I may not hope from outward forms to win, The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.    Coleridge

For some people, Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting.   These days  we are quite familiar with the latest diets and slimming fads  – and consequently put a lot of pressure on body conscious people – and they harmonize quite well with a culture preoccupied with image.  The idea of fasting, and the related notion of restraint or renunciation, however, seems somewhat alien. Because of this we lose a link to a deeper process than dieting, rooted in the unconscious. Fasting, like the silence and stillness of meditation, allow us let go of some of the normal practices of each day and we can see then what then arises in the mind. Ceasing some activities or changing routines which have become second nature can be a useful way of reminding  us to turn towards our inner life rather than distracting ourselves from it. We are challenged to declutter our busy life and see where our real priorities lie, to travel lighter.  So, “letting go”, in this sense, means not buying into automatic habits and patterns of mind, which limit us into kinds of contraction, and seeing what can be done differently. We become more fluid and can experiment with the space which this gives to act with greater creativity.

Sacrifice is an important concept for anyone interested in leading a religious life, but most people today seems to think that sacrifice means giving something up. This is how shallow our religious sense has become. Sacrifice really involves the art of drawing energy from one level and reinvesting it at another level to produce a higher form of consciousness.

Robert Johnson, Jungian Analyst