With each first day of Spring (March 21) Baha’i’s around the world welcome in another New Year–preceded by a 19-day Fast between sun up and sundown. Although fasting is an ancient religious practice, it is seldom done in current American culture. Few of us indeed in today’s modern undisciplined society, will voluntarily go without food or drink for such extended period of time for any reason, religious or otherwise, Instead we more often over-indulge in most things we have easy access to, seldom exercising any voluntary restraint.
A spiritually designated fasting period affords us an opportunity for self-discipline that an ever-increasing laxity in society fails to do. But aside from self-discipline, fasting offers something mush more valuable when done in conjunction with spirituality, joining holy spirits throughout the world! With less catering to physical desires we become more cognizant of our spiritual nature that may lie dormant and undernourished within us. It’s as being possessed with two different personalities with the dominant, more demanding one (as with individuals) always getting the most attention while the more passive one, although needing and desiring the same, is denied it. It usually takes some drastic measure or special occasion to focus attention on far too many who do not demand it.
How many souls continue to leave this earthly plane spiritually weak and undernourished because the physical side of our human nature is so demanding and, as with any spoiled brat, we try not to deny it anything within or without of our grasp. The moral deterioration of our present day society (from top level down) is indicative of the dire need for the rearranging of our personal priorities to become model demonstrations of dignity and trust! This physical side of man that we pacify for a lifetime, ends with the grave, while it is that spiritually starved soul (our reality) that must continue its weak journey Home.
History and statistics concur, the more primitive the society the more spiritual it is. Must we be reduced to such level before acknowledging and turning to the Creator-–Who created each of us for a certain purpose that no one else can fulfill? Must we be faced with famine, contamination and devastation before using our ever increasing discoveries in modern science and technology for PEACE instead of perpetual war–on some part of the world that inevitably kills innumerable innocent men, women and children, regardless of its purported purpose?
A year is the expression of a cycle and a new Springtime season marks the beginning of a new cycle in nature. Religions, too have their cycles; their Springtime, when a new Spiritual Sun appears on the horizon (also always from the East), warming the earth with new and invigorating rays; their Summer when the heat of the cycle is at its peak; their Fall when the followers begin to differ and divide into confusing factions, differing widely in intent and interpretation; and their Winters when, in mass fragmentation and confusion, men’s harts become frozen over in their remoteness from the Sun (of Reality). At this period, a New Sun appears on the spiritual horizon and a new Spiritual Springtime begins.
This time is the Promised Age! Now is the great Day of Judgement,” claim the Baha’i Holy Writings. “Soon the whole world, as in Springtime, will change its garb. The turning and falling of autumn leaves is past; the bleakness of winter is over and the Spiritual Springtime is at hand!”
May we at this Vernal Equinox, this fresh new Springtime season, voluntarily turn the mirrors of our hearts and souls toward the bright new Sun of Reality that is reviving the socially and politically winter ravaged earth, that we might individually and collectively reflect its warmth and brilliance throughout our community, our nation and the world!
Happy Baha’i New Year & Spiritual Springtime! (Investigate – 1-800-22-UNITE)
