On Fasting

[Guest guest]

* Since we have an opportunity to fast for MahaShivaratri, I thought I

share these thoughts.

 

Fasting

 

It amazes me how much time people spend focused on their bodies. When I

go out with my women friends, they often seem focused on how they want

to change their bodies (lose weight, gain weight, get fit, etc.) or on

their illnesses and conditions. I don’t understand how they can spend

so much time talking about how inadequate their bodies are and yet

their bodies are still functioning. Few of them have any concern about

how their souls are functioning.

 

The blessing that comes with fasting is finding out “who” you are. You

are not the body that requires food and exercise and a sense of “body

image” or imagined health or illness. In fact when you remove your

attention from the physical body and place it on the inner shining

Self, that Self truly blossoms forth. As the individual life becomes

full of Light, the body becomes lighter, the mind becomes clarified and

life is filled with its natural state of Bliss and Gratitude.

 

The rishis and the teachers of ancient times knew what they were doing.

As an American woman in the twenty-first century, I feel so fortunate

to have come across their instructions. Every time I chant the sacred

texts in Sanskrit or the Heart Sutra in Japanese or the Tibetan

Buddhist pujas, I feel at home. There is a thread that runs through

all of them that tugs at our soul and leads us back to our Soul.

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