Today's Shrove Tuesday; Lent starts tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, is the start of a special Lent for me. It is the 33rd consecutive year in which I observe the fast, and being 66 years old, it marks the time that for half of my life I have been doing so.

Lent lasts 46 days if you include the Sundays, 40 if you don't (which the Catholic Church tends not to, allowing indulgence in flesh and wine on the Lord's Day). I go the whole distance, without the weekly break. 46 days is six and half weeks, or one-eighth of a year. A time for cleansing the body and focusing the mind on matters spiritual. For me, an cornerstone of my personal spiritual practice, the most important time of year.

In the run-up to Easter Sunday, the Northern Hemisphere emerges from the dead season of winter to the great re-birth of life that is spring. A natural time of joy, caused by the tilt of our planet as it proceeds around our sun. Movement away from the dark and the cold towards the light and the warmth. Fasting has traditionally been associated with the hungry time of year, as granaries and cellars run low, before new food starts to grow.

Over the past 32 years (and half of those Lents observed have been covered by the period during which I have conducted on my blog), my spiritual focus has become increasingly stronger and sharper. Looking back at those early days, I had then focused almost exclusively on 'giving up things' rather than 'doing things'; since 2020, this blog includes daily contemplations upon matters that are most important to spiritual evolution.

On the purely physical plane, Lenten practices have turned into daily good habits. Exercising (seven sets of different exercises) are now something I do every day, for example. I've cut out sugar almost entirely (exception: when it would be socially churlish to say no). Salt snacks and fast food are rarities rather than staples. I've more than halved my alcohol consumption over the past decade. And I've become vastly more ascetic in life, no longer being drawn to material baubles. And much more ecologically aware as well.

But apart from all the self-denial, Lent is a time for a spiritual summing-up, rounding up stray thoughts that have occurred to me over the past year, that have added definition to the shape of my spiritual worldview. A time to measure my progress along that eternally long path from Zero to One.

A founding premise of this blog has been that it should serve as a history of my personal development and how I perceive the world. Over the years these blog posts will serve as milestones marking the development of my thinking (and more importantly, my intuition) about the ultimate nature of reality, the nature of God and the survival of consciousness after death (aka the afterlife). How one approaches these fundamental questions has a role to play in how we live; our priorities, our goals – and our purpose in this life.

So join me on my annual journey, starting tomorrow, along those 46 days running up to Easter.

This time three years ago:
Winter returns, and I must say I'm rather glad

This time four years ago:
Bus loop opens at W-wa Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
[Warsaw's] Morskie Oko in black & white

This time seven years ago:
Preparations for Lent

This time eight years ago:
Religion and Spiritual Growth

This time seven years ago:
When trams break down

This time 12 years ago: 
Who are the thickies of Europe?

This time 13 years ago:
Oldschool Photochallenge: Response No. 2

This time 14 years ago:
Oligocene water from Jeziorki