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Healing Home: Spiritual Food
Excerpted from
Finding God in Your Family 
by Mary Kretzmann
 Receive Lord, In Thy Light The food we eat, for it is Thine Infuse it with Thy Love, Thy Energy, Thy Life Divine!
-Grace sung before meals at AnandaHot tip for parents:According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse atColumbia University, teens who ate dinner five to seven times a week withtheir families were 45% LESS LIKELY to try alcohol, 24% LESS APT tosmoke marijuana and 67% MORE LIKELY to get A’s compared with kidswho never or rarely dined with their families.
Family Meals
Meal times create daily opportunities for loving connection within the family, but oncekids get older, you often have to make it a point. We still managed to eat together mostnights of the week, even when Peter was a senior in high school. He also got up veryearly for school, (he left the house at 6:30 AM) so we arranged our schedules so that atleast one of us was with him in the morning. This created some family connection beforehe went off to school, which helped his attitude very much. Our youngest is currently insixth grade, as of this writing, so we have a few years of respite before facing the highschool schedule again!We sing the grace before meals, which sometimes comes in spontaneous four-partharmony, due to the musical element in the family! And at special holy times of the year,we use the time immediately after dinner as a time for a short spiritual story or readingsuitable for the whole familyLove and healing energy can be infused into food, and this is an important aspect of  preparing most of your meals at home, as opposed to the common American lifestyle of eating on the run.
Daily Bread
A few years ago, our automatic bread-maker was broken, so I decided to make bread byhand one Sunday afternoon. I always used to make bread this way, so it wasn’t a big deal, but I wasn’t ready to make a daily commitment to it, again, either. So with that inner freedom, I set out to make the bread, using
exactly
the same ingredients that I normallyused in my bread-maker recipe. As I was kneading the dough, I decided to sendconscious, loving energy through my hands into the bread, with the same feeling as whenI am sending healing energy during healing prayers. I focused deeply this way for 10-12minutes, feeling God’s love and joy, while kneading the dough. Time didn’t matter; this
 
was not a chore, but a choice. The dough became very soft and wonderful. Then I let thedough rise and eventually put it into the loaf pans to rise again.When the bread was done, I put it out on the table with butter. I had already made a bigSunday lunch earlier for everyone, so this was supper: bread and butter, and maybe somefruit. In other words, Mom was taking it easy… Our youngest son, David, then age six,tasted it and exclaimed,
“Oh, this bread is so good! It’s the best bread I ever had! We should have this for dinner every night! I don’t care if we ever have anything else, just bread and butter for dinner, every night!”
The funny thing is, he had eaten the same bread, but made in the bread-maker, every dayfor the past year! The only thing that was different was that this time it had been made byloving, conscious human hands…mother’s hands.Saints in India often used food as a means to share spiritual vibrations with large crowdsof people. The devotees who helped to prepare such food would keep their minds on God,in joyful, loving silence, or in singing to God while cooking, and the saint would bless it,which is to say, infused it with divine energy, before it was served. When food is offeredto God and blessed in this way, it is called
 prasad.
Likewise
 ,
infusing food with love is avery important aspect of nurturing one’s family.So many colloquialisms carry an aspect of truth, which is why they are repeated, such as
“Home is where the heart is”
and
“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach”
andgeneral, fond references to
“Mom’s cooking.”
If Mom loves her family, then this specialfeeling enters into the food she prepares, whether it’s elaborate or simple.Sometimes I wonder if it is becoming a lost art in some circles. Many American womenare so busy juggling careers and family that they often rely on fast or frozen foods to feedtheir families. Of course, a little bit of this can really save your sanity in a pinch, but itshouldn’t be a mainstay, because then no one is infusing the family meals with love, careand attention. Who loves your family? You do. The vibrations in fast or frozen foods areeither mixed or barely present, due to automation: the food is not in contact with anactual person. Similarly, many yogis prefer to eat out only occasionally due to the‘homogenous vibrations” of restaurant food in general. In other words, it is not prepared,normally, by people who are filled with God’s love and joy. The food is infused with theconsciousness of those who prepare it. Of course, sometimes it is nice to go out just torelax and have fun. I’m talking about balance here.
Banquets of Light
I remember a particular banquet years ago at Ananda’s
 Expanding Light 
retreat followingan important spiritual event (such banquets happen several times a year). Normally theway we prepare such banquets is to have many devotees help with prep work for a day or two in advance. In this instance, the retreat kitchen had recently been remodeled, and thehead chef wanted every possible food processor, mixer, various ovens, etc., so that large
 
meals could be prepared in a hurry, as needed. It made sense, on a practical level.However, even though the meal was delicious, it was lacking a certain “sparkle.”After the meal, Swamiji enquired about it and told the chef that even though the food wasdelicious, and excellently prepared, it had “no vibrations”. (”No” is probably a relativeterm here; I think it would mean ‘no vibrations” compared to what he knew was possiblefrom previous banquets.) Swamiji stressed the importance of sharing spiritual vibrationsthrough the food, as this was a way to bless our guests and community members alike.The end result was that most of the food processors were eliminated, so that much of thefood could still be prepared by hand, but the other improvements were retained, of course. Now, as one enters the Expanding Light kitchen, you can hear sacred chantingsoftly emanating from the cooks, or from a beautiful recording. These things help to keepthe cook’s heart happy, loving and joyful, as the food is prepared. The vibration in thekitchen is very good, and retreat guests often comment on how wonderful the meals are atthe
 Expanding Light.
I also recall, years ago, a much smaller banquet at Swamiji’s home, given in celebrationand gratitude for those who had remodeled his home. All of the builders and their spouseswere invited. My husband is a cabinetmaker, so we were both there. The food wasabsolutely delightful, and even had a transcendent quality. At a certain point I felt myself lifted into a state of spiritual joy. At that moment, Swamiji commented,
“There is a lot of bliss in this food!”
That moment marks for me the highest potential of what is possible with infusing foodwith Light. Even if our meals don’t put people into spiritual bliss, you can bless your family with your love and joy day to day, and at special events such as holidays and birthdays, etc. On those “special occasions” let your attention be on the joy, as much as possible, and not on the tensions that can build up when you want every detail to be “justright.” Do your best to plan and prepare, and then just flow with it. Smile.
Exercise to practice infusing food with love and blessings:
1.If you like, put on some joyful, yet calming music that will help your heart stayhappy as you cook.2.Take a moment to feel your heart center. Take a few deep breaths to let go of anytensions. Smile. Then feel into your heart center again. Focus on feeling warmthor Light there. Let it radiate through your heart and chest. Smile again, this timewith more warmth and depth. Breathe…3.Feel this warmth and Light is flowing into your arms, and through your lungswith each breath. The heart center, or 
heart chakra
, feeds spiritual energy to the physical heart, the lungs, and also the arms and hands. Feel that with each breathyou are filling your lungs with sparkling Light, and this fills you and flowsthrough your arms and hands. As this Light gets stronger, it will bless your kitchen and everything in it, radiating through your aura.4.In this energy, begin to assemble the ingredients and tools you will need to cook.Let everything be contained in this calm flowing grace. Let the Light and love
of 00

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Mary Kretzmann

These principles have helped to heal families and/or marriages that needed an extra boost of love and care...

reply06 / 25 / 2010
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