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2 min readJan 22, 2025
Is fasting outdated for spiritual growth?
Here are a few attitudes towards fasting:
- Discipline. Fasting can help develop discipline. When we’re hungry the “oogies” within us come to the surface more easily. When this happens this is an opportunity to transcend it. By fasting, it’s a practice it not compromising your kindness, patience, or other values just because you’re hungry. Being ‘hangry’ is not cute or desirable. This is actually what children do. They get grumpy when they’re hungry. There are more mature options.
- Spiritual development. The benefits reaped from fasting and developing discipline is a spiritual practice. If you withstand hunger and move past it, you can take on harder spiritual challenges. As an extreme example, you’ll be able to not comprise compassion and understanding if someone steals something from you or insults you. So fasting is a way of developing this self-control/spiritual discipline muscle. Life can be tough. And living a spiritual life can be even tougher. Using fasting as a method to create spiritual resilience is excellent and free.
- Effects on the mind. Fasting was also used because by not eating the mind had less things to be distracted by. It’s our senses and our craving to experience that pulls the mind away from God. You’ll notice that some foods have a stronger ability to pull the mind away. These are foods like meat, sweets, alcohol, etc. That’s why…