Happy Fasting!!

Today, the Baha'i Fast starts and will go on for 19 days and at the end of it, it is Naw-Ruz, when all Bahai's look forward as it marks the new year for the Baha'is!!

Here's a little something about the fasting period;

As has been the case with other revealed religions, the Bahá'í Faith
sees great value in the practice of fasting as a discipline for the soul .
Bahá'u'lláh designated a nineteen-day period each year when adult Bahá'ís fast
from sunrise to sunset each day. This period coincides with the Bahá'í month of
Ala (meaning Loftiness), from March 2 to 20, inclusive. This is the month
immediately preceding the Bahá'í new year, which occurs the day of the vernal
equinox; and the period of fasting is therefore viewed as a time of spiritual
preparation and regeneration for a new year's activities. Women who are nursing
or pregnant, the aged, the sick, the traveler, those engaged in heavy labor, as
well as children under the age of fifteen, are exempt from observance of the
Fast.

"The fasting period, which lasts nineteen days starting as a rule from
the second of March every year and ending on the twentieth of the same month,
involves complete abstention from food and drink from sunrise till sunset. 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."

Fasting is the cause of awakening man. The heart becomes tender and the
spirituality of man increases. This is produced by the fact that man's thoughts
will be confined to the commemoration of God, and through this awakening and
stimulation surely ideal advancements follow... Fasting is of two kinds,
material and spiritual. The material fasting is abstaining from food or drink,
that is, from the appetites of the body. But spiritual, ideal fasting is this,
that man abstain from selfish passions, from negligence and from satanic animal
traits. Therefore, material fasting is a token of the spiritual fasting. That
is: `O God! As I am fasting from the appetites of the body and not occupied with
eating and drinking, even so purify and make holy my heart and my life from
aught else save Thy Love, and protect and preserve my soul from self-passions...
Thus may the spirit associate with the Fragrances of Holiness and fast from
everything else save Thy mention.'

SO TO ALL BAHA'IS OUT THERE, HAPPY
FASTING AND MAY THIS FASTING PERIOD BE A TIME FOR REFLECTION, DEEPENING OF
THE SOUL!