# The Short Cut to Regeneration Through Fasting/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II
How To Fast
This "Fast" will need to be divided into instructions for physical, mental, emotional and Illuminati fasting.
There are not many things to be said; the methods, on all planes, are simple to tell, yet not so simple to do. All the written words on earth could not cover everything that the Initiate will want to know. Each faster presents a new problem, as each one will react to the Fast in his own particular way.
After years of careful scientific and psychical study, these instructions have been chosen as fundamental principles for all, which, if followed, will lead the Initiate on in perfectly normal development. It is impossible for any one to have malicious reactions in either body or mind if he follows these instructions.
There are those who have fasted outside of instructions, with just a little learning, never acquainting themselves with the real meaning of the Fast, then when they have come upon some unexplainable phenomena in mind and body they have laid the blame on fasting, when in fact it was only their own ignorant use of a great Cosmic Law.
​The first law of a Novitiate or an Initiate is to OBEY", and unless we want to do this and obey faithfully the teachings to those who know, we had better let things alone and take our chances with the great evolving masses who take life as it comes—easy, safe and slow.
There is not a single symptom of body, mind, emotion or revelation which cannot at once be reduced to normal by a single cup of coffee or tea. After one has fasted a while he will be disgusted with his own weakness and at the "hold" a little food has upon him. It will fire his spiritual pride when he finds that the very slough of despair and the valley of physical prostration, a little like a cup of coffee, tea or milk will make him feel a normal man, which without, he had not the soul power to be. The real divinity within us comes to laugh at our frail dust "damning us ever to decay and death when at our center burns the flame of God."
The method of the physical fast is very simple. Just stop eating: Eat one meal every other day for ten days. In the last two days of the fast do not drink any water, or at least only enough to keep from real thirst. The Fast is not penance,—it is a joy, and thirst that one can easily combat will do the work of empting the blood vessels. Get a big thirst, but do not push it to the point of suffering.
Why do we eat one meal every other day instead of fasting continuously? Because this is the way to fast and not destroy any of the normal functions of the body. Thus the ​destructive changes do not out-run the constructive. In this manner the gastro-intestinal tract is kept normal, and, when the FAST is ended, the faster can resume his normal meals, without discomfort, the blood current is relieved of all its waste substance, the blood cell itself exhausted without affecting the nucleus of the cell. In an uninterrupted fast the whole cell is oftimes destroyed and a long time is needed for the reconstruction of the blood current. One meal every other day comes in time to save the life of the cell but does not interfere with its reconstruction.
When should this meal be eaten? Between eleven and two every other day. The midday meal comes just when the energies are fagging and it restores the equilibrium of the body again. After the meal there comes into the body a great influx of vital energy, and this energy will make for wakefulness if the meal is taken at night or late in the day. Sleeplessness is a part of the normal reaction after a week of fasting and does not need accentuation with food.
What should be eaten at this meal? Everything and anything agreeable to the appetite and as much as one wants. Eat a mixed diet; the system needs all kinds of food from which to select the new fuel for its new release of interior substance, and a single diet will not satisfy the demands of the physical cells.
Shall we drink water with meals? If you like,—it does not matter. Do JUST as you would if you were not fasting (unless you are a hospital case under the care of a trained nurse ​and doctor, then they will know what is right for your particular case.)
The ordinary individual, fasting for a short cut to health, freedom, liberty, success, love and truth, can be just as happy and normal in his one meal as he knows how to be.
Common sense demands that he eat slowly, Fletcherizing his food. It will give him a sense of uncomfortable distension of the stomach and sometimes bloating and gas if he does not. When one feels worse after eating than before, it is because he has eaten too fast and not taken time to masticate his food.
During these ten days of abstinence from food, the body tissues will fall away; the muscles will become flabby and soft and it is here that physical exercise, breathing, massage, walking, dancing, electricity and all attention to the flesh should be given. One must break up all his old flesh tracts and lay the foundation for a new body. If he does not like his face he can change it; if he does not like his form he can give himself a new one just as easily as he can order a new suit of clothes.
All old age is in the food body. The life body is young, fresh, unwrinkled; not fat or flabby nor skinny, but just whole. When one gets his misfit food body out of the way by fasting, breathing and exercise, he gives the life cells a chance to make him a new flesh suit, and this flesh suit can be of any type that he himself decides. Our life cells are creators and they create just what we determine they shall create; ​when they have finished it, it is not their fault if we do not like ourselves. They cannot refuse to build the pattern we give them and our personality is a picture of our own thoughts of God (Good).
We know that all fever diseases kill off the food body and we have all seen instances where after a prolonged fever, the patient lost hair, was reduced to skin and bone. When he recoveered and took on flesh, he was a new creature, plus a new crop of shining hair.
We know now that fasting does just this rearrangement of the flesh, and does it without the penance of fever, pain and disease. So we just stop eating and break up our old flesh body in every way that we can; we get back to normal posture, stand erect with all our bony structure held as it should be, so that when our new body comes on it will be draped with grace over our bones and all errors of physical angles be lost.
A beautiful figure is the birthright of every one, be he tall or short, and it takes only a little conscious thought to have it so.
The face is set in lines and wrinkles or squints by habit and has grown that way. While fasting we change our expression, break up every line and wrinkle, free the muscles from the bones and set up the true circulation to the facial muscles and the throat.
A double chin is a tragedy and tells of gross neglect in diet and facial massage. It need not be, more than flesh in any other place of the body need be. When it has grown loose and flabby ​with fasting, it can be massaged and pinched away and the muscles will contract so that it will never return.
Wrinkles under the chin are caused by sagging muscles on the back of the neck. When these are tightened by fasting and massage and the new body comes on, they act as a strong guard against future looseness. Hollow cheeks and skinny faces, bones and hollow chests are all set free by the Fast, massage and exercise. When the new food body appears, the hollows are normally filled and a soft contour takes the place of the old ugliness.
Mental states and mental pressure set their stamp in the physical form and face; "As a man thinketh, so is he" and every person thirty years old wears the stigmata of his own thoughts. There is also an occupation personality,—we say "He looks like a farmer, or a preacher, or a professional man, or a business man" and this tells us something, without seeing the person, of his personality.
There is nothing so pitiful as a retired business man trying to be an idle gentleman with marks of his old business all over him. A working woman's face does not fit well the get-rich-quick situation. Child-birth leaves its mark on the faces and forms of most mothers, but there is no reason why the grandmother should bear yet upon her face and form the traces of conditions which have ceased fifteen or twenty years ago.
All such impressions are set in the food body and when this is changed, the whole personality ​takes on a new impression.
The way, then, to fast for physical change is just to stop eating, eat only one meal every other day for ten days, and with breathing exercise, massage and change of thought, the old body is destroyed and a new one is allowed to grow, embodying the image and likeness of the vision one carries of his choice of personalities.
The picture of just what you wish to look like must be held in the mind while the old body is being torn down and replaced, and the full explanation will be found further on in the chapter on the "VISION".
Special Directions
| 1. | Eat only one meal every other day for ten days. |
| 2. | Eat a mixed diet—eat of all kinds of foods—and eat between the hours of 11 a. m. and 2 p. m |
| 3. | Drink all the water possible until the 8th day then quit drinking to the point of a hard thirst. |
| 4. | Empty the gastrointestinal tract every fast day—any watery cathartic will answer the need. |
| 5. | Bathe, swim, exercise—walk—dance—climb, all things that cause rapid respiration and muscular action. |
| 6. | Sleep all you want to for the first three nights; after that keep awake,—cultivate awareness. Four hours sleep nightly during fasting is sufficient. |