Purity
by Jef Bartow
As the Sun progresses into Sagittarius on November 22, we have an ideal opportunity to become more familiar with and utilize our next characteristic of SPIRIT, Purity. During the next 30 days, we can begin a process to make Purity a more fundamental part of our life. Purification, as a process, is very important on the Spiritual Path in both Eastern and Western mysticism. In Eastern mysticism it is called "Ngondro," which leads to renunciation and the path of liberation. Pure fixation of the soul brings "holiness." For the Western mystic, purification involves renouncement, abnegation and self-renunciation. This is how we "struggle against our evil inclinations in order to subject them to the will, and the will to God." We purify ourselves to live a higher life.As a characteristic of SPIRIT, Purity provides the impetus and energy to free us from the limitations of Matter. It can liberate us from the ways we normally qualify our daily existence and lead us to living life based on the freedom and unrestricted light of the spiritualized Realms. Various definitions of purity will help us understand how this works. Purity is defined as "freedom from adulterating matter, cleanness, and clearness." Synonyms include unmixed, unmodified, flawless, whole, lucidity, homogeneity and virtuous. Doesn't this seem like the antithesis of how we experience life day-to-day? Are not we more often qualifying our daily activities with a variety of often divergent thoughts, emotions, expectations and psychic energy? Spiritualizing Exercises
Besides becoming a mystic living the ascetic life, how can we take advantage of Purity to spiritualize more of our daily life? As we have before, let's begin with Purity's natural relatedness astrologically to certain areas of life (ninth house). That is our higher education, when exchanging abstract ideas and philosophies and our spiritualizing activities, all in which to develop an understanding/philosophy of life. Let’s make a quick review of the things we have been and are currently reading. What percentage of our reading relates to our spiritual practices? This is a good time to define and commit to a goal which increases our reading and purifies it into a clear, lucid and unmixed spiritualizing practice. Further, how many hours per week are we involved in activities in which we can exchange ideas and knowledge with others regarding our spiritual philosophy? Let’s define one new periodic activity that can increase this spiritual practice. Or just as good, transform one of our weekly leisure activities into a spiritual practice of observing and reflecting upon how principles and philosophies of Spirit affect life. One good exercise is finding TV programs and movies which can be used as this spiritual practice. Last season, Joan of Arcadia was an ideal example. West Wing and Everwood are current examples of programs that can be transformed into a spiritualizing practice. And the number of movies that are available is a long list.Since astrological ninth house activities include our spiritualizing activities, Purity naturally becomes a powerful tool to improve the quantity and quality of what we have defined as our spiritual practices. During this next month, let’s use our daily meditation or reflection to review all of our spiritualizing activities with regard to the degree in which they provide a clear, clean, lucid, flawless and virtuous means of transforming our Personality and Ego. Evaluate how much of our Personality/Ego needs motivate our involvement in these activities. What changes in attitude, orientation and behavior do we need to make to purify even these defined spiritual activities?Finally, this next 30 days is a good time to review, recapitulate and initiate changes, which will better align our day-to-day decisions and behaviors with our spiritual philosophy for life. How are we continually/still motivated by security, comfort and happiness in our relationships, work activities and the rest of our daily existence? The Spiritual Path requires that we sooner or later give up these human needs. Ultimately, our only security will come from the God Within; our only comfort comes from living in Spirit; and happiness will become an unattainable illusion we transform into the reality of living with joy while climbing our mountain of spiritual fulfillment. Purity is how SPIRIT can facilitate our defining and living a spiritual philosophy in daily life. Characteristics of Spirit
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Purity is how we can qualify more and more of our daily activities and spiritual practices with a clear, lucid, flawless and virtuous intent and energy. Projected into the Imaginative Plane and our imaginative nature, we can utilize Purity to transform our daydreaming and fantasies in order to allow the unrestricted and unmodified qualities of the soul to be projected into our Personality. We can proactively cooperate by utilizing our creative imagination as a spiritualizing tool within our Personality. The spiritualizing power of creative imagination has been demonstrated in both the East and West. For Deepak Chopra, with creative imagination "one may be able to make almost any wish come true." A purity of visualization is one of the most important aspects to obtain in meditation. With it, we can "learn to transform ourselves into Buddhas and Bodhisattvas." Finally, C.G. Jung describes creative imagination as that which allows us to "bring meaning to" the mosaic of our experiences.Images on this page provided by: Jenny McCarthy
