Purified Intentions: Seeing With an Undivided Heart

Human beings lie to themselves more often than they lie to anyone else.

We rationalize.
We justify.
We reinterpret.
We explain away.
And most dangerously—we do all this sincerely, convinced our motives are pure.

This is why the spiritual life, regardless of tradition, always returns to intention. What we do matters, but why we do it forms the very architecture of the soul. The Desert Fathers, Thomas Merton, the Orthodox tradition, and even contemporary research on near-death experiences all converge on this truth: the heart must be purified, or else we walk in self‑deception while believing we walk in light.

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1. The Human Tenderness for Self-Deception

Jesus says, “The lamp of the body is the eye; if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light” (Matthew 6:22).
The “eye” in that passage is the intention—the inner orientation of the heart.

But the human heart “is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9). Not deceitful in a malicious sense, but in a subtle, protective, ego-driven way. We routinely:

• Cloak selfishness with “prudence”
• Call fear “caution”
• Rename avoidance as “humility”
• Disguise pride as “principle”
• Mask self-indulgence as “self-care”
• Use religiosity to avoid actual transformation

Self-deception is rarely a dramatic lie; it is “a slight tilt of the inner compass” that slowly leads us away from truth.

This is why the spiritual masters insist that intention must be examined, purified, and surrendered again and again.

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2. Thomas Merton: Intention as the Engine of Spiritual Authenticity

In No Man Is an Island, Thomas Merton devotes significant attention to intention. He warns that spiritual pride is a “more dangerous darkness than outright sin,” precisely because it masquerades as virtue. His point is simple but devastating:

“A good intention is not something we merely feel but something we must continually choose.”

For Merton, purity of intention is not moral perfection but inner transparency—an honesty before God that cuts through layers of ego and false self. He echoes the monastic tradition that “the true self” is found only when all motives are placed under the light of grace.

Purifying intentions, then, is not about scrupulosity but about truthfulness—the courage to see ourselves as God sees us.

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3. The Orthodox Vision: The Heart Must Be Illumined

Eastern Christianity emphasizes nepsis—vigilance, inner watchfulness. The Orthodox saints teach that the spiritual life is fundamentally an attempt to “guard the heart” (Proverbs 4:23) so that the mind is not clouded by passions and the intention does not become distorted.

Key Orthodox insights include:

• Purification is the first stage of the spiritual life
  Before illumination or union, the heart must be cleansed of distorted desires.
• Motives matter more than external appearances
  Two people can perform the same action—one as an act of love, the other from vainglory.
• Self-awareness is a spiritual discipline
  The Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me”) is not magic—it is a continual return to humility, a way of uncovering false motives.

In Orthodoxy, the purified heart is not primarily a moral achievement but a state of clarity where one perceives reality, God, and oneself truthfully.

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4. Near-Death Experiences and the Judgment of Intentions

One of the most remarkable patterns in thousands of near-death experience accounts is the life review. People describe encountering a divine love that shows:

• not merely what they did
• but what they intended
• and how their motives affected others

Over and over, experiencers report that the judgment is not punitive but revelatory. Many say they were “shown their real intentions” behind certain actions—sometimes kinder than they believed, sometimes more selfish.

NDEs thus echo both Jesus and the saints:

God sees the heart
God reveals the heart
God heals the heart

The life review often leaves people radically transformed—and intensely committed to living from love rather than fear, ego, or social conditioning. In this sense, NDE research provides a modern psychological and phenomenological confirmation of ancient spiritual wisdom.

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5. Philosophical Insight: The Will to Truth vs. The Will to Comfort

Philosophically, purifying intention is the long war between:

• the will to truth (Augustine, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil)
• and the will to comfort (Nietzsche’s “self-preserving illusions”)

Human beings are wired to selectively perceive reality in ways that protect the ego. The philosopher José Ortega y Gasset put it beautifully: “We do not see the world as it is, but as we need it to be to avoid collapse.”

Thus the spiritual life is a commitment to truth even when it hurts—the “narrow way” that leads to life (Matthew 7:14).

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6. Christianity’s Answer: Purity of Heart as the Gateway to God

Jesus’ promise is radical:

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
— Matthew 5:8

Purity of heart is not moral blamelessness.
It is singleness of intention.
It is wanting the truth more than self-protection; God more than self-justification.

Christian spirituality teaches:

• The Holy Spirit unveils hidden motives (Psalm 139:23–24)
• Grace empowers transformation (Philippians 2:13)
• Love is the criterion of all intentions (1 Corinthians 13)
• Light exposes and heals self-deception (John 3:20–21)
• Christ saves those still trapped in darkness (John 12:46)

This last point is crucial: Jesus comes not only to forgive wrongdoing but to liberate us from the inner confusion that causes wrongdoing.

Those “drawn to darkness,” as you said, may still glimpse truth—yet recoil from it. But Christ’s role is not merely to observe this struggle; He enters it, illumines it, and works to heal it. Salvation is the healing of intention from fragmentation into unity.

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7. The Practice of Purifying Intention: A Continual Return

Across traditions and disciplines, the method is consistent:

1. Self-examination
   “Why am I choosing this? What do I fear? What do I seek?”
2. Honesty with God
   “Show me my heart; help me to love truth more than ego.”
3. Contemplation
   Silence reveals where motives are mixed.
4. Confession (to God or a spiritual guide)
   Naming false motives takes away their power.
5. Reorientation toward love
   The purified intention always points toward compassion, truth, and humility.
6. Letting grace illuminate the inner world
   Transformation is not self-will but cooperation with divine healing.

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Conclusion: Purified Intention as the Core of Spiritual Life

In the end, Christian spirituality, NDE insights, Orthodoxy, contemplative practice, and modern psychology converge on one luminous truth:

What we seek in life determines what we become.
And what we become depends on the intentions we cultivate.

Self-deception is our natural state.
Purified intention is our redeemed state.
And Christ’s light is the path from one to the other.

To live with purified intention is not to be perfect.
It is to live with an undivided heart—one that wants truth more than illusion, love more than ego, and God more than self-deception.

This, ultimately, is what makes us capable of seeing God—and capable of seeing reality with His eyes.