About 4 months ago, my sister Amy talked me and several others into studying a book called 'SoulSpace' by Xorin Balbes. She started a Facebook Group (which you can join
here) and within days we were all transforming our homes and our lives. The initial project was to be 8 weeks, a chapter a week. And for those of us with tiny well kept homes that probably would have been enough. For me, not so much. So when the 8 weeks rolled to a close and I had just gotten started, I asked her if I could take over the group and go for 8 months. Well I begged is what I did. I realized I needed these new friends of mine. I looked forward to seeing their names in my day and their pictures of clothing piles and empty drawers. I was feeling empowered by the group to let go of years of neglected items that I would walk by before and not even see. So April 1st, April Fools day, we started anew. Every week I have given the group a task, a smallish bite of something to do that will make a change. These last two weeks have not been so smallish.
We are in the 'release phase' so I have asked everyone to go into the closed off areas of their homes and bring things out into the light. Empty their closets...
see what's in there...
All of this was in one closet. Can you believe that?
And this one in the guesthouse...
held all of this...
Is that bizarre? I think so. When I began to go through it all I realized that I wanted to leave empty spaces in my life. After these 4 months, I've been letting those empty spaces speak to me about possibilities, unlimited possibilities. Who needs a round basket? 20 tablecloths (even though they are pretty). I got rid of a whole backseat filled with things I could hardly believe I'd kept and then some more that had once called my name and now felt like interlopers. I'm seeing how stuff keeps me unconscious, endlessly moving it here and there, cleaning it or wishing it were clean. Telling myself I'll use it one day, guilting myself into keeping it because a good friend gave it to me for my birthday. Endless ridiculousness.
As a group we've gotten rid of all of the interloping clothing and dried up pens (all of April). Now we're working on bringing the neglected things into the light and sorting them into categories to go through, once a week throughout the 8 months, taking our time and letting go, for good. To do this, we picked up a new book this time to use along with SoulSpace, its called 'The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up' by Marie Kondo, and its brilliant. She asks us to keep only what 'sparks joy'. To hold things in your hands and ask them, do you serve me now? or are we done. Then if it is, with gratitude, send it on its way to the thrift store. In this process we have gotten in touch with materialism not as a degrading phrase like, "Oh she's so materialistic." But as the global distraction that it is. The time spent on the STUFF, the time spent on making the money to buy stuff, and the time spent on the buying. And then the time spent on the storing it and the moving it from one pile to another, washing it in the kitchen sink or laundry. The water we waste on it! The piles. And the distraction of it from our families and our spiritual practices, how its unrelenting messiness stops us from having friends to dinner. Its endlessly ridiculous.
So me and my friends, we're putting a stop to it. We're emptying out our homes and filling them with the energy of our Souls. Will you join us?
Comments
Good stuff. Yes, those closets are amazing! I call them magic spaces. They magically hold more and more and more stuff!