Fasting from the World
Fasting is done for physical wellbeing reasons – to maintain a strong and heatlhy body.
So, when Jesus Christ instructed us (in the Gospel of Thomas) to “fast from this world”, what was he saying?
Let’s relate it back to fasting from foods and fluids. There are certain substances that are not healthy for us if we consume them in excess – that is, we take them too often and in too large a quantity. If we continue consuming those substances they bring us various types of disease (e.g. heart and liver dysfunction, and ultimately failure). It’s the same with any “inputs” from the world, whether they are foods, thoughts, or behaviours. If we consume too much of a bad thing it will bring us disease.
Undertanding disease in the body is easy.The body has key organs (such as lungs, heart, liver, kidneys) along with supporting “mechanisms” (such as muscles, veins, arteries, nerves) that must be kept healthy if we want to enjoy long and active life. When we neglect those organs and mechanisms (e.g. through poor nutrition, substance abuse, lack of exercise, etc.) we invite dysfunction and disease into our bodies.
But what do we understand about spiritual disease? At least in the human body there are visible organs and “mechanisms” that we can see and observe in response to certain inupts (e.g. foods, toxic substances). How do we do that with the soul inside our body and the spirit within our soul?
Fasting from the world is also for wellbeing reasons – physical as well as spiritual. Just as fasting from foods requires abstaining from consuming material substances for a certain time, fasting from the world requires abstaining from consuming “inputs” from the world (such as visual and audio materials, practices and behaviours, thoughts and feelings). In other words, if we want to maintain a clean and healthy soul and spirit, those things in the world which cause disease, or “dis-ease” (such as lust, jealousy, frustration, anger, hatred, etc.), should be indulged in less and less, or avoided all together.
It’s quite simple: choose “inputs” that are clean and healthy for your body, mind, soul, and spirit. If you like unhealthy “inputs” (e.g. cream cakes; cigarettes; alcohol; porn; aggressive and extreme violence, etc.) find ways to limit your intake. Fast from those things until you eliminate them from your life. If you eliminate them, your life will be healthier; if you don’t your life will be unhealthy until you eventually succumb to the disease and die (either physically or spiritually). Your demise may come slowly or quickly. You choose.
Personally, I find it easy to just stop doing things that are bad for me. About 20 years ago I was drinking six espresso coffees per day – it was bad for my blood pressure, my heart, my liver and kidneys. I frequently had very bad acid reflux (“heartburn”), I did not sleep well at all, and I frequently had palpitations. One day I decided that I would no longer drink coffee. The next day I stopped. At first it was difficult to resist coffee, especially when I walked past shops where I could smell the freshly ground beans and the aroma of the freshly brewed drink. I did not succumb to my urge to drink it, and after two weeks the urge subsided. After about two months, I did not even think of coffee. I had eliminated it from my life.
We can do the same with any other habitual or addictive “input” into our lives. Make a deliberate decision to eliminate it, then act every day to realise that elimination, until we don’t even have to make a conscious choice about it any more.
The point is that we don’t have to go into hiding to avoid the “inputs”; we can live around those “inputs” and still fast from them. At first we can engage in intermittent fasting before graduating into a regular cycle of fasting until we achieve elimination. If needed, as a transition, we can susbstitute bad “inputs” with healthier ones (e.g. replace coffee with tea; replace cream cakes with low-fat baked goods; replace violent films with documentaries; replace sitting on the couch with exercise, etc.). Basically, we do not have to become hermits to avoid the bad things around us.
This is a critical point for soul and spiritual health. We don’t have to retire to a remote monastery in the heights of some isolated mountains and live a solitary and sterile existence. We can live amidst the world (of madness and badness – of disease and dis-ease) without being a part of it. We can choose the healthier options and make those common in our life. Of course, such choices will make us different from those around us, which will make others look upon us as “strange or weird”, but so what. Our choices could even limit our social interaction as “friends” no longer invite us to their events like alcohol driven frenzies called “week-end barbecues”. So what! Replace that time with a walk on the beach, or read a good book, or any other wholesome thing. Choosing healthier options will not kill you.
We can fast from the world. All we have to do is choose the things that are beneficial to our soul and spiritual wellbeing, and make those our regular inputs. We don’t have to tell all around us what we are doing – that is what Jesus Christ was saying to us in Matthew 6 and Matthew 9 when he taught us about fasting. We can just go about our life with no advertising and grandiosity, and we can be humble when we decline certain things (e.g. no thanks, I don’t drink alcohol; I’ll just take some water or juice).
Of course, we can also avoid all the bad things. I teach self-defence, and my model for effective self-defence is called “A2E-Escape”. It stands for Aware-Avoid-Evade-Enage-Escape. The overarching objective of the model is to escape the danger. Every action we take must bring us to the escape. It starts with awareness of the dangers. If we have good awareness we can immediately escape the dangers by not going anywhere near them. If we have to go into areas where there is danger, we must avoid the hot-spots. If, for some reason, we find ourselves in a danger hot-spot, we must act to evade it (e.g. turn around and run away). If we find ourselves under attack, we must engage in a way that enables our safe escape.
To fast from the world we must start with awareness: of the soul in us and its connection with the spirit of the ONE true God. This is the foundation for our spiritual health. Then we must be aware of the madness and badness of the world we live in, so that we can escape it and keep it way from our soul. Everything after this conscious awareness amounts to strategy – how will we think, feel, and act to avoid – that is, fast from – the world. Through our fasting we do not have to starve ourselves, we just have to choose to consume the right “inputs” with discretion, moderation, and humility.
Image: Loch Ness, Scotland, United Kingdom. Copyright - Michael Beaton
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