Iremember the first time I truly felt the power of fasting. It was during the Bahá’í Fast, in the quiet hours before sunrise, when I woke in darkness to eat. During those still moments, I felt something unexpected: clarity. The hunger I had feared was not an enemy but a teacher. It stripped away the excess, revealing a heightened awareness, a quiet strength. Fasting was not about deprivation, but about making space – literally and symbolically.
Religious fasting has always carried a critique of the status quo. It challenges the idea that fulfilment is found in the material world. It asks us to consider the nature of our attachments and reassess what we truly need. It’s no accident that many of history’s great thinkers – Mahatma Gandhi, Simone Weil, and Nelson Mandela – used fasting not just as a spiritual discipline but as a means for stripping away illusion and encountering a deeper truth.
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