Value: Cleanliness & Purity- June 2025
Fourth Week: Discovering divinity
Every soul is fundamentally divine, and forgetting this truth leads to sorrow and confusion. It's similar to an actor who becomes lost in the character they portray on stage. The character begins to feel like their reality, and all the other characters in the play seem just as real to them. Their emotions, actions, and reactions start to influence the actor emotionally.
Caught in this whirlpool, the soul repeatedly experiences joys and sorrows, tragedies and comedies, day after day, year after year, birth after birth - endlessly. The eagerness to escape is known as mumukshutvam - the desire to be free!
Where to start?
Reflect on the purity of the soul.
You have different roles to play each day, depending on the people you meet. You assume the role of a wife, mother, daughter, friend, and so on, based on your relationships. But who are you when you are alone?
When you set aside your connections to the world, you are left as just a soul, accompanied by your mind and body. Vedanta teaches us that even the body is a gift from your parents. When you let go of identifying with your body, what remains is the soul, along with a flow of thoughts known as the mind.
By recognizing that the mind is often false or only appears temporarily real, you eventually realize the purity of your soul, which is peaceful, profound, and divine. Make it a daily practice to spend exclusive time with your soul in solitude—what I like to call "soulitude."
In soulitude, let go of all your relationships in the world and focus only on one: your relationship with Brahman. The essential nature of every soul is only Brahman. A pure mind can easily transcend its entanglements in soulitude and re-establish its true nature.
Consciously hear and see all that invokes divinity
The famous Atharva mantra says:ॐ भद्रं कर्णेभिः श्रुणुयाम देवाः | भद्रं पश्येमाक्षभिर्यजत्राः | - O Gods, may we hear what is auspicious with our ears. O Adorable, may we see what is auspicious with our eyes.
From early childhood until we were able to read independently, we gained knowledge primarily through listening. As a result, what we hear becomes integrated into our understanding and thought processes. To preserve the purity of our minds, it's important to choose to listen to those that are wise, worthy, and beneficial to our personal growth. This principle also applies to what we see.
Begin each day by chanting the name of the Lord and visualizing His form before interacting with anyone. By remembering His presence in your heart, you will invoke divinity within yourself and stay inspired to approach all your daily tasks as offerings to Him.
