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Today is my birthday. Starting in 2005, I have fasted every year on my birthday. I consume nothing but water to celebrate another year of life.
Why do I fast?
My fasting is an intentional spiritual practice of honoring all of my living relations around me that sacrificed their lives so that I may live another year. It is a reminder of my own mortality and the interconnectedness of all life and our interdependence. We are all related.
How do I fast?
My practice has changed some since the beginning. I started with a strict midnight-to-midnight fast during which I would eat no food and only drink water. What I realized after a couple of years was that I was pigging out just before midnight on the 22nd and having a huge extra midnight meal on the morning of the 24th, and that this really contradicted the purpose of the fast. It lacked the reverence for all life and all my relations and the real restraint that such a spiritual practice should have. In keeping more true to the intent of my spiritual practice and holding myself more accountable to my relations, I decided a couple of years ago that I would eat a normal dinner at our normal dinner time the night before and then my fast would begin. My fast would end with a normal breakfast at a normal time the morning after my birthday. There would be no more binging just before or just after.
This year I want to attempt something new to make my spiritual practice just a little more mindful and to increase my own self-awareness. I hope to blog as the thoughts/feelings urge me through the day to write about what I'm experiencing and why I believe it to be significant or what meaning I find in it. To keep things tidy, I'll just post them as edits here. I want to keep this post open for all to read in case what I experience might be meaningful for others.
Reflection: 1:15 P.M.
Once again as I notice in many years I am having cravings and impulses to eat that I have to willfully ignore. Temptation can be very powerful, but these temptations are nothing that we don't all experience. For me so much of my life is spent indulging temptations to an opposite extreme. Today I am going to the opposite extreme and completely denying those temptations. In reality, I can't survive without some moderate indulgence of these temptations. I must feed on life to live. It's like the Tool song "Disgustipated," in which the following lyrics are chanted repeatedly over trance-like music:
"This is necessary. Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on........ This is necessary."
At the same time, indulging too much, as my Christian upbringing taught me, is sinful. While I no longer identify as Christian, the idea of sin remains present in my mind as missing the mark. I should strive to live my life in a way that I attempt to not miss the mark, but also realize when I have missed and to make up for that. That's not to say that my birthday fast is making up for all the times I have indulged too much, but it is an annual practice in which I remind myself that what I take should be what I need and no more. It is also a recognition that I do indulge too much at times and that I need to work more diligently in the coming year to miss the mark less.
I am reminded of the book Mitakuye Oyasin: We Are All Related by Ehanamani Emaciyapi in which he writes of the Lakota spiritual practice of walking the Red Road. To walk the Red Road is to live a life in balance. It is not saying absolutely no or absolutely yes, but rather maybe now, maybe later. Sometimes we indulge and sometimes we don't, but it is best if we do this in as balanced a way as we can. How can I be as balanced as I can in my role as one of many relations in our natural world? How can I walk the Red Road and only ask of my relations for sacrifice as I need it and offer them what I can in return? What is my role as a contributor as one of many relations in this natural world? What are my responsibilities to all my relations?
Reflection: 4:15 P.M.
It is amazing how absolutely delicious a lemon smells after fasting for half a day. A lemon: so bitter and sour. After hours it smells like the nectar of gods. It brings new meaning to making lemonade when life gives you lemons.
Reflection: 2:45 P.M. (9/24)
By midnight last night/this morning I was hungry and gave in to temptation to eat. I exercised a good deal of self-control and only ate a single portion of the veggie lasagna I had made and one roll with a little cheese and meat. It turned out I stayed up much later than anticipated trying to finish the reading for class this morning and Ian was no help.
As it turns out, it's a good thing I had that midnight meal. This morning I figured I would treat myself to a bagel and coffe from Dunkin Donuts since I didn't have a lot of time to have breakfast at home. I got to the DD at the corner of Avon and West right next to Antioch with only 10 minutes to spare before class and there was a long line at the drive-thru and no parking in the lot (yay delivery truck). Donna's wasn't open, so I had a mini-fast until just about an hour ago when I finally got home from class and made myself brunch. Surprisingly I wasn't hungry for most of the class, but toward the end I found myself dealing with fierce temptation. It is truly interesting how powerful an instigator anticipation is in driving temptation. It was like midnight last night all over again. I knew that my "deadline" was soon approaching and my body went into craving mode and my tummy started rumbling like crazy. Brunch was a bit excessive with a couple of bagel sandwiches and some chips, so I had a minor slip there.
Tonight I'm going to push myself a little further to extend the lessons beyond just the fast. We've mostly stopped eating at chain restaurants opting to eat at local places preferentially. In contrast, tonight I'm going to Longhorn for my birthday dinner. I have this nasty habit of ordering entirely excessive amounts of food when I eat there. I want to go this time intentionally to see if I can take my spiritual practice of balance with me and order just enough. I think of it as looking the beast in the eye and not letting it consume me. Will I say maybe now or maybe later to my excessive eating habits there? I'll post one last update tonight to share what comes of the experience.
Reflection: 11:00 P.M. (9/24)
Success! I did not succumb to overindulgence. I ordered much smaller portions than I ever have at a Longhorn, shared an appetizer with Kathy, and didn't order dessert. I did indulge a little and enjoyed a refreshing white peach sangria with my meal, but otherwise not anywhere near the levels of excess. Having achieved this success, I now feel very much ready to never return to Longhorn and resume what little eating out I do at local restaurants as much as possible. While admittedly eating out the next night still seems a bit excessive compared to my spiritual practice and very much a contrast, I feel this was the right thing to do. I proved to myself I can do better at eating in moderation when my temptation is greatest.
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Date: 2011-09-24 03:06 pm (UTC)From:p.s. can we be lj friends?! this is emily from antioch.
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Date: 2011-09-24 06:48 pm (UTC)From: