The Bread Basket

The Tools of Mysticism Series : II

New fathers know all about the feeding habits of babies. Waking up every two hours to do so is an experience few fathers forget.

One wonders about the needs of the baby at this point. They probably lump together all their needs for love, security, desire and survival in that one expression for milk. In this regard animal behavior in the wild towards food may be similar in expression. 

The adult human's relation to food is not dissimilar. The mere thought that we might starve for lack of food brings the worst intimation of nightmarish thoughts to us. In a person who has lost his job, left his family or drops out from society, such thoughts grip the very fiber of their bodies and sculpts it into a shape and form that is conducive to seeking work and sustenance. It justifies all that we do.

As a young man growing up we are way ahead on the issue and cultivate an attitude to succeed, ensuring that our every action is aimed at procuring and consuming food. We act to create the opportunity and to preserve our rights in relation to it.

In the mystic something quite unusual takes place. He may have lived his life up to a point and finds that it provides him with no satisfaction. He seeks something more and contrives to find it. In such a person they bring themselves to observe the responses of the body and mind to his high risk situation. In that he separates the issue of nutrition from all the rest … such as love, esteem, survival, socialization and companionship.

He realizes then that he has been engaging his mind much like an anima … creating a reliance on the instincts as a driver on his mind. To reverse it, he isolates the food impulse and organizes his life for knowledge of the world, God and the self. He maintains enough attention on the need for food but thereafter comes to regain himself as the driver of his own mind.

Its something everybody wishes they could do. Sometimes we do it out of the accidental conditions of life … and sometimes we do it because we know its the right thing.