Dave's Blog

Monday, March 13, 2006 5:23:23 PM 

OK, I get it.  Every message associated with fasting is negative.  
There's either shame and remorse, or grief, or penance, or 
cleansing.  Even cleansing asserts that there is something in the 
person committed to the fast that they want to get rid of.  What 
I am getting rid of is unsupportive belief systems, and all 
negativity is unsupportive.  So, what I am giving up now is the 
fast itself.  Not my religion.  I am powerful, an incarnation of 
the Living Spirit, whom the Universe loves and supports.  Thank 
you, Universe, for revealing this to me in much, much less than 
six weeks.  I move forward now.  

My mission is to help thousands of people to learn to be abundant, 
independent, empowered and prosperous.  I must be certain, 
unwavering, and amazingly prosperous myself.  I must become the 
agent that assures others that prosperity is theirs to enjoy, 
that opportunity is theirs to exploit and control.  I now release 
old habits of looking outside myself for instructions of what to 
do and how, for supervision and approval.  I let go of the idea 
that cash must be raised by assuming a subservient role.  I 
recognize my own power and my own responsibility.   I am learning 
new habits that place me in an infinitely abundant trajectory.  I 
am learning to be the self-motivated person that enjoys these new 
habits.  I think outside the box.  I trust my intuition and I act 
upon it.  
 

Thu Mar  9 02:45:55 GMT 2006

Round two:  the Old Testament hardly mentions fasting.  It was 
not mentioned in the Pentateuch.  It was known in the times of 
Jeremiah and Isaiah, the 7th and 8th Centuries B.C.  The fasts 
mentioned by the prophets were primarily connected with grieving, 
and occasionally with prayer.  The book of Tobit, apparently 
from the same period, mentions that "Prayer is good with fasting 
and alms and righteousness" in a list of good works.  Since this 
was between the fall of the Kingdom of Judah and the exile to 
Babylon, I suspect fasting was a borrowed custom.  

Jesus and his disciples practiced fasting, always in connection 
with prayer.  In both the Old Testament and the New Testament the 
context of fasting indicates it was a complete and total 
abstinence, not the meat-free game that is played today.  If it 
was a borrowed custom, it may have come from a priesthood that 
practiced it as a form of purification, like ablution, as a 
preparation for prayer.  I am reminded of a statement once made 
to me when I was a child, that starvation leads to hallucination, 
which is often interpreted as a holy experience.  Full-on fasting 
was popular in the 11th Century, when there was little food, and 
a tour of Winchester Cathedral will show the kings and knights of 
the day were rail-thin.  When a person decides to cleanse the 
body today, the first thing that goes out of the diet is meat.  A 
good cleanse involves a vegan diet, and the use of clay to clean 
out the digestive tract as well.  

Six weeks is a long time, but my current diet is not such a 
difficult discipline.  Margaret is already entertaining a vegan 
diet, and I am discovering that most menus will accommodate a 
vegetarian.  I doubt that I will hallucinate, as the vegetarian 
diet is perfectly adequate to meet all the needs of the human 
body.  

In the Sermon on the Mount, after Jesus explained the Lord's 
Prayer, he also had advice on fasting.  

	"When you fast, do not put on a sad face as the 
	hypocrites do.  They neglect their appearance so 
	that everyone will see that they are fasting.  I 
	assure you, they have already been paid in full.  
	When you go without food, wash your face and comb 
	your hair, so that others cannot know that you 
	are fasting -- only your Father, who is unseen, 
	will know.  And your Father, who sees what you do 
	in private, will reward you."  
	-- Jesus Christ (Matt. 6:16-18 TEV)

Oops!  It looks like I have a lot to learn.  

Oh, funny thing.  The Encyclopedia Britannica states that 
fasting is used "to prepare persons, especially priests and 
priestesses, to approach the deities."  Also that fasting is 
used to induce hallucinations.  Stay tuned!  
	fasting. (2006). Encyclopędia Britannica. 
	Retrieved March 8, 2006, from Encyclopędia 
	Britannica Premium Service 
	http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9033803 


Tuesday, March 07, 2006 2:42:48 PM

On February 26, Margaret and I attended Mass at Saint Ignatius 
Church.  We had accepted an invitation to the Presidents' 
Ambassadors of the School of Business and Management, and we were 
interested in seeing what a Catholic Mass looked like these days.  
We discovered that there is a very real need for our message to 
the world, that every person has abundance and glory inherent 
within, and that the possibility for growth is unlimited.  This 
was not the message that was given to the congregation in the 
Catholic Mass.  I wondered how the Priest could have been so 
limited in his role, until I read the letter from John Paul II to 
the Catholic Priests "On the Eucharist in its Relationship to the 
Church," of April 17, 2003.  It turned out that for the sake of 
a worldwide uniform message, the role of the Priest is highly 
regulated.  

On this occasion the Priest used his free time to explain that 
Lent was coming up, and that there were many ways that a Lenten 
fast could be observed.  The list of exceptions ran longer than 
the principle, and the message I got from the Priest was that 
there was some moral obligation to understand and sympathize with 
those who had nothing to eat.  That sounded like a weak reason to 
fast at best, so I did a little further research.  The Catholic 
Encyclopedia added more to my understanding of the controversies 
and exceptions than to the principle.  The principle still 
appeared to be sympathy, even compassion, for the poor.  

On the Internet two principles other than that which the Priest 
gave in the Mass came up.  The first was that the money saved on 
meat was to be distributed to the poor (Coquinaria).  The other 
was that it was a way to remind oneself to pray (Ken Collins).  

All of this was interesting, but I did not feel an attachment to 
the traditions of the 5th to the 16th Centuries.  Jesus Christ 
fasted for a reason, and that reason has not been clearly 
explained to me by anyone yet.  Nevertheless, as an intellectual 
experiment and a spiritual exercise, I decided to fast this year.  
I was faced, then, with the question of what kind of fast would 
be meaningful for me.  I was amused that meat has been the 
primary target historically, and that fish, or even fish and 
fowl, have been OK to eat during this exercise.  However, there 
were also vegan leanings, as many had cut out eggs and milk as 
well.  Reflecting on the differences between the Animal Kingdom 
and the Vegetable Kingdom, and on the various reasons given by 
Hindus for vegetarianism, I decided that my fast would be 
meaningful to me if I would become a vegetarian until Easter.  

This decision has actually focused my mind upon the issues of 
poverty versus wealth, assistance versus opportunity, compassion 
versus entanglement.  Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Fillmore 
agree that poverty is a sin.  What does this sin constitute?  It 
constitutes forgetting that opportunity is available to all 
mankind, that wealth and prosperity are ours for the accepting, 
that it is the responsibility of each individual to recognize his 
or her power and to accept the Universal Wealth that is knocking 
on the door.  Opportunity doesn't knock twice, it knocks constantly.  
One of my advisors recently told me that my obligation, my duty 
to the poor, is to make as much wealth as I can as quickly as I 
can.  If I can do it anyone can do it, and through the 
demonstration of personal success I can show others that they can 
do it.  Wealth without limits is available to everyone.  

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