Here's one way of looking at it:

1. I am a fragile thing with mountains of impurity on all sides, and I must thread my way through life, always searching out what I find more sacred, so I can protect and improve upon my purity until one day I arrive at perfection.

2. I am a manifestation of God, living in a theatre composed of God and moving at God's behest. Those things I happen to find sacred ARE sacred, not because some ancient tome has told me so, only because my heart was moved to make it sacred.

Such a wide variety of folks have come to self-realization as to render all approaches merely the thing we found ourselves interested in. For some, it's tantra. There's at least 100,000 others, not all of them have a cow about things such as cereal treats, or anything else that is edible.

It's quite amusing and interesting that what I say I eat could can be used as an indication of the quality of my thinking. As a matter of fact, I'm off the CKs attm. I've been going with Trader Joe's Os and Multi-Grain Cheerios for the last 3 years now, and for the last year, only two nights a week. I seriously doubt it's had any effect on the quality of my thinking plus or minus.

Now maybe all that PCP I smoke is another matter...

My dictionary (Merriam-Webster) has the same list as yours for its first definition. The second definition is as follows: a doctrine or body of doctrines formaly proclaimed by a church. I was refering more towards the second definition when I wrote my post.

"Ah. So you DO have some beliefs. That's your dogma. "

I dont believe you =P

i have a body. my body is governed by a set of rules governed by nature.
fake food doesn't help my body operate properly. is that a dogma or science?

...? also i think that other guys is right...if i eat twinkies then i will have twinkie thoughts... hee heee.