Vegan Meetup

I just went to an amazing vegan Meetup in Maine. I love vegan groups like this because they're so inspirational and filled with energetic, compassionate, healthy, brilliant, and beautiful people. When I became vegan in 2007, I began participating in Boulder's Vegan Meetup (with over 900 members!) until 2009. I met some of my best friends there, including the organizer, Lisa, to whom I dedicate my book, so I'm very excited to get plugged into this community again.

This Portland group with over 580 vegans (or aspiring vegans) is Amazing!  Our gracious hosts at the Cancer Community Center prepared and demonstrated the making of a delicious bean burger. We listed to a great talk about the wonderful work at Maine's chapter of the Humane Society, and we signed up for the next lobbying day to encourage better animal welfare standards.  We had a fun "show-and-tell" discussion about cooking, nutrition, food processors, cookbooks, opportunities for volunteering with Vegan Outreach at schools, and animal cognition in cats and fish. And one member passed out bumper stickers: "PLANT TREES." We also did a fun interactive activity where we talked about how to encourage someone to try preparing a vegan meal.  I love it! 

On the issue of animal cognition, I didn't get an opportunity to mention to the group three things: (1) Drawing the Line: The Science and Case for Animal Rights by Steven Wise, discussing the intelligence of animals; (2) Steven Wise's Nonhuman Rights Project and lawsuits to get animals legal "personhood" status (see, In Re Kiko, especially the Memorandum of Law describing the frontier science of animal cognition); and (3) telepathic communication with animals, which I explain in Unity (pp.308-22),  based on one of my favorite books, The Language of Miracles, co-authored by a quantum physicist to describe how it's based on concepts such as "signature frequency," "resonance matching," and a specific way to develop the ability.

And, of course, I was enthusiastic to talk about my book Unity, which includes a chapter on the Vegan Healthcare Standard (pp.76-160). I mentioned how veganism is essential to achieving higher consciousness and the "yoga of climate change" project that I'm working on to solve the climate crisis. Beyond the fact that the meat and diary industry consumes about 33% of fossil fuels and is responsible for over 50% of greenhouse gases, vegan nutrition is essential to raise our consciousness, vibrations, and ability to literally reduce greenhouse gas emissions through focused concentration. It takes a while to describe how this is possible, which is why my book is 630 pages!  I was enthusiastic to also share how vegans can grow their own B12 (p.142). There was far too much to say, so I'm looking forward to giving a more complete presentation in the future. And I had wonderful conversations afterwards about possible collaborations.

The vegan community is absolutely inspiring and I always feel so fulfilled and honored to be in the presence of such wonderful souls. I'd love to encourage everyone to reach out to their local Vegan Meetup group. These groups make it so fun, easy, and delicious to be part of the rapidly expanding local and global transformational community.