Empty Calories

We sometimes talk about people eating empty calories—that is food which is materially plentiful, but lacking any kind of nutritional quality. This kind of food may satisfy our craving for something, sweets for example, but has no real ability to affect the nutritional needs of the body.

Let’s suppose that human being can be the same—materially real, but lacking any quality. The great Sacred Traditions speak of that which makes humans “real”—full of quality. The word that is most commonly used in the Christian context is “virtue.” The virtues are qualities that make someone a real person and not just existent but “empty.”

Let’s also imagine that the larger world feeds on quality, and that lacking it becomes unbalanced and weak. Suppose that quality (virtues) are the nutritional element that humans can give the world through who they are and what they do in the world and that this quality comes actually from a higher source—from the divine field of energy that feeds each of us and makes us real, which we in turn we feed the world.

The question facing each of us then is this: Are we eating empty religious quality, or is our diet rich in divine nutrient? And, what, in turn, are we feeding the world around us that has been processed and made available by our own being?