Prayers are a soft and intimate recognition of our location in the cosmos. Prayers acknowledge our existence in an elevated and personal way.
This prayer enhances your devotion, inner relation and connection with the five elements.- It purifies and elevates your food to a pure vibration ( sattva)
Prayer before you eat:
Bhagavad Gita, Chapter IV, Verse 24
Do this prayer in prayer pose before you take any food or liquid. You ask the five elements to be a consecrated offering ( prasad). This prayer removes three uncleanness:
1-. impurities caused by the absence of cleanliness of the vessel,
2.- cleanliness of the foodstuff and
3.- cleanliness in the process of cooking.
It is necessary to get rid of these three impurities to purify the food, for pure food goes into the making of a pure mind.
The mantra
Brahmārpañam Brahma Havir BrahmāgnauBrahmañāhutaṃ,
Brahmaiva Tena Gantavyam BrahmakarmāSamādhinah.
Meaning: The whole creation being the gross projection of Brahman, the Cosmic Consciousness itself; the food too is Brahman, the process of offering it is Brahman; it is being offered in the fire of Brahman. He, who thus sees that Brahman is action, reaches Brahman alone.
I love this second part of the mantra associated with the pranas, how we invoke the pranas to transform the different types of food.
The mantra:
AhamVaishvānaroBhutvā PrāñināmḌehamāshritaha,
PrāñāpānaSamāyuktah PachāmyannamChaturvidham.
Meaning: I, the Supreme Spirit, abiding in the body of living beings as the Fire (Vaiswanara) in their stomach, I am associated with their Praana and Apaana, digest the four types of foods (solids, fluids, semi-fluid and liquid) which they eat.
Listen and learn this mantra here.