Practical Purity

What's the importance of true purity? How can we view purity and what can we realistically think, say and do to increase the purity rate from day to day in our everyday mundane lives? This recorded live event gets into these questions by seeing purity as clean energy on the levels of mind, emotion, body and transformation

Transcript

Wholeness,

Welcome.

This is Josh DeFold,

IntegratingPresence.

Com.

Welcome to this live event titled Practical Purity.

Take what you find helpful from this and leave the rest.

The description I have here is,

What's the importance of true purity?

How can we view purity and what can we realistically think,

Say,

And do to increase the purity rate from day to day in our everyday mundane lives?

I thought we'd look at a definition,

Our dictionary definition of purity.

It says,

Freedom from adulteration or contamination.

The second definition is freedom from immorality,

Especially of a sexual nature.

This country was founded on Puritanism,

Or part of it was.

From what I understand,

Or what I've heard too,

Is that they were so strict that they weren't wanted where they came from.

So I think that's interesting.

Then we have the other extreme,

Like the Hellfire Club,

Which is basically like,

I don't know if I'm misrepresenting this club or not,

But I would say definitely hedonistic,

If not debauchery and just kind of anything goes right in secret.

So where these proclivities can be indulged in in secret and not have to affect society,

Those around them perhaps as much.

Probably most of us don't fit into these two extremes,

I would think.

But where's the middle ground to this?

First off,

Where does purity affect us?

I would say on the three main levels that we experience most days,

Mind,

Emotion,

And body.

So then some of the benefits,

I would say,

Of somewhat living more of a pure life is optimal energy.

Some of the payoffs for this perhaps could be balance,

Stamina,

Tranquility,

Lightness,

Softness,

Flexibility,

Uprightness,

Authenticity,

Truthfulness,

And proficiency.

There's also this interesting notion of transforming.

So whatever comes across our path,

Whatever falls on our plate,

How can it be transformed into a more pure nature because for whatever reasons we'll encounter things that we perceive as,

I guess,

Impure.

And if there's an intent to purify something,

How can we do that?

How can we transform what's already here now,

What we experience in our lives?

And I don't know if I have too many direct answers to that.

So it's just kind of a question for contemplation.

Let's just dive in here to one that is the most obvious around sex,

The hot topic,

Juicy topic of sex,

Sexual activity,

Sexual energy.

So this is easy in monastic life.

I'm just drawing on what I hear and seeing known from Buddhist monastics.

It's really easy,

Right?

There's no sex at all,

No sexual activity.

It's a precept that they have to refrain from any kind of sexual activity whatsoever.

So in the lay life,

Buddhist lay life state,

A lot of them take precepts and one is not to abuse one's sexual energy.

So I've gone over this plenty of times before,

But the obvious one is kind of like adultery,

No adultery.

That one seems pretty obvious,

Right?

There's so many,

There's families involved.

There's a partner involved.

There's the legal system involved in this.

There could be kids,

Community.

They went and got a marriage license.

So this one should seem fairly obvious,

Right?

Even for me,

If there's open relationships too,

It just doesn't,

It's really risky.

So what do we do as far as everyday life,

Even just with our sexual energy,

Right?

There's things like seduction,

People using their sexual energy basically to kind of control,

Manipulate,

Get what they want,

Right?

So detecting this and refraining from this,

But also not repressing one's sexual energy too.

What are the wholesome,

Skillful ways to express sexual energy?

What should be done with it?

Especially if one doesn't have a long-term committed loving relationship until one gets into that.

So these are all kind of questions to consider.

So what about one's living environment?

I think this is one of the easiest things that we notice.

Our living environment,

Inside and out.

So the easiest one we have control over is where we live,

Cleaning our space where we live,

Apartment,

Houses,

Wherever it might be,

Whatever we have access to,

Tidying things as well.

And then it gets into more subtle things like energetic hygiene.

And this can be something like burning sage or smudging whatever plant material is effective in your area.

It can be things like crystals.

Before I lose you on the woo woo,

This is just something to experiment on your own.

You can look up how to smudge a house,

How to smudge my space.

And basically it's just like,

Well,

You brush your teeth,

You take a shower,

Things like this.

You can see levels in the house once everything's cleaned.

There's an energetic component to address.

Some people like silver,

Salt,

And sage are things as well.

What I recommend for this is whatever you find,

Try it out for a little while.

See if it makes any change or help in your life.

And if not,

Stop or talk to other people about how to do it.

So outside our living environment too,

This has been an ongoing thing.

Where I live currently is I've pretty much just stopped picking up trash other than my general vicinity of where I live.

So right along the borders,

It's just gotten too much.

So I used to pick some of it up,

But I just really can't keep up.

I'll just say really briefly,

It's kind of an open call for suggestions about this.

I mean,

What do you do with people just guessing here?

Maybe they're in so much pain.

Maybe they're not even conscious of it.

Maybe they don't care.

Maybe they feel victimized.

It's hard knowing.

Maybe they don't even notice.

The level of consciousness isn't even there that they can just live with trash right outside their place like a pig or something.

Pick up what you can.

Am I doing enough?

Am I not doing enough?

Personally,

I like to keep my general area outside clean.

And then if I have time and it makes sense to do a little bit beyond that sometimes.

The other big things here are the four nutriments.

These are talked about in Buddhism too,

And these are basically what you're putting in to your beingness,

If that's a word.

The obvious one is food.

The second one is sense impressions,

And then I'll come back over to this.

What you're looking at,

Listening to,

Smelling,

Tasting,

Touching.

The next one is volitional thought.

So what are we consciously thinking about when we feel we have a choice to think about something?

So when we know that we're choosing to think about certain things,

Well,

I'll come back to that.

But in the consciousness,

That's kind of the most subtle layer of these nutriments.

So food is obvious,

Right?

You eat crap food,

You're going to feel like crap.

It might feel good for a little bit,

But then more than likely you're going to feel like crap.

People that know me know I have a pet agenda of organic food,

Food that hasn't been sprayed with synthetic pesticides and chemicals.

And after eating primarily that for a while and then eating something that has been sprayed with synthetic pesticides and chemicals,

Genetically modified once a level of sensitivity is built up,

Then this is even more noticeable,

At least for me.

Not everybody is as energetically sensitive right away.

Some of the easier things for me to detect,

If you do dairy,

I don't do a lot of dairy,

But organic milk versus non-organic milk,

Most people I know can taste a difference immediately in those.

So basically it's just make common sense choice.

I mean,

If you're presented with certain options of food,

Choosing the better option,

It's just that simple.

And eventually what I find is that we'll get cleaner and cleaner diet,

Those junk foods that used to provide so much pleasure,

Now they almost switch where they just,

They might not even provide any pleasure,

But then they'll start craving healthy food and getting a really healthy food buzz from healthy food.

So the Sims impressions are easy.

You just treat it like food.

If this was food,

Would you eat it?

Whatever you're watching on TV,

Is it beneficial,

Helpful,

Or is it like eating junk food or maybe working in the sewer,

Spacing out?

Same thing with what we read and listen to.

Ray says,

I was literally just thinking about McDonald's and I never eat that.

The last time I had McDonald's,

By the way,

I think it was in 2009 or 10 on a road trip.

So I was traveling with somebody.

Somebody told me recently they got rid of all the healthy options.

They used to have salads and stuff at McDonald's.

Now the only thing they could eat is the fries.

I know it's convenient,

But even things like Chipotle supposedly use non-GMO food.

They're fairly quick.

I haven't ate them in a while.

Things like Panera,

I know they got a lot of chemicals out of their food.

Also just buying things that are quick to eat at health food stores,

Possibility when traveling a lot of even small towns will have a health food store.

So volitional thought.

So how many times a day do we wake up and like,

Oh,

Well,

This line of thought that I have is negative or it's not helpful.

So choosing to think about things that are helpful because what we pay attention to,

We give energy and what we give energy to,

We participate in and amplify to.

So when we do have a conscious choice to direct where and what we think about,

Consider is it helpful,

Skillful,

Wise,

Not only for me,

For others,

Both and for everyone,

Ideally.

And it's a process,

It's a training as well.

This is why mindfulness is so important because if we're not aware,

We don't know what we don't know.

So the next one is consciousness.

I'm probably going to skip this.

If anybody has any specific questions or anything they'd like to share about consciousness that is nourishing versus stuff that's not.

I think one of the easy ways,

If anybody's ever done certain types of substances,

We know that certain types of drugs and substances,

One will be like a really low vibration or a low consciousness level.

And some may temporarily boost consciousness,

Alter it,

Raise the vibration.

However,

There's lots of caveats to that.

Like it can do so artificially.

People can get hooked on these things.

People don't integrate experiences from them.

They artificially can speed a process that a person's not ready for.

But just basically noticing similarities and parallels to that if you've had those experiences.

There's things where we just feel like we have access,

Expanded consciousness.

Of course,

Meditation is one of the best ways I know of to do this.

The next thing here that I learned recently is our motivational factors.

So if we're motivated by fear,

If fear is a driver in our activities,

Then the energy surrounding this will be based in fear.

So even though we might have some decent productive or changes that come from fear,

Like the stick in the carrot thing,

There's still going to be fear surrounding that,

A fearful energy involved in that.

So feeling or being mindful of this as well.

So our motivation,

What kind of energy and what's behind what our motivations and drivers are.

So that type of energy is going to feed in to the result as well.

So has anybody here ever woken up in the middle of being emotionally entangled with someone?

Basically not even knowing what's going on and then all of a sudden,

Oh wait,

I'm in an argument and I just realized it.

So entangled in this.

For me personally,

It's like waking up and oh,

I've pushed this and pushed this just to try to prove a point,

But has it even really helped trying to stand my ground in order to try to convey a point?

I would say sometimes maybe yes.

Other times it's like making things worse.

So again,

Mindfulness of waking up,

Oh,

Hey,

There's a choice in this matter.

What energy am I bringing?

Usually is an energetic game.

So where whoever's dominating an energy and the strongest,

The tendency tends to be for the other person to match that energy level just so they can relate to the other person.

When in fact I find it more helpful and I've been taught that let the person be however their energy is and focus more on the energy I want to bring to the response instead of matching that energy coming at me.

So I focus on,

Okay,

Listen,

Wait,

And then respond with the energy that I wish to convey and how I respond is going to be a big factor.

And I feel sometimes just those altercations,

As long as they're not abusive,

Then sometimes they just need to happen.

Like some things that are repressed need to come out.

If we're constantly avoiding conflict,

That's almost as detrimental sometimes than being entangled emotionally entangled,

Perhaps something for consideration.

Again,

When we're mindful that we do have a choice and we can pause and reflect and have different choices available than the immediate knee jerk reaction,

Which before I started meditation practice,

It was just basically based on habit patterns of responding in the same old ways.

So I ask a few friends about how they engage in practical purity.

And one of the things I got was setting the intention to increase purity,

Then being able to have the willpower and desire to make the necessary changes as hard as those may be.

So basically this is intention setting.

So most of all of our activity is driven by an intention.

And this is a clarity I got on this.

I did a live event a while back about intention and outcome.

So the clarity I got on this was our intentions are 100% our responsibility.

So if I set an intention to do something,

Setting that intention is 100% on me.

Now the outcome is 50-50.

So part of it will be my behavior,

What I say,

What I do,

And the intention comes in that.

And then the other part is the other party,

How it's met,

Viewed,

Perceived,

And responded to.

So the responsibility is shared there because I can't control how it's,

What I say,

It's going to be received.

So I'm partly responsible for that,

But not 100%.

So the increased purity here,

Setting that intention and then sticking to it.

And the willpower,

This is an interesting thing.

It's a whole other ball of wax about how much we actually volition and will we actually have involved,

How that whole process works.

Of course,

I'm not 100% up on how willpower works or doesn't.

A lot to say about that,

But I'm not qualified to be an expert in that,

Obviously.

In the desire to make the necessary changes,

This is really important.

The series I did on the idipada,

The roads to power,

One of them,

Necessary to accomplish just about anything is the desire.

That's the first thing.

Are we just doing central desire or do we have a desire to actually have something beneficial,

More lasting benefit for our longterm happiness,

Happiness of others,

Wellbeing of others,

Both and everyone.

So desire to make the changes,

Looking at that desire and the changes that need to be made and sticking to it,

Persistent,

Patient,

Persistence,

And making sure you have good instructions too.

Because if the instructions are off on what we should be doing,

Then it doesn't matter how patient or persistent we are.

So that's where discernment comes in to know the difference.

And I would also add to this radical acceptance too,

Because some days it's just too fricking hard to make those changes we need to make.

So the mantra of radical acceptance is it's okay.

So it's okay that I'm kind of failing at this now.

It's okay that I don't want to fail.

It's okay that it sucks that I'm failing at it or perceived that I'm failing at it.

It's okay that I'm doing the best I can.

Trying that so we don't beat myself up and at the same time notice that the next step from that is making those changes we need to make.

Making those changes we know we need to make that we've been putting off.

Again,

I just kind of want to reiterate why this might be important.

Purity is just the energetic quality,

Right?

So we notice maybe reflecting back on when we felt we've been done things pure and how the energy level is and then how we've done things we might consider unpure and now without any kind of value just on an energetic basis kind of looking at the energy.

It's clean,

Uplifting,

Helpful instead of falling into this thing of,

Oh,

I'm a bad person.

I shouldn't have done that.

A little bit of that can help prevent it from happening again.

At the same time,

It can be pushed too far into self pity,

Shame,

Blame and guilt,

Things like that,

A healthy reinforcement to see that it's not beneficial.

It might be kind of a relief in the moment.

It might be kind of benefit from it,

Weighing those as well,

But practically how do we make those assessments to see what's beneficial and helpful?

Of course,

Good clean energy,

It's all obvious,

Right?

When we're feeling good,

We feel like we have good energy,

Then life seems more amazing.

We're able to enjoy the things we want in life and to help others better and help ourselves better.

Then also not pushing it into puritanism because we have these things like these certain religions where it's just ridiculous amount of extreme purity where it's almost unrealistic.

What ends up happening is the opposite where people rebel against those things.

May you all find practical purity in your days ahead and see and know the benefits for yourself,

For others,

For each other,

In all beings everywhere.

May all beings everywhere realize awakening and be free.