Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning

I like to read, and own, books and magazines. I like music and movies. I like to make things. I like to play with my cats. That means, in my world that I have stuff. And without careful management and culling, stuff becomes clutter, oh, yes, it does.

There are hundreds of placing online to help you dispel your excess stuff, my favorite is Flylady.net.  Clearing the dreck from your decks is a lovely thing.

We’ve got other clutter, too, inside us. This kind of clutter is more insidious.  We can have an austere home, but be a hoarder on the inside. Isn’t that crazy?

So what do we hoard inside? Old traumas, betrayals, disappointments, fears, hurts, abuses, humiliations, failures, well, you get the picture.

We store them up in our emotional basements, our emotional attics. And then we pretend they aren’t there, and wonder why we are so miserable.

Imagine this:  The hoarder of physical stuff is asked, “What are you going to do with all the stuff? You have to walk around it, your rooms are so full they are useless, you can’t get to the stove to cook nourishing meals, and there are  bugs and it stinks.” And she answers, “Oh, I ignore it. It will go away. It doesn’t have any impact on my life. Oh, I just forget about it. You’re wrong; there is nothing bad here, life is just like this. ”

All that internal detritus is incomplete experiences. And we take that flotsam, that residue, and we build on it; tottery, unstable ideas and thoughts, shaky and damaging. We get ideas like, all women are control freaks, all men are cruel, I never get rewarded, I am helpless, life is hard, suffering is the human condition.

I feel so sad for the people I see who think they are not responsible for their lives, for their feelings. like the hoarder who thinks all her rotting crap has no impact on her life.

We try lots of outside stuff to make our lives feel better; more money, a fancier job, a bigger house. We think we will be happier with a new partner, or if we lose or gain weight, if we get chest implants, or carve new faces. We think our lives will be happier if we volunteer enough, or work hard enough, or do enough hard stuff.

It’s the hoarder throwing sheets over her piles of crap so’s not to notice ‘em.

Nothing we do “out there” will make us happier, more peaceful, centered, and serene. It’s only when we start the very interesting process of clearing out the wreckage of our past, addressing our mis-learnings, practice new behaviors, changing our thinking, that we find true inner comfiness.

It’s not the walk in the forest that makes us feel so calm, it’s what we do inside while we’re on the walk.

How have I changed from blaming the world for my crap to taking my responsibility?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 02232013