Kleshas: Avidya: Confusing Impurity with Purity

Avidya is the veil that stands between you and the real you. Avidya is like believing Jim Carrey is Ace Ventura. The symptoms of Avidya are delusion and confusion as to what is permanent and impermanent, pure and impure, pain and pleasure, self and not self. Last week we dove into the portal of the NOW as all we really know to be unchanging. Life is always now, everything else is a mental construct, with a sketchy construction crew. This week is all about pure and impure.

Right off the bat I am turned off by the interpretation of pure and impure as it has a tendency to dance with morality and I am not about to jump into that mosh pit of posers preaching prescribed religion that doles out sin, fear, and guilt like candy on halloween. What might be more helpful is to consider impurity as compulsion. So the question to ask myself then is not wether I am speaking, acting, or being pure or impure, but wether I am speaking, acting, or being out of compulsion. And if I am, I am wrapped in the veil of Avidya. I am forgetting myself to be like somebody else. I am lost, drunk, under the influence of others in their own compulsions.

Attuning our awareness to life, to the earth, to the moon, and the sun, and to the cycles of the seasons is how we purify. Aligning ourselves with the one thing we know, that life is right meow, is how we lift the veil, how we discern our way through our own delusion and confusion. If I am aware that I am only half listening to you, or that I am more interested in my phone than fun, or that I am blaming you for my unhappy, then I can alter my reality to what is really real, vs what I am allowing my mind to make real.

When my mind is of my making, my life is pure. When my mind is polluted, under the influence of the media, politicians, big Pharma, hell…even my family and friends, then my life becomes impure and I find myself identifying with other peoples ideals. Not only do we identify, but we compete and compare and perform for a version of reality that is of someone else’s making and this equals compulsion or impurity.

Only you can find you, get to know you, learn how to love you, and have the chance to live and breathe 100 percent as pure you.

Dearest Reader,

As always I am grateful for your time and consideration and commitment to studying yoga philosophy. Wether we agree or disagree is never the intent, but more so to broaden our perspectives and understand more deeply the veils that are shrouding us from experiencing a deeper love of self and of life.

Blessings,

Andrea Dawn