Cooking as a Spiritual Practice

Cooking as a Spiritual Practice

Most people like to eat good food and not many of us want to engage in the process of preparation and clean-up. I can speak from experience because this was my approach for most of my life. I was raised in an ethnic family and community where many activities revolved around sharing food and it was the women's role to handle it all. The men just showed up at the table and were served, ate their fill and then left while the women cleaned up the mess. This continued to be my pattern through college and until I got married. There were always women to do the preparation and clean-up and all I had to do was show up at the table and enjoy the fruits of their labor … I liked it that way.

My wife only got into cooking because we both saw that as one of her roles in the marriage and she became very good at it. This lasted for 16 years until we got divorced in 1990 and it was only then that she told me that she had never enjoyed cooking and only did it out of love for me. What a revelation, I had no idea that she had felt that way for many of those years! That was a good gauge of my sensitivity at that stage of my life; it was at a rather low level to say the least.

Soon after the pain of our family break-up, it occurred to me that there was now no one to put those tasty meals on the table three times a day with delicious snacks available throughout the day. I had gotten very spoiled and was in a dilemma about what to do because I really did not like to eat out much and the type of food that I had gotten used to was not easily available in restaurants anyhow. The unthinkable idea that I should learn to cook for myself appeared in my consciousness one day and I found myself actually considering it seriously. So I called my former wife and asked her if she would give me some recipes to start with … she agreed after getting up off the floor from convulsive laughter at the thought of me cooking anything at all.

So, I sat down at the table with notepad and pen and begin to remember some of my favorite meals, snacks, and desserts and began to make a list. I took her a list of about 25 things and the next week she called me and said that I could come to pick up the recipes. When I arrive to get them, she pointed to a couple of large boxes and said that I should take those also. She was giving me an entire set of heavy-duty stainless steel cookware. I said "What will you cook with?" and she replied that "the next man that I get involved with will not even know that I can cook." Thus began my journey into the unfamiliar world of menu planning, grocery shopping, meal preparation, and clean-up. What a revelation for me! I realized very soon that I had never really appreciated all the women that had cooked meals for me over the years.

I quickly established a routine that I followed for the next two years. I would make a list of the things that I wanted to eat for the coming week, look at the recipes to see what ingredients I would need, make a grocery list, and then go shopping. I hated all of it and really resented all this work to have a meal that would be eaten in 20 minutes. I did find it interesting to start with raw ingredients and most of the time end up with eatable food and sometimes pretty good food. I was learning a lot and even got into making breads, pie crusts, granola, and other things that a lot of long-time cooks never venture into. I just had a bad attitude about the entire process and resented all the work that I had to do in order to have food on the table three times per day.

Then in the spring of 1992 a miracle happened which changed my whole perspective on food and life in general. I had been exploring the metaphysical world and concepts and learning about consciousness, intention, and energy. I had taken a level one Reiki class and was learning about how our attitudes and intentions affect all sorts of relationships. I was sitting in my dining room having lunch and watching the birds and squirrels eat and play in the front yard. All of a sudden, I had this revelation that eating the meal in front of me was all part of a much larger picture. It was very clear in that instant that all the other activities that I did to have that food in front of me were very connected and that the energy of it all was in the food! I immediately understood that I was eating my anger, resentments, and bad attitude related to all the efforts that it took to get the food on the table. This changed my approach to cooking and life in a profound way from that instant forward.