Year of Faith

As of today I have been fasting for a full week, and I am definitely starting to see the effects of eating basically one meal a day.  I’ve been noticing that my pants keep falling off my waist, and it only just clicked for me this morning that this is probably because I have been losing weight.  I don’t know how much I’ve lost exactly, since that is a particular quantity I tend to ignore, but I can say that I’ve definitely advanced a notch on my belt.  I fell kind of good about this, since I can always stand to lose some weight.  But it’s unsettling because I’m almost-not-quite starving myself.  Not a diet plan that I would recommend.  Not feeling any more spiritual, just hungry, and occasionally moody.

I spend a lot of time focusing on the things that I have denied myself.  I plan how I break my fast every night, I think of what I’ll eat, what it will taste like, how much I’ll have.  I also have a growing catalog of video games that I want to play once I get a day off, and as for sex?  Well… I’m sure you can use your imagination.

I have definitely become very grateful for the food that I do eat, and I find myself avoiding things like fast food.  I am gravitating to things that I haven’t tried before, or things I know will be very tasty.  When you only get one meal a day, you make sure that it’s a good one.

And oh my good Godness is it ever satisfying!  Everything tastes better, it’s actually very similar to being high.  Every taste, no matter how nuanced, is heightened.  If I could drink this month I would love to have tried some wine, that would probably take my head off.  Dinner with my friends has turned into dinner and a show, as they each get to watch me go through the throws of passion as I taste for the first time in twenty-four hours.

I could wake up before sunset and have something for breakfast, but being more of an evening person (and more importantly NOT a morning person) this is somewhat problematic.  But if I want to do some of the longer obligatory prayers, and really get something out of prayer- since according to Baha’i texts prayer at times when you don’t have to think about anything else is best- then I will eventually have to face these painfully early hours.

Ugh.

Last night I had some instruction with a local Baha’i.  Let’s call him Jack.  Jack is a 70-something retired high school teacher who converted to Baha’i when he was 18.  For the last twenty years he has been informally teaching people at his home who are interested in the Baha’i faith.  Since there is no clergy and no churches in Baha’i, this kind of thing is pretty common.  In order for the Baha’i message to spread, adherents volunteer their time and expertise to teaching the faith to the unenlightened.  Of all the people this very kind man has invited into his home, about half have converted to Baha’i.

His course is four weeks long and takes the form of an hour and a half informal lecture.  He expounds on different parts of the Baha’i faith, often referring to the source texts spread liberally throughout his large and comfortable living room.  He often pauses to make sure I’m following him as I madly scribble down notes, and seems open enough to questions and dissenting opinions.  This last part is good, because I’m already starting to bump up against some Baha’i doctrine.  But first let me make sure that we’re all on the same page, I’ll share the bits of Baha’i that I learned that night.

• Adam was not the first human, rather he was the first human who became aware of God.  This is interesting, since I have often imagined something similar while working on my own religious fiction.  As far as I know, most monotheisms see Adam as the first man, full stop.  I suppose we’ll see if this is actually the case later in the year.
• The only ones who could interpret the doctrines of Baha’i were the past heads of the religion (Baha’u'llah, Shoghi Effendi, etc).  The current council that leads the faith, the Universal House of Justice, can add certain laws in order to keep the faith current, but cannot reinterpret existing doctrine.  This means that there is no theology within Baha’i, people are not free to re-imagine the faith as they want- that has all been done, and all we can do is understand it as best we can, in our own way.  For me this raises an immediate red flag, but I need to have a  bit more time with the Baha’i texts for me to properly communicate this worry.
• God is unknowable, and his message is only communicated through His various manifestations (Baha’u'llah, Jesus, Muhammad, etc.) who do not have any greater access to God than we do, they are just His conduit.  These manifestations help us to evolve our spirit so that we will be more prepared to exist as spiritual beings.
• Baha’i does not give much credence to evolution.  Jack used the term “scientism” to refer to the standard biological understanding of evolution, implying that they see it as a kind of dogma.  Instead they see the creation of life as like a seed, planted by God at the beginning, and left to flourish in all forms of life.  So, evolution does take place, but in a very specific way.
• The spirit that animates human beings and is the seat of creative thought and intelligence exists apart from our physical bodies.  Our spirits exist in a parallel, timeless and infinite realm.  The separation between that realm and our own is “but a hair” and what happens in one can affect the other.  When we die, our bodies cease to exist, and we being to live our spiritual side, using all the things we learned with our physical shells.  Therefore human beings, once created, exist forever.

I was extremely nervous at the beginning of the evening, but I really had no reason to be.  Jack is amiable and good natured and his genuine love of his religion is apparent in his lessons and character.  He has given me a lot to think about, and although I didn’t have a lot to ask him last night, next week I’ll probably talk his hear off.

I was planning on writing that previous post last night, but I ended up crashing pretty hard once I got home.  At the end of the day, as I made my way from work to the library downtown, I really started to feel the effects of the fast.  There were some predictable bodily pains, aches in my stomach and such, but there was also a feeling of focus, of concentration.  Perhaps I was just trying to ignore my own hunger, but I felt very, very focused on my own thoughts.  It was a lot like meditation actually.  It felt, well… spiritual.  Almost religious, like this feeling was important.  Considering I was reading Baha’i books throughout the day I guess this shouldn’t be a surprise, but I was really able to think clearly.  I actually felt good, like I really had a handle on what I was doing.  However, if I can learn anything from last month, it’s that I’ll have the rug pulled out from under me the moment I think I’ve come to understand anything, so I’ll just leave that as it is.  No matter how spiritual I may have felt I pretty much collapsed on my bed after I ate, so maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to praise whatever this was.

I have to say though, finally breaking down and eating something felt a little bit like defeat.  I wanted that feeling to last forever, but I was also STARVING, and as I am discovering hunger can be a powerful motivator.  I really didn’t get the same feeling this evening, I was just hungry, no closer to anything spiritual.    Still, I’m really curious to see if I can attain that same state of mind again.

I wonder how long I could last without any food at all…

I need to stop writing things on my hands. This morning I scribbled a couple of things on the side of my left hand, things to keep track of, things to remember so that they aren’t swept away by the work day. But when I go to perform my ablutions before prayer all I see is a blemish, something that could be offensive. I think the same about the scruffy stubble on my face as I rinse it. It shows that I haven’t been mindful, and I don’t want to offend.

I have mixed feelings about that thought right there. It implies that I could be offending someone other than myself. Maybe other Baha’is? Maybe God? I don’t like that this thought has so quickly and effectively taken root, infiltrating my habits overnight. However this is exactly the kind of thing that I was hoping for, a genuine experience of the religious life. So I should be happy, but still… it’s weird.

Anyway, I like my daily ablutions. Not only is there the inherent cleanliness, which is nice, there is also a feeling of a new start, a new day, a new chance and, within the context of the prayer that follows: a new deal with God, a new promise.

There are three kinds of obligatory prayers one can chose from in the Baha’i faith, and as I understand it you’re covered so long as you perform one of them every day. There is the short prayer, which I’m doing now, which is a short verse stated once a day at midday. The others, the medium and long prayers, are obviously lengthier recitations, and they are performed several times a day with accompanying prostrations, much like Muslim prayers. They include more ablutions too, one before each prayer. I’m definitely going to be attempting these longer prayers soon, since they obviously act as a catalyst for my experience of this religion.

Oh, and I have a question for any Baha’is reading this. How do you go about your ablutions? Do you just rinse your hands and face, or do you really scrub and make sure everythig is spotless? Is there an approved method in Baha’u'llah’s writings, or is it more of a personal thing?

Thanks in advance.

During the last Year of Faith I learned that fasting has a very strong moral component.  It really lets you connect with people who don’t have the means to be able to eat everyday.  But I’ll get more into that later.  There’s probably a spiritual component to it as well- since you aren’t worrying about food or other carnal things there is a lot of time for reading, prayer, and reflection, but I haven’t really gotten to that point either.

Today I really got to appreciate the physiological side of fasting.  As your body depletes it’s primary means of energy, glucose, it moves on to glycogen reserves in the liver and muscles before moving on to fatty acids.  I’m not quite sure at what point of this process that you begin to get the warm and fuzzies, but I know that at around three or four o’clock I stop feeling hungry and start to feel all full and warm inside.  I assume that this is my body burning up my plentiful reserves of backup fat.  Feel free to replace the word ‘assume’ in that sentence with ‘hope’ because that’s what I did.

Apparently short term every other day fasting can be pretty healthy for you, as can brief longer term fasts.  Anything over a month is bad news, so something like the Nineteen Day Fast is healthy for the soul and the body.

Breaking the fast is fifteen kinds of awesome.  The food tastes amazing and I really did appreciate the first meal of the day.  In addition to this, the meals you do manage to have at the end of the day take on a whole new meaning.  It’s a chance to make dinner into a big deal, a chance to enjoy yourself with friends and family, to celebrate after a difficult experience.  It must be quite fulfilling for Baha’i families, to come together for a meal and have it actually mean something.  Me?  I try to have dinner with my friends, to go out and make a big deal of it, because it is really easy to take something like this for granted, and it deserves celebrating at least once a year for a few days.

I tried and failed to pick up some Baha’i books today, but apparently my local Chapters doesn’t believe in this particular faith market.  But I’ll be damned if I leave a bookstore empty-handed, so I picked up some other titles instead.

Dharma Punx by Noah Levine.  This is something that I’ve been wanting to read for a while now.  It’s the memoir of an ex-punk who did the acid, sex, rock and roll rebellion thing, failed to find any spiritual meaning and found a kind of salvation and direction in Buddhism.  Sounds like a good time, and a great addition to my reading list for May.

Against the Stream by Noah Levine.  Lessons on Buddhism using personal anecdotes and guided meditations.  Levine uses the experiences chronicled in Dharma Punx to teach others how to escape addiction and find freedom from suffering.  Looking forward to this one too.

The Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight.  I have been looking forward to this book ever since I saw the documentary Taqwacore at last year’s Vancouver International Film Festival.  It was one of the best films that I have ever seen, and it covers the small but acute counter-culture mismash that is punk Islam, following a band of queer and Muslim punks as they travel accross the states, playing gigs and finding out what Islam means to the youth of today.  I should keep this tucked away for my month of Islam, but I may indulge for a few chapters.

“I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee.”

This is stupid…

“I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth.”

Really stupid…

“There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting.”

I can’t believe I’m saying this.  Crap, which way is East?

Such were my thoughts during my first prayer in the Year of Faith.  This simple, short prayer includes a lot of things that grate up against the principles left over from the real me, the person who I am when I’m not trying to be a Taoist, or a Satanist or a Baha’i.  The first two religions of the year fit me really well, at no point did they cross my line of self-rule.  There was no point at which I felt that the way I usually live my life was threatened, I was still the one in control of all the rules, I was still the ultimate arbiter of my life.  My autonomy is important to me and this is the first time during the year that I feel that I am being threatened by what I want to experience.

Suddenly I am poor, suddenly I am made humble, and suddenly I have been created by and for this God guy who I don’t even know.  This is going to take some time.

Before the obligatory prayers I must perform oblations- washing my hands and face, and I must also face towards the East while I recite the prayer, towards the Shrine of the Baha’u'llah in Israel.  These things help set the prayer apart from the rest of everyday life.  It makes me more aware of my body and where I am in the world in relation to the rest of the members of the Baha’i faith.  It’s a short prayer, and much like my first attempt at oral sex, it felt strange tumbling around off my tongue.  But it did feel, well, religious.  It felt like a first step.

Monotheism is going to be a hell of a hurdle for me, being an atheist.  But as a lover of religion it’s something I need to face, and this definitely won’t be my first attempt to do so.

Well, here we go again.  During this month I will be a Baha’i, one of some six million adherents around the world.  Baha’i is the first monotheistic religion I will be practicing and I have two things to look forward to already: obligatory prayer and a nineteen day fast.

There are several different forms of the obligatory prayer- a short, medium, and long version each with different acts of bowing and supplication.  The short, easy to remember version which only needs to be said once a day is as follows,

I bear witness, O my God, that Thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee.  I testify, at this moment, to my powerlessness and to Thy might, to my poverty and to Thy wealth.

There is none other God but Thee, the Help in Peril, the Self-Subsisting. [1]

Much like its parent faith Islam, these prayers are required in order to foster feelings of humility, faith, and devotion towards God, who in the Baha’i faith is the center and creator of every major religion on Earth.

The nineteen day fast stretches from March 2 to March 20, and is concludd by the Baha’i New Year, a celebration called Naw Ruz.  The fast is to be performed during daylight hours during whcih I will not be eating anything.  During the entire week I will be abstaining from carnal things like sex, alcohol, drugs, and video games (gulp).  If you can think of anything else I should avoid then I’m all ears, I really want to make these nineteen days count for something.  As to the purpose of the fast, the former head of the Baha’i Faith, Shoghi Effendi puts it quite well.

It is essentially a period of meditation and prayer, of spiritual recuperation, during which the believer must strive to make the necessary readjustments in his inner life, and to refresh and reinvigorate the spiritual forces latent in his soul. Its significance and purpose are, therefore, fundamentally spiritual in character. Fasting is symbolic, and a reminder of abstinence from selfish and carnal desires. [2]

Frankly this sounds like something I could really use, doubly so since I kind of ignored similar perscriptions during Taoism.

Wish me luck!

[1] Baha'i Reference Library- Prayers and Meditations by Baha'u'llah p. 314

[2] Baha'i Reference Library- Directives from the Gaurdian pp. 27-29

Every third Sunday of January is World Religion Day… apparently.  It is meant to be a day of interfaith talks and relations, orchestrated to bring unity to the human race, stressing what is common between the different faiths of the world.  It is an initiative that was begun in 1950 by the National Spiritual Assembly, a Baha’i organization.  Although the website says, again and again, that this is not a Baha’i event, and is attended by peoples of all faiths, it has all of the trademarks of the Baha’i perspective.  Some of the central tenets of Baha’i are the oneness of God and of religion.  The idea is that God is the same being in every religion, who has sent different envoys throughout history (Moses, Jesus, Allah, Buddha, etc.) to spread his message in a way that is appropriate to the context of each age and country.  So the Sikh, the Jain, the Zoroastrian, all of these people are carrying around ideas that may seem different, but come from a single source.

Satanism is I suppose, by it’s very definition, not included.  I fancy the Satanist in this situation could be much like the Greek goddess Eris at the wedding banquet of Thetis and Peleus.  Uninvited and pissed, the goddess of discord barges in with a golden apple that has engraved in it, “To the fairest one,” and throws it amongst the most vain and callous goddesses of Olympus, who all lay claim to it.  In order to dissuade the celestial cat fight, Zeus appoints the mortal Paris to choose the prettiest of Athena, Aphrodite, and Hera.  They all try to bribe him with various goods, Aphrodite offers him Helen of Troy, he picks to get laid, and we all know how well that worked out for everyone.

But Satan does not exist to create chaos, he is an adversary, a  counterpoint to these faiths, an example of what they tend to vilify and avoid.  So I could get right in and start something here, throw in my proverbial golden apple and dig into that centuries old hate-on these religions can have for one another.  I could talk about the implications of one God spreading very different images of himself and his requirements for being good and faithful to the same people, I could talk about the difference between a religious cause and a political or cultural cause for violence between different groups of people.  I could talk about the sheer masturbatory nature of these kinds of talks and events.  But I think Satan, rather than being the one to crash the interfaith dialogue, would be the one passing it all by to go to the really great party down the road, perhaps the same one that all the hypocritical clergymen and women would sneak into under the security of the night.  The Satanist isn’t concerned with these kinds of things.  The senility of their ideas robs their opinions and stances of any weight, “their words … are scattered, and their mouths are stopped with dust.” Let these people have their spiritual pipe dreams and their conferences, whilst the people who know go out, have fun, and live!

Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the wise to talk; one thing is certain, that life flies; one thing is certain, and the rest is lies; the flower that once has blown for ever dies.

-The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, first translation by Edward Fitzgerald