Today is Ash Wednesday, the start of the Christian season of Lent, a period of simplification and fasting. Just as this morning’s saying simplified practice down to its very basic, this whole season encourages us to reflect on  all the different   inputs which come into the Body-Mind, not just those in the form of food:

The past decade has seen an unparalleled assault on our capacity to fix our minds steadily on anything. To sit still and think, without succumbing to an anxious reach for a machine, has become almost impossible… Our minds, no less than our bodies, require periods of fasting.

Alian de Botton

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