginable tragedy.
It also revealed how differently human societies define which animals deserve love and protection and which may simply become dinner.
This forgotten story also made the memory of Mikey's heartbreaking story, resurface in my mind. I do not know what happened to Mikey, nor do I wish to speculate.
But the memory reminded me how easily vulnerable animals can disappear without ever having a voice to tell us their story.
As I reflected more deeply, I realized that perhaps the absence of empathy towards many sentient beings is often not born out of cruelty or an inherent lack of compassion.
More often, it is simply the result of conditioning.
Most of us did not consciously choose our relationship with animals.
We inherited it.
From the time we were infants, we were introduced to certain foods by loving parents and grandparents who themselves had inherited those same customs from previous generations.
We were told:
"This is normal."
"This is how it has always been."
"This is simply the way the world works."
Our favourite meals became associated with family gatherings, festivals, celebrations, comfort, and happy childhood memories.
Very few of us ever paused to ask what journey those meals had taken before reaching our plates.
Not because we lacked compassion.
But because the suffering remained invisible.
The animal was no longer seen as a living being with a mother, a family, emotions, fears, and a desire to live.
It had become...
A product.
A meal.
A tradition.
Something so deeply normalized that questioning it rarely even occurred to us.
Perhaps this is how every society normalizes its own practices.
A child is born innocent.
The child does not initially know what is food and what is family.
It simply learns from the adults around it.
Whatever is repeatedly presented as normal gradually becomes normal.
Perhaps this is why cultures across the world have developed vastly different ideas about which living beings deserve love, companionship, worship, protection, or consumption.
It also made me wonder whether this same process of cultural conditioning explains many practices throughout human history that today seem unimaginable to us.
If a child is raised from birth believing that a particular act is normal, necessary, or even honourable, that belief may become deeply embedded long before the child is old enough to question it.
Perhaps this is why awareness is so transformative.
Not because it instantly changes everyone.
But because it gently allows us to see what we had previously never thought to look at.
And once something enters our moral awareness, our conscience naturally begins asking questions it never knew to ask before.
Are we simply unaware of the astonishing ability of the human ego to expand compassion towards those we identify as "ours" while quietly excluding those whom we have labelled as "other"?
Perhaps this is one of the greatest illusions of the human mind.
We do not consciously decide that our suffering matters more.
We simply experience our own pain from the inside and everyone else's from the outside.
And perhaps that distance makes all the difference.
It allows us to cry when one dog dies.
To celebrate when one child is born.
To treasure a loving spouse.
To mourn when our own father passes away.
Yet remain emotionally untouched by the millions of equally conscious lives that disappear every single day because their stories are not our stories.
Instead, their deaths become the means of satisfying our palate, preserving our traditions, sustaining industries, and generating profits, while their suffering rarely enters our conscience.
We have normalized the taking of conscious lives to such an extent that we no longer consciously perceive the moral weight and consequences of it!
Perhaps this is humanity's greatest blind spot.
Not that we lack compassion.
But that we have unconsciously learned where to stop extending it.
Whether we ultimately change our choices or not is a deeply personal decision.
But perhaps the more important question is whether we are genuinely willing to ask ourselves:
"How many of my own beliefs, habits, customs, and traditions have I accepted simply because they were normalized long before I was old enough to question them?"
And perhaps an even more uncomfortable question:
"Am I happy and willing to continue participating in the taking—or supporting the taking—of another conscious being's life, despite its desperate longing to live, simply because the practice has been normalized by my culture, my upbringing, or my habits, without ever examining it through the lens of deeper awareness, compassion, and expansive empathy?"
Or perhaps the question is even simpler:
"Can my own happiness truly be complete if it depends upon the unhappiness, fear, suffering, or death of another sentient being—regardless of how powerless, voiceless, or evolutionarily different that being may be?"
I do not ask these questions to judge anyone.
I ask them because I have begun asking them of myself.
Perhaps every journey towards greater compassion begins with a single moment of awareness.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of spiritual evolution is not becoming more religious or more ritualistic.
Perhaps the real challenge is becoming incapable of limiting our compassion only to those who resemble us.
Perhaps the measure of an awakened heart is not how deeply it loves its own.
Perhaps it is how widely that love extends.
I do not expect that this one reflection will change the world.
History teaches us humility.
Even the Enlightened TathΔgata, Lord Buddha, despite His boundless compassion and wisdom, did not transform the hearts of every human being.
Nor did the twenty-four Jain Tirthankaras, whose lives embodied the highest ideals of non-violence, persuade the entire world to abandon violence towards other living beings.
Humanity has always evolved one soul at a time.
According to the law of karma, as understood by many spiritual traditions, every action ultimately bears its own consequences. If we become the cause of another being's suffering, fear, separation, or loss, then perhaps those experiences, too, become part of our own soul's journey until understanding, compassion, repentance, and transformation naturally arise.
In my own journey of exploring consciousness, I have found this principle echoed repeatedly in what are known as Akashic Record readings. I fully understand that not everyone accepts the existence or validity of the Akashic Records, and I respect that. My intention is not to convince anyone. I merely share what has personally resonated with me through years of exploration.
Whether one interprets these accounts literally, symbolically, or chooses not to accept them at all is entirely a matter of personal discernment.
Yet they leave me with one simple question that continues to echo within me:
"If I would never wish to be bred, confined, terrorized, slaughtered, or butchered against my will simply because another being was more powerful than I am, what gives me the moral right to inflict that fate upon another sentient being?"
I do not claim to possess the answer.
I only know that it is a question I can no longer ignore.
For me, it serves as a constant reminder that every choice matters.
That is why I hold no expectation that the whole world will suddenly change.
Nor is that the purpose of this reflection.
My only hope is that these words reach those souls who are ready to pause.
Ready to question.
Ready to reflect with an open mind and an open heart.
And then, without pressure, guilt, or judgment, allow their own conscience to guide them towards whatever they sincerely feel is the highest expression of truth, compassion, and awareness.
If even one person becomes a little more conscious because of these reflections...
If even one sentient life is spared unnecessary suffering because someone chose compassion over habit...
Then, for me, these words will already have served their purpose.
Forever A Humble Seeker of Truth & The Divine!
ΰ« ✝ ☪ π π― ☮ ☸ π ⛪ π π π π¦
Meraki Pegasus
Dr Racchana D Fadia
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