My Sacred Life Day 20

Today I continued my huge decluttering project. This time I actually binned up all of my "sausage clothes" (clothes that make me feel like I'm a sausage because they're too tight). They were pretty much all my clothes. I put them in the garage. Actually, LoveHubbie put them in the garage, carrying them three at a time---all 21 bins! LoveHubbie is STRONG :) It felt so good to get them out of my closet.




Now I can actually live with a few clothes that fit and that I can pretty up and thus feel better about myself. Plus the others are organized so that as I lose weight I can pull them out and find them. I feel happy and totally exhausted.

~Pictures by Me

Decluttering is Hot Topic

There is a wonderful discussion on decluttering as creating space here at Carrie Bartkowiak's blog. Be sure to read the comments, as they have some good points in them, too. She echoes my concept of seeing decluttering as "creating space", transforming it into a freeing activity filled with possibilities rather than as an overwhelming chore.

Recently it's been suggested by my healer/bodyworker Shannon that since I decided to declutter my house and my life, that this process is going on in other areas, too, and my recent life losses may be related to letting go of things to create space. This in no way diminishes the incredibly high value of what was lost (e.g., the loss of my wonderful father), but just means that it is time in my life for something else, something different, something unknown that the Universe wants to bring my way. Dr. Christiane Northrup writes in her book "The Wisdom of Menopause" that this time "in between" can be difficult for women---a time when they have very real losses and a vast space that has not yet been filled by anything---it's sort of a different type of "empty nest syndrome" (not related to children but to an emptiness in our lives). It is at this time, she says, that we can trust Spirit and trust ourselves that good and wonderful things can and will come our way. Although this time may be filled with space and vastness as in a kind of free-fall (that's what it feels like to me), it need not be filled with fear, but can be a time of joy and trust, and a time for the development of our faith in the Universe's goodness and caring for us. I truly love this idea.



~Picture by Hubbie Mark: Dale Chihuly sculpture in Union Station, Tacoma, WA

You're Enough

"For many of us, raised to believe that money is the real source of security, a dependence on God feels foodhardy, suicidal, even laughable. When we consider the lilies of the fields, we think they are quaint, too out of it for the modern world. Listening to the siren song of more, we are deaf to the still small voice waiting in our soul to whisper, "You're enough."---Julia Cameron in "Inspirations"

Decluttering awakens me to the wisdom of less, the freedom of less, and the excitement of new beginnings, although they be intertwined with loss. This is how life works.

I am, and my husband is also, presently enmeshed in one of the most difficult times of loss either one of us has ever had. First my husband lost his father less than a month ago. Now we have a mind-numbing loss that I will write more about later, but one that is especially poignant because it is Easter time. It's important for me to remember my frequent comment to others that "this too shall pass" and that dependence on God is the only way many of us (including me) can get through life. For me, in some mystical way, God is within me, something I used to call the Holy Spirit, but now I feel more comfortable just calling "spirit" or "me".

Below is a beautiful picture I purchased a while ago by an unknown artist (I can't read her/his name in the signature). It is a poem called "I Am Enough". I love this, and think you will too:

I wish everyone a wonderful Easter, and a glorious weekend of beautiful weather. We are expected to have a high of 80 degrees today and our Farmer's Market is open after being closed all winter. Spring has sprung.

~Top picture with my cell phone, bottom by Hubbie Mark

A Daring Adventure

I have been noticing the brave and wonderful journey of Carla Blazek as she navigates the storms of life in her blog Zena Musings. Today's Zena Musings featured my favorite quote by Helen Keller:

"Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all. Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature."---Helen Keller

I am especially fond of the second line of this quote: "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all" and believe this with all my heart. I find it especially impacting that it was Helen Keller---who was blind, deaf, and mute---who wrote this.



Carla is moving to a new city and a new life, relocating her business without her husband and without her beloved canine companion of many years. She is so brave and authentic and very inspirational to me. She has the opportunity to recreate her identity and her life from scratch. So scary, too. A daring adventure.

Anyway, so on a much, much smaller scale, decluttering is recreating your life, and potentially, your identity. You are making your environment fit your current life and values. It is a creative act. Carla is involved in super-creation, but if you're decluttering, you are being creative. When I see decluttering like this it becomes fun instead of mind-numbing drudgery most of the time. Decluttering is reinventing your home to reflect who you are now.

Here is one of my challenges: to create a sacred space:

"You must have a room or a certain hour of the day or so where you do not know what is in the morning paper. A place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. At first you may think othing's happening. But if you have a sacred space and take advantage of it and use it every day, something will happen. Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again."---Joseph Campbell in Mariel Hemingway's "Healthy Living from the Inside Out"

Isn't this great? Mariel suggests ways that this can be done with limited finances and/or space. I love the idea of having a sacred space to come home to myself in on a daily basis. I have an informal area, but nothing intentional. I am particularly excited about this, and am right now working on my "nook", where I think I'm going to locate this sacred space. When I get it done, I'll post pictures of it.

Mariel's book is exceptional, wholistic, and comprehensive, and has been intrinsic to me in recreating my physical space, including my home, office, body, spirit, and diet. Her book has inspired me to restart my yoga practice. And I am "right ready" to tackle a major improvement in my diet, making it cleaner and healthier via the potpourri of ideas in the book.

So I plod, celebrate, drag my feet, move, dance, on with my decluttering project (see here and here for more), recreating my living space (and getting a big fat whopping tax deduction as well!)

~Picture of the rose from my cell phone

Decluttering, Part Two---Creating Space

I started my decluttering process with my office/studio.

I am impressed that what I am doing is not really decluttering, but Creating Space. Space for functionality, and space for new dreams. There are so many old dreams that I am letting go of---my paraphernalia for past businesses I've owned and have long since abandoned, old web design books (including a DOS for Dummies book), musical instruments I used to play, things that belonged to people who have since died and are memories of my love for them, other "important paperwork" from the past 20 years. It feels so freeing to leave the past where it belongs and to move on. So much old baggage is going out the door, and much of it to people who will be able to use it and benefit from it.

I created a bin for sentimental items so that they will all be in one place, not lost or mixed in with our bills and other paperwork.

And best of all, there is a whole dresser now available for my collage materials. They are now accessible and organized. I was so inspired by looks at Lia's studio yesterday. I'll take some pictures of mine. I'm not done yet but I'm on my way!


~Picture by Hubbie Mark

Decluttering, But More...Really, "Blasting Open Your Creativity"!

I just read a great book last night about decluttering---"It's All Too Much" by Peter Walsh. It only took me about two hours, but it really had an impact. Hubbie (the one recovering from a heart attack) worked until midnight. So had an unexpected chance while I was waiting up for him to read this life-changing (yes, truly) book. For those of us in the Finding Water community, decluttering can be vital to opening up the creative process. I am very excited about doing this in my home and plan on accomplishing it during our twelve-week program. Or at least getting an incredible start. Especially after reading this book and understanding how to make the physical environment of my home compatible with the vision I have for how I want to live my life. I'm very psyched!

Here's my Amazon review:

Great Book for Everyone to Read Before Attempting To Declutter, March 6, 2007 *****
What I found most valuable with this outstanding book was that it was about the motivation behind excess accumulation and cluttering. Unless you address this motivation, the clutter is bound to come back, even if you hire a professional organizer and everything in your home is perfect. All of the clutter will creep back.

There are so many outstanding points in this book. For example, with sentimental-type clutter, the author says that the most important thing is to separate the memory from the item. Then the item can be dealt with appropriately. You are not discarding the memory, just the item. Thus, if you have an overabundance of momentos, you can divorce the memory from the item, pick a few items that you want to represent the memory and truly honor them by displaying them in your home (rather than storing them in boxes in your garage), and discard (or digitally scan and then discard) the rest.

In my house, my husband has a wealth of pictures of his children when they were small. These pictures are filling boxes in the garage and our barn. We have all of their schoolwork and many personal items because he loves his children and feels as though throwing away one of their things is throwing away a part of them. They are now adults; however, until this underlying motivation for hanging onto things is addressed, all attempts at decluttering will be futile. For me, the whole book was profound. I'm great at organizing techniques, but the idea of looking at the feelings and problems sourcing the whole hoarding behavior was most helpful.

I am getting ready to declutter my house, as we are bursting at the seams and can no longer function well in our home. This is the perfect book to read to understand the emotional work and the letting go that must go on so that the process of decluttering can take place. Then whatever vision and purpose you have for your home can be implemented, and you can enjoy the space you have in your home. The book targets a huge consumeristic flaw in our American culture, and gives solutions.

I cannot imagine who would not benefit from this important book. Highly recommended.
*****

Ok, so THIS IS NOT PRIMARILY ABOUT DECLUTTERING! It is really, truly, about letting go of your stuff and being free to create and change and grow. It is about being in the present. It is about creating space for whatever vision you have for your life. And really...your "stuff" can hold you back and hold you down.

If anyone else has read this, let me know. I'm looking for an accountability partner here. Maybe we can support each other in creating a space to support the lives we want to have.