[kosta50]

Another plan down the tubes :(

I know ... bummer. But, interestingly enough, it didn't used to be that way. Early Christianity didn't have regulated fast, although twice weekly was always kept from Judaism. Slowly, the type of food and periods of fast were set by the Church. Monastic fasts were stricter and longer, but eventually everything evened out. Monastic orders maintain their own regimen nonetheless.

A fast is a true fast when it comes from the heart and not when it is an obligation imposed from the outside. As long as it represents obedience to someone else's directives, and is perceived as such, it is not a fast. Especially if it is done out of fear of retribution for disobedience.

I am certain that once the heart decides to fast, fasting ceases to be an obligation and it turns into a prayer. When that happens, all temptation ceases and all cravings disappear. I think the way to proper Orthodox fast is a matter of theosis, and how we experience fasting is a reflection of our position on that ladder.

[Agrarian]

I very much agree that a legalistic and punitive approach to fasting is counterproductive and misses the point. We don't fast for God's sake, we fast for our own sake and benfit. The model that has shaped my family's lives has been a positive approach that lays out the guidelines of the Church for fasting -- both the outward acts and the inward struggles that must accompany the outward acts. And there is the encouragement to "do one's best" -- with the constant striving to improve, with the eventual goal of completely following the guidance of the Church with regard to both the inner and outward struggle.

I really don't think that most of us are able to look on fasting as a result of theosis, since we haven't come anywhere near to achieving it. For most of us average folks, fasting according to the guidance of the Church is a discipline that leads us to and down that path. We have to walk before we can run. The guidance of the Church is clear that self-willed and self-directed fasting is ineffective at best, dangerous at worst.

Very few of us are going to fast consistently at all, let alone to a degree adequate to accomplishing spiritual goals just out of our own volition and when we feel it in our heart. Very few of us would fast much at all under those conditions.

When we look at the lives of the great ascetic saints (who have travelled far down the path toward theosis) held up for our example, I can't say that I have heard of any saint that has come up with fasting practices different from that which the Church recommends. What we see in most of them is that they have left these guidelines far behind -- they keep them to the letter as a matter of course -- and do a whole lot beyond that.

The fasting guidelines of the Church are the product of thousands of years of experience with average folks like us, guidelines that are going to help us down that path in a way that we would only accomplish, if at all, with great difficulty and wasted effort. The Church's guidelines, have been (so to speak) "road-tested...", whereas something we might come up with on our is generally not.