Lose it to find it

The self to be denied is not your personhood but the small, anxious, defended self: the one that manages impressions and counts grievances and reaches for the next meal before the last one is finished. That self is exhausting to maintain. Jesus is not asking you to suffer for its own sake. He is offering to take a burden.

Fasting is the gentlest practice of self-denial there is, which is why every tradition has it. You say no to the smallest, most constant demand of the self, and you learn that you survive the no. Then the larger no's become possible: to the reactive word, the grasping, the fear. And what is found is a life that was underneath the whole time.