THE FIERCE EMPTY

Fasting is one most ubiquitous and ancient spiritual technologies. Just about every religious & spiritual tradition I’m aware of has some tradition of fasting.

But it is one that many of us modern mesopotamians have lost connection with. Perhaps like me, you were not raised with any connection to fasting.

I only came in touch with it as part of wilderness rite-of-passage ceremonies, as both participant and guide. Over 4 days/nights, it becomes very clear how fasting can be a portal to connecting more deeply to the rhythms & wisdoms of our body, heart, psyche, and spirit. 

Fasting allows us to physically remember (or experience for the first time) what it is like to be hungry without relief. The posture of humility that accompanies it helps us touch in on how utterly dependent/interdependent we are.

Fasting is not merely abstaining from food. For me, just as important is abstaining from usual distractions, ways in which we habitually fill up, escape from the moment or parts of the world or ourselves we ignore. If we’re not always taking in, we are available for receiving or seeing in new ways. 

Fasting becomes a way of cleansing in order to listen to the living world. An emptying out to receive something anew—The Fierce Empty, as Martin Shaw calls it. 

It can open up deeper intimacies. Sometimes what we receive is clarity about what feeds us, and what we are here to offer. 

In our new moon Thrum Circle Sunday we had a rich conversation as we explored various meanings of fasting.  One of the etymologies of fasting is from Old English fæstan, meaning “to make firm; establish, confirm, pledge,” so we ended with a dark moon meditation, asking: what might we temporarily refrain from, to help support and deepen our commitment to our intentions, or goals, or purposes? 

I think of how on the dark moon we are able to see the stars more clearly and brightly. This is one gift of darkness and temporarily refraining from the incessant filling. 

As that misfit mystic Rumi put it, “There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness. We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox is stuffed full of anything, no music.”

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#TheFierceEmpty is an experimental series exploring the concept of fasting through a ecospiritual, animist, mythopoetic, and liberatory lenses. It weaves together the personal and the collective, and the presence of the moment with deep time. It is in contrast to the empty found in heart of the hungry ghost, and is curious about other species of power and possibility living inside an intentional emptying out.