In order to prepare our bodies for maximum receptivity to God's light and love, our motivation must be strong. We must want to love others more and to love God more. Out of this motivation comes attention to the characteristics of thought and feeling that promote receptivity to Divine energy, and attention to the characteristics of our bodies that promote this receptivity as well.

    With respect to our emotions, it is easy to see how energies of anger, fear, or despair may block out full receptivity to light and love. With respect to our thoughts, it is also easy to see how qualities of obsessive thinking, worrying, and trying to control things may stand in the way of forming attitudes of openness and trust. With respect to our bodies, however, most of us are more prone to separate the physical from the spiritual. We need in this area, as well, to see how we can become more receptive to God's light.

    The goal here is that of embodying light. There have always been virtuous and spiritually advanced people that walked our globe who transmitted ideas and teachings of great value to humanity. However, there have never been a large number of people whose care for their bodies as instruments or vessels of light made them deliberately, and by their own choice, instruments for the healing of the planet. That this is possible today is part of the time we live in, part of the consciousness we live in, when both knowledge about spiritual development and the availability of a higher vibration on the earth allow us to develop and nurture bodies which can significantly carry light. By moving in this direction, we have the capacity to affect our own lives and the lives of others. As servants of God and of the earth, our acceptance of this responsibility leads us toward purification both for our own sake and for the sake of all.

    On the physical level, purification especially has to do with consciousness of diet and care regarding the substances we put into our bodies. In this context, many of us still discount what is best for us physically in favor of what feels best for our emotions or seems best in terms of the ways we have been brought up. As a result, we put into our bodies things that may have a negative or limiting effect, looked at from the standpoint of spiritual growth. The first issue that needs to be addressed in this regard has to do with the eating of meat.

    There are many reasons to refrain from eating meat. Some are moral and some are practical, though stemming from a moral core. The moral reasons are reasons of the heart. They have to do with our caring for animals as sentient beings - beings with a consciousness not that dissimilar from our own. Out of this caring comes a moral need to respect the life of animals - to not take that life because we are capable of taking it. The perception of animal consciousness allows us to observe that animals feel, suffer, bond with others, raise families, and learn. Though their form of thinking is more primitive than ours, it is apparent that they do think in some rudimentary way and that they do, therefore, have a consciousness. Those who hold life to be sacred find reasons of the heart to not take that life, both out of respect for God's Creation and out of respect for the individual life of the animal itself.

    On the practical side, there are many more reasons to refrain from eating meat. All result from the fundamental premise that you become what you eat.

        1. When we eat animal parts or products, we lower our vibration and take on the spiritual vibration of animal life instead of the spiritual vibration of human life. This takes us away from the full expansion of spirit that is possible for us as human beings.

       2. When we eat animal parts or products, we take into our consciousness the thoughts and feelings of that which we eat - both the more primitive, instinctual urges that animals have by their very nature, and the pain and suffering that they often also experience due to the conditions under which they are raised. Eating the flesh of animals is not just a physical act. It is an act with emotional and spiritual consequences that relate to the vibration and consciousness of the life that we have taken into ourselves.

        3. When we eat meat or animal products, we rely on this source of nourishment to support our bodies instead of a plant-based source of nourishment which could provide us with metabolized light as a result of photosynthesis. Metabolized light is the physical light of the sun already taken into the plant's internal structure to produce chlorophyll. This light, especially in concentrated forms such as chlorella or blue-green algae, allows us to raise the vibration of light in our bodies and makes us more available to the inflow of spiritual light.

    The premise behind this third phenomenon is that all of light is related in God's universe, all of light comes from the same source. Sunlight - the light that plants absorb and that we enjoy with our vision and with our bodies - is merely a lower vibration along a whole spectrum of light that connects the entire spiritual universe. The light of Creation spoken of in the Book of Genesis is the source of all light, physical light included. A light-based diet, therefore, hooks us up most directly to this 'ladder of light' so that within our bodies we become more open to the higher spiritual sources.

    Throughout the ages, individuals and groups have tried to create a body that could contain more light and that could therefore house the highest degree of spiritual awareness. The ancient Egyptians did this, as did many other cultures. Today, too, our spiritual goals require that we seek to create within ourselves a pure and holy space into which God can enter. We seek this, because we have a vision or aspiration to live a sacred life on earth, a life filled with God. We have a vision of the earth as a sacred planet. For this reason, and in order to support this progression, we interest ourselves in bringing more light to the earth plane through our bodies. A body whose senses are dulled, thick, or deadened is less alive to the experience of life and to God in life. It is less alive both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. A body whose senses are clear, has the greatest opportunity for enjoyment of the sacred present and of all that the present brings. Furthermore, only such a body can become an embodied source of light for others. This is an important fact for those of us who wish to serve the earth.

    As servants of the earth and creators of bodies of light, we need also to be attentive to the life or vitality of the food that we eat. Certain foods have more life, certain foods less. Some foods are so devoid of life that they may be described as anti-life. A food can be anti-life in one of two ways:

        1) It can change the natural process of how our bodies function on their own when they are in good health, and diminish this healthy functioning,

        2) It can be a food from which the life has been extracted through over-processing or other alteration so that it is effectively lifeless or dead.

    In the first category are foods that alter our metabolism, sleeping patterns, alertness, ability to concentrate, quality of emotion, ability to maintain an even keel, etc. There are many such foods in this category and they include, especially, refined sugar, coffee, and alcohol. But they also include toxic substances, even in small amounts, such as preservatives, chemicals, and pesticides that make our bodies work in ways that it is not accustomed to. Preservatives and chemicals found in many foods such as emulsifiers, artificial coloring, dyes, etc., introduce into the body trace elements of substances that are frequently harmful. This is true also of pesticides. These substances cannot be processed by our bodies because they do not naturally occur in our bodies and often their effect is extremely damaging even if taken in in small amounts.

    Other foods are anti-life not because they are harmful, but because they lack life or are dead. Food needs to be fresh when eaten and processed as little as possible. Those foods that are over-processed in the course of canning, heating, or refining, have literally had the life boiled, pressured, drained, or compressed out of them. To love our bodies is to give our bodies foods that contain life, vital foods, foods that are natural and whole, rather than foods that are dead and lifeless.

   Food preparation is also an important subject for those interested in creating a sacred body. The food that we eat, freshly picked from the earth, is pure and nourishing the way God intended it to be to support our physical life. The food that we eat that comes to us through supermarkets, in bottles or cans, processed, or having travelled through many hands to get to us, is often much less pure and much less nourishing. Why is this?

    Food that is prepared by loving hands, lovingly, does not add anything to the food that is difficult for the body to digest. Rather, it adds energy to the food that makes it more nourishing. Food prepared in haste, indifferently, or with anger or fear, without the desire to offer it as gift, incorporates into itself some part of the attitude of the person or persons preparing it. That is why food served to others and to oneself needs to be prepared slowly and peacefully, as if we were preparing a welcome for an honored guest. In offering this food to others, we need to offer it with love and a desire for their nourishment. This attitude maintains the pure, clear state of the food we eat and adds love to it.

    In all types of learning including the learning of how to live a sacred life, we move by stages from one level of what we do not know to the next level of what we do not know. We must do this innocently, like children, willing to stumble along in order to grow, willing to be ignorant in order to learn. We must adopt an attitude that seeks to meet the new without fear and without unwarranted expectations of ourselves. We can allow for mistakes being made, and we can allow ourselves to slowly grope our way into a new reality. When we operate in this way, we need not despair when what is new is difficult to grasp, but instead can greet it with curiosity and enthusiasm, knowing that we will be helped to find our way as we walk into the unknown.

Article Section -  Purification