Verily, I say, fasting is the supreme remedy and the most great healing for the disease of self and passion.
Bahá’u’lláh, The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting
Every year from March 1-19, Baha’is aged 15 and over abstain from eating and drinking from sunrise to sunset. The Fast is a time of spiritual purification that occurs as a result of the outward symbol of physical fasting. I have been fasting since I became a Baha’i which this year, makes a total of 40 years. The exceptions were when I was pregnant and nursing, and I distinctly remember feeling cheated out of the benefits of fasting during those times because there are so many wonderful spiritual perceptions that occur while going through the physical fast.
For me, the most important of the many spiritual gifts inherent to fasting, is a kind of breakdown of the ego. I feel tired, thirsty and may have a headache or feel weak. But for some reason, those things just seem trivial. I find when I pray in the mornings and during the day at the time of fasting, it is as if all my usual defenses that keep me away from merging my will and heart with the Divine are unable to keep up the walls. I dissolve in tears as I say my obligatory prayer and feel the power of the love of God washing over me.
Fasting is the cause of the elevation of one’s spiritual station.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting
Saying prayers before breaking the fast in the evening has a potency that is not there during the rest of the year. There is a power in the knowledge that millions of Baha’is around the world are all fasting at the same time surrounding the planet in the power of prayer and fasting at every minute of every day as the earth revolves around the sun and rotates on its axis. I see the beauty around me more poignantly and appreciate deeply moments like my grandsons’ laughter or the sound of a purring cat.
I feel less and less desire to eat and find that before and after the rising and setting of the sun, I am only able to consume maybe 60% of what I would normally eat, but it feels right. As the days of the Fast wear on, I wonder why I ate all that food before when I clearly didn’t need it. I lose my desire to drink coffee or to eat sweets. My body resets, cleanses, purifies and feels new. The famous 12th century poet Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi wrote about fasting:
There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
While fasting, the suffering of others becomes more poignant to me. Injustices in the news fill me with the desire to make some significant effort to eradicate in some way hunger, poverty, racism and abuse. When I feel cold at the end of each day, I think about people who may not have access to heat or warm clothes. Feeling tired reminds me that I am grateful for my warm bed at the end of the day. Imagine the effect of fasting on all the world’s decision makers, should they become through fasting so sensitized to the pain and suffering of the people they serve!
It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires.”
(From a letter written on behalf of Shoghi Effendi to the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States, January 10, 1936)
Yet although Fasting is a wonderful gift of ever increasing significance, it is commitment to the sacrifice that allows that gift to be made visible. Without submitting to the inconvenience and hardship of fasting over a period of time, the benefits remain hidden. I have certainly matured in my understanding of fasting and become more willing to accept and embrace the hardship, finding, like Rumi, the new song in the burning clean of brain and belly.
There are various stages and stations for the Fast and innumerable effects and benefits are concealed therein. Well is it with those who have attained unto them.
Bahá’u’lláh, The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting
But sometimes just getting through the work day during the Fast is all I can do.I may not feel particularly spiritual and the cumulative exhaustion causes me to flop into bed with no thought other than “one more day complete, X number of days left”. It is at those moments that I am reminded that Fasting without the counterparts of prayer and meditation cannot have the same effect.
“prayer and fasting produce awareness and awakening in man, and are conducive to his protection and preservation from tests.”
‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Compilation on The Importance of Obligatory Prayer and Fasting.
Then, suddenly, the 19 days are done and the Baha’i New Year dawns. It is the first day of spring and my spiritual spring cleaning has been completed just in time for the vernal equinox!
The Divine Springtime is come, O Most Exalted Pen, for the Festival of the All-Merciful is fast approaching. Bestir thyself, and magnify, before the entire creation, the name of God, and celebrate His praise, in such wise that all created things may be regenerated and made new.
Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah
I am flooded with gratitude and joy.