Ramadan - The Three Levels Of Fasting.

     As I recently discussed on a social media platform, Ramadan is a period of fasting and self examination. However, the purpose and value of this period is lost among the majority who claim to be Muslim. Iftar has become a dramatic public spectacle rather than one of moral piety and inward focus. For example, in most Muslim countries, it is a lavish onset of feasting and an excuse from work or other of life's obligations. Below in this article, I shall undertake to explain what its true meaning and purpose is. At least in how I interpret the Koran and the teachings of wise elders/sages from days past. I shall discuss the Sufi perspective. The true path of Islam.

Fasting in Sufi thought is never merely a legal abstention from food and drink; it is an epistemology of the self. It is a disciplined method for knowing what in us is essential and what is merely noise. Classical Sufi authors repeatedly return to the metaphor of the mirror: the heart is a reflective surface clouded by habit, appetite, fear, and vanity. Fasting is one of the most deliberate ways to polish that surface so that reality both divine and human, may appear without distortion and bare of nafs. The fast is therefore not an act of deprivation but an instrument of perception.

In Sufi literature, especially in the works of figures like Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and Jalal ad-Din Rumi also known as Melvana Rumi, fasting is described in layered terms. There is the outer fast known to all Muslims as abstaining from food, drink, and sensual indulgence from dawn to sunset. But Sufi commentators insist that this is only the first gate. Behind it lie subtler fasts that concern speech, thought, and identity itself. The Sufi does not reject the legal form; rather, the form is treated as scaffolding for inner architecture. Without the inner work, the outer fast risks becoming the theatrical endurance as you see today. With the inner work, the same fast becomes a laboratory of consciousness.

Al-Ghazali famously distinguishes three levels of fasting. The first is the fast of the common person: restraint of the stomach and the genitals. It is valid, necessary, and foundational. The second is the fast of the elect: restraint of the senses. Here the eyes fast from greed, the ears fast from gossip, the tongue fasts from harm, and the imagination fasts from fantasy that inflates the ego. This stage introduces moral psychology. The practitioner begins to notice how consumption is not limited to food; we ingest impressions constantly. Every glance, rumor, and resentment leaves a residue. The fast becomes an audit of what we allow into the psyche.

The third fast, often called the fast of the elect of the elect (deeper than the elect), is the fast of the heart itself. At this level, the practitioner attempts to abstain from everything that distracts from the Real. The heart fasts from attachment to praise, from anxiety over status, from obsessive self-reference. This is not a rejection of the world but a recalibration of its importance. The Sufi writers describe it as an interior silence in which one’s identity loosens. Hunger here is symbolic as much as physical: it creates a space where the false self weakens and a deeper awareness emerges.

From this perspective, fasting is a technology of polishing. The mirror metaphor is psychologically precise. A mirror does not create an image; it reveals what is already present. But dust accumulates. In Sufi anthropology, that dust is heedlessness and an automatic living driven by appetite and fear. Fasting interrupts automation. Hunger slows the body, and the slowing exposes patterns: irritability, pride in endurance, secret resentment, or unexpected tenderness. The practitioner is invited not to suppress these reactions but to witness them. The fast thus becomes diagnostic. It shows us to ourselves.

Rumi writes repeatedly that hunger is a teacher because it dismantles the illusion of self-sufficiency. When the body complains, the ego loses its usual confidence. In that vulnerability, a person may encounter humility not as an abstract virtue but as a lived sensation. The Sufi path treats this as polishing in action. Every moment of discomfort becomes an opportunity to see the machinery of the self turning. The clearer the seeing, the cleaner the mirror.

This is why Sufi masters insist that fasting without intention is spiritually thin. You do not fast because that is the law of the land or your household. You fast because you personally seek to attain a deeper meaning of who you are, your purpose and your relationship to your soul. True fasting is inseparable from dialogue, a continuous inward conversation. The practitioner asks: What am I actually hungry for? Food is only the surface answer. Beneath it lie hungers for recognition, greed, control, intimacy, certainty. When these deeper cravings are observed during the fast, the act becomes a form of contemplative inquiry. The believer is not performing for an audience, social or divine such as those Iftar feast gatherings you observe. The fast becomes a personal and private correspondence between the heart and its source.

Crucially, Sufism resists turning this into elitism. The “higher” fasts are not reserved for monks or saints. They are orientations available within ordinary life. A merchant can fast the tongue while bargaining. A parent can fast anger while exhausted. A worker can fast despair while under pressure. The polishing occurs in situ, in the friction of daily existence. This is why Sufi manuals repeatedly stress sincerity over spectacle. A hidden fast that is unknown to others, free of performance is often considered more transformative than a publicly admired one.

In this light, fasting with true faith is less about outward heroic denial and more about accuracy. It is the practice of aligning outward action with inward truth. When the fast is observed as a personal dialogue, it ceases to be a seasonal ritual and becomes a recurring recalibration of the self. One learns what one depends on, what one fears losing, and what remains when comforts are stripped away. What remains, the Sufis argue, is closer to the original clarity of the mirror.

The ultimate aim is not asceticism for its own sake. Sufi teachers consistently warn against mistaking harshness for holiness. The polished mirror is meant to reflect compassion, balance, and lucidity. A fast that produces arrogance or contempt is considered a failure of understanding. A fast that produces gentleness, patience, and insight is evidence that the surface is clearing.

Seen this way, fasting is an epistemic discipline: a way of knowing by subtracting. By temporarily removing what sustains the body and distracts the mind, the practitioner encounters a more unadorned version of the self. That encounter, when approached with honesty and faith, becomes a meeting point between psychology and spirituality. The Sufi tradition frames it beautifully: hunger empties the cup so that it may be filled with something truer than habit. And in that emptied, polished space, one begins to see not just a new self, but the self that was always there, waiting beneath the dust. 

The Gentile!

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