I am starting to wonder if some of the weird problems creeping up in society- such as:
1. people searching high and low for things to be outraged about
2. people hating others for holding different political beliefs
3. people wanting to label others as bigots on the thinnest of evidence
4. people treating victimhood as heroism
could be related to having turned our back on the grains that have guided us throughout history and taught us how to live together in harmony and peace. Especially wheat, which shortly before all these problems began became public enemy #1 for no apparent reason. Suddenly every health problem could potentially be resolved by removing wheat (if not all grains) from your diet. Suddenly, a grain free diet took on a saintly aura, despite the added expense and violence of living off only vegetables and meat.
I don’t know much about the history of wheat, but I do feel that the history of grains is the history of humanity, and without their help, we would not have become human as we now understand it. I think that to dishonor grains is to disconnect from our human self.
As I see it, we have three parts- the human, the angelic, and the beastly*. They are like stair steps, with the human resting upon the beast, and the angelic resting upon the human. If we detach from our human self, we are left with nothing but the beast, since without the human foundation, the angelic in us cannot exist.
I believe it was the Great Grains of the world who taught us how to construct the human aspect of our psyche so we could rise up out of our animal nature and reach towards the heavens. It was grains that gave us the ideas, knowledge, and values that were needed to build and organize civilizations.
Because- in addition to being mostly benevolent- grains are also practical beings, who know how to balance virtue with necessity, to let us recognize ideals and move towards them, while having the realism to accept that these ideals can never be reached. Grains know how to find the compromise, the middle ground, between God and Nature, Goodness and Power. And I believe that fleshing out this middle ground between heaven and earth is part of the reason why humans were created. Hence, humans and grains are best friends forever, and their destinies are intertwined.
I have said similar things before, and I will say them again, because the importance of Grains as both food and spiritual guides to humanity cannot be overstated! It is GRAINS that give us a balanced mind! It is GRAINS that calm our emotions! It is GRAINS that give us the capacity for brotherly love, and GRAINS that will give us the vision for how to move forward as a collective!!!!! GGGRRRAAAIIINNNSSS!!! And although you can choose to befriend any grains you prefer (perhaps befriending unusual grains could even lead to novel solutions to age old problems), let us never forget the grains that fed and guided our ancestors. Let us never dishonor them and write blasphemous books like “Wheatbelly.” These age-old friends still have many things to teach us and I am sure we will never outgrow them.
Notes:
1. I recognize that these ideas sound weird and although they do make me laugh, I am still completely serious. I believe in grains!
2. I don’t mean any disrespect to animals by referring to our lower nature as beastly, but I think the word beastly captures the essence of the blood & slime part of our self, that slithers, tricks and fights its way towards power, life, and survival.
3. Despite technically being our “lower” nature, I don’t mean to imply that our animal self is lesser than the angelic. The lower self provides the passion and vitality without which heaven would just be a flaccid and never-ending harp song. The lower self is a brave man who is not good, and heaven is a good man who is not brave. Neither has much value on their own. That is why the Middle Ground (between heaven and earth) is so important. The more this ground is developed the more places heaven and earth can touch. And this is the work that humanity and grains were meant to do together.