As the old adage goes, cleanliness is next to Godliness.
In my youth, as a messy atheist, I found objection to both poles of this aphorism.
My journey of coming into faith was more like a reconning than a ritual.
I had put my foot on the accelerator for too long, and my mind and body began busting apart at the seams.
“My life’s a mess.”
I’m sure I had that thought, more than once.
But what did I mean when I said that?
That my car had years old mud caked on it? That my carpet was so far gone that it needed a guy in a hazmat suit?
Though both of these may well have been true, when we say ‘life gets messy,’ we are talking about something else.
Imagine for a moment an ocker bloke and sheila chewing the fat.
“You hear he was sleeping with the boss?”
“Oh yeah mate? Meeeeeehhhhssy!”
Or perhaps…
“You know she embezzled the client’s money to pay for her treatment?”
“Oooof…. That’s messy”
This is the type of mess I am talking about; the conflicting desires and moral conundrums we encounter every day at the coal face of life.
Mess comes from the old French, mes, which means a portion of food.
It was then adopted in military contexts to describe a group who eat together (I spent plenty of time in the various dingy mess-halls in my time in the Army – it’s an apt term!)
Over time, it expanded to the modern meaning of a jumble, confusion.
And what, dear reader, do we suppose is the opposite of mess?
Clean.
Disorder = mess.
Order = clean.
Ironically, when our life is truly a mess, it may appear spotless.
Mine was.
I had the job, the house (well, err, apartment,) the partner, the brains, a healthy, fit body, plenty of cash, plenty of life experience… and obviously, zero humility.
But yet… my life was a mess.
Behind the thin veneer of ‘success’ was a litany of maladaptive coping mechanisms; bulk amounts of stimulants like coffee and nicotine to get the day going, truckloads of depressants like alcohol to ease the anxiety and forget my troubles at the end of the day.
Rinse. Repeat.
Behind the frenetic busyness and workaholism was an inability to be at rest.
I formed a closeted addiction to adult media content which temporarily numbed the overwhelming stress I felt, which in turn fuelled my other great addiction, to shame and self-loathing.
Life became…. messy.
Enter meditation.
By God’s grace, I learned relatively simple practice that I sucked at.
It was humbling.
Wading through the detritus of my mind would make a single minute feel like a decade.
But as I practiced with regularity, something shifted.
I began to clean up my act.
My life became less messy.
As a kid, I was a naturally messy. I think to some extent, we all are. Long gone are the days of minimal, nomadic existence or the simplicity of tree dwelling. Our monkey chassis, on which our humanity rests, carries untold intergenerational trauma (ponder what your ancestors had to do to survive!) We carry these primitive impulses, which are often at odds with the demands of modernity (one need not look far to see the animal tendencies that give rise to war and violence.)
In order to evolve into more sophisticated, egalitarian creatures, we have had to learn… to clean.
Without plumbing, we’d be wading in knee deep excrement.
Without systems of waste management, we would be overrun by rats and disease.
Yoga takes the old aphorism; Cleanliness is next to Godliness…. and makes it literal.
On the path of Yoga, the life detritus we accumulate is understood as leaving impressions (vritti) on our mind (chitta.)
Like waves on the ocean, these experiences and impressions gather and create the stormy seas of messy old life.
The result? We suffer.
Built over millennia, and passed down by compassionate guides, Yoga teaches us the art of cleanliness, of purification.
How so?
Physically.
The lymphatic system, responsible for draining accumulated waste from cellular processes, literally only works through mechanical pumping i.e. movement. Yoga teaches you to wake up… and move. Our body also stores the energy of our experience, “oh he’s a bit up tight!” and when we cultivate awareness between mind and body, we free ourselves from responses stored in trauma or stress “ahhhhhhh”.
Mentally.
Our mind is polluted by the things we see, the thoughts we indulge and the company we keep. Meditation, the crowning practice of Yoga, turns our attention inward, and stems the flow of inputs. It gives us a chance to see the mind, digest the thoughts, and discern the truth. It literally cleans the mind.
Spiritually.
Through prayer, devotion and offering, Yoga establishes a hierarchy between us, and something bigger than our ego. You may call this God, spirit, source, universe, mystery, even perhaps nature… the name doesn’t matter, what does is that you pay respects to something bigger than you. When we orient our life like this, we clean ourselves from the selfish desires related to the ego (which makes it be all about us.)
The ultimate fruit of Yoga is the realisation of our inherent divinity, and the divinity of all life.
This knowledge can only find home in clean body and a clean mind, Yoga is the applied path that helps us scrub up the temple (the dwelling place of the Soul.)
And what of the Soul then?
There is no need to clean the Soul as it is the unblemished, eternal, self-luminous consciousness, the very thread on which the rich tapestry of life is woven.
No matter what we have experienced, the Soul is pure, it was pure and it always will be… pure.
Don’t forget, You Are That!
(Tat twam asi!)
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If you are ready to roll up your sleeves and clean up your mind and body so that you too can enjoy the clarity, peace and presence of a more Soulful life, we would love to welcome you to our upcoming Soul Retreat. On it you’ll learn the nuts and bolts of scrubbing up the mind and body and will gain a new perspective on the Soul.
Spring is the time for cleaning and our Spring Sale is finishing soon. Use code SPRING500 to get in quick!
–
Jai Atmeshwar
Victory to the Divine Soul
David
