Yoga of the Heart

The ethic of Purity (Sanskrit name: Shauch) is essentially about being able to be one hundred percent yourself: unfragmented, strong, and confident. Most of us present different faces to different people; we say one thing and do another; and we are not always clear about who we are or the direction of our life.

This fragmentation keeps us from becoming as powerful as we could be. For instance, you cannot become a concert pianist if you practice the piano only a half hour per day. In order to become a superb pianist, your whole life must be dedicated to it. Even when you are not actually at the piano, you are thinking about the music, planning your concert schedule, and preparing yourself in many different ways, all centered on becoming an exceptional pianist.

The practice of Purity teaches you how to reduce the quality of separateness in life so that you can focus on what you want and make a determined effort to achieve it. This takes the participation of both bodies: physical and spiritual. Purity clears the channel between the two bodies so they can work together in strength and power.

The Power of Being Yourself
In my career as a Yoga teacher, I have worked with many students who were troubled by frequent anxiety attacks, during which they felt fractured and powerless. In all cases, I discovered that these feelings emerged because these students had no concept of who they were or what they wanted to do with their lives. There was no clear effort to reach any goal, and so there was no chance for any goal to take shape.
Consider people who have had a strong influence on the world, such as Gandhi, Mother Theresa, or Albert Einstein. Even though their goals were widely varied, all of them had one thing in common: they were tightly focused on what they perceived as their purpose in life. A clear vision of their goal gave them strength. They were practicing a type of Purity in body, mind, and speech, because everything they thought, did, or said was dedicated to what they believed in.

HOW TO BEGIN PRACTICING PURITY

Yogic texts describe three domains in which to practice Purity: body, mind, and speech.

1. Purity of the body includes physical cleanliness and clean, beautiful surroundings. Make your body as healthy as possible; Yoga exercises and breathing techniques can help a great deal to maintain optimum health and strength. Breathing techniques are especially helpful because they make your nervous system strong enough to handle the extra energy generated as your spiritual body begins to emerge.

Lakshmanjoo: There is one element in body that is the purest. That is breath. Purest element in body is breath. And through breath you can reach God.
Alice: Does this Purity of the body bring about a cessation of the fear of death?
Lakshmanjoo: Yes.

Keeping your body strong, healthy, and clean is a natural starting point for Purity, because you are inviting the spiritual body to join with you, and, as a good host, you want your environment to be as welcoming as possible for its entrance. A conversation begins in your mind, directed toward the spiritual body: "I am trying to coax you to come forth in all your beauty. I am trying to make myself something you would love to join with." It is a seduction of your spiritual self, and you are trying everything you can think of to persuade it to appear. You make yourself beautiful, thinking, "Do you like these clothes? Is this color pleasing?"

Your conversation extends to all the food you eat. You are essentially eating for two, and you want the food you give that growing spiritual body to be as pure as you can make it. It becomes an enchanting game: "Do you like this? Would you prefer that?" And in the end you are eating and drinking intuitively. Fasting for the sake of Purity would be impossible. One does not starve the physical body when it is trying to coax the spiritual body to join with it. The result would be disastrous: as you starve the physical body into a weak state, the spiritual body has to carry the whole load. This never works. The spiritual body will retreat if the physical is not strong enough to carry its share.

Your Mental Diet

Now widen this outlook a bit and consider everything else that you "eat" through your other senses. A careful mental diet is necessary to clean and strengthen the mind. This is not a religious proscription against violent movies, loud music, and so on. The point is, how do the things you watch, listen to, smell, and touch affect your thoughts and feelings? How do you react? Do you enjoy the reaction? How long does the reaction stay with you? A student of ethics tries to always observe and make choices based on these observations — not on those that are someone else’s opinion. It takes constant alertness in order to remain steady in the face of multiple distractions.

2. Purity of mind. Mental Purity has been described as "not being disturbed by a myriad of thoughts"; in other words, protecting the mind against fragmentation. One of the easiest ways to practice mental Purity is to simply observe your thoughts without judgment or censure. This will automatically detach you slightly from upset or discomfort associated with your thoughts.

Lakshmanjoo says in one of his books that when you are walking, for instance, you perceive all the features of the landscape, such as the grass, the trees, and the clouds, but they don’t leave impressions on your mind. He recommends acting in the world in the same way: to do everything, but leave the impressions behind. In Shaivism, you are taught to simply observe, and then move on. Do not let the impression bind you.

You do this by learning to tolerate the pairs of opposites (pain and pleasure, cold and hot, happy and sad, angry and loving, etc.) so they leave no impression. When opposites no longer cause an imbalance and you rest comfortably between them, in the center position, you feel connected to all existence. When this occurs, all experience of separateness is gone.

As I was sitting for my lessons with Lakshmanjoo one day in Kashmir, I noticed that he was obviously uncomfortable with toothache. I felt sad that he was in pain and told him so. He replied, "Oh, I don’t waste energy on that. I have two choices: I can hate it or I can enjoy it. I am choosing to enjoy it." The power to choose between suffering and enjoyment in such a situation, I believe, is a tremendous gift that all of us would be grateful for.

Using Opposites to Reach the Center

Start by simply observing all thought and feeling in terms of opposites. For example, you hear an old song on the radio and it reminds you of some tender experience. The music rides on the vehicle of remembrance of emotion. Pay full attention to the feeling that the music evokes in you. Then consciously move to the opposite feeling. For instance, if the song evoked sadness in you, consciously feel joyful; if the song excites you, feel as you would if it were a lullaby. This practice shows you that you are the same in both cases; you are moving from one emotion to another only by choice.

Now take the exercise one step further: imagine the song playing as before, but try to have no reaction of any kind. Choose to be absolutely still and aware in the center, between the opposites. That is the practice of Purity: you are aware of both feelings, instead of becoming stuck on one type of feeling only. This will help you become less fragmented.

Recently a student who was practicing this exercise wrote me about her experiences:

I was confused about my feelings for a man I was seeing, so I tried this exercise of working with opposites. I started with how I was feeling in the present and labeled this extreme "Choice A.": I stated it as a desire: "I want a man who is mean, self-absorbed, unavailable when I need him, afraid of intimacy, and who devalues my life." Then I stated the opposite, "Choice B": "I want a man who deeply cares about me, values my life, supports me, loves me, and is around when I need him."
I went back and forth between the two sides and I don’t know how it happened but I realized that my unhappy feelings were not the fault of this man; they were a choice I was making. Even though I cared very much about this person, I was in a relationship that I didn’t want. This exercise of seeing things in terms of opposites cracked my emotional shell and things started to unravel for me. I didn’t know how to turn my back on a relationship when I had such strong feelings for a person, but after seeing the situation, I couldn’t go on the way I had been, hoping and waiting for things to change.
The next morning I woke with an incredible sense of loss. I cried all day. I felt there was no way to go for what I wanted without losing what I had. I sat down and wrote him a letter stating what I wanted and it was simple and clear. I don’t know the results yet, but I made a decision to live by.
I was so struck by the light this exercise shed on my muddled thinking, as well as helping me see the clarity of what I wanted in a relationship. Of course, no one wants "Choice A," as I stated it above, and who wouldn’t want "Choice B"? Yet the situation had evolved to Choice A without my realizing it. It occurred to me that I have spent a great deal of my life like this: not knowing exactly what I wanted, so hanging on to what I had and not letting it go even if I wasn’t content or happy. And how could I see what I wanted when I was so busy hanging on to what I had and trying to form it into something it wasn’t?
I have tried this exercise several times over the past few days. In each case, when I’m unhappy about something, I state the present feeling as a choice: "I want . . . ." Then I state the opposite. I never want Choice A. Yet time and again I find myself there. This exercise is a great tool for making my choices very conscious and successful.

Break the Pattern of Addictive Thought

Meditation is another way to practice mental Purity. Meditation helps break the pattern of what I call "addictive thought," an example of fragmented thinking. Addictive thought means being stuck in one way of thinking about something, such as believing that every discussion with your boss will turn out badly for you.
Meditation, which is simply practicing not thinking about anything for a period of time, teaches you how to rest in the center, between two opposite thoughts, giving your spiritual body a chance to speak. (See Chapter 10 for a brief description of how to begin meditating.) The more you do this, the more you will be able to break addictive thought patterns by seeing other possibilities. Meditation gives you a glimpse into that state where the spiritual body and the physical body are one.

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." This well-known line from the Bible illustrates the power of Purity. Those who are "pure in heart" are balanced between opposites. Because they are not fragmented, the channel between their physical and spiritual bodies is clear. They see no separateness between themselves and anyone or anything else, and no separateness between themselves and God; therefore, God, or their spiritual body, is always available to them.

3. Purity of speech refers to speech that is true to yourself and which does not harm anyone. As I said previously, Purity is described as being yourself. When your speech matches your inner thought and feeling, then you are practicing Purity of speech. Young children naturally display this quality; they say exactly what they are feeling. They have not yet learned how to be deceptive, so they express themselves purely. Sophistication, which our adult culture values so highly, is attained by layer upon layer of false representation.

In this sense, Purity of speech implies a certain assertiveness that comes from the confidence of knowing that your physical and spiritual bodies are operating in concert. When practicing Purity of speech, you would not speak deceitfully or carelessly. You would not say one thing and do another. When your inner and outer thoughts match, this Purity gives you supreme poise and great strength of purpose.

Bringing body, mind, and speech together in harmony results in Purity, which unites the two bodies in a solid body of power. It is exactly similar to the way great athletes prepare for a contest. They use everything at their disposal to reach for their goal of peak performance. Their intense physical and mental preparation is one-pointed; the same intense preparation is needed when practicing ethical behavior.

RESULTS OF PRACTICING PURITY

Purity of body, mind, and speech helps heal the separateness that we all feel from time to time. The longing for an end to separateness is a constant theme in Western literature, especially in writings about utopias. The goal of wholeness seems vague and unreachable, but if you practice the ethic of Purity, wholeness is within your grasp. You no longer feel diluted, fragmented, or split, and you feel connected with your spiritual self.

Peripheral Awareness

Another wonderful result of practicing Purity is the development of what I call peripheral awareness: the ability to see beyond your immediate reactions and perceptions that emanate from only the physical body.

Lakshmanjoo once commented to me, "Doesn’t that bird’s song taste delicious?" How could he taste the song of the bird? Very simply, he was not bound to only one way of perceiving the bird’s song, because his spiritual body was functioning as clearly as his physical body. (Some people naturally experience this type of crossover of the senses, called synesthesia, but the type of intuitive experience that springs from the spiritual body is different and is available to anyone with practice.)

Practicing Peripheral Awareness


You’ve been asked to attend a cocktail party connected with your business. When you arrive, you realize you don’t see anyone you know. At first you feel nervous and upset, and this prevents you from seeing much around you, because all your attention is focused on your anxious feelings. Then you remember the ethic of Purity; you call up a feeling opposite to anxiety — such as comfort or enjoyment — and this helps you to lessen your initial feelings of discomfort as you move toward the middle position, between the two opposite feelings.
When your anxiety lessens, you are able to look around you, sensing where you will be comfortable and having the needed poise to present yourself and your work. You will have more confidence as you begin to talk with people, knowing that you are able to project your true self.

Peripheral awareness means that you can become completely aware of everything. You can notice every thought, every reaction, every feeling — and then have the ability to move away from involvement to clear observation. This ability will complement the practice outlined above when you observe that you are stuck in opposites, because peripheral awareness shows you that you have other choices. Lakshmanjoo described this state of peripheral awareness by saying that it is important to maintain awareness that is neither external awareness nor internal awareness, but rather the center of the deepest aspects of these two. He called this the most refined type of awareness.

The center position, the middle state between opposites, is where Purity is found.