Purity, like devotion, is a virtue that may sometimes be regarded as a grand thing – high minded, even abstract. We might think we have to be free from sin, almost angelic beings, vegan, and/or celibate, to be considered pure – but that’s not really true. The essence of purity, and its practice, is something we can find in our ordinary day, and in our ordinary gestures. And as you read along dear reader, you might even be surprised to find all the ways you are already living a life of purity.
To live a life of purity, we have to live a life of truthfulness, of love.
SEE ALSO: Does “Living In The Moment” Actually Work?
What is the essence of purity?
The essence of purity is truth. And truth is about authenticity; it is about aligning ourselves to the core essence of who we are, in our heart, soul and spirit, and allowing that essence to move through our body, freely like the air we breathe and the moving waters of pure love – because love is our true essence.
As a poet and wordsmith, I love delving deeper into the worlds that live within a word. Satya is the Sanskrit word for purity, also meaning truth, essence. It refers to the virtue in Indian religions, referring to being truthful in one’s thought, speech and action. What I find beautiful about Sanskrit is that it is an intrinsically vibrational language allowing for a deeper understanding as well as awakening consciousness on all levels of our being through its sound. In this way, it connects us to form – and through that form, we can perhaps shape a more intimate understanding. There are no rights or wrongs in our interpretations or even applications – as it is an inner road, an inner experience and an inner knowing. While there are many “set” ways about how to live a life of purity shared online – I want to offer you the perspective that what matters most is the essence, and then shaping our own practices of purity as a truthfulness living. I will share some general ways – but I want you to always do what feels true for you.
What wild roses know
Before we begin exploring further, let’s think of a wild rose. Esoterically, wild is often times a word used to describe our soul’s true essence. It’s not because wild is instinctive or irresponsible – on the contrary, wild carries itself with integrity and loyalty; wild knows it’s true essence and allows it to flow through its body, like scent, like water, and like footsteps in the sands. Wild is unnamed, untamed. Wild is pure and clear. It just is as is – and this is the freedom of our soul that breathes through us, like the breath of God experiencing itself through us, in each inhale and exhale, like the ebb and flow of waves. Sometimes we might think we’ve lost it, or that we have forgotten our way back to connect to it again – but it is always there, within us.
A rose has its own true essence – it’s a rose. Like Gertrude Stein famously wrote, “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose” and yet each rose will be different depending on how we nurture it, where we plant it, and how the sun’s hands will touch it. In this lies an important wisdom for us:
For our authenticity, or anything else, to grow and thrive in its essence, we need the right environment that will be supportive of it.
And sometimes, we might wake up to a dense fog or mist outside. We’ve experienced the wild rose with all of our senses before, we know its touch, its scent, and how it perfumed our hands long after we unheld it – and we know of its existence in the meadow. But a fog so opaque obscures our view, and it’s as if the rose is no longer there. A stranger may even come in our house and they wouldn’t know of our wild rose outside – but still we know it’s there. Despite confusions, despite evidence to the contrary, despite what our eyes can see or not see, we have an inner knowing. And maybe the fog will last a long time, and maybe we’ll even forget about the rose, but it is still there. Once the sky clears, perhaps the rose might even appear in a more magnificent and luminous way than before. Here is the second key:
Our purity, our essence, our truthfulness, is an inner experience, an inner knowing, and it is there, always, existing in our present moment.
Why is living in purity important?
Living in purity allows us to lead of life of more wellness, and connects us deeper to our intuition, as well as to become channels of inspired creativity. Especially in our modern day, when things feel confusing, stressful, unstable, uncertain and at times overwhelming, it is important to clear the way within us – so that we can settle in a space of greater clarity, connection and inner wisdom.
Purification practices go way back. They were also one of the main practices of the priestesses from the mystery schools – because in order to channel higher energy correctly one needs to create an inner vessel of purity and stability of inner truth, so that inspired creativity and intuition can flow through freely.
The more pure you are, the higher energy you can hold and emit externally also.
Some of the practices of purification were: generating holy emotions, which were all emotions related to the love vibration; living an authentic life; clearing and balancing the emotional, physical and mental bodies; developing discernment and clarity of mind; developing a strong spiritual core; aligning to higher principles and integrity; harnessing sexual energy and opening the creative channel; and developing the high heart which is the consciousness of unconditional pure love, also known as the Christ consciousness.
The intuitive development aspect of purification was basically focused on how as human beings we can merge with the universal love consciousness – uniting soul, heart and body. The goal of these sacred practices was to saturate the system completely into a higher energy, so that we would feel and create loving emotions within. Through the emotion of love in the heart, we can then try to maintain it and hold it as long as possible each time, so to saturate the entire psychic system with extremely high energy, which is what we describe as pure blissful love. This then generates and emits the high energy outwards, which transforms our life, both for ourselves and those who are a part of it.
Compassion, tenderness, joy, forgiveness, and openness, are all just different shapes of love, different movements of love, different speeds of love. When we express them through our actions, we become fully embodied in love, rather than only ideas and thoughts about love, like clouds flowing the sky. We have to be able to build love, contain love and emit love.
This love integration allows purification and allows us to see beyond the veils, with greater clarity. And through greater clarity – we become more discerning, which is extremely important nowadays. It is also this love that becomes our greatest protector. We access this love consciousness through the heart – through embodying love, joy, appreciation, playfulness, curiosity, creativity, dancing, singing, and showing affection in the present moment.
It is also about truth; for every priestess knew that living a life of purity essentially meant living a life of inner truth and authenticity – which is why “know thyself” is the foundation of self-development and spiritual evolution.
Living a life of purity also creates a stable vessel within us through which inspired creativity can flow freely and continuously. Our creative expression then becomes a channel of the divine and flows beautifully into the life and awareness of others, inspiring them and awakening their own unique beauty, raw creativity and inner wisdom also.
How to live in purity
Purity in our physical space
In order for love and truth to flow through us, we need to start by creating a sacred space in our environment. Our outer space is essentially an extension of our inner state of being. To live in purity, we need to take care of the place where we live – to clean our sheets, to allow fresh air to circulate in our rooms by opening the windows, and to clear away anything that no longer serves us so that we don’t live in clutter and messiness. Creating a peaceful and beautiful space allows us to have more peaceful and pure thoughts. You can read more about creating this in my article Creating Sacred Space. Our living space is also our body. It is important to keep it clean, and to cleanse and purify through water, showers and salt baths – and to remember to treat and tend to our body with the respect and loving care it deserves.
Purity in our relationships
We should be mindful of the people in our lives, and build relationships based on harmony, open communication, honesty, joy, love, understanding, acceptance and peace. Sacred relationships, whether friends, family, romantic and intimate, are based on authenticity and there is no worse feeling than being forced to be something that we are not in our connections. And when we surround ourselves with harmony, we will also have a more peaceful life. Of course we’ll have disagreements, but it is in the acceptance of our true selves and respect for another’s unique perspectives, that we can solve problems together. One true friend is worth thousands of shallow ones.
Remember the rose. It needs the right environment to thrive, just like we need the right environment for our true essence to thrive. This also means knowing and setting our boundaries clearly, whether emotionally, mentally, physically or spiritually. We also need to honour our needs of support, respect, kindness and appreciation.
Purity in food and drink
I am of the belief that to live a pure life one doesn’t have to be vegan or vegetarian or anything other than what one’s body truly needs – and that’s unique to all of us. We all have our own paths, and what matters most is that we listen to and understand the language of our body and soul. Naturally, it will guide us. Naturally, the body will begin to desire more clean food as we evolve spiritually – so we shouldn’t force it or push it before it’s ready, nor should we ever starve ourselves.
What I do believe is that we must be mindful and understand what we are taking in our system. Personally, I drink a lot of water, practice intermittent fasting and eat as cleanly as I can, plenty of fruits and salads and seafood too – but not because I should but because I naturally feel better when I do. But I also allow myself indulgences in sweetness such as chocolates and cookies, though I try not to over-indulge. When we over-indulge in anything, we ultimately lose our pleasure and taste of it, and we become less grateful for it – and this is the wisdom of this concept of purity. It is ultimately about simplicity so that we can tune into our true selves and our soul’s needs and pure desires – and understand the importance of humility, gratitude, grace and appreciation.
The same goes for relationships – when we treat people as replaceable, we stop appreciating them; when we view time as unlimited, we don’t appreciate the present moment and miss living it fully. Living in a consumerist society, both materially and emotionally, it is important to remember the value of limit-ness, so that we are more clear and pure in our intentions and actions. There is a lot of talking about transcending things nowadays – but we must first master the limitations, and be grateful for them. We must treasure one another, and the limited time we have, so that we can love more fully, truly and deeply.
Purity in thoughts and feelings
Just like food and water, we also feed ourselves with thoughts and feelings. Purification practices emphasize the continous clearing, releasing and cleansing of old patterns, wounds and outdated belief systems. Without having the clear vessel of our body, anything that flows through us, whether as thoughts or emotions, would be clouded – and it will be harder to connect to our heart. The heart is the initiatory pathway towards higher consciousness and our emotions are the vessel of our spiritual body.
To live a truthful life, we must have inner clarity. Feelings are brilliant and pure like water – there is no bad or good, they just are. Emotions too are purposeful and needed. If feelings are our inner compass, emotions are our guidance in life, if we know how to listen to them with clarity and understand them their true message.
If feelings are water, thoughts are the tea leaves we put inside it – to make our tea, also known as emotions. Depending on what tea leaves we have, that’s the tea we’ll drink. Understanding this is the key to our emotional balance – we must remain mindful of what we drink and feed ourselves with. I talk more about feelings, emotions and thoughts in my articles The Brilliancy of Feelings, The Emotional Body: Our Unique Wildland, Transforming Emotions, and Connect To The Heart.
Our thoughts create our perceptions – and they are the prism through which we perceive and view and understand the world, and the people around us. We need to keep our windows clear as much as possible so that our view is less obscured. This begins with understanding how our mind works – what thought leads to another – and what our subconscious beliefs are based on.
We have limited understanding and conditioned beliefs as human beings – and we will never understand the entirety of the world, and the mystical ways of how things work. We will never know it all. The humility in this deserves to be treasured, so that we can be more open to other perspectives and how we perceive information. We should also remain curious towards others, exploring and re-exploring their individual unique inner worlds, no matter how many years we’ve known them. There will always be a new shade to be unveiled, like a painting.
To generate holy emotions, is to generate pure love emotions from within us. Love has many shapes and forms, speeds and movements – and can come as tenderness, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, joy, curiosity, playfulness, creativity, and generosity. Whenever our world begins to look messy externally, it is almost an instict to turn that instability within and start some version of self-destruction. In these times, we should try to create more love and joy within, and in our outer space, so that we remain clear and peaceful in thought and feeling.
Purity in words
To live a pure life also means to infuse truthfulness and love in our words, both written and oral. This doesn’t mean to be hurtful towards others with our “truths” and opinions of them – but it means to be truthful towards ourselves, and mainly it means: love before truth. Before saying something to another ask yourself: Is it useful, is it needed, is it necessary, will I still want to say it a week from now? If it isn’t contributing to, or leading towards, more love in someone’s life, then perhaps it isn’t of ultimate one truth and we should instead just use it to reflect on our own selves. We should also be mindful of what we intake as information from others, and develop our discernment regarding what we read and listen to. And we should also be clear in our intention when we speak and write.
A beautiful thing I once read in old mystical texts, is that in the higher angelic realms, we can’t pronounce nor say any word unless it is of love. So for example, if we don’t love apples, we can’t say apples. Part of the reason why we are in this realm, is to learn what we love and don’t love, because this is what brings us to our true pure essence of love. So when people say “you attract what you are” – the misunderstanding is that if you attract a bad person, you are the bad person. The real meaning of this statement is that by seeing how we react to or respond to that other person, we get to know who we are – because to know who we are is to also know who we are not. Anyway.
What is important to remember is that the divine communicates with us through the language of love, which feels like peace. You know that yourself – that when you say something expressing your inner truth, you feel a sense of peace and lightness. Sure, some truths feel scary especially since most of us didn’t grow up being supported nor encouraged to share our love, feelings and needs – and we get especially scared and uncomfortable to express our love, because it makes us feel vulnerable and we could be rejected or misunderstood.
Think of the Dalai Lama – how his whole face shines so bright when he smiles and there’s a aura of peace and pure joy around him. Think of your parents and grandparents – how no matter how old they are, when they speak about the things they love, they shine so brightly that they fill you with unconditional love – and their laughter is the sweetest sound you’ll ever hear. Think of you – anytime you share something you love, such powerful joy emits from you, with such divine power, that you transforms the moment of everyone else around you. In this childlike innocence and joy, is the purity of our heart – is our true essence of love. And when humans speak of love, they embody angels.
Purity in service
To live a life of purpose is to be a source of joy and love to others – to be understanding and compassionate, so that we contribute to another person’s life meaningfully. Ask yourself: How can I contribute to someone’s life today? How can I be kinder, more loving, more supportive, more encouraging? What can I do to make someone’s day better today? It is important to remain clear in our intentions and know our why – why are we doing what we are doing? Is it aligned to our inner truth, heart, and integrity? Our higher service is our purpose and how the divine channels itself through us – it doesn’t have to be some extraordinary job title, it is found in our ordinary everyday gestures and behaviours, and how we treat others. We can be great environmentalists saving the planet – but if we then turn to the person beside us and treat them unkindly and disrespectfully, then that’s something we need to reflect on.
We must also show kindness and compassion towards all life without discrimination – including the tiny animals when no one is watching us in the forest, and the people with the quiet voices in the corners away from the grand applause of social media.
Purity in spiritual discipline
Spirituality has become quite trendy in modern days but what is rarely discussed is the importance of spiritual integrity as it is founded on certain unspoken universal laws. There are laws and unspoken rules such as the fair giving and receiving, and the equivalent energetic exchange. These strengthen and honour the connection to higher knowledge and build a bridge for more love, wisdom and guidance to come our way. There are also laws about “do no harm to none” and the spiritual integrity of respecting other people’s private spaces. These are all important and it is where our spiritual integrity, or the lack there of, shows. We live in a consumerist society where we receive things for free and often forget to give back as well, or acknowledge someone’s contribution to our life, whether in came in the way of words, reading or actions. And in a world of over-sharing we’ve also lost the meaning of the words sacredness and integrity. Many people don’t understand nor respect boundaries. It is part of our spiritual integrity and discipline not to invade anyone’s private space, physically, spiritually, psychically or emotionally, whether through telepathy, or through obsessive thoughts about them, or through doing readings about them without their permission. We also shouldn’t engage in anything that harms someone – and in fact, the practice of such darker rituals is a sign of weakness and lack of authentic spiritual power.
Spiritual discipline also means understanding the responsibility of the emotional responses and spiritual truths we might be awakening in other people – and knowing when certain knowledge should be shared – and when it shouldn’t be.
What is important to remember – is that whatever we do in life should be aligned to some form of higher principle. This becomes even more important when we delve into the spiritual realms and practices – because these are the invisible realms – and without a strong spiritual core we might get lost in the abyss. Building a strong spiritual core is about knowing who we are – and who we are not. What are our boundaries, what are we willing to do, who are we? Knowing who we are is what will ground us and give us clarity in the realms of no gravity and unseen lines. Otherwise – we ourselves become susceptible to anything in these realms.
We should all create our own higher values, whatever that may be for us, and then stay true to them. Ask yourself, what do you truly believe in? And then align your actions and words to it – whatever it is. Let’s say your higher guiding principle is love – so any time in doubt ask yourself, what would love do in this situation? We need a guiding star, and we need a set of values and morals that would keep our actions and words in integrity and discipline. This is ultimately what defines who we are.
To live our life in purity
we don’t have to do something too extraordinary – we only have to live more intentionally, more consciously and more truthfully.
We have to stay connected and aligned to our heart, and embody the love and true joy that we already are – because this is our true essence. This clarity is what gives us purpose, meaning and fulfillment.
To live a life of purity means to walk in our inner truth – and yet there might be times when we are feeling that in some way our truth isn’t seen nor honoured as being equally important as that of someone else’s. In these times – may we allow the understanding of our own truth to be what sees us through the forest like the purity of moving waters; may we allow our knowledge of ourselves to be enough for us.