Robert Ohotto is a brilliant archetypal astrologist, author, teacher, and intuitive life strategist. I enjoy listening to his podcasts and audio classes. He is intelligent, has a great radio voice, and knows his subject thoroughly.
As a fan of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, I especially admire and appreciate how Robert overlays the study of archetypes with astrology. I find it fascinating and very helpful!
Over the years of listening to Robert I have learned that early on in his life he wanted to become an environmentalist. In fact he had big dreams of winning the lottery so that he could donate all the money to environmental causes. He loves nature, elephants, whales, and his companion animals. He was especially moved by the documentary Blackfish which tells the horrific reality of whales kept in captivity for human entertainment. I can relate to all of these points!
I listened to his recent podcast titled Letting Go of Spiritual Perfection which aired on August 25th. (You can also find his podcasts on iTunes.)
I’m treading lightly writing this post because I want to make sure that I am not promoting perfectionism, spiritually or in any other way. I agree with Robert that perfectionism is a manifestation of shame which is an emotion that I have no desire to feel, spread, or amplify.
Robert recently wrote on his Facebook wall a post that he references in the podcast:
“If you refuse to witness what’s happening in the World because it might ‘throw your vibration off’ or because you don’t like it – how do you expect to be called to serve that same World without knowing what’s going on in it? What do you think Destiny is, disconnecting from others in crisis or pain so your frequency isn’t thrown off? Where do you think ‘Light Workers’ are called to go? They are called to the dark places in the World that need their light!
The supreme spiritual truth that All IS ONE means you are part of this entire Universe, and it is ALL of The Divine. And if that truth is truly alive in you, you’ll tend [to] care about the experiences of others, and if you care about what’s happening in the world, you’ll then be guided to bring your Light where it’s needed through your heartbreak and passion.
Too many folks feel lost and without a purpose, only then to turn away from Life’s heartbreak via the idea that activating your life’s purpose is all about your ‘vibration’ being in some pure alignment to being positive and grateful. I greatly disagree…Purpose is about CONNECTION! And connection is about living from a PRESENT, MESSY, and UNCONDITIONAL HEART as much as you can!
If your heart’s not broken by what’s happening in the world today, you’re not paying attention. Tune into LIFE and then you’ll find your purpose and discover how you’re meant to LIGHT LIFE UP with the Genius of your Soul! Destiny is found in your offering of love to the World. Here’s an intuitive tip: The Universe guides people who give a sh*t.”
I feel guided to provide a vegan response to some of Robert’s comments during his podcast because his are perspectives that are held by many people in the world. Knowing how smart Robert is and sharing his love for the environment and animals, I feel it’s important to help him connect the dots of compassion because I give a sh*t.
At 52:08 Robert says “There was a book out, Seat of the Soul, Gary Zukav, and he puts out there that somehow animals are lower on the totem pole as souls than us. This reeks not only of spiritual perfectionism but also of the human dominator model where we’re somehow as man more sophisticated and evolved than animals and I’m calling bullsh*t on that. I’m telling you dolphins, elephants, they’re far more advanced than we are. I think my cat is far more advanced than I am.”
Carla: Yes, dolphins and elephants and cats are very evolved and so are cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, goats, and all the other animals in the animal kingdom. Reptiles operate from their reptilian brain. Mammals operate from reptilian (instinct) and mammalian (memory and emotions) brains. Humans operate from a reptilian brain, mammalian brain, and a neo cortex which allows us to plan, project, and imagine into the future. We share the commonality of souls and of many brain capacities.
To align some animals, but not all, with human capacities or similarities is to practice speciesism which is a system in which humans have deemed themselves the most important and valuable species on Earth which allows them to give no moral consideration to other species. Because of this, humans are allowed to do whatever they want to other species (pet some, eat others). It is another hierarchy socially constructed to explain away the exploitation of another group of sentient beings. (source)
We know that there is no human nutritional need for the flesh or fluids (milk, eggs) of animals. As long as a person has access to a decent grocery store, s/he can purchase all their caloric and nutrient needs as plant-foods: fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, tubers, fungi, nuts, and seeds.
To mark some sentient nonhuman animal beings for breeding, slaughtering, and consumption for human want, not need, is as illogical and insensitive as marking some favored animals – elephants, whales, lions, horses, cats, dogs, dolphins – as less evolved than humans. Our neo cortex can help us understand these distinctions.
At 54:04 Robert says “…I’m going to give up sugar. I’m going to give up gluten. I mean, if you give up gluten because you actually have celiac disease or you have really something that’s going on, that’s one thing. But when it’s the next fad and the next fad which I’ve seen happen, well now I’m giving up this and this, before you know it you’re not even enjoying your f*cking life. You just renounced everything and now you’re back to the same Catholic bullsh*t of renunciation that we just thought we left. There’s only landing in what’s true. It can be true for somebody to give up sugar or be a vegan. Absolutely. But you don’t know that if you don’t really question “why am I doing this.” Why am I doing this? Is it because I think that killing animals is wrong, moralistically? Well, that’s interesting because they eat each other. Do you go judging mountain lions and judging you know…no.”
Carla: Cats are obligate carnivores and don’t have access to grocery stores. Humans are not obligate carnivores. We are opportunistic omnivores when plant foods are scarce and most like fruigivores when plant foods are abundant.
Humans are not cats. We could not catch & eat a deer without a tool. Our anatomy and biology tell us that we can eat meat, dairy, and eggs to survive, but these are not our ideal foods for thriving. Luckily most of us reading this have access to decent grocery stores so that we can easily & conveneiently choose plant foods over animal-based consumables.
At 54:58 Robert says “What about factory farms that are horrific? That is an absolute atrocity to the soul of our connectedness. Absolutely, I agree. But personally I don’t think it’s wrong to kill animals for food. I think it’s about how humanely we are with them. That’s my landing in truth. But I’m clear on that because I questioned it. I was actually a vegetarian years and years and years ago for about three years. And it just didn’t feel right for me.”
Carla: Meat, dairy, and eggs purchased from any major grocery store chain or restaurant sources their products from factory farms.
Meat, dairy, and eggs purchased directly from small farmers still struggle with the humane treatment of animals when slaughter is included in the treatment package. “Needlessly killed” defies the definition of humane.
There are not some humans who need to eat meat, diary, or eggs and some who don’t. We’re not that different from one another. Baring any extreme and rare health condition, humans can and do thrive on plant foods. This is great news because Earth needs more humans to adopt animal-free diets in order to slow climate change & planetary pollution.
At 1:04:25 Robert says “Who’s going to like what happened to that lion? What happened to Cecil. Who likes that, unless you’re a trophy hunter? And who likes trophy hunters? Only other trophy hunters! And people that get paid by them! But my point being, you know, who’s going to like that? But shouldn’t we look? Shouldn’t we talk about it? If we’re going to live from “all is one” shouldn’t we f*cking say something? And maybe have a discussion about the laws in South Africa, or Zimbabwe…or would you just rather turn the other way toward positive-ism and gratitude while everyone else starves, dies, is raped, women’s pay and inequality goes on. You know, think about the changes that have happened in our society throughout history. Why did they happen? Because people looked at the dark side and they didn’t move from perfectionism, they moved from something deeper. They moved from “all is one.” They moved from that place that says wait a minute, I have to care about slavery. It’s just in violation of the soul-truth “all is one.” I have to care about elephants and them being slaughtered for ivory. It’s in violation of “all is one” and our interconnectedness. Is it in violation to kill an animal for food? No, I don’t think so at all. Because that animal, depending on the animal, and maybe it’s the deer that the mountain lions eat, is part of a whole journey, a whole schemata of life. And it’s a noble thing…it’s a Native American thing that a lot of tribes believed, that’s why they honored the animals spirits.”
Carla: Yes we need to look at slavery. Yes we need to look at the needless slaughter of elephants. Yes we need to look at the enslavement and needless slaughter of billions of magnificent farmed animals per year.
Native Americans living on the land prior to European invasion and eventual industrial revolution didn’t have access to grocery stores. Their meat consumption, as with all native peoples, was rare, ritualistic, and reverent. If ample plant food was accessible, the killing of nonhuman animals was not necessary. When the killing of an animal for its calories became necessary for survival it was employed consciously, sparingly, and with great awareness. This is very different than today’s massive slaughter & consumption practice.
To compare modern humans to native tribes or wild animals is an inaccurate analogy. Nutritional science has demonstrated that smart & safe plant-based eating is optimal for human wellness. Environmental science has demonstrated that eating a plant-based diet significantly lowers one’s destructive footprint. Nonhuman animal science has taught us that the animals we eat feel pain, terror, and grief. They are like us. When they see danger they fight or flee. When they are forcefully separated from their kind or offspring, they mourn. Factory farmed or pasture-raised animals bred, tended, and killed for unnecessary human food is unjust and inhumane every time.
Animal rights is a social justice issue. Whenever a sentient being, whether human or nonhuman, is exploited, disrespected, and made a victim, we are morally called upon to protect their rights and lives. No longer is eating meat, dairy, or eggs a personal choice because these choices create innocent victims. No longer is it responsible to make personal nutrition decisions for ourselves without taking into account the impact it has on animal and planet life.
If we enjoy, appreciate, and demand our personal rights being respected and protected, we need to extend the same courtesies to all the other living beings with whom we share Earth. It is a call to extend conscious compassion to our plates and do whatever we can within our awareness to practically and possibly not harm others, all without getting hung up on perfectionism.
Additional Resources
• What Any Social Justice Activist’s Lunchbox Must Contain
• Johns Hopkins on Health & Environmental Implications of Animal Consumption
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I totally love the idea of maintaining a high vibration and keeping yourself happy. What I don’t like is the idea of maintaining a high vibration at the expense of our Earth and all of her creatures. It just doesn’t make sense to me. In fact, the idea of creating excessive waste and harming sentient beings throws my vibration off completely. Good to know I’m not the only one thinking like this, Carla. Thanks for the article!
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Great to hear from you Josephine! Happy to hear we are in alignment on this topic.
This was Robert’s first reply to my blog post and then my subsequent reply, both made on Facebook. More dialogue can be read at the Facebook link below:
https://www.facebook.com/RobertOhottoIntuitive/posts/10153039420756316
Robert Ohotto: While I respect your thoughtful review, veganism simply isn’t right for everyone and there actually are humane farms. I know because I buy from them. In my opinion, within much of vegan philosophy that I’ve been exposed to there is often evident a psychological resistance to the fact everything dies to feed something else so it can live. This is actually a cosmic process that happens with galaxies in as much as it does within the biosphere of this planet. Even for vegans, something is dying to feed their bodies. Studies have in fact proven plants feel the harm of being harvested, they can even sense our intentions. How come I never hear this mentioned by vegans? Any fundamentalist approach will tend to take the data or viewpoints that support its stance and exclude others. Death is a part of life…how we raise and kill animals is another story and conversation – something Temple Grandin had a Soul Contract to awaken. Becoming fundamentalist about killing animals, what is that really about? Nothing is ever black or white. Did you know that there actually are folks who medically need to eat meat? This is something I learned from Norm Shealy (the doctor who teaches medical intuition with Caroline Myss) when I was struggling with the side effects of a three year vegetarian diet – YEP I’m someone who medically needs some amount of meat in my diet, something I know from my own experience. Contrary to your homogenous blanket assumptions, we all have different biological systems that have different needs. How could that not be true? We have different immune systems, nervous systems, metabolisms, health challenges, etc…I absolutely respect those who choose to go vegan for whatever reason, however forcing some moral superior view that those who eat meat are less compassionate or less evolved is elitist. So is thinking that veganism is the only solution to the world issues you identified. On many of your points I absolutely agree…eating too much meat is not good for the environment and the sustainability of the planet. And factory farms need to be addressed somehow. (Which is why I don’t eat red meat and only buy humanely raised and slaughtered meat.) However, I would encourage a more balanced view and approach as you don’t really know what’s right for everyone…only you. Assuming you know what’s right for everyone and presenting that as fact makes you sound evangelical. In my Soul I know eating meat is right for me, I hope that can be ok with you, and if not, that’s ok too. This doesn’t make me any less of an environmentalist or animal rights activist. I can be a conscious carnivore at the same time, both can be true. To assume that I haven’t ‘connected my own dots’ for myself comes off as very condescending and yes,
perfectionist. Everything has a Shadow – even Veganism. What do you think its Shadow side is? Be wary of the either/or…and be well.
Carla Golden: Thank you Robert Ohotto for your thoughtful and thorough reply. I’m grateful you took the time to read my blog post.
1. Some farms may be humane but slaughterhouses are never humane. All farmed animals must visit a slaughterhouse to become meat. We don’t like visiting slaughterhouses or watching slaughterhouse videos because it hurts to see someone who doesn’t want to die get killed.
2. I am very aware of the argument for the sensations of plants and that plants must die to feed humans and nonhuman animals. The fact still remains that plants do not have central nervous systems and can not feel pain, terror, or grief as you and I understand it. Does that mean the sensations of plants don’t matter because we can’t relate to them? No. Yet some grand cosmic force gave legs and the gift of mobility to animals and not to plants. An asparagus stalk doesn’t lean or run away when someone comes at it with a blade. Might it scream in plant-language or release defensive chemicals in response? Quite possibly. At the same time I think that most people would agree that a dog suffers differently than a dandelion.
3. Yes, Temple Grandin is an animal welfarist. Perhaps when Africans were legally enslaved in America and the conversation remained on their welfare instead of freedom, they would still be enslaved today. The abolitionists saw the African right to freedom and campaigned on their behalf. There is no human nutritional need for the flesh and fluids of animals so to farm, enslave, breed, and kill animals is unnecessary and exists only to please the palettes of humans wants, desires, and habits. Animal abolitionists see that enslaving sentient animals is unjust, cruel, and unnecessary. It’s not about bigger cages, squeeze boxes, or more accurate blades, it’s about not enslaving animals to begin with. Doing this to farmed animals is just as unnecessary as enslaving orcas for entertainment, slaughtering elephants for ivory, murdering lions for sport, eating dogs in China, or mass killing dolphins for tradition.
4. I wonder what it is in meat that makes it medically necessary for some people to eat it since all the nutrients in that meat came from plants. Animals aren’t magical nutrient factories who synthesize macro or micro nutrients from nothing. They store vitamins and minerals in their tissues that they have eaten from plants or fortified feed. All nutrition comes from the Earth and sun through plants. A mountain lion (carnivore) eating a deer is getting second hand-nutrition form the plants eaten by the deer. A human (opportunistic omnivore) is getting second hand nutrition by eating a cow, pig, or chicken. Because we don’t require meat and have general access to plant-foods, we have the choice to get our nutrition first-hand and directly from plants, bypassing the need to cause anyone else to suffer maltreatment and slaughter.
5. I apologize that you felt anything I wrote here was fundamentalist, morally superior, elitist, evangelical, condescending, or perfectionist. We all come across like this to somebody even though crowds of others would hear our same words with congruence. Everything is relative. It’s never easy to speak with someone who has conditional compassion for animals. Your positions are typical and common. I used to hold many of them myself! (I was almost 40 before I realized that dairy cows don’t just always make milk. How embarrassing!)
I hope through this exchange that you might become more inclusive in your love, admiration, and protection of farm animals when you speak of orcas, dolphins, elephants, lions, dogs, and cats. All animals deserve respect, care, and freedom as a birthright. There is nothing that makes a cow less magnificent than a horse, nothing that makes a pig less magnificent than a dog, and nothing that makes a chicken less magnificent than a parrot.
Thank you for your time. Best, Carla.
Read more on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/RobertOhottoIntuitive/posts/10153039420756316
I stand up and applaud you!!! I agree full heartedly with everything you have so accurately
said here! Thank you! Thank you …
Thank you so much Theresa for taking the time to read and comment!
‘conditional compassion for animals.’ that is THE TRUTH
Thanks for this. I am always interested to hear what others say about spiritual issues. When I find they are advocating participating in the torture of other sentient beings I know they re not for me. I do find that when a person becomes vegan from the heart, from that realisation of what we are doing, then it is more likely to be a lifelong change. I was vegetarian for about 15 years until I went to a lecture and learned about dairy cows crying for their babies. I turned vegan overnight and that was 7 years ago. In fact I was annoyed with myself that I didn’t realise what happens to the mother cows. I have never been tempted to go back and do not feel in any way that I am sacrificing anything or not living the life that I was meant to live.
This is absolutely beautiful Kerry! Thank you for sharing an aspect of your journey. I am in full agreement with you. It breaks my heart to know what we are doing to innocent, beautiful animals. I hope more people are willing to open their eyes and make changes that align with their natural compassion.
I’m curious about the continual mentioning if grocery stores…. sustainable? Responsible? Trucking, large scale farming, being dependant on a corrupt system….. huge issues there that are just as significant for Mother Earth. I don’t know the answer to any of this, but I do know ‘the grocery store’ isn’t it. As a person who jumped off grid and built my own home from the ground up and struggles to implement permaculture practice…. i.can tell you one thing for sure, this issue is wide and varied and not as simple as it seems. It is most definitely not black and white…. this comment isn’t meant to be combative but more a thinking point. Take away your.grocery store safety net, like an overwhelming percent of the world, and imagine your life. Imagine your skills. Imagine your resources. Imagine your time. Imagine your contribution. What does like without the cushion of.fossil fuel driven factory farming look like?
*i need to add, as a Lakota woman…. your account of indigenous eating habits is also skewed….
Thank you for taking the time to read and comment Hanna. The current reality is most modern humans in industrialized nations source their ingredients and food (whether animal-based and/or plant-based) from modern grocery stores. There are definitely different calibers of grocery stores and some are operated more conscientiously than others. You’re right, without modern day grocery stores most of us would be at a loss as to how to hunt, gather, or grow food. It’s great that you have chosen to remove yourself from these systems and are self-sufficient. It will be important to the rest of us that we make our modern food distribution system more and more sustainable. One way to vastly reduced fossil fuel consumption would be to stop farming billions of animals for food.”Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than the combined exhaust from all transportation.” (source)
I would appreciate your sharing of how traditional native Americans procured food and ate so that I can correct my blog post.
Oh my goodness, I can’t believe that Robert, someone who thinks of himself as such an environmentalist and animal lover, someone who argued that animals are as equal as us, is still arguing for his taste buds! Unbelievable, and sad that he just cannot connect the dots… Hopefully by now he has… For he is just stating all the same old excuses all meaters think are valid points…
Thank you Jen for adding to this conversation. I haven’t kept up with Robert so I don’t know his current perspective on animals. For everyone’s sake, I hope he has grown in his compassion for all animals.
Thanks again for a thoughtful article. I write as an ethical vegan.
When humans want to do something, we will find a million excuses for doing so.
This is where the normal, natural, necessary argument comes in, Humans have been murdering and cooking dead animals for thousands of years. We got used to the taste, the smell, the mouth feel. Its’ unfortunately in our DNA, as is anger and violence toward all animals including humans.
When humans say, the “diet” failed them, i believe that somehow, subsconsciously, they wanted to go back to eating animals. They needed a reason to do so. Also, we make all of our choices, including the food choices. Take full responsibility for the food choices you make!. Do not blame the “diet”. And veganism is not a “diet” its’ a lifestyle.
It is well-known that vegans and vegetarians do not necessarily make healthy food choices as there are plenty of processed foods, and the food choices we make are not always adequate or have enough vitamins and minerals. Vegans and veg’s are known to be deficient in D3, B12, and usually zinc and often iron. Supplement with D3 B12 and be aware of a need to consume enough Zinc and iron. I believe most failed vegans are because of poor personal food choices and not supplementing. But there are social factors also involved, and men in particular must contend with being called soy boys or some other derogatory term. Killing an animal, or eating dead animals however does not make a man, masculine or virile. Peace.