A Spiritual Relationship with Food
Matthew 6:16–18
Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;
That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.
I always wondered why fasting and spiritual ascension have always been intertwined within religious circles. Was it because punishing the flesh automatically gave a boost to the spirit? As the “spiritual” people would say, “there’s a bitter war between the flesh and the spirit.” And in that war, it was necessary to slay the flesh so that the spirit could prosper. They would go on and on claiming that only the strongest of the strong could win this war, and that winning the war led to heaven. Or at least a closer relationship to God.
But this storyline never sat well with me. It was too simplistic. I couldn’t understand why God would create a scenario where men had to purposefully harm themselves to come closer to Him. My relationship with God never felt adversarial. God felt loving to me. Warm and inviting. God also felt complicated and hard to reach, even though He felt close, especially when I was in pain or angry. Artificially creating pain through fasting always felt like a scam. A get-rich-quick scheme.
My relationship with food was perilous for most of my early years in this life. As a child, I spent most of my days with an empty stomach. Poverty left a semi-permanent void in my gut. This part of my life saw a ton of forced pain in the flesh. So much pain that the thought of fasting to cause the same type of pain now makes no sense to me. I experienced first-hand what it felt like to starve while praying to God day after day and night after night, as well as the results. Indeed, it brought me closer to God. In fact, it gave me a direct connection to the Creator of the universe. He was all I had. But it wasn’t the pain of starvation that created the bond between me and the Creator. It was the faith I had in Him. The undying belief that He would sustain me, protect me, and deliver me through my darkest days.
Forced religious fasting can’t create the same environment as involuntary starvation. The two simply do not compare. One is an exercise in religious faith. The other is a situation of life or death. Am I saying religious fasting is a waste of time? An exercise in ego? No. I am saying religious fasting, in many instances, is a byproduct of a deeper physical-body experience related to food and the body’s ability to connect to the Divine. Fasting alone, without the religious aspect, is enough. More than enough. In fact, bringing religion into the scenario only waters down a very effective tool for enhancing one’s spirituality.
I learned all of this while struggling with a debilitating autoimmune disorder. When I was a teenager, I had a vision within a dream. The moment I woke, I felt a pain in the center of my stomach that I will never forget. From that day forward I began to suffer from the ravages of a disease called ankylosing spondylitis. This illness affects the spinal cord. In my case, it affects my entire body. I have been in constant pain every minute of every day since then. I am now 49. To make a long story short, this illness is incurable. No specialist, herbalist, practitioner, or healer can heal this illness. Not in my case at least. This caused me to go on a journey of healing myself. I’ve done that, for the most part. It was during this journey that I discovered the power of food. I discovered how it affects not only the body but also our soul, as well as our connection to the Creator.
What I discovered changed my life, faith, and path. It changed how I interact with people. I’ve lost connections to most of my friends and family because of the ramifications of being empowered through diet. Yes, I have lost connections! I can’t explain why so much conflict came my way during this transformation. It was a process that took years. But I noticed the stronger and wiser I got concerning my diet, the more conflict came my way. Especially from people who knew me for most of my life. As conflict increased within the physical plane of my existence, love and wisdom grew within me spiritually. My connection to the Divine grew leaps and bounds.
The main thing I discovered was that our physical bodies are only responsible for a portion of digesting the food we consume. In fact, our physical bodies are totally dependent upon small creatures invisible to the naked eye to properly digest what we place within our mouths. These invisible creatures form a body within our body that is called the microbiome. This microbiome has a direct and powerful impact on how our bodies function, as well as how our minds and nervous systems operate. These tiny creatures affect our emotions, physical well-being, and our ability to communicate clearly with God. A healthy microbiome leads to physical, emotional, and spiritual health and abundance. An imbalanced, incomplete, or toxic microbiome leads to a lack in the physical, emotional, and spiritual. What we eat has a direct and lasting impact on the health of these tiny creatures and the body within our bodies that they create.
Fasting becomes a pivotal tool when interacting with the microbiome. A proper fast can not only reset a toxic microbiome, but it can also repair and heal damage done through years of consuming an imbalanced and toxic diet. This has nothing to do with pain or religious faith. In fact, bringing spiritual or emotional ignorance into this process can hamper the magical work of a proper fast. I have found negative or ego-centered thoughts can wipe out entire colonies of good microbes within my gut. I believe this is why most religions have strict dietary requirements. What we eat has a direct impact on the invisible world living within us, impacting our entire physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies. Taken a step further, proper spiritual alignment during a fast can accelerate and multiply the healing effects of a fast.
This is how I healed myself from an incurable disease. It is also how I reached higher levels of spiritual knowledge and awareness. I learned that when fasting, one should be happy, excited even. Your body is resetting in a way that brings invisible friends into your body. Friends that help you become stronger, smarter, and more spiritually balanced. A fast also destroys colonies of toxic and poisonous microbes that are constantly destroying us from the inside out. Much of the pain we feel during a fast is the slow death of these toxic pests and all of their byproduct waste piled up inside of every nook and cranny of our bodies.
Religious folks believe the pain we feel during a fast is a test of faith. A killing of the flesh. Something to embrace as proof of a physical sacrifice done in the name of the Lord. It’s laughable to me. The pain and sacrifice of a fast are for the person fasting, not God. God may be happy we are healing our bodies through a fast, but we aren’t getting some kind of special crown placed on our heads. God isn’t going to reward us for doing what we are supposed to be doing anyway. The reward we receive comes from our own hard work and sacrifice to ourselves. Part of the reward of a successful fast is the ability to communicate more clearly with God. Not because God bestows us with something special. It is because we cleared the crap piled up between us and God. Once the crap is removed and we are clearly communicating with God, the secrets of the universe become available to us. It is within the secret realm that God rewards us. Not only in spirit, but on the physical dimension as well.