Purify Yourself: RsH"-G3⁵

The most important technique for healing is self-purification. While this was well-understood in the past, it has become ritualized and unfashionable in present times. Life itself, and certainly any contact with others, is liable to generate fear and other distressing emotions that interfere with your state of goodness.

Removal of Impurities

Purifying yourself is about freeing yourself (your mind, your being) from anything that debases, contaminates or pollutes the goodness of your being. Experiential pollutants (such as those listed below) lead to bad judgements and unsatisfactory actions. Self-purification is the most powerful technique in your repertoire. However, it is not something than can be mechanically applied. Your identity, the situation and the impurity, all affect what you must do, psychologically and socially, to regain personal equanimity.

When you experience an adverse event, it is natural to have feelings that spoil your capacity for making a constructive response. Our biological natures are often responsible, because sexual, aggressive, status and attachment drives are so easily triggered and immediately enter consciousness. Pollutants might include:  

●mental pain ●resentment ●irritation ●victim-thinking ●feelings of unfairness ●envy •jealousy ●revenge fantasies ●fear ●depression ●retaliatory urges ●defensiveness ●negativity ●magical thinking ●fuzziness ●excessive criticism ●superiority ●intent to control.

A state of impurity is usually unpleasant, but it may seem enjoyable: e.g. revenge can generate a perverse joy, and wishful fantasies can reduce anxiety. So removal is not always spontaneously desired. Temptingly attractive but harmful states need to be gripped and put into perspective. They are drugs that harm you mentally and spiritually. Nevertheless, many come to accept a debased state on various grounds:

► Identity: "Accept me! This is what I have always been like. This is who I am."
► Entitlement: "I have a perfect right to be resentful/miserable/envious &c."
► Perversion: "Hate is good: it makes you strong. Kindness is stupid."
► Convention: "Everyone who feels jealous thinks like this. Why shouldn't I?"

Purification is not intrinsically difficult once you commit to it: Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened.

Internal Structure

Self-purification encourages mindfulness, self-awareness, and refined self-scrutiny. More importantly, just being aware of this technique brings the distinction between light and dark (good and evil) starkly to the forefront of your imagination. This then spontaneously (g3) aligns the self with the path of goodness.

Careful perception of your own state (g2) reduces projections on to others, which increases unity. Subsequent actions and communications then ensure any conflict is constructive. There can also be a revelation of personal truth, which then becomes a potential for transformative work (g1).

g3: Purification is powered by a spontaneous unification-R"G7 with what is good and pure.
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g2: A conscientious submission-R"G6 to goodness leads to an inner appraisal using intuition and reflection, together with any beliefs or doctrines that you genuinely hold.
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g1: Purifying requires necessary exertion-R"G5 in relation to your inner states so as to remove, reduce, avoid or counteract specific negative, harmful or bad elements. As part of this, you may need to contact others whom you would otherwise seek to avoid. Exertion is also necessary because, like cleaning in the physical world, there must be constant repetition.

Method

Purification, being a way to contain and neutralize all negative energies, is the essential self-healing process. It starts from a recognition that all pain and suffering depend on an undisciplined and poorly educated mind.

The method is then the same in all situations: the light of awareness must shine on dark hidden thoughts and feelings. Reason and emotional intelligence must be applied to remove their power to control and to spoil unity. The process is often aided by confiding and seeking guidance from trusted others. Exchanges can then build hope and conviction.

More on Awareness: 

Note that the goal of awareness here is to render inner states harmless in practice. This compares with some doctrines that demand expulsion or repression of inner states—extremes that are liable to rebound and cause later damage.

For those of a spiritual bent, there may be deliberate efforts to become aware of a sacred reality as distinct from identifying with egotistical concerns.

Sometimes, major personal change follows awareness. These are the striking cases you tend to read about, possibly following a healing event or a collapse into despair and illness. But traumatic collapse is an extreme, not a requirement.

Self-purification stands apart from the other techniques in its breadth and impact on healing. It can generate positive acts via restitution and reparation. It can enable virtuous choices like the active expression of honesty or bravery or patience. The process also tends to activate the use of the other healing techniques when they are being blocked by some conventional or egotistical pressures.

Paradoxically, major life change following traumatic collapse may be relatively easy. What is often harder is to value purifying yourself as an essential personal regimen. Life being what it is, our imperfections being what they are, biological drives being what they are, sullying is repetitive and purifying yourself is a daily matter—like bathing.

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• Now consider the other techniques of healing.

Originally posted: 26-Apr-2013