Fasting and Your Mind: Configuring Your Thoughts for Greater Spiritual Awareness

Fasting and Your Mind examines the reasons people have fasted for thousands of years and the remarkable convergence of a practice recommended by both science and religion. It highlights the spiritual and therapeutic characteristics of food deprivation and describes its undisputed endorsement by both religious and medical authorities.

Part spiritual journey, part curative manual, this comprehensive narrative is also a systematic study of an ancient protocol for managing desires, consumption, and for enhancing self-restraint.

Scriptures and several thousand years of religious practice by a wide variety of sacred traditions have established that voluntarily depriving ourselves can be an effective means of heightening spiritual awareness. Fasting and withdrawing from worldly pursuits remain common elements of the scriptures of Hindus, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims, all recommending fasting as a religious practice.

Food deprivation has also enjoyed widespread approval among health advocates and nutritional gurus. The benefits of fasting, including weight loss, reduced levels of blood sugar, cholesterol and inflammation, have been consistently documented. Moreover, research indicates that fasting and calorie restriction have salutary effects on the aging process and improve cellular repair. They also enhance the production of enzymes involved in liver activity, thereby, promoting detoxification.

The physiological and psychological responses we experience during a complete fast, including the adjustment to ketones instead of glucose nutrition, have long-term beneficial effects on brain function, improving emotional health as well as physical well-being.

These physical, and sacrosanct benefits of fasting offer rational and principled commentary on a timeless practice for nurturing our inner spirit.

Einstein's famous comment, "we can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them," is quite fitting. Our mind must gravitate toward fulfilling needs beyond those of the body.

The quality of our life depends on the quality of our thoughts. In a fasting mode, our mind becomes introspective, opening to a unique frequency, to a different way of listening and understanding. The denial of desires prepares the way for a clearer perception of the Divine.

Fasting, thus, deepens the solemnity of our thoughts, inspiring and carrying us into a closer relationship with the Divine, and providing an extraordinarily satisfying encounter with the unseen.

Science and religion do not often see existence as dealing with the same issues. However, as we better understand their respective realms, we begin to recognize common concerns and perspectives.

While not expecting Wall Street, Madison Avenue and academia to adopt asceticism, self-denial, or celibacy, the book does suggest that both scientists and sages happily embrace truth wherever it is found and in whatever form it is expressed. They study creation to understand the Creator, and our societies enjoy, as byproducts, technological innovations and communal advancements.

We are living at a time when most people feel that so-called enlightenment must include the sciences and also provide an adequate spiritual diet. This kind of holistic life is precious in both science and spirituality, where both are simply imperfect reflections of the Ultimate Reality.

Seamlessly, Fasting and Your Mind provides an interdisciplinary look at voluntary food deprivation, both as a modern practice and a traditional ritual. It convincingly argues; that, by fasting, we can exchange our cravings and trivial desires for new mindfulness that willingly conforms our thoughts to higher consciousness. These are the essential motivations behind all spiritual exercises and the deepest meaning of what we call "worship."