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It’s Saturday. I’ve been fasting for over twenty-four hours. My last meal was back on Wednesday evening. However, my statement is truthfully a lie.
The Fast: Body To Spirit & Back
Camron Karsten2007-04-27 22:09:06
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man was charged with new energy.
In such regards, caring for the mind and body, and by such means so as to awaken oneself to the day’s highest potential, the practice of fasting is a spiritual endeavor. In a way, it is its own spiritual retreat as time, effort and strength are honored and one withdraws into inner discipline.
What the eyes are for the outer world, fasts are for the inner.
—M.K. Gandhi
For me, my fast was designed for it all. It was my own protest against the enormity of the modern world’s food consumption, equally as it was my retreat center of self-purification; a cleanse of the mind, body and soul
for a variety of personal reasons. In Gandhi’s words, my fast was the eyes into my inner soul.
Community Strength in Culture
Apart from Gandhi, other cultures have practiced the spiritual discipline of fasting. Mr. Franklin believed in his methods of fasting and he was no Hindu like Gandhiji. In fact, fasting has a history stretching as far back to the first records of mankind.
First and foremost, when animals roamed the earth freely and were the kings and queens of the food chain, the fast was a religious ritual of the evolving human, meant to bring sharper awareness during ceremonial practices. Further along, in the Far East fasting was known for its cultivation of wisdom and spiritual knowledge, as well as self-purification. In the West, it was—and remains to be—a source of religious penance, though one having dispersed far underground in the modern consumption of today’s society (Who could think of not eating for twenty-four hours with Kmarts, Wal-marts, and Targets, and not to exclude the fast-food joints?). Likewise, within tribal religions around the world, fasting was a form of sacrifice towards the gods, allowing their humanness to dissolve as they fed off and nourished themselves with prayer and worship (KFC by-the-bucket? McDonalds between-the-bun? I don’t
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See photographs from:
France Gallery
