Do You Need More Purity in Your Life?

We are all looking for happiness in life. To achieve this, most of us firstly try to do things that we actually like doing, in our jobs and in our spare time. Many people find a great deal of satisfaction in simple things like taking regular exercise, eating well, creative activities, even weeding the garden or cleaning the house!

This satisfaction actually comes from the fact that you are bringing more purity into your life. Purification of your surroundings, by keeping your living environment clean and tidy, will help you to feel calmer and more in control of your life, which brings with it a degree of outer as well as inner purity. Wearing clean clothes and washing regularly will also make a difference. If you can eat fresh and wholesome foods and get some exercise every day you will keep yourself fit and healthy, which will bring more purity into your body, as well as into your mind.

To be truly effective, purity needs to be established not only in our outer body, but also in our thoughts and feelings. Sri Chinmoy, who is a spiritual teacher who writes prolifically on the philosophy of integral spiritual living, says,

"...the inner purity and the outer purity must go together. Inner purity may be compared to having a clean body, and outer purity may be compared to wearing freshly laundered clothes. If an individual takes a shower but then puts on filthy clothes, what kind of purity will he have? Again, if for a week he has not taken a shower and then he puts on clean clothes, this is also unsatisfactory. His outer purity will not satisfy him because his inner impurity is creating a problem for him. Likewise, with spiritual purity, the inner and the outer must both be there. The body must be pure and clean, but so also must the mind be pure, as well as the vital."

To bring more purity into the mind firstly you need to calm the mind. To have a pure mind means to have control over the thoughts of the mind. When you can achieve this state, you will see the strength of purity in your life. Many of us suffer badly from stress, depression, worries and anxieties just because we do not have any control over the mind. When we can learn to calm and still the mind, we become aware of the power of inner peace. The practice of meditation is an ideal way to reach this state, but even becoming aware of the breath can be very helpful,

"There are various ways to purify our outer existence. If we do not have any specific method of meditation, we can start with breathing. We should try to breathe in calmly and quietly, and while inhaling just repeat the word 'purity'...then, when we breathe out, we try to feel our impurities going out with the breath. If we practice this simple exercise, we will see a difference in our nature in this lifetime."

• Sri Chinmoy

Purification of our emotions and feelings can also make a tremendous difference to our lives. Meditating is a great way to do this because it puts us in a natural state of consciousness and enables us to see and feel the truth from a higher perspective. The use of imagination and visualization can also be very powerful. Sri Chinmoy says,

"We should have purity in our thoughts, in our ideas, in our feelings, in our conversation, in all that we say, all that we do, all that we feel and all that we are. We can make our entire life like a flower in a garden. If we identify our consciousness with the flower, we can never have impure feelings. But even if we remain inside the garden, if we don't consciously identify with a flower or with the garden itself, then we will remain impure."

These are a few simple but very effective methods for inner and outer purification that can be of great assistance in enriching the traveller's journey along life's road.