Julia Seton

“ Through fasting we may established a normal balance and come back into that place of exquisite emotional sensation, where every moment of our life is full of a sort of unexplained exaltation, which the mystics call “bliss.”
Under this new power, the flesh body takes on a new radiance; it becomes beautiful with some subtle, occult radiance half-defined. Beauty is a perfect balance in the flesh of all of life’s finer forces. ”

“ It is powerless to try to win one’s way with a physical body cold as ice, void of magnetic currents. Life must speak to life on all planes and it demands a rapturous response, whether it be from a physical, mental or emotional embrace. ”

“ They never want anything that will harm them, sometimes it is the simplest thing which will make them happy; their innate timidity, which has kept them repressed all their lives, has at the same time kept them from developing their biggest selfhood; they need a larger fling into experience, and fasting opens the door to larger opportunities. ”

“ Whenever one enters an office where heavy perfumes, burning incense, luxurious couches, cozy exotic corners and alluring pillows are a part of the business scheme, he can know that he is in the presence of a sensualist whose greatest weakness is his over-stimulation of his emotional senses.
This individual, when he fasts, should hunt the lonely mystic cell where bread and water, hard floors to sleep upon and all things unlovely and unpleasant in appearance are his daily companions; these would offset his naturally over-intensified emotions and give him spiritual backbone. ”

“ One entertains a thought and it passes into the imagination and reacts upon the feelings. The emotional fast demands that we clean up our moods. Induce the state of mind and feeling we want to live in and come away from all dark, gloomy feelings, forebodings or melancholy. ”

“ There is just as much need of emotional control today as in the past, perhaps more, for the present age is rather one of more than less self-indulgence, but seeing the spirit of the law, man need only go as far as he finds it necessary to fulfill his true spiritual being. ”

“ Return again to the light heart of youth, if you do it with tears in your eyes and a smile that you cultivate. Come out from under your load of responsibility; slip it onto the universal shoulders. Often after a true fast we will find that it has slipped off forever. ”

“ So while we fast we build for ourselves a new world made beautiful by our own inspired thinking and feeling and we let go of the sober, settled human lines of distress which have seared the brand of poverty, lack and pain into our flesh and our environment. ”

“ If you belong to their class, then while you fast whatever it is that will make you altogether happy, madly inspired, sweet, tender and loving, seek that thing and build into your consciousness all the life more abundant that you can. ”

“ Cultivate joy; laugh, leap, dance, run, smile, sing and be happy. “Except ye become as a little child ye can in no wise enter into the Kindom of Heaven” is just as true today as it was when the Master said it. ”

“ The celibate learns not to yield to the erotic sensations either of mind or body. There are many who have been so long slaves to their slightest emotions that unless all the fine sensual sides are consciously satisfied, they are unhappy and morose. ”

“ There are those who need the fast for emotional discipline and still others who need it for complete and perfect self-expression. There are many who have never in their lives done the things which they really wanted to do ”

“ It is the heart that wins and all practised arts of cold mentality and the force of physical power, become as nothing before the warm, true flush of an inspired soul.
“God measures souls, by their capacity of entertaining His best Angel–LOVE. Who loveth most, is nearest kin to God.” ”

“ The power of the body is in the things of the body. The power of the mind is in the things of the mind, and the power of the emotions is in the things of the emotions. Thought demands that it shall have legitmate and normal expression, so does emotion ”

“ The Emotional Fast, then, is for complete emotional satisfaction or for complete emotional denial and control. There are no diseases in the world harder to displace from the flesh than those brought on by abnormal emotional states. ”

“ The other side of these instructions are for the sentimental emotionalist who has so saturated his inner senses with indulgence that he knows nothing of a strong emotional control. Sex belongs to the emotional side of nature much more than to the physical or the mind. ”