Purifying for Peace: The Peace Pilgrim Project, Part 3

"One day as I was combing my hair at the mirror, I looked at myself and said, 'You vain thing! Why do you think you know better when you forgive everyone else for not knowing better? You're not any better than they are." Peace Pilgrim

In the last post, I noted that Peace Pilgrim spent 15 years preparing for her cross-country pilgrimage for peace. As she reflected on these years, which she called her "spiritual growing up" period, she later identified three categories of practices: preparations, purifications, and relinquishments. Under each of these categories, she identified four specific attitudes or practices. This post will focus on the practices of purification.

1. The Purification of the Body

Peace Pilgrim focuses here on physical living habits, noting that it was five years after she received the vision for her life before she began to take care of what she refers to as her "bodily temple." Specifically, this involved changing to a diet of "mostly fruits, nuts, vegetable, whole grains (preferably organically grown) and perhaps a bit of milk and cheese."

Was Peace Pilgrim ahead of her time? Consider that she began her pilgrimage in 1953, so the time period she's referring to here would be roughly 1943. I wasn't around then, but I was around a decade later, and I know the standard American family diet was radically different than the one she describes. But there's more.

In the following passage, Peace Pilgrim describes her decision to become a vegetarian:

I began to realize that I was disobeying my rule of life which says: I will not ask anyone to do for me things that I would refuse to do for myself. Now, I wouldn't kill any creature--I wouldn't even kill a chicken or a fish--and therefore I stopped immediately eating all flesh.

I have learned since that it is bad for your health, but at that time, I just extended my love to include not only all my fellow human beings but also my fellow creatures, and so I stopped hurting them and I stopped eating them.

Then I learned from a college professor . . . that it takes many times the land to raise the creatures we eat as it would to raise fruits or vegetables or grains. Since I want the maximum number of God's children to be fed, that also would make me a vegetarian.

In describing her eating habits more specifically, Peace Pilgrim notes that whenever she learned that certain substances were bad for her health, she simply stopped eating them. This included white flour, white sugar, and all processed foods. The list of substances she quit also includes caffeine and highly seasoned foods. I'm going to exercise my editorial privilege and skip over those, however, because I am not ready to give up my coffee or my spicy foods!

Peace Pilgrim sums up her dietary habits by describing her attitude toward food:

I enjoy my food, but I eat to live. I do not live to eat, as some people do, and I know when to stop eating. I am not enslaved by food.

Included in her discussion of physical habits, Peace Pilgrim recommends getting as much "fresh air and sunshine and contact with nature" as we can as well as getting sufficient rest and exercise.

2. The Purification of Thought

Peace Pilgrim begins her discussion of the second purification noting how powerful our thoughts are and states:  "I don't eat junk foods and I don't think junk thoughts!" She notes that positive thoughts "can be a powerful influence for good when they're on the positive side, and they can and do make you physically ill when they're on the negative side."

Peace Pilgrim identifies two specific actions we can take to purify our thoughts:

• If you're harboring the slightest bitterness toward anyone, or any unkind thoughts of any sort whatever, you must get rid fo them quickly. They are not hurting anyone but you.
• You must learn to forgive yourself as easily as you forgive others. Then take it a step further and use all that energy that you used in condemning yourself for improving yourself.

She illustrates this first principle with a story of a 65-year-old man who was still harboring bitterness toward his father, who had been dead for many years. The man's bitterness sprang from the fact that the father had paid for his brother's education but not for his. As she listened to the man's story, Peace Pilgrim was able to help him see that his father had done his best under the circumstances and had not intended to harm or create a disadvantage for his son. Once the man was able to release the bitterness he had been harboring toward his dead father, the man's chronic illness faded  away and eventually disappeared.

Her second principle reminds me of C. S. Lewis's discussion of forgiveness in Mere Christianity. Lewis suggests that a key to understanding the dynamics of forgiveness is the biblical phrase "Love your neighbor as yourself." His point is that I continue to love myself even when I don't like the things I've done and suggests that we should extend this same attitude of love and forgiveness to our neighbor. Peace Pilgrim's point is different. She found that it was relatively easy for her to forgive others, but that she was often very unforgiving toward herself. I suppose each of us will have to decide which approach speaks to our condition: Peace Pilgrim's or Lewis's.

3. The Purification of Desire

Here Peace Pilgrim asks a hard question:

What are the things you desire? Do you desire superficial things like pleasures--new items of wearing apparel or new household furnishings or cars?

Well, yes, I do. And perusing my friends' Facebook posts, I'm fairly certain most of them would be right there with me. But Peace Pilgrim offers a different path:

Since you are here to get yourself in harmony with the laws that govern human conduct and with your part in the scheme of things, your desires should be focused in this direction. It's very important to get your desires centered  so you will desire only to do God's will for you. You can come to the point of oneness of desire, just to know and do your part in the Life Pattern. When you think about it, is there anything else as really important to desire?

4. The Purification of Motive

This purification involves more hard questions and sayings from our spiritual teacher:

What is your motive for whatever you may be doing? If it is pure greed or self-seeking or the wish for self-glorification, I would say, don't do that thing. Don't do anything you would do with such a motive. But that isn't easy because we tend to do things with very mixed motives. I've never found a person who had purely bad motives. There may be such a person, I have never encountered one. I do encounter people who constantly have mixed motives.

I talk to groups studying the most advanced spiritual teachings and sometimes these people wonder why nothing is happening in their lives. Their motive is the attainment of inner peace for themselves--which of course is a selfish motive. You will not find it with this motive. The motive, if you are to find inner peace, must be an outgoing motive. Service, of course, service. Giving, not getting. Your motive must be good if your work is to have good effect. The secret of life is being of service.

Peace Pilgrim tells another story to illustrate this practice of purification.

I knew a man who was good architect. It was obviously his right work, but he was doing it with the wrong motive. His motive was to make a lot of money and to keep ahead of the Joneses. He worked himself into an illness, and it was shortly after that I met him. I got him to do little things for service. I talked to him about the joy of service and I knew that after he had experienced this he could never go back into really self-centered living. . . . A few years later I hardly recognized him when I stopped in to see him. He was such a changed man! But he was still an architect. He was drawing a plan and he talked to me about it: 'You see, I'm designing it this way to fit into their budget, and then I'll set it on their plot of ground to make it look nice. . . .' His motive was to be of service to the people he drew plans for. He was a radiant and transformed person.

 
She concludes this section by remarking that while some people may need to change jobs in order to change their lives, more often people merely have to change their motive to service in order to change their lives.

One of my colleagues noted about a previous post in this series that Peace Pilgrim's practice of waiting and preparing for her pilgrimage reminded her of Advent and the waiting associated with that season. As I was writing this post on New Year's Day, it struck me that Peace Pilgrim's four purifications may be particularly appropriate for this season, a time when we often make personal resolutions for a new year. I don't know about you, but, for me, many of her practices challenge me in areas of my life I spend a lot of time thinking and even stressing about. Peace Pilgrim's words challenge me, but they don't make me feel defeated. They resonate with some of my deepest longings, but they don't produce guilt in me. They give me some simple and true rules to follow, and her tone gives me hope that I might just be able to make some progress in this "spiritual growing up" process. And, finally, her words remind me of this essential truth:

There's only one person you can change and that's yourself. After you have changed yourself, you might be able to inspire others to look for change.

Happy New Year, fellow pilgrims. May it be one of growth and peace for us all.