Kundalini and the Art of Being ... 12After sleeping heavily, I awoke to another sunny day. I decided to
make the most of the sunshine and spent the day swimming in the
ocean and reading on the beach. But conditions changed later that
afternoon. A fog bank started to roll in while I was sitting in the sand,
reading. I crawled into my tent as the fog poured in. Thick clouds ap-
peared overhead, and it started to mist. By evening it was sprinkling.
Eventually, it started to rain.
Though I hoped the storm would pass quickly, I had actually seen
the last of the sun for the remainder of my trip. I stayed warm and
dry in my tent through that evening. I cooked up some macaroni and
cheese on my camp stove and then crawled into my sleeping bag to
read my latest metaphysical exploration, Journey into Oneness. After
a while, I lay down my head to snooze and drifted into pleasant
dreams. I awoke the next morning to rain still pelting my tent.
My plan was to spend the first week of my trip hiking north, about
halfway up the thirty-five-mile stretch of continuous beach. The sec-
ond week I would turn around and go southward, along a ridge of
the steep mountain range that rises out of the ocean. Since I couldn’t
carry fourteen days of food in my pack along with all the other neces-
sary gear, I planned to do a three- or four-day fast somewhere along
the way. Since it was storming, I decided this would be a good time
to stay in my tent and fast. I hoped that it might clear up in the next
few days, before I continued hiking.
I stayed relatively dry, if claustrophobic, in my little blue tent, fast-
ing through the next three days as the rain continued to pour down.
This was the first time that I had done a fast drinking only water,
rather than juice and tea as well. It proved to be a mostly unpleasant
experience that I don’t intend to repeat—though I did come to some
important understandings as a result.
For one, I realized that, since one of my major challenges through-
out the Kundalini process was that of staying in my body, fasting
didn’t have the beneficial effects it had had for me previously. Rather
than invigorating and cleansing me as it had in the past, it made me
weak and disoriented. This may have been compounded by the lack