Have you ever fasted?  Lent, whose second Sunday begins tomorrow, is a good time to fast.  Mystics the world over extol the virtues of fasting; it is not a practice native to just one religion.
     So why fast?  Simply, when we give up that to which we are normally accustomed, when we deprive ourselves of what we could easily have, we come to see anew that, really, our spirits are far more important than our bodies.  Our minds may lose clarity, our bodies will wear out, but our spirits will last, indeed, last forever.  Fasting reminds us that genuine insight is born of openness to things that we can only see when we let go of the obvious, and that attaining wisdom is a function not of bodily greatness, but of submitting and taking hold of things beyond.  Try it!