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Originally Posted by ocean breeze
People still do these things??? I thought this was way back in ancient times. I thought now a days it would be more along the lines of suppressing your negativity and helping others to enhance your spiritual image.
I believe Buddha realized the error of this after almost dying hence his way became "the middle path."
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I think it's more common in certain spiritual traditions, but yes, it's still a thing. The major world religions have ascetic origins, preachers and saviours that taught about the 'value' of believing that the world is one of only suffering, that one needs to escape it through faith or practice, and doing so would require abstinence from any sensual pleasure and sense of self. Some people start abstaining from pleasure and start to eat less and less food to the point only a green smoothie becomes edible, then entertaining the idea that they can perhaps become breatharians. There are similarities between asceticism and health issues.
These ascetic traditions perform practices and lifestyles where they deprive themselves of food, adequate nutrition, and/or sleep, all in the pursuit of inducing a mystical experience. What is overlooked is that this sense deprivation and embrace of hunger and malnourishment is no different from someone starving in the wilds, or people suffering from eating disorders, anorexia etc. Apparently, anorexic patients can describe their condition as 'happy' and 'light-hearted'. There are simple physiological explanations, and depriving one's self leads to delusional thinking. People may confuse a decline in health with ''light-heartedness'', ''higher self'', and ''detox''.
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Originally Posted by ocean breeze
Later. I'm going to take a nap in my bed of nails soon.
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Yeah, that will certainly *destroy* your ''ego'' and the Lord will come!!
