Food has been a very important part of my life since the embryo that was me could partake of it!  Food has defined my moods (good, bad, sad, and happy); my surroundings (aromatic, smelly, plush, and sparse), and my events (holidays, celebrations, and somber occasions). Because food has been such a huge part of my life, I shouldn’t be surprised that my dreams would choose to use food as a metaphor to enable me to  see things in a different way.
 

I’ve had two dreams within the last week in which the symbol of food prominently stood out.  In the first dream, I was in a very fancy grocery store that was throbbing with people. There were many carts of food to navigate around as I filled up my cart.  A couple of times I became separated from my cart and the way I was able to find it  from among the multitude of other carts was my cart contained an AA “Big Book” and the book of Baha’i prayers. That made it very different from all the others that just had food in them.  There were many layers to this particular dream but what I learned from the food portion was to notice what it was that “fed” me.  My cart contained more than just items that I could eat; it also contained “spiritual” food.
 

In the second food dream, my yoga instructor and I were walking through an airport to catch a plane.   As we passed through a food court, we noticed that the usual greasy spoon type restaurants were in the process of being transformed into very healthy food outlets with ample salad, vegetable, protein and fruit choices. (Because of the specific diet that I eat these days, airports have notoriously been a pain for me to locate everything I need for a meal!)  Even with the airport’s food transformation, we kept moving towards our destination.  In this dream, my mind was working out the news that I learned last night in which my beloved yoga instructor would be taking a year long sabbatical.  I had also learned that the funky macrobiotic community where he had taught classes for several years had decided to move into another direction. They were creating a fancy, top-shelf kind of yoga studio. As a result, not only was our instructor leaving, but his whole community feared the changed of being torn apart. Luckily, another wonderful place had offered to take in our many members, but the change was still a great shock. 
 

The point I’m trying to illustrate for you is to ask yourself where you get your spiritual food?  What feeds your heart and soul?  I’m so grateful that along the way I’ve learned to look at food as simply nutrition for my body. I’ve stepped away from its seductive dance of taste and smell.  This is not to say that I don’t still enjoy food very much, I do, but now that I’ve taken the focus away from  food , I have  become more aware of all the other ways  I am  nourished.  Now I know that a whole world of “food” awaits me.