Why I am a Vegan

[Diana]

you can't deny that it's *a possibility* that (infinite) beings could incarnate here (at this time) for the purpose of experiencing being mistreated - or rather experiencing w/e they may experience.

it could be that by eating animals (& animal products) you are actually always providing a service rather than a disservice. maybe every animal that crala ate incarnated here just bc they wanted to be eaten by her.

the other day i was skimming thru Natalie Sudman's NDE story & she talks about getting killed (temporarily, of course) & then learning (from the other side) that she had agreed to experience the NDE (agreed to get bombed in iraq) before ever accepting her current body & lifetime on earth.

bombing someone seems like something that's obviously wrong to do...but she thinks that those responsible did so at her own request & accepted her request bc they wanted to experience bombing someone & the consequences that come with that.

you may be right that food was one of crala's blind spots.

maybe it was dispassionate of her to listen to her heart/intuition & eat fast-food burgers, just bc she enjoyed them, w/o batting an eye that doing so may mean she was directly supporting an industry that tortures & slaughters billions of sentient beings every year...but i can't be so quick to judge.

i can't judge anything as wrong unless i know for sure it is. & i strongly suspect there's no wrong in existence. i can't deny that some things are seemingly wrong, though; you've got me there.

You make very good points. I don't see it as right or wrong, however. It goes back to an old argument in these threads: if beings here choose to suffer (from torture/slaughter; rape; murder; molestation and so on), do I choose to experience being the perpetrator of that suffering? No, I choose not to harm, if I can help it. I choose not to support an industry killing and torturing animals.  

And substituting humans for animals is another part of the old argument: if a child in this life has chosen to be molested, would I be willing to do the molesting as service to that child? Or if a person chooses to be murdered would I be willing to kill? No. Would Carla have done so? I seriously doubt it, but I can't know for sure. Hence—and it's only conjecture on my part—a disconnect between animal and human suffering.

This is all based on the assumption that suffering is chosen. While it seems worth considering that humans choose it (for various reasons), I find it more difficult to imagine animals choose it. And if they do, in service to us, what do you imagine that to be? To let us know we need to learn compassion (beached whales; dolphins caught in nets, etc.)? If it is to become self-aware, well, that's been covered as well, and seems a pretty poor way for us to offer service. Love, as one does with pets, seems a better one to me. If it's to experience what we experience, jeez, I loathe the thought they would follow humanity's violent history. But there is free will and I honor it. 

If Carla (or anyone) did a service to animals by eating them, I don't see that as out of the realm of possibilities. But what is one to say then about the other consequences: harm to the planet, the ecosystem, starvation, global warming—it's all directly related to factory farming animals. Is anyone living here now—from elsewhere or not—excused from any responsibility to this collective existence? Humans are already humancentric. Beings here who may be more evolved would, I think, make a poor show of higher consciousness by just doing whatever they fancy without considering the consequences. But then again, who is to say what higher consciousness is? Some imagine they are from very advanced densities where nothing matters, or all is well, from a larger perspective.