The Fast

WILDERNESS SPIRITUAL FASTING

Going alone into the wilderness without food has been practiced in every culture.  This sacred pilgrimage is taken to renew the spiritual connection to the life that is present in all beings; every tree, plant, deer, person, or mountain has a soul and a spiritual purpose.  Detoxifying at a soul level allows the deep hunger within us to be filled with the sacred.

All true wisdom is only to be learned from the dwellings of men, out in the great solitudes

-Igjugarjuk

EMOTIONAL FASTING AND DETOXIFICATION

Food is associated with love, gratification and is a source for our emotional needs.  Going without food and daily companionship or routine facilitates emotional fasting.  Most people in western culture have associations with food that are part of how they take care of their need for love.  Without food, feelings long locked away or ignored come to the surface.  As you fast you will be changing your way of relating to yourself and your body. This emotional detoxification and cleansing effects the mind and a new clarity is birthed that will help you change your relationship to food and to yourself.

PHYSICAL FASTING

To reestablish a healthy environment on Mother Earth begin with your own piece of Earth, your body.  The respect we are willing to show our own body will be reflected back in our relationship to Mother Earth.  Going without food heightens our awareness of our body.  We begin to feel each breath, the touch of a stone, the slight breeze, our skin, our bones, our hunger.  The toxins in our body begin to be felt and released.  Changing your diet and preparing your body to go without food will begin the process of  detoxing before your water fast, and will enable your body to cleanse and heal at a deeper level.

We are part of a circle, a sphere, a biosphere, a universe that evolves and moves in cooperation and participation.  We go on pilgrimage to turn this information into knowledge, into personal wisdom.  This is the initiation we seek, that of belonging to a tribe, the tribe of all life. 

The garden of life is always talking to you – all life, the stones, the trees, the elements, the animals, the insects.  This is a memory most of us have tucked away, forgetting that we have always known there is more to life than what meets the eye.  It is common for people to forget what truly matters, and that all life, including non-human life, embodies spirit, a vital life force at its core. Going alone without food into the uncivilized wilderness invites into memory our own uncivilized wild spirit that embodies passion, life and the sacred. 

Remembering is a reclaiming of soul and personal destiny.  Intentional spiritual fasting is devoting oneself to knowing and remembering who you are, to have nothing hidden and begin to see the sacred in yourself as well in ordinary day to day life.

WAITING UNTIL SPIRIT IS HEARD
     As my prayer became more attentive and inward
I had less and less to say.
I finally became completely silent.
I started to listen
Which is even further removed from speaking.
I first thought that praying entailed speaking.
I then learnt that praying is hearing,
or merely being silent.
     This is how it is.
To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking.
Prayer involves becoming silent,
and being silent
and waiting until spirit is heard.

-Poem describing Vision Quest by Kierlegaard

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