A friend was going through a period of life where she felt overwhelmed by all the things going on around her. She longed for the simpler life she once knew, when she lived in a starker environment without knickknacks and a house full of mementos, and all the other possessions that filled her home. She was a nun, though no longer lived a nun’s life, and her desire to reconnect with that life meant to become more pure and connected with the divine.
It made me think of many other spiritual faiths that have long held views that in order to connect with the divine we must ‘clean up our acts,’ ‘purify our environments,’ ‘scour our thoughts,’ ‘modify our behaviors,’ and many other mottoes intended to purify, simplify, and reduce the effect of the physical realm upon us so that we can become more connected with the divine.
I looked around at my own home and garden. They were so cluttered and filled with things that an aunt of mine once told me that visiting my home was like visiting a museum. I raised my eyebrow at that term, thinking of a stuffy and musty environment, but she then told me that she meant that it is full of an eclectic array of things that keeps people fascinated exploring them.
My garden was overgrown because I was so busy with other things that I could no longer keep up with it. I had to learn to allow the dust on my tables and shelves, and on the multitude of photos on my walls, to just be, because I couldn’t keep up with all else I had to do.
From time to time, despite this stoic position, I wished my home was less cluttered and my garden less weedy. I wished that things were in their ‘places' and that tables and floors shone in the daylight glow from windows. I wished I had the energy to quickly attend the affray left behind by simply living life. But as I looked at the world around me and at the burgeoning greenery in my overgrown garden, and saw wildlife within it, I paused in those wishful thoughts. God’s house is not uncluttered. I then wondered, how does God cope with all the extraordinary complexities and overload that comes with such a vast manifestation?
In answer, I was brought to mind of the novel I'd then been writing for many years. Others read what I’d written and enjoyed it but critics made me hesitant to finish what I began. They said I wrote well. They said I wrote evocatively. They said I wrote copiously. They said I wrote unusually because as they read. and at a point when things could have become boring, I inserted a whole new thing that stopped the story from becoming that.
In today’s writing world, you take things out instead of putting things in, so that the story becomes ‘cleaner.’ I didn’t. I added things in, instead. It’s the way my mind worked. My threads followed other threads and, while they all connected and reconnected, they kept expanding the story. My critics said I wrote a good story but the unconventionality of my writing got to them. They wanted less. They wanted things to the point. I had points and I created journeys but it wasn’t quick enough for them. They were embedded in their views that a good story was quick and dramatic – not an unfolding adventure.
I then realized that God’s stories are not as clean as they would have liked them, either. Every time you think one of God’s stories has come to an end, another begins. Every time you think you have a handle on what the story is about, a new aspect comes into play. God, like me, doesn’t take away from the story but keeps adding new bits to keep our interest up and our investment in the story maintained.
When I looked at my home and garden again, truth to tell, I saw their beauty. I knew their presence. I felt their serenity. If I let things like dust I could draw hearts in or weeds so high a snake could hide in them bother me it wasn't because they were wrong or unclean or untidy or unkempt or disconnected from the divine. It was because I was feeling overwhelmed, lacking energy, lacking vitality, feeling disconnected myself, and needing less on my plate to deal with so that I could tackle what I had to maintain.
This was not a problem with cleanliness or untidiness. Our ancestors lived in homes with dirt floors. Did they dust their mud brick walls, then? They lived with their animals in the same room they slept in at night. Did they worry about keeping the muck separate? Did they scythe the weeds outside their doors or did they pick them for herbs? My modern problem was one of overload and overload is a problem of attitude. What’s really important?
So what if others thought crazy people lived in my home because the lawns weren’t mown and the weeds had grown high in my garden beds? Why should I think, 'If only they could remember how beautifully kept these yards of mine were when my life wasn’t so burdened?' Why should I feel that I could only have friends visit in my home if my tables were dusted and my clothes didn’t litter my floors? Are friends people you impress or people you hang with because you are comfortable with them through thick and thin?
Burdens help you prioritize. We can’t deal with everything. Human frailty doesn’t allow us to be superhuman, no matter how much our mind wants to complete its agendas. This doesn’t mean we have to give up what we love just because it can no longer be kept up with or because it doesn't meet our expectations and ideals of what living in the divine light is. I love my home and garden. I still find great peace and haven in them, despite those petty considerations. If God likes the clutter and keeps adding to it, then why do we think that decluttering brings us closer to the divine?
I am grateful for what I have. Of course, I like it better when my home is cleaner, my garden more navigable, and when I have the time and energy I deal with it as I can, if only so that I don’t trip over last week’s washing on my way to bed, or so that my dogs can go to the toilet in my yard without being scared a toad will jump out at them from the underbrush. Yet there are a multitude of lives happening in that underbrush. When we stop and look, life thrives in the messiest of places. I thrive. You thrive. We thrive…so long as we don’t get caught up in our concepts of clutter, of cleanliness, and of good and bad.
I live in the sub-tropics. Cockroaches are rife in most homes, here. They’re very hard to get rid of once you have them. Clutter helps them hide. It doesn’t matter how much you clean up after yourself, if there’s clutter around, they manage to keep on keeping on. Multiple pest controls haven’t got rid of them. They continue to thrive. I had to laugh when I realized that in part of our regular pagan rituals, when we do a house and garden cleansing that asks Mother-Father God to cleanse the place of negative energies and to fill it with their life force, their love and wisdom, and to protect it and everyone in it from harm or negativity, we unwittingly asked for them to be protected, as well. The cockroaches lived in our home. They were born there. They were God’s creatures, too. (That thought didn’t stop me squashing them when I saw them, though I did wish them a happier next life).
Snakes, lizards, frogs, toads, spiders, beetles, termites, ants, butterflies, moths, geckos, centipedes, mice, kookaburras, possums, blackbirds, magpies, parrots, and my domestic cats and dogs, and fish live in my home and garden, along with the humans. It’s a zoo. A thriving menagerie. Could they exist there if my home was less cluttered? Probably, but in lesser population. I deal with the vermin as best as I can, and wish them the best – after all, they don’t know they are vermin. They're just looking for homes and nourishment, too.
Do I truly want my life to be less cluttered in order to feel more in contact with the divine? Oh, no. Not I. I see the divine in every being, even those poor little cockroaches I am about to squish. But there are priorities. Having clean plates to eat my dinner on and a place to sit without bugs crawling on it are priorities. Priorities deal with what is most important. Dust is not so important as cleanliness. Weeds are not so important as serenity and diversity. Burdens are only as important as you make them. I chose not to make weeds and dust my burdens. There were other burdens I would rather carry than such petty loads.
In Tantra, yogis attempt to discipline their minds and bodies in order to reconnect with the divine, and to connect with the divine on more powerful levels. To do so, their regime includes extremes of meditation, prayer, and dietary restrictions so that they are forced to focus on the bare minimum of physical reality and can only focus on the spiritual. But an enlightened being doesn’t need such physical disciplines to refocus their mind. All they have to do is focus to reconnect with the divine. It’s a shift in time and space, and has nothing to do with physicality. You can be totally connected in body in a physically cluttered world, and yet be completely focused in the mind essence of divinity, where all life is one and naturally much simpler.
Buddha made peace with himself the day he became enlightened. For years he’d meditated and starved himself to try to follow the regimes of yogis in order to become enlightened. He’d reduced the clutter from his life in order to become more connected with the divine, but nothing worked. It was when he decided to accept life in all its diversity that the light went on in his head. In that moment, he realized that you don’t have to disconnect from the world in order to reconnect with the divine. Like making a phone call home, you just connect.
The key to living in a burgeoning and writhing physical universe is a basic tenet of Buddhism. Focus on the moments, instead of the sequence of events. Be mindful. Be here. You can’t be in the future because it hasn’t happened yet. You can’t be in the past because it has moved away from you. You can only be here, now. That means you can only deal with what is before you, and you can only deal with one thing at a time. What a wonderfully effective mode for decluttering existence!
I know that the weeds and dust will always be there, waiting, and will always become part of my here and now, some time. But as I deal with priorities, what needs the most attention gets it first. In doing that, I live life effectively, no matter what other people think or what notions I have about what they think.
I came to like my clutter. I realized I found it interesting. I made an uneasy peace with myself, instead, and whenever it got to me after that, I just decluttered my mind...
It made me think of many other spiritual faiths that have long held views that in order to connect with the divine we must ‘clean up our acts,’ ‘purify our environments,’ ‘scour our thoughts,’ ‘modify our behaviors,’ and many other mottoes intended to purify, simplify, and reduce the effect of the physical realm upon us so that we can become more connected with the divine.
I looked around at my own home and garden. They were so cluttered and filled with things that an aunt of mine once told me that visiting my home was like visiting a museum. I raised my eyebrow at that term, thinking of a stuffy and musty environment, but she then told me that she meant that it is full of an eclectic array of things that keeps people fascinated exploring them.
My garden was overgrown because I was so busy with other things that I could no longer keep up with it. I had to learn to allow the dust on my tables and shelves, and on the multitude of photos on my walls, to just be, because I couldn’t keep up with all else I had to do.
From time to time, despite this stoic position, I wished my home was less cluttered and my garden less weedy. I wished that things were in their ‘places' and that tables and floors shone in the daylight glow from windows. I wished I had the energy to quickly attend the affray left behind by simply living life. But as I looked at the world around me and at the burgeoning greenery in my overgrown garden, and saw wildlife within it, I paused in those wishful thoughts. God’s house is not uncluttered. I then wondered, how does God cope with all the extraordinary complexities and overload that comes with such a vast manifestation?
In answer, I was brought to mind of the novel I'd then been writing for many years. Others read what I’d written and enjoyed it but critics made me hesitant to finish what I began. They said I wrote well. They said I wrote evocatively. They said I wrote copiously. They said I wrote unusually because as they read. and at a point when things could have become boring, I inserted a whole new thing that stopped the story from becoming that.
In today’s writing world, you take things out instead of putting things in, so that the story becomes ‘cleaner.’ I didn’t. I added things in, instead. It’s the way my mind worked. My threads followed other threads and, while they all connected and reconnected, they kept expanding the story. My critics said I wrote a good story but the unconventionality of my writing got to them. They wanted less. They wanted things to the point. I had points and I created journeys but it wasn’t quick enough for them. They were embedded in their views that a good story was quick and dramatic – not an unfolding adventure.
I then realized that God’s stories are not as clean as they would have liked them, either. Every time you think one of God’s stories has come to an end, another begins. Every time you think you have a handle on what the story is about, a new aspect comes into play. God, like me, doesn’t take away from the story but keeps adding new bits to keep our interest up and our investment in the story maintained.
When I looked at my home and garden again, truth to tell, I saw their beauty. I knew their presence. I felt their serenity. If I let things like dust I could draw hearts in or weeds so high a snake could hide in them bother me it wasn't because they were wrong or unclean or untidy or unkempt or disconnected from the divine. It was because I was feeling overwhelmed, lacking energy, lacking vitality, feeling disconnected myself, and needing less on my plate to deal with so that I could tackle what I had to maintain.
This was not a problem with cleanliness or untidiness. Our ancestors lived in homes with dirt floors. Did they dust their mud brick walls, then? They lived with their animals in the same room they slept in at night. Did they worry about keeping the muck separate? Did they scythe the weeds outside their doors or did they pick them for herbs? My modern problem was one of overload and overload is a problem of attitude. What’s really important?
So what if others thought crazy people lived in my home because the lawns weren’t mown and the weeds had grown high in my garden beds? Why should I think, 'If only they could remember how beautifully kept these yards of mine were when my life wasn’t so burdened?' Why should I feel that I could only have friends visit in my home if my tables were dusted and my clothes didn’t litter my floors? Are friends people you impress or people you hang with because you are comfortable with them through thick and thin?
Burdens help you prioritize. We can’t deal with everything. Human frailty doesn’t allow us to be superhuman, no matter how much our mind wants to complete its agendas. This doesn’t mean we have to give up what we love just because it can no longer be kept up with or because it doesn't meet our expectations and ideals of what living in the divine light is. I love my home and garden. I still find great peace and haven in them, despite those petty considerations. If God likes the clutter and keeps adding to it, then why do we think that decluttering brings us closer to the divine?
I am grateful for what I have. Of course, I like it better when my home is cleaner, my garden more navigable, and when I have the time and energy I deal with it as I can, if only so that I don’t trip over last week’s washing on my way to bed, or so that my dogs can go to the toilet in my yard without being scared a toad will jump out at them from the underbrush. Yet there are a multitude of lives happening in that underbrush. When we stop and look, life thrives in the messiest of places. I thrive. You thrive. We thrive…so long as we don’t get caught up in our concepts of clutter, of cleanliness, and of good and bad.
I live in the sub-tropics. Cockroaches are rife in most homes, here. They’re very hard to get rid of once you have them. Clutter helps them hide. It doesn’t matter how much you clean up after yourself, if there’s clutter around, they manage to keep on keeping on. Multiple pest controls haven’t got rid of them. They continue to thrive. I had to laugh when I realized that in part of our regular pagan rituals, when we do a house and garden cleansing that asks Mother-Father God to cleanse the place of negative energies and to fill it with their life force, their love and wisdom, and to protect it and everyone in it from harm or negativity, we unwittingly asked for them to be protected, as well. The cockroaches lived in our home. They were born there. They were God’s creatures, too. (That thought didn’t stop me squashing them when I saw them, though I did wish them a happier next life).
Snakes, lizards, frogs, toads, spiders, beetles, termites, ants, butterflies, moths, geckos, centipedes, mice, kookaburras, possums, blackbirds, magpies, parrots, and my domestic cats and dogs, and fish live in my home and garden, along with the humans. It’s a zoo. A thriving menagerie. Could they exist there if my home was less cluttered? Probably, but in lesser population. I deal with the vermin as best as I can, and wish them the best – after all, they don’t know they are vermin. They're just looking for homes and nourishment, too.
Do I truly want my life to be less cluttered in order to feel more in contact with the divine? Oh, no. Not I. I see the divine in every being, even those poor little cockroaches I am about to squish. But there are priorities. Having clean plates to eat my dinner on and a place to sit without bugs crawling on it are priorities. Priorities deal with what is most important. Dust is not so important as cleanliness. Weeds are not so important as serenity and diversity. Burdens are only as important as you make them. I chose not to make weeds and dust my burdens. There were other burdens I would rather carry than such petty loads.
In Tantra, yogis attempt to discipline their minds and bodies in order to reconnect with the divine, and to connect with the divine on more powerful levels. To do so, their regime includes extremes of meditation, prayer, and dietary restrictions so that they are forced to focus on the bare minimum of physical reality and can only focus on the spiritual. But an enlightened being doesn’t need such physical disciplines to refocus their mind. All they have to do is focus to reconnect with the divine. It’s a shift in time and space, and has nothing to do with physicality. You can be totally connected in body in a physically cluttered world, and yet be completely focused in the mind essence of divinity, where all life is one and naturally much simpler.
Buddha made peace with himself the day he became enlightened. For years he’d meditated and starved himself to try to follow the regimes of yogis in order to become enlightened. He’d reduced the clutter from his life in order to become more connected with the divine, but nothing worked. It was when he decided to accept life in all its diversity that the light went on in his head. In that moment, he realized that you don’t have to disconnect from the world in order to reconnect with the divine. Like making a phone call home, you just connect.
The key to living in a burgeoning and writhing physical universe is a basic tenet of Buddhism. Focus on the moments, instead of the sequence of events. Be mindful. Be here. You can’t be in the future because it hasn’t happened yet. You can’t be in the past because it has moved away from you. You can only be here, now. That means you can only deal with what is before you, and you can only deal with one thing at a time. What a wonderfully effective mode for decluttering existence!
I know that the weeds and dust will always be there, waiting, and will always become part of my here and now, some time. But as I deal with priorities, what needs the most attention gets it first. In doing that, I live life effectively, no matter what other people think or what notions I have about what they think.
I came to like my clutter. I realized I found it interesting. I made an uneasy peace with myself, instead, and whenever it got to me after that, I just decluttered my mind...
No comments:
Post a Comment