Emotional, Mental & Spiritual Benefits

Aside from the physical benefits I have enjoyed since becoming vegan (described below under "Vegan Health"), I am discovering surprising benefits, emotional, spiritual and mental.

Emotional and spiritual, because my emotions are more centered around compassion, which is the natural orientation of the spirit. I feel greater harmony between the two. No surprise here. I expected that.

What I find surprising are the mental benefits rising in the form of greater clarity, ease and efficiency of thinking, particularly with synthesizing and connecting ideas and thoughts and following lines of reasoning.

And here's why.

While I was vegetarian, I operated in ethical denial to the extent that my motivation in being vegetarian was feeling the suffering of animals and wanting to bring relief to them. At the same time, I knew that animals producing diary products within our industrial animal operations were also experiencing great suffering from their involuntary servitude.

I was operating with some level of denial. Going vegan was the only way out of this dilemma, at least for me.

What I can see now is that thoughts and ideas were routinely short-circuited then, because those lines of thought would run up against impenetrable obstacles created and necessitated by that denial. I would be thwarted in trying to think an ethical problem through, because I would run up against my own ethical contradictions, and so that line of thought would self-destruct right then and there. There were places in my mind and conclusions I might reach that I did not want to look at. End of exploration.

By contrast, I am now discovering a surprisingly greater level of mental continuity. I am much more easily able to connect the dots and understand what used to seem like conflicting or contradictory ideas, as well as what felt like intellectual dead-ends. Finding that one thought more easily leads to another, I am more able to synthesize otherwise apparently disparate thoughts into a more cohesive whole.

The extent to which this may increase my capacity to be of benefit - which is the only important matter - may be revealed over time.

May all beings be well and happy!