Real Filth is the one inside. The rest simply washes off. There is only one type of dirt that cannot be cleansed with pure waters, and that is the stain of hatred and bigotry contaminating the soul. You can purify your body through abstinence and fasting, but only love will purify your heart.
We live in a culture which is strongly shaped by cleanliness and this has doubtlessly beneficial aspects. What is difficult to bear in less developed countries is the disorder, the garbage on the streets, the smell and the dirt. Sometimes we overlook the radiance of people in these countries which shows a way of relaxation and daily humor which is rare in our regions. This indicates that the outer filth is just one side and not the most important. Behind the cleanest outside there can easily hide a filthy personality.
Sometimes we hear, the inside is like the outside. To tidy up on the outside is not a big thing, not more than overcoming our laziness. Outside cleansing includes our own bodies, e.g. by fasting. In this case, discipline helps to limit the ego. In any form of consistent training, inner resistances have to be surmounted. The ego has to step back, and its neediness is no longer the only guidance for action.
The cleansing of the heart is enhanced by practices like that, but not completed. Mere self discipline and self mastering do not automatically create more consciousness. The opposite can happen, when discipline and mortification start to serve a part of our ego which feels better and superior with the successes of self control and adds to one’s pride and arrogance. An further aspect of self control can be found in the rejection of anything which is dirty or unpleasant which leads to stick to cleanliness in any aspect of life in a compulsory way. By despising anything which is not clean we reject a dimension of reality and condemn it even if it belongs to it like the shadow to the light. Looking at nature can teach us how relative our ideas of cleanliness are. Pigs enjoy different forms of tidiness than cats.
The inner cleansing is so difficult because we usually do not realize what has to be cleaned. We are so attached to our peculiarities and quirks that it hardly occurs to us that they should be changed. We nourish our common self image and justify our action with great skill in front of ourselves even if they neither serve ourselves nor the others. In the same way we cultivate the images of other persons, especially those who have disappointed, deceived or hurt us. So we predominantly circle around inside ourselves and assume that this is the only possible reality.
The rule draws our attention to two forms of inner contamination: Hatred and bigotry. They represent all aspects of unkindness which we inflict on others (hatred) and for self arrogance which lead to blindness towards ourselves (bigotry). In both cases we refuse to look: at the other how he/she really is – instead we gaze at our projections – and at ourselves how we really are – instead we indulge in our cantankerousness and self glorification.
In the case of hatred we are caught in a narrowed view of the other by which we constrict ourselves – is it possible to breathe freely when we hate? Seemingly hatred makes us stronger because it bears a deathly power. Hatred wants to destroy the other person in the ultimate consequence. But it is a power which we direct upon ourselves. In reality, we extinguish the flame of love in us and cut ourselves off the energy which nurtures our growth.
When we bathe in self-approval we stretch out above ourselves. And in this pose, we cannot breathe freely either. We somehow hold the air inside of us in order to be able to float above the others. The power we can feel then is loaned from our reserves and can only last for a limited amount of time. In our egomania we tend to collapse quickly when the turns of life provide unpleasant challenges for us. The bigot likes to flee from real and authentic contact with people who could show him his weaknesses.
We act as the characters in Stanislaw Lem’s novel “The Futurological Congress”. Lem describes a world in which everything is rotten and decayed but the government has spread a drug with a fragrance which causes a shift in perception so that all the degenerated objects look wonderful and beautiful. In regard to ourselves, we tend to whitewash our distorted character traits, and in regard to other we do the opposite and oversubscribe their distorted character traits and ignore their real inner being. The drug which constantly defeats us is our pathological tendency of self relatedness and self deception as well as our deception about others, either in hatred or in idealization.
To purify our hearts requires the consistency of the inward search: To accept our weaknesses and to take them to our hearts, where they transform into strengths by the use of the power of love. The inward search never reaches an end because every new challenge of life activates our shadow aspects. But it can be improved and enhanced by exercise. The pleasure of a successful step of healing lies in the deepening of the power of our hearts when we experience it.
The rules are taken from Elif Shafak's novel “The Forty Rules of Love” (Viking 2010). They are inspired by the Sufi tradition and worded by the autor's imagination. www.elifshafak.com
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