The first time I fasted, it was not even for one day. I only lasted until dinner time, yet I felt something amazing. The effect on my digestion, mood and energy levels was wonderful, enlightening and acute. It was a genuinely mind-altering experience. My body re-learned to regulate its blood sugar level, stomach acids, and thought processes to adapt to a slower rate of consumption.
It makes me categorically realize that there is a long rehabilitation period from things most of us currently inflict upon ourselves. The constant stream of electric appliances, highly-sugared foods, artificial lights, and other mental and physical entertainments, stimulation and behavioral prompts all do lasting damage that takes time and big effort to overcome.
I have a huge amount of patience, respect and support for anyone who is trying to recover from illness or addiction through good health, clean eating, meditation and positive activity. Honestly, I find fasting really difficult because I tend to want to escape from the hellish reality of today's technocratic society. When I'm totally sober, clean and without distraction, the naked reality is almost unbearable.
Here, the majority of our people are still mentally enslaved to destructive behavior, brutally resisting any movement towards an environmentally friendly civilization. I writhe in the middle of it all, tormented by my parents' chaotic separation, their lack of love for one another, the malicious derision of my brother, and the resultant catastrophes in my own love story.
Since quitting the other anaesthetics of drinking, smoking, coffee, sugar, bread, computer games, TV shows, and shopping, my favourite form of escape is now to consume large amounts of Chinese tea, fruits and vegetables, and contribute my energy towards the creation of a completely new civilization. It will be a world with more love and joy, where we live among our own beautiful creations.
As much as possible, I eat my food raw, and I absolutely relish any opportunity to eat straight from living plants. Tasting truly ripe home-grown figs, grapes, berries and apples in the last year has completely changed my life. I've eaten wild figs, dates, berries, herbs, teas, nettles, roots and flowers. Now I know how good life is meant to taste. And I can see how much we have lost through the technocratic agricultural food system.
It is truly alarming to contemplate that most people on Earth live their entire lives without ever tasting a ripe piece of fruit. Let's think about that for a minute. Why are we neglecting this most simple, easy and innocent joy?
Why do we listen and shuffle along to the gruff men who tell us that huge mechanical implements, imported phosphates, diesel and artificial seeds, warehouses, suppliers, graders, sorters, monocultures, herbicides, pesticides and all this other harmful technocratic mess is necessary to provide our food?
For all that money, all that government subsidy, all that freely given land in the allotments of the last centuries, all that topsoil they've degraded, oil they've drilled, metal they've forged, tarmac they've poured, cement they've ground, bricks they've laid, trees they've cleared and water tables they've polluted, the agricultural system can't even provide a ripe piece of fruit.
What the hell?
We need serious government policies to address the lack of ripe fruit, and restore the balance of orchard distribution among Australian families. In case you're wondering, fruit from the supermarket is rotting on your kitchen bench, not ripening. Fruit loses many of its beneficial tastes and nutrients just minutes after it is picked from the tree.
I dream of a day when I live in a forest garden, with fruit and berries that ripen successively throughout the year, providing an everlasting source of the most delicious, high-quality fruit for my beloved children and grand-children. No refrigeration required.
We will pick herbs and flowers for tea, and then take big deliveries of healthy produce into the towns and cities to heal the souls of all the people there.
Staying focused on this dream makes everything better, and I'm sharpening my skills at making it into a practical reality. All said and done, it's a very simple way of life that people have enjoyed for a very long time. It treads on nobody's toes, and contributes only the purest, most innocent things to whoever wants to share. It will take time, determination and resilience, but the rewards are literally infinite.
On the path towards that future, however, I honestly do find it difficult sometimes to treat my body with kindness. But I'm getting better, and I really encourage all my friends to consider the little, simple, happy things that we can all do to improve our health together.
A big treat for me now will be a vegetable stir fry cooked in oil, with fresh herbs but not spices. I just ate leek, broccoli and eggplant fried in olive oil. Yum! A middling treat will be a mixture of raw vegetables, fruits and nuts finely chopped, mixed with seeds and herbs, and eaten with a spoon.
Another fun treat is soaked or sprouted beans, lentils and chickpeas, crushed in a mortar with garlic and a little oil to make a long-lasting pastey dip. Fried onion and garlic is a high-impact low-volume treat that packs a lot of energy. If I am really low, I will eat dried fruit like sultanas and toasted oats for a hit of energy.
But mostly, I've noticed that raw fruit and vegetables are the cleanest nourishment. It makes me feel the best inside, clearest and most satisfied with myself. I can really feel my organs resting, and while I might have less patience for loud traffic noise, smelly air or rattling buses, this might actually be a good thing.
Honestly, though, I'm not big on discipline, so I tend to do what I like even if that means a chocolate bar or a coffee. That said, I find that I want those things less and less and less.
Honestly, though, I'm not big on discipline, so I tend to do what I like even if that means a chocolate bar or a coffee. That said, I find that I want those things less and less and less.
At my worst, I used to eat white bread and sugared jam for breakfast, three or four milky coffees a day, smoked all day, then meat and well-cooked and seasoned vegetables for dinner and lunch, with a token piece of salad covered in dressing, and often hamburgers with beer for dinner. Needless to say, all that stuff has only bare resemblance to anything that grows on the Earth, and looking back, I existed in some sort of parallel artificial universe that could have been anywhere.
I know it takes time and willpower to get back to a less stimulated way of life. But seriously, it's a far more real experience of the world when I'm not always getting high or coming down from some consumer experience. It is a challenge that is well worth that unique sense of achievement. It feels like winning a race with no losers, where everyone wins.
Every minute cleaner is a victory. Day after day, it all adds up, and suddenly I realize that I feel so much happier and stronger than I did a year ago.
Every minute cleaner is a victory. Day after day, it all adds up, and suddenly I realize that I feel so much happier and stronger than I did a year ago.
I have to be really honest and say that fasting for even half a day brings up tormented thoughts and severe frustration for me. I have to sing and meditate them away. This song or the song at the beginning of this story. Or else I talk to someone who really cares about improving our society's health together.
It only makes me feel better when we discuss and seriously start to organize our practical plan for escaping this technocratic hell and installing a more beautiful way of life for our children. Forgive me if these words sound dramatic or harsh. This is how it feels on the other side of sober.
I fully accept the power and critical importance of fasting in order to hone my focus, deal with mental and physical illness, and heal the highly stressed internal organs of my body.
Together with saunas, sweat lodges, herbal tea, cold buckets of water and morning meditation, fasting is an essential part of robust health. I hope that's enough of a reason in itself to try. Even so, in this monetary world, one could also figure in the huge savings on public and private bills that come from a more serious approach to safe, evidence-based preventive medicine. I realized the other day that I haven't needed to go to the doctor in several years.
Proper health is a cornerstone of a stable and prosperous family, personal happiness, peace, contentment, beauty and love. And those are the cells that make up an effective economy and society. Let's start to look more seriously at good nutrition, as well as bodily and mental rest, to preserve and improve our health together. Everyone is happier when everyone is happier! Hoorah!