The Baha'i Fast started last week, where Baha'is don't eat or drink between sunrise and sunset for 19 days. Instead, they pray and try to adjust their lives closer to God and righteousness.
I'm a false beginner at fasting. 10 years on (starting at age 15), 8 years off for early motherhood, and now back again. So it's new and hard to get my mind around again. I've been working on a sort of mantra of ideas to tell myself several times a day for encouragement and so that I will feel peaceful. Here's what I tell myself:
This is the season of restraint. This is the season of restraint. This is the season of restraint.
I'm moving out of the womb world of comfort and taking on the role of traveler.
I'm going on an inner journey whose watchword is independance: from the body's constant clamoring about it's needs and desires.
My spirit is free to take all my resources and follow IT'S heart's desire.
When my spirit takes the lead, it wants to go climb mountains and get to a place where it's quiet and can see for miles.
Meditation and prayer, connecting with my family, singing, being goofy, playing cards: these are the kinds of things I imagine doing along the way.
I'm open to whatever comes up on the journey: good, bad, and interesting, beautiful, ugly and true.
I accepts that new patterns of thought will have to be created along the way to overcome tests.
Here's how the trip has gone so far:
The first week was disastrous. I got some kind of intestinal bug the first day, but tried to fast anyways because I sure wasn't hungry! That was dumb, though, and it took me the rest of the week to get better. I also felt really anxious when I was fasting, that's why I made up my little mantra. So yesterday was this false beginner's false beginning.
I felt sensitized to the world, my sense of smell heightened and really aware of my thoughts (most of them having to do with food!). I realized how much of my day is spent in dealing with some part of the eating process, both my own and my family's. I didn't know what to do with myself. It was a Sunday so Billy was there to share the thinking and doing work of feeding the kids all day. That was a huge help in getting me independant of food as the main topic of my day. I also felt both really out of it and really focused, maybe alternating, maybe the focus came from trying so hard to focus on children's class/Baha'i Center Board/Local Spiritual Assembly work through that loopy low blood sugar feeling. It was really a glorious day.