If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?
Denial. Deprivation. Renunciation. It’s not something we readily embrace or seek. Yet it’s at the heart of this foundational teaching of Jesus about his way, his dharma, his definition of the good life. The first shall be last. The greatest among you is the slave of all. So how do we practice that notion of self-denial, which is paramount to our understanding of how Jesus was able to be who he was: God made flesh?
The practice of fasting evokes either no thoughts at all, or the worst associations with religion: asceticism, self denial, and fear of the body and its pleasures. Fasting is one of the ways to practical self-denial. Today, doing a cleanse has become popular. Abstain for sugar, refined flour, alcohol, caffeine: for a week, 15 days or a month. Scientifically, we know that occasional cleanses of the body can be very helpful physically. It removes toxins, flushing out the organs, restoring our body to the functioning that it’s intended for. Fasting isn’t just one of the longest established discipline of the human body in multi-religious and metaphysical practices, it’s also one of the huge nutritional go-tos in our contemporary culture.
But self-denial, or fasting, Fasting also has transformative spiritual potential. Firstly we live in a society of excess and consumption. I’m not preaching a reject every physical or material thing, or throw your iPhone away. But we can’t help but acknowledge the way in which we are daily inundated and bombarded with messages of what you have is not enough, more, faster, better, quicker, the newer version is better, why settle when you could have…. It is any wonder that our society is struggling with increasing obesity, diabetes, malcontent, isolation, competition, class warfare and a deepening malaise about the meaning and purpose of life? If life is principally about more…then when is it enough?
“Fasting as a religious act increases our sensitivity to that mystery always and everywhere present to us. It is a passageway into the world of spirit to explore its territory and bring back a wisdom necessary for living a fulfilled life. It is an invitation to awareness, a call to compassion for the needy, a cry of distress, and a song of joy. It is a discipline of self-restraint, a ritual of purification, and a sanctuary for offerings of atonement. It is a wellspring for the spiritually dry, a compass for the spiritually lost, and inner nourishment for the spiritually hungry.”
The Sacred Art of Fasting. Preparing to Practice, Thomas Ryan
Fasting literally means a total abstention from food for a certain period of time. It can also mean abstention from such pleasures as celebrations of birthdays and marriages. Today it might be an abstention from technology, media, social media, anything that distracts, divides and diminishes our perspective.
There is no clue to the original purposes of fasting. The meaning of fasting among the Jewish people developed around the selection of certain foods and the duration of abstention from them. Fasting appears early as an act of devotion among the Jewish people, but without the formalized rules developed later. Even in the early Christian Church fasting was practiced among many, but not according to rules. Fasting generally was considered “a work of reverence toward God.” The notion of fasting, self-denial, abstention is to deny or deprive oneself of something in order to focus on other things. It’s like turning off the TV roaring in the background so that you can better focus on the person talking to you in the room. It’s for that reason that communal fasting was often done at times of catastrophic loss and destruction, to focus the people. Their hearing. Their listening. Their perspective. Fasting isn’t about self-mortification for mortification’s sake. It’s not a twisted self-masochistic practice. It’s working to listen, to hear, to focus on the voice that we often overlook in the cacophony of our lives and routines.
The Christmas season, in which we find ourselves, is one in which we are faced with multiple temptations and pulls to excess: eating, drinking, working, buying, accomplishing and re-connecting. Advent is about focusing, preparing, readying ourselves to welcome the coming of Christ. What better to make room for epiphany, renewal and spiritual focus than by fasting?
The biggest impediment to fasting I’ve found it that people approach it in a feast or famine way (pun intended). It’s not about deciding to fast for 3 days all of a sudden. It’s not about no longer watching TV for the next month. Dramatic decisions that involve unrealistic changes of routine are just that: doomed to failure because they’re unrealistic. Such a well-intentioned goal ends up often reinforcing notions of impotency, guilt and inferiority. It’s not about that – it’s about focusing, listening, seeking a larger perspective. So if you want to practice fasting choose something that is deafening loud in your life – monopolizing your attention, dividing your perspective. Then try a small fast. Skip one meal – use the time to listen to God, to others, or to yourself. Pray. Journal. Take a walk. Talk with someone else. Write a letter. Meditate. Exercise. Be still. What do you hear? feel? receive?
Here are some online helps and tips on fasting as a spiritual practice: