Purity, like devotion, may sometimes be regarded as a grand unattainable thing – high minded, even abstract. But 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 in which you may already be living a life of purity.
To live a life of purity, we have to live a life of truthfulness, of love.
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 love – because love is our true essence.
As a mystic and poetess, I love delving in and discovering the beautiful worlds that exist 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 love about Sanskrit is that it’s an intrinsically vibrational language that allows us to not only delve into more understanding, but to also awaken consciousness on all levels of our being, through sound, that is inseparably connected to form. And as raw form, we shape a more intimate understanding.
There are no rights or wrongs in our interpretations, as it is an inner experience. This is why I will concentrate on the essence of the practice of purity, and feel free to then apply it in your own way – the way that feels true for you.
What wild roses know.
Let’s think of the wild rose. Esoterically, wild is sometimes a word used to describe our soul. 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, of nature and is thus, natural. 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 is 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 much the sun’s hands will touch it. In this lies an important key 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.
Sometimes, we might wake up to a dense fog or mist outside. We’ve experienced the wild rose with all of our senses, we know its touch, its scent, and how it perfumed our hands – 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 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 it might even appear in a more magnificent and luminous way than before. And here is our 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.
The mystic’s way.
Purification was one of the main practices of mystics, priests and priestesses. In order for them to channel higher energy correctly they had to create a vessel within them of purity and stability of inner truth, so that inspired creativity and intuition can flow through them freely.
The more pure you are, the higher energy you can hold and emit externally also.
Purification is something we can all do for our wellbeing and to balance our inner world – to feel and think more clearly, and to behave in ways more aligned to our higher principles and truths. This is especially important if we find ourselves in times of stress, instability and uncertainty – because through purification we remain connected and develop our intuition and inner strength. Purification practices are also crucial for all those interested in intuitive development.
Some of the practices of purification were: generating holy emotions, which were all emotions related to the love vibration; living an authentic life; prayer and strengthening the spiritual core; clearing and balancing the emotional, physical and mental bodies; developing discernment and clarity of mind; aligning to higher principles, morals 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 cosmic 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 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 earth, beyond the veils, with greater clarity. And through greater clarity – we become more discerning. It is also this love that becomes our protector.
We access this love consciousness through the heart. It is about 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.
W a y s t o L i v e i n P u r i t y
Purity in our living space.
In order for love and truth to flow freely through us, we need to start by creating the right 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, to clear away anything that no longer serves us so that we don’t live in clutter and messiness. Creating a peaceful, serene, clean and beautiful space allows us to have more peaceful and pure thoughts.
Our living space is also our body. It is important to keep it clean, to get a good night’s sleep and eat healthily, to have regular exercise and keep your body healthy and strong, to cleanse and purify through water 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 relationships. 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 continue to live in harmony, and 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 for support, respect, kindness and appreciation.
Purity as food and drink.
We shouldn’t go all vegan or vegetarian if that’s not appropriate nor healthy for our body, but eating well and healthily, and drinking plenty of water are needed – listen to what foods your body needs, learn the language of your body, because essentially we are what we eat, we are what we speak. People who speak badly about others actually have that energy absorbed into their own selves, and become it eventually.
Learning to listen to our body is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves; and naturally, it will tell us what it needs to eat and drink if we learn to listen to it. What I think though is that we must be mindful and understand that what we are taking in our system. Personally, I drink a lot of water and eat plenty of fruits and salads, and practice intermittent fasting – not because I “should” but because I naturally feel better and desire it. I follow what my body needs to eat on each day, and this is what I do. I also allow myself indulgences in sweetness such as chocolates, ice-cream and biscuits, 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.
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. And we must treasure one another 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 as 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 feed ourselves with.
We can even do a little bit of reverse engineering. To embody a particular emotion, we can close our eyes and see an image, imagine something, or play a song that would an experience of that emotion. Let’s say once many years ago you spent a beautiful evening with a beloved friend and you two drank lemonades. Any time you taste or think of lemonades, you go back to that memory and you feel as if it’s right here, right now. It feels good. So any time you want to feel that emotion again – make yourself a lemonade. Our memories and our imagination are like batteries to our soul – and can be powerful healers with tenderness and love. They open doorways of emotions – and we enter these doors through many things unique to us, such as, scents, tastes, songs, movie scenes, and sensations on our body. Maybe you want to invoke a little romanticism in your energy field – a little dreaminess – and you know that you felt such expansion of love once when you slow danced with your first love and then shared a kiss. Play that song, close your eyes, even dance around moving your body. It isn’t about the person or object – it is about experiencing yourself through the emotion and embodying it. It is also useful to always have a magical stock of memories for the times when we feel sad, so that we can invite some hope and joy into our life.
Feelings are pure and beautiful – the depth of them is what allows us to love, to create, to devote ourselves to the passion of living, to experience ourselves in a way more true and reach the real essence of our being. To keep them pure all we have to do is feel them as they are rather than what thoughts we attach to them.
Our thoughts are what ultimately creates our perceptions – and the prism through which we perceive and view and understand the world, and those around us. We need to keep our windows clear as much as possible so that our view is less skewed. 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. This humility 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 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 isn’t contributing to, or leading towards, more love in someone’s life, then perhaps it isn’t of ultimate one truth. 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 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. Love, of course, is about truth. 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.
This is also important to remember because this is how 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 feelings and needs – and we get scared and uncomfortable to express love too, because it makes us feel vulnerable and we could be rejected or misunderstood.
Call into your mind spiritual teachers who have a serene and peaceful aura, and when they smile and laugh, they do so genuinely and in childlike way that you too smile and laugh. Call into your mind your parents and grandparents – how 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 is the purity of our heart – is our true essence of love – this is purity, this is truth. And this is how angels speak through humans.
When humans speak of love, they embody angels.
Purity in service.
We are here to be in service to others, not in service to self. 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 such as the fair giving and receiving about how we shouldn’t take more than given, and how we should give back when we’ve received something whether as emotional support or spiritual wisdom. This is known as equivalent energetic exchange. For example, we meet someone who has given us some wisdom or comfort, and naturally, in exchange for giving us some peace, wisdom or love, we can thank them, share their work with others, or donate to them. In the old days, when we’d visit a spiritual temple, we would donate money at the front door, in exchange for walking into a space of peace, of soul soothing. In Indigenous tribes, when people see an animal show up to them, they perceive it as a guide, thank it for its spiritual message, and then either donate to a wildlife center, or leave some food in the forest – to honour that connection.
When we engage in such exchange and appreciate the interdependence and interconnection in life, we build a bridge to higher knowledge or spirit, and then strengthen the communication with purity within and without. There is no leftover residue, no owing someone energy, no burdens in the aura – and by keeping our energy clear, we allow for more love to flow in.
There are also laws about do no harm to none and the spiritual integrity of respecting other people’s private spaces. This is very important and it is where our spiritual integrity, or the lack there of, shows. We live in an over-sharing world where the words like “sacredness” and “integrity” have lost meaning – and many people don’t understand nor respect boundaries. And just because you can tune into other people psychically – this doesn’t mean you should invade their space and privacy – whether obsessively thinking about someone or doing a reading for a person without their permission. We also shouldn’t engage in anything that harms someone – in fact, the practice of such darker rituals is a sign of weakness and personal power, and carries heavy karmic consequences for generations to come.
Spiritual discipline also means understanding the responsibility of the emotional responses and spiritual truths we might be awakening and triggering 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 and moral. This becomes even more important when we delve into the spiritual realms and practices – because these are the invisible realms – but 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.
We should all create our own higher values, whatever that may be for us, and then stay true to them. What do you truly believe in? And then align your actions and words to it – whatever it is. Let’s say your higher 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 what will define 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.
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Cover photograph by me, of our beautiful wild roses.
