I recently fasted for the first time. I went for 24 hours without solid food, mostly subsisting on water.

It might sound absurd, but it sneaked up on me. I didn’t have time for breakfast at home and went straight into a meeting with a client as soon as I arrived at work. Before I knew it, it was two o’clock. I went out for lunch convinced I was starving; except I wasn’t. It was at this point that I realised I was going to fast for the day.

Two weeks before my fast, due to other ongoing magical work, I revised my habits. I decided to eliminate all of those activities I indulge that have no further benefit beyond the experience itself.

I made a list and came up with:

1). Drinking strong coffee (as mentioned in a previous article).

2). Drinking alcohol.

3). Eating in restaurants/fine foods.

4). Buying books.

Now it could be argued that number 4 has many benefits beyond the simple experience of actually reading. It is also true that I am a voracious reader. But I had fallen into the habit of buying books for the same reasons I entertained the other three indulgencies – to lose myself, to get away from something, to feel good.

So I removed those habits from my life.

After caffeine withdrawal, enduring the wonderful aroma of wine quaffed by my girlfriend at dinner, finding no joy in my lunchtime break at work and narrowly avoiding buying a number of books that are ‘essential to my development’, I’m feeling happier now than any combination of those indulgences have ever made me in the past.

I also seem to have ample time to do all of those things I used to struggle to fit into a day, whilst maintaining a full time job and performing the usual chores (such as cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, etc). I’ve been performing daily magical work (up to 3 rituals in the morning, 4 at night), maintaining a blog, writing a book and maintaining a social life, and still finding myself at times with nothing to do but relax.

The fast was the icing on the cake. As I sat in work, the sound of my colleagues munching away at the socially allotted time, fully aware of the fact that my body didn’t need food yet, the full extent of my usual automation became painfully obvious. Worse still, contemplating the millions and millions of humans all over the world that must be operating in a similar robotic fashion was almost overwhelming.

I’ve been aware of the intellectual notion of walking through life ‘asleep’, and I even believed that being aware of it was enough to ensure I was ‘awake’. But it is not until you have experienced the arbitrary nature of the habits that define you that you know what being ‘asleep’ really means.

Exercise:

1. List all of those habits that you maintain that have no benefit beyond the experience itself;

2. Stop doing them for a period of two weeks (you can always start again after this period of time, so you won’t be losing those things you really can’t live without forever);

3. At the end of the two weeks, compare the old habits from step 1 with the new habits that have formed over the last two weeks.

4. Now choose who you are.