BODY WEIGHT:

180 lb

I've been doing 2 week long fasts on and off for about 10 years for a mix of health and spiritual reasons. I normally cap my fasts at 2 weeks regardless of how I feel, just to be safe. I also used to start my fasts with a week long juice fast followed by 2 weeks of just water, and then another week of juice. I was recently introduced to the Keto diet and was blown away by the amount of research done on ketosis that I’ve never heard of before.

So for my latest fast, I decided to do things differently and allow for an open-ended fast. I started by following the Keto diet for a week. I cut all grains, starchy fruits/veggies, and got roughly 80-90 percent of my calories from fat. My goal was to get into a state of ketosis before starting the fast. I felt pretty lousy the first 3 days and then started feeling better. On the seventh day I woke up feeling very optimistic, if not euphoric. Colors seemed more vivid, sounds were clearer than before, and I started noticing small things I usually miss or take for granted.

I started my water fast that evening. I felt really good, much better than after a week of fruit and veggie juice. So good that I decided to skip the psyllium husk powder I usually take before a fast. I had some water for dinner and spent the rest of the evening in prayer. The next week was uneventful in a good way. The mood boost I experienced after a week on Keto didn’t go away, but slowly got stronger through the first week.

(TMI Warning) The purge was really quick and only lasted a day. It was pleasant and not agonizing compared to my normal fast. I’m uncertain as to whether it was the Keto diet or excluding the fiber, but either way this was by far the least digestive discomfort I've experienced on a fast. If you've never experienced a fasting purge, it's kind of like having several enemas back to back. I'll leave you all with that.

On the 15th day of my fast, everyone in my household came down with a stomach bug of some sort. Fever, chills, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle ache, all the typical symptoms. I’m usually the first person to get sick, but this time it hardly affected me so I kept up the fast. I started feeling nauseous the next day and considered stopping the fast. I prayed for guidance and the funniest thing happened. It felt like someone had placed a hand on my head. A wonderful feeling of warmth came from it and I closed my eyes. I suddenly felt very happy, so much so that I didn’t care that I was sick. That intense feeling lasted for about 5 minutes and then settled back down to the fasting high I was already on. My nausea went away and while I still felt a little lethargic and mildly feverish, I felt fine enough to go to work.

By the next day my symptoms had cleared up and I spent the next couple weeks cleaning the house and nursing my wife and kids back to health. During that next week I experienced that same warmth and feeling of euphoria every time I would pray in the evening. Each time, the euphoria lasted a little longer and the feeling of warmth also would linger for an hour or two afterward.

On the 21st day of my fast, a couple of friends came over to pray with me. By this time I had already lost about 30 pounds during the water fast and barely fit into my clothes. My family was still sick, so we went down to my covered workshop to pray. We got down on our knees in a triangle facing each other and I distinctly remember the hard ridges of the non-slip concrete floor digging into my knees. As one of my friends began an opening prayer, I started to feel very annoyed. A feeling of panic started to set in and it felt like my vision was becoming very sharp and focused in the center. The world felt like it was vibrating very subtly, just enough to make things a little fuzzy around the edges. The panic intensified and I distinctly remember feeling like this was all a big waste of time.

I started to stand up but that now familiar feeling of a hand on my head hit me so hard that I plopped back onto my knees. I expected to feel pain, but the ground no longer felt hard. It took a moment for me to realize that my entire body was becoming quite numb. A feeling of pins and needles spread across my body. It felt like being in a mild sandstorm and the concrete beneath my knees felt like shifting sand. The warmth intensified until I felt an odd need to open my eyes. My eyes were already open, but I felt like they needed to be opened again, somehow. It felt like being in a dream, knowing I was in a dream, and trying to wake up.

I closed my eyes hard and opened them quickly. I did this several times until I saw mild light flashes and stopped. I decided to ignore the feeling and closed my eyes again. The next time I opened my eyes, I caught a brief glimpse of my friends kneeling on the floor of my shop and then it felt like my eyes were opened. Everything became washed in an intense light. For a moment, I could only see the white light. Then I saw my friends kneeling on what looked like rapidly shifting sand. It looked a bit like the static you get when your TV isn’t set up right. I could still see my friends clearly, though they appeared to have a glowing halo or aura around their bodies. Everything else was obscured by luminous and opaque white.

I closed my eyes and everything returned to normal again and then I closed my eyes to darkness. I opened them again and things were normal with just a touch of vibration. I opened them again and the vision of the sand and white void returned. I sat there blinking like this a few times and as I did the real world started looking less clear and the vision became more solid.

We were no longer in my shop, but kneeling on the floor of what appeared to be a tent. The tent was roughly square with walls made of the whitest material I have ever seen before. They looked like sheets woven from fibers of white light. I was barely aware of something like a ceiling, but it seemed more like an empty void of white rather than being made of anything. The walls appeared to slowly expand and contract, like the tent itself was alive and breathing.

After a few minutes, the vision held and even closing my eyes didn’t change anything. My friends had their heads down and eyes closed in prayer. Suddenly I felt a strange tingling at the base of my spine that was followed by a feeling of warmth. As the warmth intensified, I noticed that the wall across from me seemed to be getting brighter in the middle.

I began to hear a voice calmly explaining what I was seeing. It took a moment to realize that it was my voice. My mouth was moving and I was talking, but I didn't feel like they were my words. I felt very disconnected from my body as the light slowly intensified. Suddenly a blinding light burst through the wall as a human-looking figure came into the tent. It didn’t move the wall of the tent so much as pass through it.

It was all so bright, brighter than anything I had ever seen before. Unlike normal bright light, there was no dimming, afterimage, or pain. It was just pure and clean light. And joy. Joy like I had never known before. I could feel tears running down my cheeks. The being drew closer to us. It walked toward us, but it also stood still. The best way to describe the feeling was that this being was standing still and the whole world moved around it instead of the other way around.

As it came closer, I could make out a bowl or container in it's arms. It had two arms, two legs, a head, and a torso. The details weren't well-defined and it had a blurry and overwhelmingly bright quality to it. As it came closer, I followed the bowl with my eyes. It wasn't as bright as the walls or the being and I had a much easier time keeping an eye on it than the being itself.

Once the being of light was directly in front of me, it stopped. Or rather, the world stopped. It felt like both. I looked up at the being and then my concept of reality shattered. This single being, with a single set of human-looking arms, poured the single bowl onto all three of our heads at the same time, while facing each of us at the same time. At the time, it made sense and felt completely normal and natural. Looking back, it was anything but. If I were to draw it, the being in that moment would have 3 sets of arms holding 3 bowls, and possessing 3 faces each looking in a different direction. And still that wouldn't be right, because the being only ever had one face, one set of arms, and one bowl.

As the being began to pour the bowl out onto our heads, I closed my eyes. I braced myself, expecting the feeling of warmth and euphoria to wash over me. Nothing happened. I didn't feel anything. I looked up, feeling confused. The being, which was looking more blurred and sandy/pixelated flickered for a moment. In that moment I caught a glimpse of a very blurred and nondescript human face. It’s expression seemed to mirror the confusion I felt.
Everything got brighter and the tent seemed to rapidly grow longer. As it did, the space between us and the being also increased. As the being moved further off, everything became fuzzy again. The white faded away and was slowly replaced by the shop again. The feeling of pins and needless ran over my body and It felt like I was being buffeted by a small sandstorm again.

And then all of a sudden, it was gone. All of it. Every bit of happiness, warmth, and joy was gone. I didn't even feel the fasting high anymore. I remember looking around the shop and thinking how dull and lackluster everything looked. I felt sick to my stomach. We called off the prayer. My friends could tell I wasn’t feeling right so they helped me back to the house and left.

From that point I was constantly cold. It felt like the average temperature had dropped a good 10-20 degrees F, but the weather actually got warmer for a few days. I felt very down and depressed and lacked the energy to do much of anything. I felt like a failure. Like I had missed something. I slogged through the fast for a few more days but it felt like everything was just gone. No more feelings of comfort and warmth when praying, no more feeling like there’s a hand on my head.

So I broke the fast, marking my first 26 day water-only fast. Once the fast was over I decided to simply stick to the Keto diet instead of returning to my normal diet. After a few days of eating, the feeling of euphoria came back and I still have it. I'm not sure what happened to cause that vision. It may have had something to do with being sick during the fast, but I can’t say for sure.

Even though the actual vision was a bit disappointing in the end, it was truly an amazing experience. The fast was also transformative health-wise. In just over a month (from starting the week of keto) I went from 230 pounds to 175 pounds and a size 38 waist to a size 32. A week after the fast I went back up to 180 and have been there since. My hypertension is gone as well as my pre-diabetes. While I’m still reeling from the trip, I am planning another long fast as soon as I'm ready.

Exp Year: 2018	ExpID: 111695
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: 28
Published: Mar 9, 2018	Views: 4,051
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