Essay Edition
Foundations and Forms of Fasting
I grew up thinking fasting meant that when we fast on the Jewish holiday, we do not eat anything, and it is painful. It is almost like a penance. We are suffering out of guilt or something. We are so bad, so now we are going to suffer. That is totally not what I am talking about.
I am not sure that was the original intention of the Jewish holiday, because fasting is a very spiritual thing across many traditions, religions, and spiritual paths. Essentially, fasting means something similar to what Sabbath means, or Shabbat: cessation. When we fast, we refrain from certain things. I was going to say unhealthy things, but it is really less about that. It is more about being empty.
You can do many different types of fasts. You can have the classic fast, where you just drink water. A water fast is the most extreme one. There is dietary fasting with juice, vegetable juice, and only liquids. For me, that is the primary form of fasting: a juice fast.
You could do a fruitarian fast, where you are eating fruit but not eating anything else. Fruit is extremely light, right next to a pure liquid diet. You could even do a vegetarian fast. For some people, being vegetarian is a fast. There is a health benefit because the food we consume is very light.
Then we have a whole other approach to fasting, which is perhaps to leave your diet as it is and have a whole bunch of juice throughout the day. It is positively focused. Instead of saying what not to do, you say, I am going to add this.
Seasonal Practice and Physical Renewal
Summer solstice is a very powerful time to get your spiritual energy in a beautiful place. Fasting awakens the qi. It awakens the kundalini. It is a little trick in the spiritual playbook. We fast, and all of a sudden we can meditate powerfully. That is part of the reason fasting and meditation are related.
This is how I would interpret fasting in the Jewish religion. How do you clear all the bad karma from a year of sins? You go into a deep fast, and you have a deep meditation. Without looking at the tradition too closely, I would ask what the intention is. I think that seems like the original intention. Perhaps it is, perhaps it is not, because fasting is very universal.
If once a year we do a good fast, we clear out the karma. When should we do that? It is good to align it with the cosmic power. Summer solstice is a very powerful time spiritually, so we can have a great meditation. It is a good time to meditate.
A five-day or seven-day juice fast can be very powerful. The first couple of days are a little difficult, but you are getting a lot of nutrients, and it can be powerful for your health. It is not just a spiritual benefit. It is also a bodily benefit. It allows your body to start deeply healing.
I have done weeklong and two-week fasts. It gets quite easy. All this powerful energy comes from your body when you are not weighing it down with the burden of digestion. A whole new kind of energy arises, but you have to get through the challenging part, which usually lasts three days.
After three days, you realize that this is your new normal. Your body changes. This is why I do not recommend a three-day fast. You are missing the good stuff. You have to have at least a five-day fast so that you get two days to enjoy it. You could do a one-day fast, but it is not as enjoyable. With a two-day fast, you are just going through the hard part. If you make it a little longer, you get to enjoy the fast.
The main thing I have felt that I miss is chewing on something. You start thinking, I want to chew some broccoli, please. You start craving broccoli because it is some fiber. It is a good thing if you are so healthy that you just want a piece of broccoli. That is a very healthy craving to have.
It is important to fast on organic juice and vegetables. You do not want to be flooding your body with a whole bunch of pesticides. You can build fasting into your cycle annually, quarterly, or monthly. A great thing to do is to fast every solstice and equinox. That might be optimal. You could do a more minor lunar fast, perhaps eating fruit for the day before and after the full and new moon.
You do not want to have a whole bunch of pizza and heavy food. You are not really honoring the moment spiritually. Think about that. You are going to go and indulge.
Austerity, Vitality, and Prana
Fasting is not just dietary. You are getting away from indulgence in the senses. That is a big part of it. You do not indulge in the senses in all the many ways that one can. That austerity is a clearing. Through austerity, you are clearing your space. You are clearing the momentum of selfhood.
The self gets all these habits: I have to eat. I have to watch television. I have to have sex. I have to do this or that. There are all these indulgences, and you want to nip them in the bud, to clear them from perpetuating their momentum. That austerity makes us free. It is very much a spiritual practice.
Dietary fasting is a very big part of this, but you also probably should not binge on five movies. You live in a monastic, austere way for a couple of days. Why do we do this? It is not penance. It is like cleaning your house once a quarter. It is spring cleaning.
You do not want to gain a great deal of momentum in indulgence, because if you eat a giant pie every single day, it just becomes a habit. It is no longer something you enjoy. When we say no pie for a week, absence makes the heart grow fonder. You are clearing all that momentum, and you do not take it for granted anymore.
It is not just some lofty idea. Your physiology changes. Your energy flow changes. It is easier to be grateful for warm food, whole food that you chew. Especially in our society, we do not need this much food. It is very much a habit and a lifestyle of a very abundant society.
It takes a kind of strength to fast. Maybe you just do it, and that brings the strength. You can start to reintroduce it with a very positive focus. Have a juice. I highly recommend fresh juice. Pasteurized juice is not the same. If the juice can sit on the shelf for a week, two weeks, or a month, it is not the same as a juice that will go bad. You cannot juice something fresh and leave it for three or five days. It is going to go bad.
Drink something that will go bad if you do not consume it right away, because it has vitality and life in it. You are filling your energy with life.
In yoga, there is a word called prana. Prana means the ambient energy, the life-force energy all around us. Prana is in food. When you go to the grocery store and all the vegetables are cut up and packaged, there is less prana in that. If you buy carrots without the tops, I would probably think there is less prana in them. You want food as close as possible to walking up to the tree and taking it off. It has life because a tree was just part of it.
You can tell. Does the fruit look good, or does it look dull? That vitality or dullness is something you will notice. When you eat, it is very important to pay attention to these things. Something that has just been cooked is very different from leftovers the next day. It does not have the same energy. You do not have to be rigid about this, but consider it.
Science could probably look at this and perhaps measure it in some manner, but we have an intuitive feeling. Eat a really vibrant piece of fruit, then eat something else that is not so vibrant. You can tell how you feel. The heaviness prevents the qi from moving.
My approach is to have a positive focus. If you are not going to do a fast, you can make orange juice once a day. I can make a whole glass of orange juice in two minutes. I drink it, and it is like drinking sunshine. You feel the sunshine inside of you.
When you give your body a break and a chance to heal, everything changes. People say, you look radiant. Of course you do. You gave your body a break, a chance to heal.
Personal Exploration and Dietary Experience
It is great to eat fruit. But when your body is not being burdened by digestion, something happens. There is a great relief in lifting the burden of digestion. When you do that, something special happens in the body.
Fruit is great, and you can have that, but juice is more fast-like. We are getting the essence of the fruit without the fiber. A smoothie is not a juice. A smoothie has all the same material in it as if you were to eat it. It is just really well chewed by the blender. That is still wonderful, and smoothies have their own place. You could have a smoothie fast. It is a little heavier because it has all the fiber. A juice fast is a little lighter.
Ultimately, this is a personal exploration. You have to prove these things for your own body. You have to try things. If somebody says something, you can try it and see if it is true for you. You have to give it a chance, though. If you have never done a seven-day juice fast, how could you know what it does for you? You just cannot know. You might have been missing out massively.
I think it is great to start this when you are young, but it is probably more important when you are getting a little older because you need to pull out all the magic tricks of longevity. Other things are Chinese herbs, meditation, positivity, love, and peacefulness. All of those things are great for you. In terms of diet, fasting is great.
You can also be intuitive about which fruit you eat. If you eat a cherry, it has a deep red. Spiritually, that does something for you. If you eat a kiwi, it has that tart, bright green. That does something else for your energy. If you have blueberries, they are very cooling. If you have a banana, it is very warming. If you have an orange, it is very bright. An apple is very cleansing, especially a green apple.
Notice what you eat. When I first started fasting, one of the things I did was eat quite a few apples for a few days beforehand because apples clear your digestive tract. There are all kinds of things you can do to clear it.
Evidence, Experience, and Interpretation
Whether or not there is scientific evidence has a lot to do with whether some scientist was able to measure something. Some people may not be able to give me scientific evidence of enlightenment states. They could look at the brain waves, but that does not mean they know what the state is. They can measure some things, but they cannot prove these things. That is why you have to explore them.
This is also ancient wisdom and my own experience. When I fast, I can see and feel changes in my body. When I ate only fruit for four months, I was gorging on fruit every day. I had giant bowls of fruit salad three times a day, and I lost twenty-five pounds. I was the lowest weight I had ever been as an adult, with 9 percent body fat. It was very powerful for my qi.
When I first did a juice fast, I had lots of beets and kale, tons of vegetables. It was a mixture. If you have a giant glass of dark red and green vegetable juice, you are flooding yourself with minerals, micronutrients, and vitamins. Beets, kale, carrots, and half an apple can give it a little sweetness. Or you can be really austere about it and just have the vegetables.
You have to explore. You have to notice what happens in your own body. You have to prove these things for yourself.
Meditation and Renewal
Fasting and meditation are forms of clearing. Generate some love, some heart, and some light. Use the light to clear your space, to renew your nervous system, your mind, your body, and your spirit. The light is very high frequency. If you are feeling heavy or tethered to something, it can liberate us.
A lot of times when we meditate, the first part is a clearing. There is all this cacophony of movement, and it slows down because we stop feeding it. You can expect that initial part unless you are very good at maintaining stillness. But usually that means every day, multiple times a day, you clear, clear, clear, so you can always go right into stillness. You keep yourself very close to it.
It is like keeping your gas tank topped up. It goes down a little bit, and you go to the gas station. It goes down a little bit, and you keep it topped up with energy, light, and clarification.
Full Transcript
Foundations and Forms of Fasting
Adam Wes Namaste, everybody. You okay, Mom? Aw. What happened today? Well, let's generate some good vibes. We will do that.
As you can see, only my parents and my family have joined. Well, that's okay. That's the main reason I'm here, to meditate with you guys.
In fact, I'd like to talk about something that is relevant to everyone, but I especially wanted it to be for you guys because I value your health very much. The topic for today is fasting.
Now, fasting. I grew up thinking fasting meant, you know, when we fast on the Jewish holiday, we don't eat anything, and it's painful. It's almost like a penance. We're suffering out of guilt or something, right? We're so bad, so now we're going to suffer. That's totally not what I'm talking about today.
In fact, I'm not sure that was the original intention of the Jewish holiday, because fasting is a very spiritual thing across many traditions, religions, and spiritual paths. Essentially, fasting means something similar to what Sabbath means, or Shabbat: cessation.
When we fast, we say, "Okay, I'm going to refrain from these things that are..." I was going to say unhealthy, but it's really less about that. It's more about being empty.
You can do many different types of fasts. You can have the classic fast, where you just drink water. A water fast is kind of the most extreme one. You want to keep drinking water.
There is dietary fasting, so let's go through those first. You could just drink water. You could just drink juice. For me, that is actually the primary form of fasting: a juice fast. Just juice, vegetable juice, only liquids.
You could do a fruitarian fast, where you're actually eating fruit, but you're not eating anything else. Fruit is extremely light, right next to a pure liquid diet.
You could even do a vegetarian fast. For some people, being vegetarian is a fast. My mom, dad, and I are all vegetarian, so we're perpetually fasting on some level. Actually, there's a health benefit there because the food we consume is very light.
Then we have a whole other approach to fasting, which is perhaps to leave your diet as it is and have a whole bunch of juice throughout the day. It's positively focused. Instead of saying what not to do, you're saying, "Okay, I'm going to add this."
Today I had a beautiful glass of orange juice. I got the orange juicer out. I've actually been squeezing orange juice.
Seasonal Practice and Physical Renewal
Now, why are we talking about this today? It's not simply a random time. Summer solstice is a very powerful time to get your spiritual energy in a beautiful place. Fasting awakens the qi. It awakens the kundalini. It's kind of a little trick in the spiritual playbook. We say, "Okay, I'm going to fast," and all of a sudden, I can meditate powerfully. That's part of the reason they're related.
This is why I feel like, in the Jewish religion, how do you clear all the bad karma from a year of sins? Well, you go into a deep fast, and you have a deep meditation. To me, that's how I would interpret that without looking at the tradition too closely, just saying, "Okay, what's the intention here?" I think that seems like the original intention. Perhaps it is, perhaps it's not, because it's very universal.
If, once a year, we do a good fast, we clear out the karma. When should we do that? Well, it's good to align it with the cosmic power. Summer solstice is a very powerful time spiritually, so we can have a great meditation. It's a good time to meditate.
Summer solstice is on the 21st this year. It happens to be on Father's Day. That's very unusual, I think. On Sunday, have a good meditation.
What I would recommend, especially if we had a large community here of people, is this: "Okay, guys, I highly recommend, if you want to, fasting with the group." I would recommend a seven-day fast or a five-day fast. When I say that, I mean drinking juice for seven days. Have five juices a day for seven days.
The first couple of days, it's a little difficult, but you're getting a lot of nutrients, and it really is powerful for your health. Incredibly powerful. If you have any sort of issues in your body, this allows your body to start deeply healing.
It's not just a spiritual benefit. It's also a bodily benefit. Ariella, you shared something with me recently. I'm thinking of you. This actually can heal things.
There's something called the Gerson diet. The Gerson diet is largely a juice fast, actually. In the Gerson diet, which helps with cancer, he says, or his daughter says now, that basically you drink juice 13 times a day, essentially. You're just drinking. Is it eight times? Nine? Ten? Nine? Four? Four times a day?
Colleen Fourteen.
Adam Wes Fourteen, okay, great.
Let me tell you, I've done fasts. I've done a weeklong fast and two-week fasts before. It's kind of funny. One time, I went to visit my mom and dad. I arrived, and I was fasting. It had been a whole week, and I think Dad was like, "What? You still haven't eaten anything?"
But it gets quite easy. All this powerful energy comes from your body when you're not weighing it down with the burden of digestion. There's a whole new kind of energy that arises, but you have to get through the challenging part, which usually lasts three days.
After three days, you're like, "Wow, okay, this is my new normal." Your body changes. So I don't recommend a three-day fast. You're missing the good stuff. You have to at least have a five-day fast, so you get two days. You could do a one-day fast, but it's not as enjoyable. With a two-day fast, you're just going through the hard part. If you make it a little longer, you get to enjoy the fast.
The main thing I've felt that I miss is that I want to chew on something. It's funny. Get some bubble gum, or, "I want to chew some broccoli, please. Some broccoli," right? You start craving broccoli because it's some fiber. It's a good thing if you're so healthy that you just want a piece of broccoli. That's a very healthy craving to have, right?
It's very important that you fast on organic juice and vegetables. You don't want to be flooding your body with a whole bunch of pesticides.
You can build fasting into your monthly cycle. You could do it annually, monthly, or quarterly. A five-day fast once a month would be a very powerful thing to do. Think of it this way: there are people who just eat that way. You can be fruitarian. You can be liquidarian.
Ariella is laughing. You could be a liquidarian, which means you just drink liquids. It's harder to do if you don't have access to the light. You have to go into light. If you have a lot of conflict in your life, there has to be love, light, and peace. Then it's easier to do.
A great thing to do is to fast every solstice and equinox. That might be optimal, actually. You could do a more minor lunar fast, maybe something like fruitarian for the day before and after the full and new moon. That could be nice.
You don't want to go and have a whole bunch of pizza and heavy food. You're not really honoring the moment spiritually. Think about that. You're going to go and indulge.
Austerity Vitality and Prana
Let's move on. Fasting is not just dietary. You're getting away from indulgence in the senses. That's a big part of it. You don't go off and indulge in the senses in all the many ways that one can. That austerity is a clearing. Through austerity, you're clearing your space. You're clearing the momentum of selfhood.
That's a big part of this. The self gets all these habits: "I have to eat. I have to watch TV. I have to have sex. I have to do this or that." There are all these indulgences, and you want to kind of nip them in the bud, clear them from perpetuating their momentum. That austerity makes us free. It's very much a spiritual practice, right?
Dietary fasting is a very big part of this, but you also probably shouldn't binge on five movies, either, or do various things that I don't want to talk about. You live in a little bit of a monastic, austere way for a couple of days.
Why do we do this? It's not penance. It's like cleaning your house once a quarter. It's spring cleaning. You don't want to gain a great deal of momentum in indulgence, because if you eat a giant pie every single day, it just becomes a habit. It's no longer something you enjoy.
When we say, "Okay, no pie for a week," absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? You're actually clearing all that momentum, and you don't take it for granted anymore.
It's not just some lofty idea. Your physiology changes. Your energy flow changes. It's easier to be grateful for warm food, whole food that you chew. Especially in our society, we don't need this much food. It's very much a habit and a lifestyle of a very abundant society.
It's a very spiritual time to do this. You could start three days before solstice, do solstice, and continue for three days after solstice. I'm not sure if I'm going to do it this time, but I did do something. I got out my juicer, bought a bunch of oranges, and I'm trying to get myself more open. I used to fast more. I'm less in the place now. It takes a kind of strength to do it. Maybe you just do it, and that brings the strength, actually.
I'm starting to reintroduce it with a very positive focus. Have a juice. Buy a juice this week. I highly recommend fresh juice. Pasteurized juice is not the same. If the juice can sit on the shelf for a week, two weeks, or a month, it's not the same as a juice that will go bad. You can't just juice something fresh and leave it for three or five days. It's going to go bad.
Drink something that will go bad if you don't consume it right away, because it has vitality and life in it. You're filling your energy with life.
In yoga, there's a word called prana. Prana means the ambient energy, the life-force energy all around us.
I love you, Mom. I love how she listens. Look how perfect she is. This is a perfect person. This is a perfect person right there.
Prana is in food. When you go to the grocery store and all the vegetables are cut up and packaged, there's less prana in that. If you buy carrots without the tops, I would probably think there's less prana in that. You want it as close as possible to walking up to the tree and taking it off. It has life there because a tree was just part of it.
You can tell. Does the fruit look good, or does it look dull? That vitality or dullness is very much something you'll notice. When you eat, it's very important to pay attention to these things.
I shop at a really great place called Erewhon. Erewhon is a grocery store that really focuses on these values. They really care about alive fruits and vegetables. They do this in so many ways. They have unpasteurized soups you can buy. It's literally like going into a restaurant. The soup is packaged, but you want to eat it pretty quickly because it's just been made.
Actually, there's something to say about that. I know my mom loves leftovers, but when you eat something more than two hours after cooking it, it loses its prana. You don't have to be rigid about this, but consider that something that's just been cooked is very different from leftovers the next day. It doesn't have the same energy.
Science could probably look at and maybe measure this in some manner, but we have an intuitive feeling. Go and eat a really vibrant piece of fruit, then eat something else that's not so vibrant. You can tell how you feel. The heaviness prevents the qi from moving.
My approach, and what I would recommend, is to have a positive focus. If you're not going to do a fast, you can make orange juice once a day. I have this electric orange juice maker, and it's so fast and easy. I can make a whole glass of orange juice in two minutes. I drink it, and it's like drinking sunshine. You feel the sunshine inside of you, right?
If you're dealing with a health issue of any kind, I would recommend prioritizing this because it really can reverse aging. It's incredible. If I fasted for two weeks, I would look different. This little swelling on my eye would go down. All the swelling and the aggravated parts of our bodies, all the organs, our faces, our skin, everything changes. People say, "Oh, you look radiant!" Well, yeah, you just gave your body a break, a chance to heal.
Personal Exploration and Dietary Experience
Hi, Dad. Yes, question?
Colin You talked about drinking sunshine, squeezing the oranges, and getting the juice out. Why not just eat the whole orange and get the fiber with it?
Adam Wes It's great to eat fruit. But when your body is not being burdened by digestion, something happens. For a couple of days, you'll still use the bathroom. But after a few days, you won't even poop anymore. You'll poop once every five days because your body's not working to do that. There's a great relief in lifting the burden of digestion. When you do that, something special happens in the body.
Fruit is great, and you can have that, but juice is more fast-like, obviously. We're getting the essence of the fruit without the fiber. Maybe sometimes fiber is good for you.
Yes, Ariella? I love the questions. You guys are great. Oh, Ariella, your microphone is fasting. You see? The microphone confessed.
AriellaShira L Recently, I read that we can eat the skin of the orange and some other fruits. If you're putting it in the blender, can you include the skin?
Adam Wes You know how you eat the skin of a kumquat? You know those little oranges that are kind of tart? I actually have some fruits where I eat the skin because it's a little thinner, lighter.
Would I eat orange peel? Maybe put a little bit in if you want. Little pieces of orange peel can be nice, but I wouldn't put the whole peel in, personally. You could try it.
I like this question, but ultimately, this is a personal exploration. You have to prove these things for your own body. You have to try things. Don't be like, "Oh, so-and-so said..." If so-and-so said something, maybe you could say, "Okay, well, I'll try it and see if that's true for me."
You have to give it a chance, though. If you've never done a seven-day juice fast, how could you know what it does for you? You just can't know. You might have been missing out massively.
I think it's great to start this when you're young, but it's probably more important to do this when you're getting a little older because you need to pull out all the magic tricks of longevity.
This is one of the greatest methods for longevity. Other things are Chinese herbs, meditation, positivity, love, peacefulness. All of those things are great for you. But in terms of diet, fasting is great.
Once you fast like this, you probably won't want to go and have a big steak. If you eat fruit like this, you would probably be like, "Okay, well, I don't need that anymore." People get very dense and heavy. You know those guys who have really big bellies, and it looks like they have this stuff stuck in their intestines? They need to clear all of that out.
You know, the pregnant male-man look. There's stuff stuck in there. I'm not talking about fat. I'm talking about more than that.
Hi, Mom?
Colleen To add something to what Ariella said, you know Alan Bernstein? He eats kiwi with the skin on. To me, kiwi is so fuzzy, and I can't imagine it. He doesn't even blend it. He eats it straight, with the skin on, and absolutely loves it. I haven't tried it yet, but that would be interesting. Did you know that?
AriellaShira L Just recently.
Adam Wes Oh, okay.
Colleen I hear it's got incredible properties. Kiwi is supposed to be hugely great for your body.
Adam Wes Good to know. Kiwi is a great thing to have if you're eating fruitarian or just having a lot of fruit. Kiwi, yeah. Very good. There's lots of vitamin C.
Thanks, Mom, for sharing. Another thing is that you can be intuitive about which fruit. If you eat a cherry, it has a deep red. Spiritually, that does something for you. If you eat a kiwi, it has that tart, bright green. That does something else for your energy.
Colleen And there are also the golden ones, the yellow ones.
Adam Wes Okay, which have a different energy, right?
Colleen Totally different taste and energy, yeah.
Adam Wes Notice what you eat. If you have blueberries, it's very cooling. If you have a banana, it's very warming. See what I mean? If you have an orange, it's very bright. If you have a...
Colleen Apple?
Adam Wes Apple is very cleansing, especially a green apple.
In fact, when I first started fasting, one of the things to do was to eat quite a few apples for a few days beforehand because apples clear your digestive tract. There are all kinds of things you can do to clear it.
Evidence Experience and Interpretation
Colin I've been checking ChatGPT for the last few minutes about what you're talking about, and it actually contradicts everything you said.
Adam Wes Really?
Colin Yes, absolutely everything.
Adam Wes Sometimes ChatGPT will talk based on what you think. If you say, "You're wrong," it'll agree with you from a different paradigm. But what did it say?
Colin For example, it may give your digestive system...
Adam Wes Dad, you're so muffled. I can't even hear what you're saying. You have to hold your microphone properly.
A million times better, thank you.
Colin Okay. It says that a short juice fast may give your digestive system a temporary break from heavy food, but it also removes much of the fiber that helps feed beneficial gut bacteria and support gut health.
Colleen We know about that, and Adam did say that about the fiber, so it's a choice. With juicing, some people feel that it turns into too much sugar. But again, like Adam said, you do what feels right for your body.
Adam Wes You have to explore.
Colin There is little scientific evidence that juice fasts remove toxins from the body. Your liver, kidneys, lungs, and digestive system already perform detoxification continuously. This is on the basis of eating properly in the first place and not living on hamburgers and fries.
Adam Wes But this is like, if you want to get into the chat, watch this. I can get ChatGPT to say the exact opposite, I'm sure.
Colleen I think that's very wrong, Colin, because the Gerson diet actually cures people with cancer.
Colin The diet talks about live foods, not juice.
Adam Wes No, it actually is all about juice.
Also, I can tell you that if I fast, I'll literally get pimples for three days because all the toxins are pushing out of my skin. Not my forehead, but my shoulders and stuff. Then they'll go away. No more pimples at all, and I will look golden. It's incredible.
I totally disagree. Whether or not there's scientific evidence has a lot to do with whether some scientist was able to measure something. Some people may not be able to give me scientific evidence of enlightenment states. They could look at the brain waves, but that doesn't mean they know what it is. They're like, "This guy is awake, but he's sleeping." They can measure some things, but you can't prove these things. That's why you have to explore them.
Also, this is ancient wisdom. Dad, you can ask, "Tell me about the ancient wisdom." Say, "I disagree. There's ancient wisdom and my own experience of this." If you start talking like that, it'll probably say something different.
Colin Maybe ChatGPT doesn't understand the goal.
Adam Wes Yeah, that can affect it. Exactly.
Another thing is this whole idea that fruit has too much sugar. It's a completely different type of sugar. There's nothing wrong with the sugar in fruit. There's something wrong with processed sugar or concentrated sugar. The sugar in fruit does something different in your body.
Colin I agree with that. I agree with you on that one. I'm not sure that Mom does.
Colleen No, I do agree with it. Still, when you're counting calories, Colin, it's not like there are no calories.
Adam Wes That's actually another thing. There's something strange about when you eat fruit and calories. Remember last year? I lost 20 pounds eating only fruit for four months.
Colleen Hmm?
Adam Wes I was literally gorging on fruit every day. I had giant bowls of fruit salad three times a day, and I lost 25 pounds. I was the lowest I've ever been as an adult, 9 percent body fat, which was extremely healthy. I'd like to do that again. It was very powerful for my qi.
Colin I'm just checking the time. What about meditation?
Adam Wes Yeah, we should meditate.
Colleen May I just say something? You started off by talking about fasting and what you used to think about it, and I did too as a child. But then fasting actually was beautiful because it's like renewal. It's fresh. Yom Kippur didn't make me feel punished. I felt free.
Adam Wes Nice, Mom.
Colleen That's cool.
Colin Atonement.
Adam Wes You felt free. Why? What did it do? It made you feel...
Colleen It just cleans you. Before you even feel hungry, you feel like you're doing something. It just renews everything about you. What's the other word I'm looking for?
Colin Atonement.
Colleen No. Atonement is like...
Colin Like you're offloading, quieting your mind.
Colleen That too, but I'm just thinking about...
AriellaShira L You can think of atonement as at-one-ment, being one with your divine self.
Colleen That's lovely, yeah.
Adam Wes Nice. That's cool, Ariella. I've seen that before too.
I encourage you guys to try this. Dad, I know you have this thing about fiber, but you haven't felt the emptiness of drinking only juice. Your whole intestinal system feels completely unburdened and wonderful. It doesn't feel bad at all. It just feels great.
When I first did a juice fast, I had lots and lots of beets and kale, tons of vegetables. It was a mixture. If you have a giant glass of dark red-green vegetable juice, that is so healthy because you're flooding yourself with all these minerals, micronutrients, and vitamins. It's just amazing.
In fact, now that I'm talking about this, I can't believe I'm not doing it. I have to do it. Beets, kale, carrots, and then you can put half an apple in if you want, so it gives it a little sweetness. Or you could be really austere about it and just have that.
Ariella, do you want to ask something?
AriellaShira L No, I just want to say that I do have a smoothie like that, with kale, beets, and all that stuff.
Adam Wes Wonderful.
AriellaShira L I have a spoon or two with every meal as part of my dessert. But when we moved from our five-bedroom house to our little condo, it was so intense that I didn't have time to cook. I just ate raw fruits and vegetables for two weeks, and my body enjoyed it so much that I decided I was going to continue eating that kind of food.
Adam Wes Wonderful.
May we all connect with this very healthy way of eating. I'm so happy. This was actually perfect today because I'm not even going to post this, or I'm not planning to. This is our private talk about health together and a chance to connect. If some random person were here, it wouldn't be as intimate.
I mean, we could talk about it. In fact, maybe I'll do a fasting sermon next week or something. Maybe we can all say, "Hey, look at our experience. Last week, we all talked about it, and this is what it was like."
Remember, a smoothie is not a juice. A smoothie has all the same stuff in it as if you were to eat it. It's just really well chewed by the blender. That's still wonderful, and smoothies have their own place. You could have a smoothie fast. It's a little heavier because it's got all the fiber. But if you have a juice fast, it's a little lighter.
Especially if you strain the orange juice, if you want to be extreme about it. I don't like to do that, but you could even say, "Well, it's got pulp. I don't want the pulp." But a little pulp is maybe nice.
Meditation and Renewal
Good. Shall we meditate? Let's just do a ten-minute meditation.
Colin Yeah.
Adam Wes Yeah, Dad? Did he say yes? I think he said yes.
Colin I said yes.
Adam Wes Cool. Love you guys. How nice is our little routine here, getting together. I appreciate you, Ariella. Mom and Dad, ready to do it?
All right. We're going to generate some love, some heart, and some light. Try to use the light to clear your space, to renew your nervous system, your mind, your body, and your spirit.
The light is very high frequency. If you're feeling heavy or tethered to something, it can liberate us. So use the light.
When you're ready, come out of the meditation.
We have really built some beautiful energy synergy between us. In ten minutes, do you guys feel renewed? Do you feel renewed? That was very powerful. You guys feel renewed, right? Ariella, you do? Mom, you do?
Colleen Yep.
Adam Wes Dad?
Colleen I don't know if it was because you were talking about oranges, but I don't think I ever see orange. I saw orange and yellow, as well as my usual colors.
Adam Wes Let's hear your share. So you saw orange and yellow?
Colleen And other colors. I also saw a path, and the path was changing colors. The yellow brick road would become the green brick road. It wasn't brick. It was just a big, long path. But orange was prevalent, and yellow.
Adam Wes Interesting, yes.
Colleen Thank you. I enjoyed it.
Adam Wes That was wonderful. Good job. Lovely. That last song made me think of you. It always makes me think of you.
Colin Do you know what that last song is called?
Adam Wes I could tell you.
Colin It's "Liebestraum" by Strauss.
Adam Wes Nice, Dad. Yep. "Liebestraum." Cool. We have sophisticated music people here.
Ariella, how was it? Thank you, Mom. Namaste. Ariella?
AriellaShira L It was difficult for me to get into it. This whole week, since my mom passed, I haven't been meditating. In the beginning, as I tried to meditate, all these ideas that we had been talking about, the food and everything, were coming into my head. Finally, I was able to meditate.
Thoughts about my mom came into my mind. Then I was able to get back into meditation, but I really need to be doing more of this. Thank you.
Adam Wes You're welcome.
A lot of times when we meditate, the first part is a clearing. It's like there's all this cacophony of movement, and it slows down because we stop feeding it. You can expect that initial part, unless you're very good at maintaining it. But usually that means every day, multiple times a day, you clear, clear, clear, so you can always go right into stillness. You keep yourself very close to it.
It's like keeping your gas tank topped up. It goes down a little bit, you go to the gas station. It goes down a little bit, and you keep it topped up with energy, light, and clarification.
Wonderful, Ariella. Good. Thank you.
Dad, do you want to share?
Colin No.
Adam Wes Okay. This was a very special time. Mom, of course we can cancel, but this is all the more reason to maintain this very nice routine of getting together to meditate. Whether it was just the four of us, 100 people, or 1,000 people, the four of us is just as important.
Colleen Thanks.
Colin Adam, thanks. Namaste.
Adam Wes Namaste, guys. I love you. Bye.
Colin Bye.
Adam Wes Bye.
Colleen Bye.