Relax, allow your mind to become empty, and surprise yourself with the great treasure that begins to flow from your soul.
Paulo Coelho
Sometimes I am very grateful for days when there is little to no readership. I realize on those days that I am still trapped and caught up in the idea of me, even in my attempt to get to that place of what I call, "unconditional okayness", that lay in the space beyond "me". It leads me to think:
The Intrigue of watching Hoarders
My "me" is a mess and my consciousness is just amazed that something can get that messy. It is like walking by a TV while an episode of "Hoarders", is playing. You don't necessarily want to watch for all kinds of reasons but your mind is like, "Wow! How can a place get so bad!" So you just can't walk away from the screen, you are transfixed on it. In fact, you find yourself sitting down watching episode after episode. You become addicted.
The Addicted Mind to "Me"
Well as I immerse myself into this inner world of my spiritual growth I catch myself looking at my own psyche and saying, "Wow! How can a place get so bad? !"
Collecting The Desirable
I, like most people, have been focusing all my attention on my little "me" in action for many, many years. My life is a Hoarders episode and it is hard to look at anything else. Little "me", is like so many people, collecting the desirable and pushing out the undesirable or the feared. It wasn't until very recently that I have come to see the "me" as an addict and a hoarder. At first, I was addicted to collecting and holding onto things out there that I thought would make me feel better in here. I collected a lot of special stuff and people, pulling them inside and clinging to them. Though I denied it for a long time, I finally realized they didn't make me feel better. They just made a mess and the more I collected the more of a mess they made.
Pushing Away The Unwanted and Feared
I also used the mess to hide beneath. The more "stuff", the less there was of the vulnerable and unworthy "me" to deal with. I was constantly going around organizing this stuff so it was comfortable enough in here. That meant, however, keeping certain "unselected and unwanted" things out of my messy but familiar little world. My fear led me to close the door on anything or anyone that could possibly come in to disturb my piles or who might judge, criticize or tell me I had to "get rid" this mess I was so addicted to. I didn't want anyone "out there" to see the mess in here so I put my consciousness and mental energy toward making the outside look good so no one would notice the inside. I kept pushing my stuff farther and farther back away from the door into rooms that became extremely crowded. It was too hard. Naturally, the expanding piles were growing and wanting out of their cramped containment. It was next to impossible to keep it all contained inside...stuff landed in piles out in my yard for all the neighbors and all passer bys to see. It consumed me with shame. The shame of not being what I thought I should be was exhausting. Fixing it all, keeping it in order while I kept adding to it with more things that might make me feel better, but never did, was also completely exhausting. The mess took over my life. It took over my conscousness...it was all I could focus on. Eventually I realized if I wanted anything akin to peace...to get to that spacious space beneath all the clutter where "unconditional okayness" existed, I would have to clean it all up inside my mental home where I was trying to live.
The Cleansing Process
Just like the cleaning processes on these programs, it takes a lot of time to purify one's mind...I notice in my own cleansings, one layer of psyche is removed to reveal another layer, another messy pile and then another and another. Things I never even realized I collected come to the door. There doesn't seem to be any end to it. It is soo painful! And my consciousness cannot seem to look away from the mess. Old tendencies emerge. I want to push it back down and/or I want to blow it out of me. There are two things we mental horaders can do when we become upset about our mess. We can continue to suppress or we can express.
Suppress?
Suppression is bad, right? It means pushing down and away from our conscious awareness the mess and how it makes us feel. It is really not cleaning the mess up...it is just a matter of pushing back so we and others cannot see it. It is still there, all jammed up inside us, cluttering the space. We are really not cleaning, really not changing and really not removing anything in the way of us experiencing peace and okayness. Suppression does not work! So is expression the way to go?
Express?
I get so overwhelmed with the mess sometimes that I just want to blow it all out the window with a power hose lol. What I do, in this case, is "express". Expression, like suppression, though totally acceptable by modern psychologists and the like , is not really healthy, if we do it in the way I have been doing it. When I complain, unload for the sake of just unloading, come here with my tales of "poor me" and my long list of grievances, I am simply blowing all the mess I was holding inside outside to relieve some of the pressure. My piles...my junk... is now just polluting my yard and neighborhood. At the same time...I am still very much in possession of it. It is still "my" stuff. And as long as it is my stuff I am not going to get rid of it. I am still attached. I am still clinging to it, protecting it, and using it to hide behind. That is not healing.
Let the Space of "Unconditional Okayness" Emerge
So neither suppression or this type of expression is healing. Knowing that, we let the space that wants to emerge emerge. We need to stop looking for more "out there" to pile up into this space, blocking it. We now know what a mess desiring makes. We also need to open heart's door as each layer of mess is naturally released at a time. As the junk makes its way close to the door, we stop pushing it back. We also don't grab the stuff on its way out the door by saying, "Well on second thought...I think I might need that or I could use this for something.." We let it all go. We also stop pushing away those things we fear, that may actually challenge us to do a thorough cleaning. Let the cleaning help in and let the junk go out.
We Are the Space Where Soul's Treasures Can Be Found
We need to remember that we are not the mess and we are not even the hoarders attached to the mess. We are the space beneath the mess, the "unconditional okayness" on top of which we piled all this useless junk. We couldn't know that because we were too busy focusing on the clutter. In order to know that, we have to experience that space. We can't do that until we clean out our insides of the clutter we collected and fearfully protected. Better said, we just let our insides clean themselves so the space can expand. All we got to do is keep heart's door open so the stuff we don't need can get out and the stuff needed for cleansing can get in. We clear the inside so space is what we can focus our whole attention on. Then we can revel in this space of unconditional okayness that just gets better, the experts say, the more we stay in it. We can keep a door open in the front and a door open in the back, so that once we are free and spacious, Life can blow in and blow right out again without disturbing us in the least. Now that would be something. Don't you think?
The real treasures are not the stuff we collect from the world, creating this safe familiar but cluttered space we call"me"....it is that emptiness the soul provides for.
All is well.
Inspired by :
Michael A. Singer/ Temple of the Universe ( April 2 & 4th, 2023) Accelerating Your Awakening & Experiencing Love and Joy Instead of Fear and Desire. https://tou.org/talks/
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