Vegetarian | Spirituality | Health | Life Experiences

How I Became Vegetarian and Why I Went Back To Being a Carnivore

I will never go back to being fully vegetarian

This is a memory that was brought to light by a conversation in the BBB (Bouncing, Behaving, Blogs) discord server, with Anne the Vegan. While I respect Anne for her choice (maybe not so much a choice) of being vegan, I know that I wouldn’t be able to do it.

In my early to mid-twenties I moved to a resort town for work. I had recently broken up with a woman with who I pretty much fucked up my position at a dream job to be with. She had warned me during our time together that her ex felt like he had to move to another city upon their break up, and I felt like that wasn’t going to happen.

So when it did happen, I chose to move to an entirely different province (‘state’ for those of you unfamiliar with Canadian terms). I packed up all of the shit I had accumulated and hopped on a bus heading west. I found employment in various places throughout my time in the resort town, and I continued to do the profession I had gotten quite good at tattooing.

I tattooed many of the employees who worked at the various businesses in the resort town, and one of them became one of my best friends who I lived and partied with. During one of the tattoo sessions with my best friend, he suggested something I had never really ever thought of before.

“Since you technically hurt people for a living,” he had said to me, “why don’t you try learning how to heal them as well?”

After I finished tattooing him he went to his room and brought back a book his mother had loaned to him. It was the introductory level of Pranic Healing by Master Choa Kok Sui. My friend explained that his mother had been studying this style of energy healing for years and that he felt that it might be a good thing for me to learn.

I started reading it immediately.

If any of you are familiar with the spiritual practices of Tai Chi, Falun Gong, and Reiki, Pranic Healing uses the same energy that these use. Pranic Healing is similar to Reiki, though, the techniques are different.

A new beginning

I went through the book front to back, practicing the various steps within it for nearly two years before I left the resort town. Every day I would practice feeling the energy between my hands, and I would follow through with doing some of the healing procedures. I had done healings on myself and my friend many times during my time there.

I finally made the move to the west coast of Canada after having grown tired of being in this place, and my best friend decided that he too was done with the resort town, and he moved out west as well. He had already lived in the city we were moving to, and he told me of some places he wanted to show me. We both ended up staying at our friend’s place, who I had met in the resort town, and who my best friend had grown up with on the west coast.

An unexpected issue

I should be mentioning that about a year after I had begun practicing Pranic Healing, I had started to notice complications arising after eating meat (though I didn’t put it together that it was meat, and merely thought that it was just eating food in general that was the problem). I would feel pain in my stomach after eating a meal that consisted of a healthy portion of meat.

I never really thought much of this until a year later when I moved to the west coast.

My best friend’s mother had come to visit her son after we had arrived. I returned the Pranic Healing book to her and thanked her for having loaned it to her son. We went out for lunch with her to a place she suggested. My friend and I both ate meals that had meat in them, while his mother had a vegetarian meal. After lunch, my friend’s mother drove us to a nearby mountainous park to go for a hike.

During the hike, I mentioned that I couldn’t understand why I had begun to feel pain after eating. I never experienced this throughout my life and was completely clueless as to why this had started happening to me.

My friend’s mother then informed me that when using prana/ki/chi energy regularly, one’s body can go through adverse effects if they are still eating meat. My very next meal was vegetarian, and I was incredibly relieved to find that I didn’t feel any pain whatsoever.

This was the beginning of a new me.

Continuing my pursuits

While my friend was showing me around the city one day, we walked by a small complex that had various storefronts. He pointed out to me one door in particular where he said that it was a place where people practice Pranic Healing. I was immediately interested and made note of where this place was.

I returned on one of the days when the weekly meditation took place, and got along with the group of healers. I claimed to be able to do healings, yet the group members weren’t sure about a random stranger making claims without providing any solid proof of knowledge. They said that there would be a beginner’s course taking place soon and that I would be able to take part in it.

I did quite well in the course, having practiced before helped, yet there were things I hadn’t quite picked up from doing my own practice. I completed the course and went on to do healings every week. I completed two more levels of training and had taken part in another class that had to do with seeing the type of energy we were using (this will be another article).

I felt like I had found a place to be within this group.

Various paths

During this time, I was also living a polyamorous lifestyle, and I had often gotten some of the women I was with into more spiritual practices. After about three years of being vegetarian, and living polyamorously, I hooked up with a woman who was already practicing various spiritual paths. She introduced me to a few of her Native American friends, who then also asked me to join in on some of their rituals.

One of the rituals was a drum journey, in which we all sat together while one person played the drum, and a vision had come to me. I had met the white buffalo, as well as a white mountain lion, in the middle of an intersection of two paths in a forest. The most prominent thing that I remember from the vision was what the white buffalo had said to me.

It informed me that I would be able to eat of it’s flesh once again.

I didn’t think anything of it at the time and continued my vegetarian habits along with my spiritual practices. I had switched jobs numerous times, and still did tattoos on the side throughout this period of my life.

I had gotten a job as a prep cook, and it was one of the best jobs I had ever had. I enjoyed the fuck out of that job, and I think that will have to be another article though. Anyway, one of the daily tasks I had to do was to mix the buffalo/bison burger meat. After the first time I mixed the spices and meat together, the sous chef told me that I should try it to know that I made it correctly.

I found that if I had a small bit of meat, the reaction in my stomach wasn’t too painful, and sometimes I would have a bite just to ease my curiosity. So I wasn’t opposed to trying a small piece of the buffalo burger, and I asked the grill cook to cook a small puck of the meat. After eating that little bit, I didn’t feel any pain or any other adverse reaction.

The next time I tried an entire burger, and I felt great.

I didn’t think anything of this until one of the weekends I went to one of the neighbouring islands on the coast with a girlfriend. It was my first time going to this island and had heard lots of good things about it. There was a festival going on and some of her friends that she hadn’t seen in a while would be there.

On the last day, we were on the island, we went for an afternoon hike through the forest. We had come to a spot where another path intersected the path we were walking on. As I stepped into the intersection, a memory flooded back into my mind.

Mind = Blown the fuck up

Despite my having never set foot there before, I knew the immediate surroundings like they were the back of my hand. The boulders with the giant trees behind them, the cluster of skinny saplings, each fucking rock in the intersection of the paths, all of it. I could almost see the white buffalo standing in front of me.

It’s words resounded in my memory as I realized that it hadn’t necessarily just been giving me permission, but that it had been telling me that I would be eating of it’s flesh again.

My fucking mind was blown, I had never expected anything like this to happen. Like you hear of things being prophesied, usually by profits like Nostradamus and other shits, and you hear of the predictions coming true sometimes. But to have something like this slap me in my face, I was tripped the fuck out.

I gradually began introducing other meats into my diet, and I still was able to practice Pranic Healing without going through pain. These days I don’t practice Pranic Healing very often, and even though I don’t always eat meat, I’m still not going back to being fully vegetarian.

Thank you for reading, if you like my writing, you can leave me a tip on my Ko-Fi, or you can subscribe to Medium through my referral link.

You can also follow me on Twitter, and Instagram to check out my art.