Love For All Animals | Katina Czyczelis

I have always had great love and empathy for animals. However, I was brought up in the carnist paradigm and taught to think it was necessary to use, kill, and eat animals. It wasn’t until I left home and learned there was such a thing as ‘vegetarian’, that I became vegetarian myself. I was very much influenced by Buddhist and Hindu practice in this regard. I also found books explaining how bad animal products were for the human body and I then strictly followed the Hippocrates fully plant-based raw diet for several years, until I became pregnant and returned to being vegetarian – not because my body felt the need to – in fact all tests carried out through my pregnancy showed I had good to high levels of iron, calcium etc., but because there was no information for me to rely confirming the safety of a vegan diet through and after pregnancy. There were no computers, or scientific research studies such as we have today. I was alone, there were no other ‘raw foodists’ let alone vegetarians among my friends or family, I had no idea it could be done or that it was safe, and felt a great guilt in case I would harm the baby. So I went back to dairy and eggs, though I didn’t eat eggs often. I still hadn’t heard of the term vegan, and it was not until later in life when my children were a little older that I did, though I don’t remember when or what exactly it was that introduced me to veganism – which by the way, is something very different to the idea of ‘plant based’. Veganism is an understanding, a way of life, a way of seeing and living and being- one of empathy, of understanding, of wisdom and of love.

It is mainly through social media and internet access that I began to learn about veganism together with the cruelty involved in e.g. eggs and dairy, irrespective of whether it is a small organic farm or large operation, still consumed by vegetarians. Now, thanks to social media (feel free to go to my Facebook pages, “Vegan Detective.Facts.Health”; and “Reiki Meditation Adelaide”), and the vegan movement and independent research, respected medical professionals speaking out, and the undercover work by activists, we are able to discover more and more of the facts of animal farming and animal use, the myths, the lies, the cover-ups and frauds committed in a carnist paradigm. The carnist paradigm is destructive of our earth, our waterways and seas, our health, the animals, our eco-system diversity, and only works to increase violence within our bodies and this earth.

Nearly all of us were brought up to accept the use and slavery of animals for human use and advantage. It is a form of brainwashing and blindness and egoistic discrimination against other species of beings, with humans being the judge and jury. What I found after ‘going vegan’, was that I began to understand more and more clearly how utterly wrong the slavery, selective breeding and use of non-human animals is. It doesn’t matter whether you keep a slave in a golden room or a wooden room, they are still slaves, totally at the mercy of the overlord human, never free to be themselves as themselves in their own life, so it is with animal farming.

The longer one is vegan, the more clearly one begins to see things – going vegan is just the beginning of a gradual ‘un-brainwashing’ of the hypocritical and selfish carnist paradigm. I also found that the longer one is vegan, the deeper one’s sense of connection with the world and the earth and earth’s animals, becomes. One also is filled with great peace and joy – they come to abide in you of themselves- it really is an amazing way to live! At the same time, while humanity is still in transition from violence to non-violence, it is difficult to live with the fact that billions upon billions of animals, every week, every day, are suffering beyond words, all so unnecessarily, only because of human ignorance, human greed, vanity and gluttony. I have hope and trust in a vegan future. I know that there is no future worth living if we do not embrace veganism, as I know the energies of nature will return back to us what we have done to earth and animals unless we change.