How do you practice asceticism?

[u/PapaRomanos]

How do YOU personally practice it? What is your personal purpose for doing it / spiritual goal? And are you doing it all on your own or in a monastery or learning from a teacher? (If you are doing it on your own please share how you learned). I am personally very interested in asceticism and have been learning about sufis and medieval Christian mystics, while i myself am not sure currently what religion I am (all I know is that I believe in God). I feel strongly about embarking on this path but have no clue how I should start.

[u/Jolongh-Thong]

I dont do it for religious reasons, im quite agnostic. but i take a lot from their practices.

im far from perfect, and im very inconsistent at this point in my life, but here are the main ways i personally try and practice asceticism:

i do not look at porn, and i have "fasts" where i dont masturbate for a couple weeks or months. i dont have a relationship, and havent for a long time, most probably wont for a while, so abstinence is more-so of a circumstantial thing, but i wouldnt if i had a relationship most likely.

once a month, i will have a fast day. i wont eat, only drink water, from wakeup until the next morning, sometimes until the next night. also related to food, i only eat what i cook. if i am hungry and out of home, i wont purchase anything, and simply be with my hunger.

i limit myself to only one movie a week, one tv show at a time, one game at a time, one book at a time, and two albums at a time. overindulgence in media is a huge fault of mine, and this is one way for me to temper it. i also try to limit myself to physical media when possible, for going to the internet is so tricky to stay on point.

I got rid of my tv and xbox in my room, so now when i play, i have to make a big effort to drag out my new smaller tv, and plug in all of the electricals. when im done, i unplug and put them back away.

I got rid of wifi in my home, so i need to go to a library or public space to use it. this is very new, i dont know how well this will stick.

I try and practice minimalism. i always have things im getting rid of, and finding ways to reduce my belongings, to live with less and fewer. the idea is to be able to separate myself from any possession at any time, and, say there was a fire, be at peace with losing everything.

I will some days force myself into an all nighter. sometimes these happen organically with my imbalanced brain. I know sleep deprivation is a small sect of asceticism, and i never do long bouts of it, but i find the experience worthwhile.

i dont know is self harm counts. ive seen different povs, but forcing myself to endure some sort of pain, such as brutal exercises, conditioning my hands (iron fist-like conditioning), burns or cuts, etc... ways to superficially pain myself, and force my mental through it. i find it helps me a lot, but i try to be safe, and i know the implications well.

I would say my personal goal for these practices, and for practicing asceticism at all is to find the way of life that suits me best. throughout the past couple of years when i have started doing these, my life has been better. i feel better about things, and it helps me mentally a ton. I dont say i have a spiritual goal, but maybe the goal is to find some more spiritualness, however i can manage than while not believing in any religion or monkhood. it will have to be unique to me. Id love to learn more, and talk to some real monks, practitioners of asceticism, and read more about it, as well as hear about your practices aswell! pls share =D

[u/i7777i]

I have experience with both of the paths that you mentioned here, Sufism and Christianity.

I practice it all alone, started long time ago with the study of the bible. The daily goal was to cycle the book, cover to cover, to connect with it and understand it better. Maybe within a year I felt being guided to the psalms so I made it a daily thing to read the psalms, either half of them, the entire book, or some selected ones. All this with mixed old/new testament studies.

While I kept going for the bible and Christian stuff. Deep inside I wanted to experiement also with Sufism so I kept cycling the whole Quran as well. Some days read the Quran in the morning & evening and the bible morning & evening. Soon I added Hindu mantras to the mix and experimented with them as well.

Years passed. Suddenly got the idea to start experimenting with the Jesus prayer, hesychasm, felt being ready to do it. Got myself some beads, started experimenting with the goal to read it for entire days. Thanks to the previous experience I was able to get there quite fast.

I do talk to some like minded people and discuss the practices but I never took any advice from monastics or priests. The advice you get from others is not always good, not all teachers are good, you might know it much better yourself. I prefer the do it yourself approach, it feels like the progress is much faster, limitless, stronger. I create all the prayer rules and reading systems myself, sometimes with an extreme focus on the Torah, then the gospels. Maybe reading one gospel every day, maybe two, then just the Jesus prayer. Then I might get the idea to work with the psalms again, prioritizing them. Lots to choose from, rosary, liturgy of the hours, service texts of all kinds.

It has worked out very well although like this you must know what you are doing. There were days of spiritual issues, too extreme sensitivity to all energies, chaotic mind, irritation, anger. It took me many years until I figured out how to do it without the side effects. Your spiritual engine gets upgraded after a while, many upgrades.

Yes you can embark the path and go for it. Some advice, stick to one path at a time. Mixing multiple systems has bad consequences. Sufism and Christianity have very different effects energy wise and will turn your mind into a chaos. Switching between them is like going from one solid connection to another. While there is an overall openness, when you switch from A to B it can be difficult. It's about like erasing one with another, chaotic side effects. Might work for a while, might not, could turn your mind bad after some years. Lots of this stuff is individual. The quantity will crack your openess to the maximum, so you get some interesting increased awareness effect.