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Hi Brenda – As a vegan I don’t see myself as being any better than anyone else. I am pretty much the same person now as I was when I was a meat eater, although I feel that the decision to give up meat was a good one. I am not disputing that plants do have a rudimentary hormonal system which allows them to respond to any threat, temperature, light and dark etc., but they do not have an advanced nervous system like animals. In addition, know that if you eat meat you are indirectly killing many more plants than you would as a vegan (if numbers matter that is) most of the plants grown on this earth, for consumption, are fed to animals, who we, as if by magic, turn into food, shoes, handbags etc. It takes approximately 15lbs of grain to produce 1lb of beef – not an efficient system for feeding a growing population, which is why the WHO has made a strong recommendation that we all consider our meat eating – well for that reason and the fact that meat is the major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, actually creating more emissions that the whole transport system of the world put together, including planes.

One may read The Secret Life of Plants to understand that plants in fact do scream and are terrified of their roots being ripped out of the ground to be ground alive in a juicer. They send warning signs out to other plants when they’re being attacked — asking for help and/or initializing in the others a protective chemical to try to save at least themselves from destruction. Yet we all need to eat. So we protect those that look and act more like us (the animals) and assume that makes us closer to oneness — by making only those like us have a higher priority for protection.

And if “sharing sex with everyone” is what ACIM meant as a higher order of living than chosen monogamy because monogamy is not sharing sex with everyone, then ACIMers who want to reach God should be sharing sex with the homeless, the intensely overweight and underweight, the dying, the toothless and the aged — all who might enjoy an orgasm with them. ACIM is instead interpreted the sharing to mean “share everything including sex but when it comes to sex, only with the handful of others who look and act good enough to us.”

The above paragraph will inevitably result in the excuse that, well, it’s still okay to have preferences in who we like having sex with as long as we’re sharing it with *some* people. “Some people” is surely closer to God than “One person.” At least we’re sharing it with a few more people than monogamous people are.

But both are simply having sex only with who they’re attracted to and not sharing it with others. Monogamous people are sexually attracted to a familiar partner they travel through life with. Multi-partner people are attracted to novelty. There’s nothing more virtuous about either.

Both novelty-oriented and monogamous people are holding back sharing sex according to their preferences. The minute either of these choices — chosen multi-sex partners or chosen monogamous partner — are made more holy than the other, it’s the ego moving in trying to control and make its own current preferences more godly than others’ preferences.

The problem with monogamy in the past isn’t that a handful of other people they may have had sex with instead of their chosen life partner wasn’t something they felt the desire to pursue. The problem was that spiritual viewpoints forced it onto others with rules and dogma, stating that if they didn’t abide by monogamous rules, they would not (or not as quickly/easily) help bring heaven to earth.

Now ACIMers are doing the same thing the churches did. They are also helping ACIM move more and more into the rules and regulations dogma territory, dictated by the preferences of some.

There is nothing more loving about vegan, it just makes some people feel less guilty about killing other sentient beings because they’ve never been a plant so they can treat the plant as though it’s pain is beneath their own.

There is nothing more holy about having sex with a handful of people we’re at least temporarily attracted to while still leaving the vast majority of people out who may have wanted to have sex with us. This is just an ACIM interpretation that supports one’s sexual preferences as being more holy and closer to “heaven on earth” because their need for novelty is more pleasurable for them, therefore they think it’s more pleasurable for everyone.

Erika, I have just come across you and your words are music to my ears.

yep sounds about right