If you follow my blog, you may know that I have had a few interesting adventures with long water fasting over the last 18 months or so.

Originally I got into water fasting for health reasons. I completed three long water fasts over a period of 18 months, (coached and guided by Tallis Barker of Waterfasting.org.)

What most surprised me about these water fasts was the effect they had on my spiritual life.

I’ve heard stories over the years from friends who took ayahuasca or psychedelics, and experienced some kind of healing, transformation or insight that helped them evolve spiritually.

I’ve never been the kind of person who is open to taking mind-altering substances, but water fasting has been ‘my’ version of ayahuasca, DMT or LSD.

The main spiritual benefit to water fasting, as I see it, is that it switches off the ego and facilitates a shift from ego consciousness to soul consciousness. When you water fast, there’s no energy coming in and the body has to use its fat stores for energy, so it shuts off what isn’t essential.

For me at least, fasting completely switches off the ego.

The ego is the part of us that creates narratives around fear. It’s defensive and survival-based. I believe that the ego has a function that is positive, too. It protects us. It ensures that we get what we need to survive and be OK in the world.

But of course, it often goes further than that and can encourage states like greed, fear, selfishness and defensiveness.

When I water fast and the ego goes quiet, that means the mind goes quiet. There’s a lot of peace.

The last time I was fasting…

I didn’t worry.

I didn’t have the energy to anticipate what was coming up.

I didn’t have the energy to regret things

I didn’t have the energy to have FOMO or think “maybe I should be doing such-and-such” instead of being where I was

I didn’t really have any negative thinking at all.

On my most recent water fast, I became aware that the world was completely awash with love.

It felt like I was a fish and the love was the water around me.

I became so aware of the grace and love that surrounded me and surrounds us all.

It wasn’t a thought or an intellectual realisation — it was a full body and full soul experience of that Divine love.

I do know that not too many people are aware of this love or live from that place. I personally have to keep remembering.

Sometimes we can’t feel it, see it or know it is there, because:

• Our culture distracts us and we’re too busy scrolling on instagram and having FOMO or admiring someone else’s life
• We’re struggling (life here on earth can be tough)
• We’re having interpersonal challenges where we don’t feel love or loved
• We aren’t at all attuned to the spiritual realm, so we don’t know the reality of what is available
• Or we don’t believe in the spiritual realm and we think that life has no meaning

Often in order to get a first glimpse of that love that surrounds us all, we would need to do one of the following:

• Become a dedicated meditator
• Have an near death experience
• Take a psychedelic

But that unconditional love is always there, whether you can feel it or not.

It is in fact the fabric of our world and the afterlife.

It is what knitted your body together in the womb.

It is what heals your body and your mind in the night when you sleep.

It is what brought you the resources you needed, at the time when you needed them.

It is what guided you out of a dangerous situation or protected you from danger

It is what brought you your beloved partner, child or pet.

You are a part of this love.

It surrounds you and supports you in all things, whether you feel it or not.

I know this deeply and experientially, as I walked through the darkest and deepest valley of my life over the last few years and became even more aware of the beings around me:

The angels, the ascended masters, my own higher self, my guides, my deceased loved ones.

So many of them, I call them the multitude. They offered me so much support precisely because I cried out for it.

There are so many spiritual resources available to us and some of us have no idea

The best way to activate these resources is to pray.

Some of us have an uneasy relationship with prayer because it may remind us of unsettling experiences within religion.

But prayer has nothing to do with religion.

God (or Spirit) has nothing to do with religion.

God is in everything.

God is that love that we are all swimming in.

Prayer is about bringing something that is non-physical into the physical. Law of Assumption and Law of Attraction techniques, such as setting an intention, SATS or affirmations are prayers.

They take something non-physical (a desire) and through the action of prayer, bring it into the physical.

So, for me, prayer is simply about bringing things from the non-physical into the physical. Everything starts as a non-physical thing.

Prayer is also about knowing that we have a Divine spark inside of us and engaging that part of us, and allowing it to guide us to where we want to be.

We are all swimming in spiritual resources and prayer activates them.

Got no money, need to pay the rent by next week but can’t see a way to make that happen?

Pray

In a toxic relationship that you can’t seem to leave, no matter how hard you try?

Pray

Know you need to move away from your home town but no idea where to go?

Pray

Prayer opens up a bridge of incidents that brings you the resources you need.

How can you pray?

It’s really simple.

Speak out loud and say things like:

God, help me, or

Spirit, help me

Angels, help me

Help me to feel better

Help me to release this

I don’t want to do this anymore, I need your help to end this pattern/situation/relationship

I want X and I don’t know how I’m going to get there — help me

Angels, can I feel you?/ Can you make your presence felt to me? (This is a prayer I used recently and wrote about in this article.)

God, help me to use my platform in the right way. Bring the right people – students and customers – towards me, who need what I am offering (this is one I use in my work.)

Sometimes I pray multiple times per day and it elevates my life and my vibration in wonderful ways.

I love Caroline Myss’s work for prayer.

Here is a free workshop of hers that I enjoyed:

I also love Lorna Byrne’s work, and she has a video on prayer here:

“Prayer is one of the most powerful things in the world — it can move mountains”

Lorna Byrne

Prayer & Near Death Experiences

I have read about (and watched many accounts of) Near Death Experiences and one of the things that has struck me about the moment that a person who is dead (or in a coma and on life support), actually comes back into their physical body is that it often happens immediately when a loved ones prays for them, and prays that they come back.

Prayer can raise the dead.

I don’t think it can raise the long-dead, but it can bring those who are clinically dead back into body, plucking them out of the spirit world and bringing them back.

If prayer can bring the dead back, it can most certainly help solve any of our problems.

As Lorna Byrne says, prayer can move mountains.