You can check in with your Jain friends about reducing the harm caused by eating plants. They take steps to avoid such. To me life isn't eat or be eaten but eat and be eaten. It might be a horror show but it can at least be a delicious one. We might keep our own fates in mind and spare a thought for our food.

On plants, I'm sad to recall Crowley's lost Liber 934 – The Cactus. Pretty sure a great deal of his most "holy" work was mescaline inspired. Applying AL to food I see that we are divided from pizza for Love's sake and the joy of merging the self and pizza is All.

On the consciousness front there seem to be hierarchies with humans having an interesting spot looking down into cells and molecules and upward toward super organisms. "Society as a Neural Network"