Author: Tori Sidoti

Dreams and Intuition

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Every night we experience the extraordinary phenomena called dreaming. Have you ever sat down and actually thought about what a dream is or why we have them? Do you ever wonder why even the world’s leading brain specialists cannot even explain why we have these bizarre experiences? There are infinite possibilities on what their purpose truly is and that is what makes dreams so interesting.

I often find myself pondering strange things that have happened throughout my life, sometimes I get so deep into thought that I start to think, “how can I consider this “strange” when it’s the only thing I know”. There are so many things in this world that confuse me and make me question many things, but dreaming is truly one of the most intriguing parts of being alive.

Just like breathing or your heart beating, dreaming is something that we have no control over in most cases. Dreaming can be credited to the unconscious mind, which makes it that more mysterious. Many people claim that the dreams we have can be accredited to experiences in our everyday life, and as a result dreams can be translated in a way that helps one improve their life as a conscious being. I find these ideas to be extremely interesting, how is it that our unconscious mind is more self aware than the consciousness that is creating these life experiences.

One of the most mind blowing hypothesis for dreaming is the idea that we are watching/experiencing ourselves in alternate universes. Scientists have reason to believe that the universe has split an infinite amount of times, just like a cell creating body. This gives the idea that there are an infinite amount universes where “you” exist and also where “you” don’t exist.

So, what do dreams have to do with this? Well maybe this theory can explain the sheer oddness of our dream experiences and why they never really make sense to us. It could also possibly explain why we are in places or are talking to people that we have never seen before. We may be experiencing life in alternate universes through dreams by our unconscious mind.

Along with dreams we as humans are equipped with a beautiful thing called intuition. Intuition is defined as “ the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning” and is something that is just as mind blowing as dreaming. As human beings we are given intuition to help guide us through the toughest of situations, but why? Why do we have the ability to know what is right or truly wrong. Trusting your gut is something that is told to us from the very beginning of our lives, though some may not choose to follow it.

Some have hypothesized that intuition is your subconscious mind guiding you through your life through past-life experiences. In other words you are given knowledge or “intuition” from past lives you have lived and are able to use it in your current life you are living.

So, I find it odd that we are given these amazing tools as human beings. How different would our life or even the world be without them. I truly believe that we are so lucky to have a mind that can explore so many more avenues than what is at the surface. Dreaming and intuition is just the start of an ever expanding universe and mind.

My advice to you is to always use these tools as a way to create a better understanding of you and everything around you, because without it you would never be the same.

Food For Thought

Six months ago I decided to become a vegetarian. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would be doing this, yet here I am, loving it the whole way through. As an ex meat lover, I would like to say that this is definitely not for everyone, especially people who enjoy lots of variation and options in their diets.

Typically, people’s first reactions when I tell them that I have become vegetarian is, “Are you okay?”, “What do you eat?” or “You look too skinny”. Yes, I am okay, I actually eat a lot and I am at a healthy weight. I have gotten a couple “good for you” responses but that is only after I explain exactly why I made this huge choice in my life.

Last August, when I first started college, one of my friends told me that she was vegetarian and of course my first reaction was “What do you even eat?”. As a meat eater I was so confused on how anyone could ever go on without eating animals. I had watched a lot of those really sad Netflix documentaries where they show the ins and outs of the food industry, very graphic videos of animals being slaughtered or chickens having breasts so big that they could not even move and even if they wanted to they could not because there were thousands of other chickens stuffed into a room. Even those videos did nothing for me, I even recall telling my boyfriend while watching it that I could still eat meat and that I wanted chicken nuggets. So now you might be asking, so what made me a vegetarian?

College food definitely played a roll in my choice due to the awful grey meat that they serve, yuck. This all happened quite gradually actually, It started off with not adding the grey chicken to my stir fry during lunch time. I then soon realized that I really did not need to eat meat with my meals, I was just conditioned to think that it was a necessity. After a couple of weeks, I had noticed that I would go a couple of days without eating any meat and not even realize it. I still continued to eat grilled chicken after a workout just to get in the necessary protein for the day. One night after the gym I made myself a huge serving of chicken in which I proceeded to eat half of and then throw the rest away. In that split second of throwing that meat away, I had one of those “AHA” moments and I haven’t turned back since. I thought to myself “this chicken forcefully gave up its whole life on this amazing planet just so I could throw it in the trash”. To this day it makes me sick just thinking about how terrible humans are to other living, breathing, creatures.

I have had a lot of people ask me how I get my proper protein and vitamins, and quite honestly I hate this question. Yes, meat has a ton of protein in it. You might be shocked to find that there is a lot of protein found in a wide variety of foods, for example, broccoli has more protein per calorie than beef. Nuts, beans, rice, fruits, and almost all vegetables are loaded with protein, but unfortunately, we are not properly taught nutrition and can become ignorant as a result. The food industry is tremendous, so tremendous in fact that they will use their money and lobbying power to brainwash the general public into thinking that the meat that we eat every day is necessary for survival and proper growth and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Just like the pharmaceutical and oil industries, the meat industry pays for us to believe that we need something that we really do not and in turn breeds innocent animals just so they can be killed and consumed. What a lovely life these animals must live on planet Earth, harmed, controlled and pumped with hormones just to be killed by humans whose gluttony blinds them from morality and whose greed blinds them from truth.

Life without meat is not unfortunate, I feel a great amount of pride with my decision to become vegetarian, even if going out to eat or dinner at a friend’s house is much more complex now. If you are on the fence with cutting out meat I ask that you try it for just a day and see how you feel. After all, it is just getting rid of one little bit of your meals, it’s really not that crazy, stock up on your veggies or have an extra serving of rice I promise you won’t regret it.