Should I Continue Fasting?
Should I Continue Fasting?
Question
Although I regularly fast on Wednesdays and Fridays, I inadvertently ate breakfast this morning (Wednesday)… Should I have continued fasting? Or should I continue the day eating regular food since the fast has already been broken?!
Answer
Keep your fast as it is. And take this as a lesson for yourself, so that you may be more careful in the days to come. And beware lest Satan tempt you to continue breaking the fast.
You broke the fast inadvertently and without your will.
So do not continue the day eating regular food by your own will!
Lest there be behind this a hidden desire for eating non-fasting food… or as the common saying goes, “When a horse falls, it rolls around in the dust.” Do not allow Satan to make you fall into despair and break your fast. Rather, convince yourself by saying, “What I did without my will, I will not continue by my will”…
It would be better to make up for your inadvertence by fasting on another day.
For example, you could fast on Thursday, as compensation for unintentionally breaking the fast on Wednesday morning. Or, you could abstain for a week from that particular non-fasting food with which you broke your fast, not eating it for a week… And trust that this compensatory fast will become firmly rooted in your subconscious mind and prevent you from repeating this inadvertence. By it, you also respond to your own desire for non-fasting food, and thereby correct another mistake… Perhaps you ask, what is it? I tell you:
The principle of abstinence is essential in fasting; therefore, you should not eat in the morning.
And because you broke this principle—the abstinence from food—and ate, you became liable to fall into that inadvertence, which was eating non-vegetarian food. Certainly, if you had abstained from food, you would have remembered perfectly that it was a fasting day. If you eat, eat only vegetarian food…
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