I am fasting every month for a day and a half for the next year. I am doing this in preparation for a Vision Fast I am doing in May of 2018 in New Mexico. I know this is going to be a massive stretch for me, and so, in preparation, I am trying to stretch a little bit at a time before I go.

I have fasted three times now, and every time has been different. Sometimes physical discomfort has been the leading torment. At other times, it has been the incessant wailing of my mind. Wherever I have landed in this, each and every time I have caught the scent of a running theme in my thoughts. That being, the regular instructions coming out of my mind telling me to endure my experience in a way that gets me through it, or past it, to a time in the future when things will be better. Easier. More to my liking and comfort level.

Years ago, my yoga teacher spoke on the difference between experiencing our lives, and enduring them. Through the fasting, I have been face to face with how I endure. I feel the endurance as an inner tension; a way of trying to steer and manage, protect and get away. In the body it reveals itself as a clenched jaw, a tight gut and a body armored against what is happening. In the mind, it shows up as a big, fat “NO!” to the experience at hand.

In the midst of last night’s 3 a.m. mental and physical suffering, I had the obvious revelation that I had, in fact, chosen to have this particular experience. That contrary to the opinion of my ordinary mind, “it” wasn’t being done to me. Therefore, I had a choice about how to be with this, and more to the point, the recognition that I always have a choice about how to be with anything. And so, I chose to say “YES” to the sensations in my body and to the chaos in my mind. And then I took it further by choosing to pour it all into an intention for what I wanted. Even further, I chose to devote all of what I was doing and experiencing to Something More than me. With that, I fell asleep and awoke in the morning at ease, despite the hunger.

There is something so very powerful about choosing to experience the moments of our lives exactly as they are, while channeling it all into what we most deeply want out of Life. Add in devotion to Something More than yourself, and you have valuable instructions for a life fully lived. And isn’t that what we all want? The ability to be with all of ourselves, while being connected to Something Greater.