The Law of Attraction says that the mind is a magnet and attracts whatever corresponds to its ruling state. The classic example: If I tell you not to think of a pink elephant right now, what do you think of? You can't help but to think of the pink elephant, that is where your attention was drawn to.

Your intention is the same: if you intend and set out to cross a bridge by car, is it likely you would find yourself on your bike in a field? No. Because where the intention is, that's where the energy and experience follow.

Setting Your Intention

As many of us who have been working with mind/body medicine and affirmations can attest, the more you set the same intention - repeating the desired result - again and again, the greater the likelihood of experiencing what you desire.

So, when you intend to clear the body, experience your true state of abiding Bliss, the probability is great (and gets greater every time) that you will in fact experience that very thing. We create what we intend. We are creative beings, and we cannot help that we are co-creators of our life: we can only help what we are creating, by our intention.

Intention: Choosing A Different Experience

Think about how we normally consume. We usually choose to fill our shopping cart full of the foods we habitually buy. To choose new foods, even for a day, is to design a different sort of experience: it is the intention to experience something new.

I remember the first time I observed a three day juice fast. I was at the grocery store filling my cart with the items I would need for the three days - 3 gallons of grape juice, 3 gallons of distilled water, a pint of olive oil and 48 ounces of prune juice — and psychologically, just standing there in line with all this in my cart, something started to shift inside me. I had taken the necessary initial steps toward creating change in my body and in my life, and the changes had already begun.

Setting An Intention: Choosing What You're Going to Eat

The intention inherent in the process of fasting is probably the most important aspect of the experience. When you undertake a fast, you are choosing to choose what will be going into your body for the duration of the fast... ahead of time!

Our bodies are highly intelligent organisms, right down to each and every cell. In brief, when we know what we are going to do and we actively think about it ahead of time — write it down, follow a formula — we are setting an intention, and our bodies really like that. They know what to expect — they know how to handle it, because they have forewarning.

Eating With Your Hands: A Way of Predigesting Your Food?

It has been explained to me that one of the reasons it is customary in places like India and Morocco, for example, to eat with one's hand(s), is that the hands are an extension of the digestive system. Really! Your fingers have so many nerve endings in them that they begin to relay the message of the food — its temperature, spice content, etc. — to the body before it even enters the mouth, so the body can anticipate its arrival and thus have the proper digestive juices ready for whatever is being consumed. Isn't that brilliant?

The same principle is at work in the decision to fast. When you make the choice to do this chocolate fast, you are, in essence, telling your body what to expect for the twenty-four hours that you are engaged in it. You are allowing your body to prepare itself for what you will be giving it.

Eating as a Sacred Offering: Being Conscious of What We Eat

When you fast according to this method, you become more conscious about what you put in your mouth, and you approach each bite as a sacred offering to the digestive fires. In this way, each morsel that you consume becomes a representation of your desire to experience a finer state, to contact your natural state of being — Bliss — beyond this human form.

Chocolate is more than just its delicious self. Chocolate is a metaphor for our Bliss, as well a literal creator of Bliss in the body. Moreover, chocolate is a vehicle, through the Fast, for making contact with our greater Self.

Recognizing the Miracle & Blessing of Food

When we return to our 'regular' diet after a fast, we are bound to see food in a whole new light. Perhaps because we have allowed all of its essence to leave our form, and invited a cleansing to take place, the return to everyday consumption does take on an element of novelty that was absent before the fast.

Personally, this new beginning is one of my favorite parts of fasting. For we so often take the food that gives us strength for granted. We eat, day in and day out, forgetful of the miracle and the blessing that it is. When we fast for even twenty-four hours, and then begin the day after to approach food again, we cannot help but see it in a new light, treating it with more honor and respect.

Returning to the Awareness & Joy of Eating

One could express this simply as a return to the joy of eating again, and there is that. But it is awesome to think of how we regained that joy, which only two days before had to some extent been lost over the years through unmindful repetition of the act of filling one's belly.

Within the time frame set aside for the fast, we are really brought into a new relationship with the food we consume, and ultimately with all food. The act of eating becomes more about the moment and the taste in that moment than about what is to follow (the next course, the dessert, going back to work, going to work out, etc). We have the opportunity to become more aware of what is happening in our mind and in our body when we are not so consumed with what happens next.

This article was excerpted with permission from the book:

The Chocolate Fast: Embracing your Bliss one Truffle at a time!
by Stasia Bliss.

This article was reprinted with permission of the author. ©2010. http://www.neverthesamechocolate.com.

Click here for more info and/or to order this book on Amazon.

About the Author

Stasia Bliss resides in Portland, Oregon where she teaches yoga, creates raw transformational chocolate and practices life alchemy. Stasia is passionate about life and empowering others to live from a place of passion and joy. She is grateful for the experiences which encourage her to expand to become bigger and for every person she meets, in whom she can see a mirror to her inner state of being. She is thrilled to be able to share her message and life's work -- that truly -- Life is Bliss, find yours! http://www.neverthesamechocolate.com.

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