Gluttony - the Cinderella of sins.
Last week on the Seven Deadlies, we featured Greed. This week it’s Gluttony.
Given all the many options of sinning available to humans, if you were going to reduce the number of deadly sins down to seven, you wouldn’t pick Greed AND Gluttony. Surely Greed covers all bases – greed for status, material possessions, money AND food.
However, even though these sins are interpreted via religion (literal laws) they were possibly written from a higher conscious perspective (mystical laws).
In the energy world, gluttony differs from greed, because it has a different driving energy.
Greed is expansive. It comes from the need to get more or be more. Gluttony is constrictive. It comes from the need to fill a hole… an inner emptiness.
Greed is the base expression of the soul’s desire for infinity. Gluttony is the base expression of the soul’s desire for wholeness.
We confuse fullness (something from the physical world) with a desire for wholeness (something from the energy world).
Religious people through the centuries continued to promote their rule-based strategy of duality… if consumption of food is bad, then starving oneself must be good.
The mystics, on the other hand, discovered that if they moved away from the 5 sensory world (seeing, smelling, and tasting food) they could achieve higher states of consciousness.
As far as Flow is concerned, eating is neither good nor bad – it’s the driving energy that’s important. Does it come from neediness? (the need to feel more whole and complete.) Or does it come from joy? (gratitude, appreciation, and delight.)
Similarly, refusing to eat food is neither good nor bad. Does the energy driving the decision come from control? (I want it but I mustn’t have it because I’m a sinner and must redeem myself. I want it but I refuse it because I’m morally superior). Or does it come from devotion? (I’m choosing to heighten my senses. I like the way this feels in my body.)
The religious festival of Ramadan (in which no food or drink is consumed during daylight hours) is a great example of this duality of literal rules versus energy principles.
Buying, preparing, and eating food takes time. Some devotees use this time to pray, meditate, and feel close to God. Others eat three meals during the hours of darkness and sleep in the afternoon. This allows them to fulfil the “rules” of Ramadan. Box ticked.
Following the rules of the literal world, doesn’t pay an energetic dividend. These two realms couldn’t be further apart. Rules are all about control, not Flow.
It’s easy to fall into gluttony because big business came up with a strategy to turn fast food into something we crave.
Once everybody became addicted and the obesity and diabetes epidemic were well under way, big business branched out into the diet food industry. “Sell the problem and then sell the solution”.
This is called cornering the market, or creativity gone awry and used for nefarious purposes.
Greed and Gluttony are both bad AND good because they point us in the direction of our deeper desires. Once we've fallen prey to them enough times, we start to realise that our desires for infinity and wholeness can only be met by spiritual things – love, sharing, creativity, collaboration, joy, and generosity of spirit.
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