Fraggin said:

Solstice... lol... Why do you keep trying to sway people from their belief that fasting does this or that?

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Hey, I'm not trying to sway anyone, that's not my main objective anyway. I began by answering the OP's question and then I got rallied against! Now what I'm trying to do is to demonstrate that belief in the spiritual benefits of fasting is at best superstition and at worst a fool's shot at enlightenment.

Basically, I'm riled up against it because it is dangerous but still considered and encouraged by some even though there are much safer methods out there, methods that actually produce quantitative results!! Believe it or not!!

Entheogens people! What the fuck are we doing here if we are not rooting for good ol' psychedelics?

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You can't "prove" enlightened states of mind.

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Well... that's kind of my point dude. How then, can some of you pretend that fasting produces such results?

I've said this before but the only thing, the only thing that comes even close to what all your favorite gurus pretend is possible are entheogenic plants. The rest is just poor substitute at best because none of them, unlike psychedelics, can hold their promise under the eye of objectivity.

Fraggin said:

If you wanna detox, you just need to stop putting toxic stuff into your body and put only pure, clean, unadulterated nutrition into your body.

First time fast, I would just go 12 hours.

If you wanna do a day, then try a few days at limiting your intake to raw foods before you go a full fast.

That way you will see how strong food addictions are if you eat processed foods, sugars and fatty fried things.

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Gotta listen to your body and learn your own limits and preferences.

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What is strange if you have never fasted before, is that your brain and body still function well.

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wrong identification with the body is what needs to be corrected, not the bodys habits & tendencies,

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yabbahabba said:

Fasting isn't starving. One type I know of is you eat necessary nutrition before the sun rises and after it sets. It's not psuedo-science.  It's not some miracle diet or something, and just because it doesn't magically put tryptamines into your system doesn't mean it won't induce some soul-searching and new perspectives on how you live your life.  It forces you to realize that you're addicted to allievating the sensation of hunger without giving it any thought. And to live without addiction is the definition of freedom. If there's things in life you don't want to let go of, they're keeping you from being free. And there has to be less healthy things you do on a regular basis than not eating food all day.

If you were a devout drug-free person and I came up to you and said, "eat these mushrooms. They will induce a profound spiritual experience." Wouldn't you scoff at such absurdity?

"That's the fucking stupidest thing ever, there's this guy at our local nut house who thinks he's a glass of orange juice and he's scared shitless that he's going to spill over! Get a fucking clue moron."

Feel me? Maybe JUST TRY to get in some whole wheat toast with fruit, a glass of milk and water, couple walnuts or something before the sun comes up, abstain from all cravings, then have a similar sized meal after it sets? Try it for 3 days? What do you have to lose Mr. Spiritually Enlightened?

PS: Vanilla yogurt with chopped fruit, granola mix, and chopped walnuts together are super-healthy and oh-so-delicious.

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Damn, this thread is back from the dead! And it was brought back by someone who didn't like my view on fasting! Not only that, but that someone is making assumptions about my lifestyle!

Let me set things objectively straight, something you don't seem inclined to do, calling me Mr. Enlightened and all that nonsense.

Fasting may not be the same as starving, but fasting with the goal of reaching a higher spiritual state is bullocks. And that was the idea for the thread.

As for the different types of fasting related to spirituality, believe you me, I know of them and not just theoricaly. Fact is, plants are much more responsible for my current "spiritual" state than all those fasts put together. Why? Because plants are part of the physical world and as such, they contain and transmit specific energetic frequencies and by ingesting them, you are enabled to attune yourself, if only for a short while, to those vibrations making you potentially aware of what is needed in order to balance harmony, within yourself as well as outside yourself. Making an effort to stray from automatic behaviors does make you aware of how automatic those behaviors were in the first place, yes, but thinking that by denying your body proper nourishment is going to elevate your mind to new heights is foolish and dangerous and as I said before in this very thread, a mean often used by cults to weaken the spirit of devotees in order to manipulate them easier. The fact that fasting was taken out of cult context and practiced individually doesn't make it more efficient.

Furthermore, the body is where the spirit resides while we are on this planet. And so, in order that the spirit, by spirit I mean the energetic self of various degree, may reach it's full potential, it needs a harmonious physical anchor. By keeping the physical body from being properly fed, washed and protected etc, you are creating disturbances that inevitably affect your energetic self. It's all part of this quite new ideology, a rather binary and dualistic one, that came about about six thousand years ago, which stated that to chose to devote one's self to spirituality, one must renounce the material.

What non-sense. Harmony is what is needed and every part has it's importance it's the process.

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If you were a devout drug-free person and I came up to you and said, "eat these mushrooms. They will induce a profound spiritual experience." Wouldn't you scoff at such absurdity?

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iluvfungi said:

I think it goes hand in hand, that many of us are trying to find inner peace and with such, that we use any means available to achieve such peace. Hence, fasting is often viewed as a spiritual tool. What is strange if you have never fasted before, is that your brain and body still function well.

Please open discussion regarding this material.

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yabbahabba said:

My appologies, didn't know you'd tried it out. Had I known that I would've still disagreed with you but moved on. I'm sure you can understand my approach lacking this knowledge of you. I just don't believe occasional proper fasting to be malnourishment/foolish/dangerous. But, to each his own.

>>one is tempted to label you with a highly assumptive personality...<<

Yeah, pretty much. Coming to conclusions based on whatever information they have at the time...I think that's something most people do...  And what does your statement say of yours?

Calm down man.

You shouldn't have taken me calling you mr spiritually enlightened so seriously, and I don't believe it was off the mark, seeing as how you came off pretty much as hostile dismissing other people's beliefs and experiences as cult rubbish.

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Yeah, pretty much. Coming to conclusions based on whatever information they have at the time...I think that's something most people do...  And what does your statement say of yours?

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