Have you ever done something because of an inner urge, without the support of friends, family, personal habits and tastes or cultural traditions? It takes strength, determination and purpose, doesn’t it? Ironically, one of the reasons for going on a fast may be that you don’t feel any of those things at all. Along with that you may feel emotionally washed out, apathetic, unfit, unhealthy and perhaps consumed by work or inconsequential things. Perhaps there are more serious issues at play in your life!
Now, I must say at the outset that there are many ways of fasting, just as there are many reasons to fast. And, I am not recommending that you do so. I am also not presenting myself as an authority on the subject. I am just sharing my experiences with you because when I starting thinking about fasting myself, aside from the reference materials I sought out, the most important information I found helpful were the stories written about people’s own experiences while fasting.
So, if you feel the urge, are more than curious and you’re even reading all that you can on the subject; have taken whatever professional medical and other advice you respect and need; and are prepared for the reaction of caring people who might not be supportive of what you want to do, then you are welcome to read on, if only for the enjoyment of briefly sharing in my thinking and experiences.
I will give you some context for my decision to fast and what happened along the way. It was serious – magnified by my own seriousness, bordering on a messianic streak at times. It was hilarious – though I wasn’t able to laugh at myself very well. It was earth shaking emotionally and in ways totally unexpected – just what a fear-fixed, emotionally detached Taurean like me needs to be moved. It was challenging to my reliance on an overly analytical mind and a set of beliefs that I discovered later were not so grounded, but deeply rooted nevertheless.
Yet, at the time, I was blissfully unaware of these things and more. I didn’t understand and still don’t understand so much. Gratefully, the source of the inner urge was true and had caring form and most importantly I listened to that quiet, persistent urging which I believe saved my life.
I had been looking for something for quite awhile. From the five years of psychotherapy focussed on anxiety to the communication course a beautiful scientologist on the street had drawn me into based on a questionnaire which she said showed that I was “really f**ked up.”
Well, despite all of those things, I got it into my head that I wanted and needed to fast, that is not eat and drink water for an extended period of time, up to 40 days. Like I said, there are many ways to fast, for a short time, intermittently, with shakes which mimic the process and so on, but that is what I fixed upon.
Why? I’d read that people have done it for millennia, Jesus being one of the more known practitioners. I’d read that it was good for your health and spirit. I’d spent all that time in therapy just to have one significant dream with a therapist who would eat her meals while I talked. I felt like the scientologists were trying to brainwash me. And, there were others who had seemed equally dubious. Fasting was old, established and ignored by many, so it attracted me. It’s not surprising in that I’ve always felt comfortable walking in the opposite direction to the crowd.
But, how can you know you want to go somewhere or be somewhere without ever having been there before especially when everyone you know thinks it a crazy idea? The fact is, no matter how much reading I did – without the money to pay for a program with professional monitoring and support – I just didn’t know. And, this is part of the value of the process itself, it’s getting to know yourself, how you feel and what is right for you.
So, what did I do? Well, because I had never done it before, I thought about fasting, planned for it, shopped for books about it (remember, this was before the internet and google existed), talked about it (but had to be prepared for the resistance and misunderstanding there was towards it) and let it take up a good part of my time without doing anything about it for a long while.
You see, approaching the age of 30, I had just left employment which was more than just a job to me at the time. I had spent years working for causes by supporting and working for politicians in New York that were progressive, had the right views and had leadership and even charismatic qualities like John Lindsay who had been Mayor of New York City, Charles Goodell, Bella Abzug and Herman Badillo. Finally, I had ended up working for Rep. Fred Richmond of Brooklyn whom I felt when I joined him fit the bill – fighting the coffee cartels, travelling to Cuba, promoting urban gardening, speaking out on other issues of concern to me with an at times sparkling personality and the money to pay the bills.
I was fortunate in that, after working on his successful political campaign for election to the U.S House of Representatives, I was offered work as a bookkeeper in a company that he owned and progressed to researching companies to buy on the stock market and, wow, for a percentage of the profits made on any investments made upon my recommendation.
The stardust – fantasies sustained by my blinkered awareness – of this arrangement dissipated when I visited the family of my girlfriend in the home town of one of the companies I had suggested buying. They were deeply upset because they knew more about him than I did. They knew that he was known to make quick profits from ‘green mail’ – buying and selling large blocks of stock bought on the share market back to the management of or investors in companies who did not have controlling interest or else buying the company and selling all the assets (e.g. factories and land which were often significantly undervalued at original cost) and laying off all of the workers.
So, here I was looking into the eyes of people whom could be hurt by actions from my own hand. I was troubled and couldn’t rationalise this away. My good guy self-image was shaken to the core. How could I have been so naïve. So, even though I didn’t pursue and wouldn’t have accepted any percentage on that purchase, the deed had already been done. I was responsible!
Nevertheless, it took time to sink in because it was more than a job. I felt a personal loyalty to Fred. There was a kind of symbiotic, love-hate co-dependent relationship there which I think characterises at various levels some people who commit to political candidates or causes.
So, understand that when I finally did quit that job and that symbiotic relationship, it was like a spear in the heart which I’ve subconsciously carried with me my whole life.
The point here is that over time while I gave of my life and soul to such work, I became increasingly troubled by what I was doing. So, while I continued to work there, I felt increasingly drained like the victim of a vampire. Remember how in the movies vampires would repeatedly bite but not kill those they wished to join their family? So, I put on weight, apathy, disillusionment and became more unhappy as I slowly realised I was like a frog in the gradually boiling water of corruption – corruption being not the profits you make, but how you make them; not the self-image you have, but the real character of what you do.
I found that to stay and progress in the system, to make money, to have more responsibilities, the cumulative weight of each seemingly minor compromise of one’s heart-based values puts one on an inexorable path to losing one’s soul. That is what I saw happening to me, by my own hand. The difference this time was that I had a more than a sense that something was wrong and that I could really do something about it. I am not making comments on any of the individuals mentioned here, as each, for better or worse, has their own story to tell. Rather, now, I am genuinely grateful for the opportunities that I have been given and all that I learned from them.
However, at that time, I was ill-at-ease and wanted a change. I had taken a holiday trip to Europe for the first time and realised there was another whole world out there. And my world, after that taste felt quite a bit smaller. The seed of discontent blossomed from there. I would eventually return and leave for good to travel the world. But first, I was determined to find the quietest, greenest and most empty place I could where I could be with myself and fast.
Now, while this sounded good to me, in context, I had grown up in a super noisy, ungreen, dirty place called New York City. I had never really experienced what I was looking for and perhaps wouldn’t know what to do when I got there, but I plowed ahead falling back on: a Taurean single-minded focus augmented by the subliminally learned tunnel vision of my father; and finally honed organising skills learned in politics and from my bright, analytical mother.
So, I picked up a map and the most recent census data and found Montana which, outside of Alaska, was the largest State in the USA with the lowest population density.
For some reason, I decided not to drive, rather I sold my Corolla and with what little money I had flew to Los Angeles, intending to attend a series of talks by J Krishnamurti (https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/about_landing), whose thinking helped me to consider an alternative path. Though I had quit my job, as you can imagine, I carried much emotional baggage. But, at least I had no end-of-work-holiday reason to return so quickly, just not a lot of money. So, I looked to hitchhike to Kalispell in Montana after the talks.
It all seemed rather romantic to me, unconsciously drawing on movie role models like John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers and Lassie. But more, have been painfully shy, I was carrying the scars of my experiences growing up in a rough neighbourhood in public housing on the Lower East Side where I didn’t feel safe walking to the bus stop; where a policeman cited me as an 8-year-old for walking on the grass; living in a dysfunctional family environment characterised by infighting amongst a whole group of equally troubled people; attending church where the words being spoken at the altar didn’t match what was going on around and in me; and painful attempts at forming relationships like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. In any event, all of this learning fell into an emotional and mental cauldron which shaped my memories, feelings and beliefs, coming out as one story, what I thought to be me.
So I was one confused and troubled person, embarking on the re-start of a life-long journey to find myself. In hindsight, this journey was an opportunity to pause, break with the past and to begin self-healing and perhaps begin to discover who was buried beneath the veneer of a personality quite hidden, especially from myself.
And, what then and now has made it particularly difficult to change are the deeply ingrained habits of living and eating which anchored all of these negative aspects of myself. For example, diet. Now I’m not complaining about my mom, because she really tried her best with me, but out of her sight I drank copious amounts of fizzy drinks, especially Coca Cola, which are chocked full of sugar and salt so they never quench your thirst. It was so bad that I’d drink them, instead of water, whenever I was thirsty. I ate sweets and lollies, as often as I could. My favourite was a bit of a Chuckles followed by a bit of a Hershey bar.
And, on Sunday, when my parents were at church – St Augustine’s Episcopal Church on the Lower East Side of Manhattan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St.Augustine%27s_Church(Manhattan)) a historic church noted for its old slave gallery – I was down at Kossar’s Bagels & Bialys (https://kossars.com/our-story/) buying a soft, hot, fresh from the oven bialy, bagel, onion roll or some other wicked thing, then stopping at Gus’s Pickles for pickled tomatoes out of the barrel and then a 16oz bottle of coke. I’m not sure I’m doing you a favour by telling you this because the smells were exquisite and intoxicating. And perhaps you’ll get an idea of why it is so hard to change when you have such pleasant multisensory memories of things that over time, in quantity, are not good for your (at least mine with what became diabetes) health. I’d go home, butter the bread, eat the pickle, drink the coke and sit down and watch a rerun of an old Laurel & Hardy movie or some such thing while complaining incessantly about and mocking the TV commercials. So, rather than being out in the world, I’d be sinking deeper and deeper into a syrupy slug-like existence and lifestyle.
There was much more, but hopefully this might give you an idea what was holding me back. Inside, at 29 years of age, was a frightened boy screaming ‘let me out of here’. And, this time, I, with the help of those spiritually who watch over me, was just beginning to listen.
At the time, the journey began as a series of things to do. In the doing was achievement and satisfaction until the next. So things were done and I was satisfied. In reality I was involved in a string of interesting, enjoyable even exciting experiences to which meaning was lost until later, but certainly seemed out of the syrup I was afraid I’d never get free of. It wasn’t until some time later that I realised that what I was trying to get away from was part of the baggage I carried with me.
It is said, and I now realise from my work with sound, that people attract to themselves in kind. So, how you feel, for example, will be reflected in the nature of what is attracted to you and vice versa. This was my experience of the first phase of the journey, hitchhiking north from Los Angeles to Montana. As you will see, my experiences going north were completely different from my journey going south, just after the fast, into Mexico. In each, I was two completely different people drawing different types of experiences which I credit to the effect of my fast.
So, off to Ojai, California, and four days of talks by Krishnamurti. And, I am sorry to say that all I can remember is his asking the audience why do you keep coming back? It’s not surprising for one who has trouble listening, doesn’t meditate and can be quite impatient.
It was October 1979, I left Ojai, intent on hitchhiking and got a ride to Santa Barbara and was dropped off on the north side of town at a place with four lanes of traffic going north. I thought, it’ll be a cinch getting a ride here with such a volume of traffic. Well, if you believe that life is filled with challenging experiences which help you to grow, this spot was perfect for me. I waited there for seven hours, but no one stopped. I stood there the whole time because I thought my ride would stop just as I turned away. Consider what that means for an impatient person.
And then, caught unawares, a pick-up truck (ute), ghost-like had stopped and its driver had already thrown my backpack into the back before I turned and ran to get into the cab. I had an unsettled feeling about the driver who seemed OK, but I shared the front seat with another young hitchhiker, lost-looking who said he hadn’t eaten in three days. I gave him all the food I had, a carrot, which he gratefully accepted.
I still felt uneasy, and it was getting dark. I asked the rather chatty driver where he was going and he said, as unexpectedly he started to turn off onto an unsigned deserted road: “Let’s go down to the beach for a picnic.” My New York antenna swivelled in focus and I said, can you let me off here? Whew! He did, but the other boy wasn’t interested. I went on, but to this day I am convinced that this fellow could have been a serial killer. I later discovered that the very area around this beach reportedly had a suspected serial killer operating there as several bodies had been found over time.
I’ll never know, but it’s like defensive driving. You drive always anticipating that the unexpected can happen anywhere anytime. Wanderers, homeless people and society’s fringe dwellers can easily disappear – as can anyone – without raising alarm. Recently, one guy confessed to killing 90 women over many years (https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/samuel-little-serial-killer-90-murders-762018/), and he’s just one they know of because…he told them! So, perhaps the fool on that occasion, I have no regrets as my journey is still teaching me to trust my own instinct and gut no matter what anyone says.
All the way to Montana (some 1,600 kms), I got rides from a string of people with whom I had little real engagement and a few with a similar feel about them. Now, of course I know, this was a reflection of my own state of mind, but also perhaps a reflection of the principal that likes attract. I don’t know but that was the character of my journey to Montana.
Now after some searching I found a place to rent for three months that summer in Big Mountain, near Kalispell, a ski resort with only a few residents that time of year. There was plenty of fresh air, pine forests, the reputed Big Sky of Montana and it was not far from Glacier National Park. The place was comfortable and there were sufficient residents that I could hitch a ride back and forth to town or go walking to my heart’s content. So, I settled in to begin my fast.
As a background for you, according to The Transformational Power of Fasting – The Way to Spiritual, Physical, and Emotional Rejuvenation by Stephen Harrod Buhner (http://www.gaianstudies.org/Stephen.html):
“We are evolutionarily designed to fast, and the body knows how to do it well. Fasting allows the body and all its systems to rest, purify, and heal. During a fast, the body enters the same cleansing and healing cycle it normally enters during sleep. As a fast progresses, the body consumes everything that is not essential to bodily functioning – including bacteria, viruses, fibroid tumours, waste products in the blood, buildup around the joints, and stored fat – and the mind and heart release their toxic buildup as well…in order to be truly transformed, you must first empty yourself.”
Other books from different perspectives include:
Religious: “God’s Chosen Fast – A Spiritual and Practical Guide to Fasting” by Arthur Wallis
Longevity: “The Miracle of Fasting” by Paul C. Bragg, N.D., Ph.D. Life Extension Specialist
Medical: “Fasting and Eating for Health” by Joel Fuhrman, M.D.
I do urge you to draw your own conclusions and take professional advice if for any reason you would like to go on a fast, but I wish you well. Be strong and you won’t be disappointed.
So what happens? Just hours into the fast, I feel hungry. I tell myself, just a bit to eat and you can start it again later. Well, I thought about that before responding. For none of the reasons discussed in those books, I decided to continue because I had come all that way and really had nothing else better to do. I found the embarrassment at going back without having done the fast about which I had made so much fuss stronger than my urge not to do it. So the depth of my commitment was weak. And, I realised – that beyond planning and understanding what, why and how I going to do a fast or anything for that matter – I have to make a decision and put my life energy into any action I take.
Living in a society where the path of least resistance is to do what we are told and encouraged to do, it takes real energy to think and really act of our own volition. I think we really do this all of the time, but we forget that power is given to others by us, not taken by them. So, in that moment, I decided to continue.
The first three days were the most difficult, as I was hungry all the time. By drinking water when I felt hungry, I could fill the stomach and tame the urge to eat.
On a fast, I had read that the body metabolism shifts in functioning after the first three days or so such that hunger disappears and starts breaking down non-essential fat, tissue, etc. which is where the main physical benefit derives from detoxification. The consumption of water throughout is essential in part to help flush out all of the stored toxins emerging from the breakdown of non-essentials by the body’s metabolism.
I can confirm that that was my experience. My hunger disappeared after the third day such that I could visit stores in Kalispell and calmly walk all over smelling the foods, spices, herbs and just about everything I could stick my nose into with immense pleasure without feeling any urge to eat at all.
Yet, this period of the fast presented some really fundamental challenges and learnings for me.
One challenge and learning from this phase was the tremendous amount of time I had to spend, gained time normally spent preparing for and eating a meal. Another aspect of this was the loss of time socialising with people over meals. Have you ever gone out to a meal and not eaten for any reason while everyone else did? I’ve noticed a certain discomfit both mine and theirs. Sometimes, not eating or drinking is an affront to social norms. Try refusing a drink when invited to visit the home of an Arab Bedouin, for example!
So, here I was with a lot more time than I had ever had before. At first I slept a lot. That felt good. I didn’t read because my head was in turmoil and unfocussed. Instead, I watched TV! Just where was this going?
Well, it got worse and better. As time went on, I needed less and less sleep such that I was sleeping maybe five or six hours a night. This meant that I had even more time on my hands. I did start to read and watch more TV, but discovered that my energy levels were increasing. So, I started to walk each day, but not just a little bit, but for hours and many miles/kilometres. My vision sharpened and in fact so did all of my senses. That experience, along with the smells and sounds of the forest, food being prepared, produce markets and just about every experience became more rich and enjoyable.
I joined a Bible study group of born-again Christians, having asked for Jesus to come into my life a few years earlier when drug use had started to spiral out of control. Marijuana led to cocaine and with increasing use paranoia and decreased job performance. For the first time in my life something spiritual had touched me and directly helped me. I had the strength thereafter to throw it all away, permanently. I realised that everything I could get from drugs I could get without.
For me, being born again was an awakening. It was very personal and what I felt and still feel is a direct connection and awareness of the spiritual guardianship that is always there for us when we truly need it. It does not require blind faith, because it is an ever-present loving connection, but my life is still my responsibility. By the time I began fasting, I was not a Bible-thumping Christian and the Bible itself is a good book that like any other that is better understood with heart-felt questioning. So my questions were not taken well in that group, but they felt they had to accept my presence because I could honestly affirm that I was a born-again Christian. They wouldn’t accept questions from someone not born again.
One defining moment came for me at a prayer meeting where some visitors invoked a prayer for Ronald Reagan in his work as president. I put forward my own request to pray for all those poor people who would be needlessly hurt by his welfare reform policies. No one said a word, but you could hear a pin drop. I wondered then how a grade-B actor could get elected as president and now President Trump has taken that question to a new level.
Another defining moment came another time when a member stood up and thanked the Lord for helping him out. He had recently gone bear hunting and lost his .45 handgun in the forest. However, he asked the Lord for help and was miraculously able to find it again. Well, I can’t speak for him or the Lord, but I am still speechless about the meaning of that event. I wondered, and still do, what does awareness and awakening in a spiritual sense mean?
In the same vein, I don’t think you have to be spiritually aware, nor do you necessarily become so, just because you fast though you need strong motivation to do so.
Anyway, another experience highlighted the need to attend to your physical state and message throughout a fast. I decided to go to the top of Big Mountain and walk down one of the ski slopes. Well, everything was fine until I got halfway down the slope. My leg muscles started quivering because I had reached the limit of my endurance for that type of body movement, walking down a steep hill. This was a problem because I was half way and had to push myself to continue. No matter how much I rested, my muscles told me to stop. Yet, I felt that I had no choice and continued. Later, I noticed some degree of numbness in a few places, like above the knees where I had experienced particular stress. This continued for many years.
The point here was, and really is all of the time, that it’s very important to listen to what your body is telling you. And, if you’re not sure what it means, find out. On a fast, this is very important, especially when you are on your own. Pain is your body talking to you. It’s not something to suppress or ignore. That is why some people say fasting should be supervised and there is merit to that view. In my case, I knew the risks I was taking and was prepared to accept the consequences. And, when you’ve reached the limits of your knowledge, listen to your body, your gut instinct and if you are really still the quiet voice of spirit which can have important things to say.
Anyway, after I got used to having so much time, things settled into a routine – reading, TV, walking, socialising only on occasion because I valued the peacefulness of the experience. I also started planning what I would eat when I stopped the fast.
However, while I had a new routine and sharpened senses, emotionally I was all over the place. That was difficult to cope with. There were lots of dreams which I took to writing about in my diary which became a real friend I could to about anything.
What I believe was happening, particularly midstream of the fast was that not only were toxins being released, but some of the emotional memories lodged in the tissues that were being consumed. Frankly, I don’t feel the need to have someone do a scientific study proving this point, though I think there are people who have done just that. Sometimes waves of feelings would occur for no apparent reason. And, remember that if you are alone on a fast, you won’t have interactions with other people to bring out your feelings.
Those feelings I think were quite challenging to deal with, so my activities became very important to help distract from and cope with having them.
What I did notice was that there was a shift in the quality of my experiences. So, even though the emotional turmoil at times had me questioning the whole value of the fast, different things started happening. I had hitchhiked to Missoula, the capital of Montana, just to take a look around. A fellow hard on his luck came up to me and asked for some money. Well, all I had was five dollars in my pocket, but I gave it all to him out of a feeling of compassion. He said, it wasn’t enough, but I told him it was all I had and he went away. But, the ripples from this action came back to me a few weeks later.
However, back to money. Once I paid the rent on my place, I had no need for money, no food to buy, no car to maintain, no insurance to buy – I was free! As a hitchhiker, there were really no expenses I had when I was not loking to eat. So my insurance mind would say, what if? Yet, as the fast extended in time my anxiety and those waves of feelings diminished. I found I was a much kinder or more gentle person than the person I had been growing up in New York.
These changes were subtle. Over time they were overshadowed by whatever life I was leading at the time. But, they became part of me, part of my memories, a resource that I could draw on over time as my habitual, monkey mind would try to say negative things about me. And, these different, more positive experiences were cumulative. Almost like a scale somewhere within, these actions and powerful memories started to counterbalance the negative and support a shift to becoming a new me, or rather being the me I had always been inside but suppressed and ignored.
As the fast started to draw to a close, I was happier more comfortable with myself, but still the person I had always been. But, coming off the fast had always been a concern. How would I know when to stop? I had read that hunger would return – that going past that point would mean starvation with the body consuming essential tissues with perhaps irreparable damage being done.
Uncertain about the return of hunger and prodded by the look in the eyes of a born-again Christian neighbour, I stopped the fast at 29 days with a snack of home-made popcorn. It and everything I ate including fruit and vegetables, but no meat, tasted better than they ever had before.
I gradually built up to a desired food intake such that I stopped before I felt full. Over this transition period of some two weeks my weight returned to what it was before it started, but I looked and felt different because the weight was more evenly distributed all over my body, not just my stomach as before. With all of the walking, I felt fitter. I also felt calmer and had a certain bounce to my step. What also had diminished was the sense of anxiety I had always felt when I stepped into the unknown – a real accomplishment for me. What had not changed, nor could I easily tell, was my low level of social awareness and innocence – I had and continue to have a lot to earn.
I decided to leave shortly thereafter as my money was severely depleted. I left with some $60 in my pocket with the vague intent of hitchhiking down into Mexico and then back to Los Angeles.
I left intent on visiting the Hopi indian tribe near the four corners area where four U.S. states (Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico) converge, thus there is a spot there where you can straddle and say you’ve been in all four states at once.
What stands out to me are a series of happenings along the way down to Mexico and back to LA.
I fell in with a group of people who invited me into house they were all staying in and I really enjoyed their company. I was learning how much I craved the company of people, but missed or ignored the subtle signals that my time with them had finished. I’ve always been fairly literal in my listening and just wish people would say what they mean without having to guess at it. So there was discomfit on both our parts in communicating how we each felt, but finally I left and continued on.
Later on, I stopped in a supermarket to buy a can of fish and some bread. While waiting at the checkout, a woman in front of me shoved five dollars in my hand. I was taken aback because I don’t think I looked down and out, so I asked her why she did that. She said that once someone was very kind to her son when he needed it and she was passing on the feeling. I was grateful, but also remembered the man in Missoula to whom I had given my last five dollars to.
I got a ride down to a road on the other side to a mountain pass to the ski resort of telluride. The way seemed clear and I hiked up to the pass which was over 10,000 feet and the view with dozens of snow-covered peaks spreading for miles in every direction and the ice-cold sparkling clean air were spectacular. I stopped and ate what food I had, savouring every moment. The first snow had fallen recently and remained out of sight on the other side of the pass. Not one to go back, I went down the road and found that most of it had waist-deep snow. No hint of traffic on this 4WD track, so with the confusion and lack of mental clarity that comes with the early stages of hypothermia, I slid down the mountain snow past the track’s switchbacks. Extremely lucky, or divinely protected, I missed all of the hidden rocks and other sharp objects that could have done serious damage and in a short time found myself down past most of the snow and on a manageable walk into town. A nice town, but I remember very little of it.
After that, I made it down to the four corners area which is near the Black Mesa. I was told that the Hopi prophesized, hundreds if not thousands of years ago, the end of the Fourth World (our world) when a number of signs were evident including: “earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, record flooding, wildfires, droughts, and famines”. Locals said that one of the final signs would be mining of the minerals of the Black Mesa. (https://www.crossingworlds.org/hopi-water/) At the time I was there, it was being planned with construction of a dedicated train line proceeding.
I then passed into the Navaho reservation which surrounds the Hopi reservation. I was kindly invited to share a family’s home for the night and headed next day for the Hopi village. I never got there because most of the rides were heading for Navaho farm dwellings.
I was thus taken to the home of one elderly lady whose family was assembling for a ceremony to consult with their ancestors on an issue of importance. That place was perhaps the most peaceful I’d had ever been. She was quite poor, living in an adobe house on a limited diet and a small herd of goats that provided for many of her needs. Yet, I was invited to stay overnight, as her family gathered. They had erected a teepee out back to hold the ceremony which involved the use of peyote. The medicine man arrived with his helper, the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life.
They left me in the house alone as they spent the whole night singing, dancing, drumming and talking in a language I didn’t understand. They had also left a bowl filled with peyote on the dining table. I had such an urge to take one of the bulbs. I had always wanted to go on such a trip, but I just couldn’t. There was an element of not wanting to get caught, but more that it would have been a singular mark of disrespect. I didn’t and felt the better for it. In the morning, there was such calmness as the ceremony for them hit the mark.
For me, I still wanted to head to see the Hopi, but that was not to be. The old woman asked me to stay and learn to tend her goats. I am certain that this was one of those moments, pivot points in life which could have led me down an entirely different path. I chose not to, with significant regret. I was not sure how I’d cope after my fast on her diet, but there was a strong inner pull to stay and there was the medicine man’s helper. However, I let the momentum of my existing journey carry me on, except all of the rides offered went away from the Hopi and so it was. In hindsight, I don’t think I made the wrong decision, rather all decisions seem to lead to where we are going. In this case, I think the difference was that I was aware of the meaningful choice.
I then headed south towards Pheonix where there wold be a youth hostel to stay. I was given a lift to the outskirts of Pheonix on the other side of the city from the youth hostel. The place I waited was similar to that spot in Santa Barbara where I waited for seven hours. This was a suburban street corner with four lanes of traffic each way. The prognosis was poor, but I didn’t have much choice and it was late in the day. As the sky darkened and headlights awoke, I was stuck but not feeling worried. Putting out my arm and thumb it was like fully me without pretence standing there, come what may.
Not long after dark, a van pulls up and I hop in the back. There are a few people there. The driver asks where I am going. After I say, he says the youth hostel is not in a very good neighbourhood and asks me to come to the movies with him and his friends. I say sure still not knowing where I’ll be staying and for some reason I don’t ask. The movie was pleasurable but I don’t remember it at all. Afterwards, he dropped his friends off and he and his partner took me to their suburban home. I was so tired. They offered me a shower and a bed which I gratefully accepted. In the morning, I was given a sumptuous breakfast.
Then I found out it was their bed they let me sleep in and the warmth of their hospitality and being just washed over me. He even offered me clothes to wear. Though I was sensitive enough to realise that what he was offering, including a windbreaker I really liked, he would like to have kept and he did when this time my awareness was stronger. They then dropped me off on the other side of town with a good stock of travel food and I proceeded on to Mexico.
I only spent a couple of days there but got down to the tip of the Baja peninsula and then returned back through Tijuana to Los Angeles for a plan back to New York.
Unless, you are in a laboratory, there are few objective measures for the effect of a fast. Thus, subjectively, the best results of my fast were the quality and nature of my experiences both before and after the fast. Plus, I learned a lot about myself. I hadn’t taken a particularly spiritual approach to what I was doing, rather I had learned all I could beforehand and had a safe productive experience for me.
For me the journey was everything. The ripple effects of this experience and healing have carried through my entire life. I think also that it marked a change in direction, already begun, which changed and even saved my life. Had I stayed in New York, gotten by MBA in accounting, I am certain I would have become very wealthy and even more deeply hollow emotionally. The accountant who was tutoring me at my last job in New York died of cancer. It all wasn’t for me.
Interestingly enough, I went to the dentist afterwards because one of my teeth was bothering me. He told me that the pain in this one tooth was due to spontaneous regrowth within an old cavity. He said, it happens sometimes and no one knows why! Imagine how much we could accomplish if we knew and understood what we were doing!
