Time For Some Mental Spring Cleaning

 If it is not happening outside, It isn't going to happen inside.

Michael Singer

Keeping it out 

What Michael Singer is saying in the above quote is that we need to make a commitment with ourselves not to allow events to get stuck inside us like we have a tendency to do. Our insides, he goes on to tell us in the below video attachment, are more than likely a real mess. Like hoarders who desperately need the services of Molly Maid we have collected , stored, stuffed and attempted to hide away all those experiences we didn't want to process through.  We also collected, claimed and clung to all those things (memories of pleasant events we want to relive etc)  that we thought would make our lives better...piling them up in corners until there was barely room to breathe.  Most of us now live in a real dump inside our heads.  

Who Made This Mess? 

It isn't pleasant and it isn't comfortable up there but there is no escaping it...where we go the mess follows. The last thing we want to do is add to that mess or make the discomfort any worse.  So we learn to react to the events taking place around us or seemingly to us.  To get by we look outside the dump we live in for pleasant things to distract us with, adding to the mess.  Then when we see disturbing things we do whatever we can to resist them entering our messy minds ...we push away with the over used defense mechanisms of denial, avoidance, repression and suppression ( just to name a few).  It seems that we are pushing them away to avoid more mess and discomfort  but all we are really doing is pushing them down away from our conscious awareness...we are throwing them into the piles of junk we are accumulating in the deeper recesses of our minds.  We are adding to the mess and the mind is getting more and more cramped and harder to be in. And do you know what we do then?  We blame Life for being so hard, for making such a mess of our minds...we judge and get angry at that person up there for driving too slow ( adding to the mess inside our heads) or that person for not agreeing with the way we do things (knocking over the piles in the corner making an even better mess) . 

Hmmm!  The outside world didn't make the mess and the outside world is not going to clean it up.  There is no Molly Maid in this world that would be willing to get up in that head of yours to clean up the mess you made and continue to make.  The only one responsible for that mess is you and the only one who can clean it up is you.  There is a little voice inside your head, isn't there, if you are truly honest with yourself you will admit that... maybe it sounds a bit like your mother telling you to clean up your room in the past and that voice is telling you to "Pick up the darn broom!  And clean up this mess!" 

If  we want to be able to breathe freely and lightly, if  we  want room to grow and expand, if we want to be comfortable in our own lives , undisturbed by whatever is going on "out there"  we need to take responsibility for the mess we made of our minds , however unintentionally, and clean it up.  

How do we do that? 

Cleaning It Up

Well Michael singer offers a few tips to help us :

• First , he says we need to recognize and take responsibility for the mess we have going on in our minds and the cause of it.  We need to see that what we have been doing: pushing away the unpleasant and clinging to the pleasant is what created the mess in the first place. 
• Then we have to turn around and face that mess.  When we do that we will see that what we thought we pushed away is piled up all over the place inside us. It didn't go anywhere. 
• Before we can start cleaning up the old stored stuff, however, we need to stop storing up more stuff.  We get rid of our hoarding tendencies by learning to deal with life events more effectively. We start, not with the big events or the ones that have been stuffed inside us for eons but with the smaller events that are occurring around us now.  We start with the  person driving too slow in front of us, the person at work who  doesn't agree with our ideas, the toe we  just stubbed. We watch how we  tend to react and decide to react differently.  
• Take control of our minds...instead of using up energy to turn this into a negative story, another pile to add to our overcrowded minds... we can re-frame the way we  look at it in a positive and constructive way. 

• Take a step away from the event ( even if it is just a mental one) , take a deep breath and observe and then we can begin again to handle it differently.
• Once an event is done and gone ...we do not want any remnants of it in our heads. What we  really want to do, is not push away life circumstance,  but just let it flow right through...open up to it.  Open up our front doors and a couple of windows...allow that event to blow right through and be gone.  And that is what it wants to do...the vibrational and emotional energy attached to an event  is just meant to blow through us. We open up to it through relaxation and breath awareness.  We do not cling to it through grasping or aversion. 
• Notice when we  get disturbed. Relax and let go back into the place that is noticing.  Ironically, that place that is noticing is as clean and tidy as can be...in fact it is empty and spacious. 
• What happens when we begin to respond rather than react to less than favorable circumstances is allow for the mess  inside to clean itself.  All the stored stuff will eventually make itself known before it too makes its way through the windows like a breeze in May and is gone.  

I don't know about you but it is time for me to do some spring cleaning.  

All is well. 

Michael Singer Podcast/ Sounds True ( April 23, 2022) Taking Care of Your Inner Environment . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teP3TS9fHNk