Deep Minimalism: The idea that too much of anything is a bad idea. Whether it’s too much food, too many clothes, too much scrolling, overconsumption is a distraction from ourselves and our Lord.
I’ve been practicing intermittent fasting of late. Intermittent fasting is an eating pattern where you deliberately fast from eating for a period of time within a 24 hour period, the most common time split is 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of feeding. The longest period I’ve fasted recently has been a 24 hour dry fast. Every time I fast I’m confronted with the fact that I do not eat mostly for hunger but for emotional reasons that are difficult to resolve. Even within a 24 hour period of not eating, I wasn’t hungry, I was annoyed, bored, frustrated. Fasting has allowed me to realize how much of a crutch food can be and how often we use it to avoid truly experiencing our full range of human emotion.
Worship is sweetest when my belly cleaves to my back.
But fasting is also a spiritual pursuit; a multitude of Hadith and Sufi sayings urge us to fast in order to gain spiritual ranking with God. It makes me wonder, beyond being out of touch with ourselves, is our overconsumption of food also keeping us from God? When we’re indulging we allow ourselves to become out of touch, we live for the here and now of the food we’re enjoying, but what happens when we put our forks down? What happens when we can’t hide? When we have no choice but to reflect, to remove the veil and gain deeper insight in to ourselves and our purpose on earth? Physiologically fasting is relatively easy but psychologically it’s somewhat of a mind trip, time moves slower, the time stolen from us by food and its preparation is given back to us and we have to engage on a deeper level with ourselves. Fasting may not lead to spiritual enlightenment for all, but I can understand why it would, it’s a removal of a worldly distraction that can —if we allow it to, lead to a spiritual opening.
Photo by Kal Visuals on Unsplash
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Consider picking up a copy of my book, 40 Hadith of ‘Aisha, An English collection of 40 Hadith narrated by the beloved wife, scholar, and sage ‘Aisha bint Abu Bakr, available here. Also, consider signing up for our monthly newsletter here: bythefigandtheolive.com/newsletter. For speaking engagement visit Nuriddeenknight.com
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