Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice: Part 4

One Bite at a Time 

"How do you eat an elephant?"

One bite at a time.

(I guess a vegan alternative might be, "How do you climb Mount Everest?" "One step at a time.")

Anyone who has had to move house knows this. Anyone who has completed a Ph.D. knows this. Some jobs just seem too big and overwhelming.  The only way to tackle them is one small task at a time.

Because we can take one step. One bite. Then one more. Then one more.

Some of my clients have whole boxes of stuff they cannot deal with. Years of unanswered mail, unread magazines, containers of screws and push-pins and paperclips and weird things, piles of detritus all sit in boxes or bags dumped somewhere out of sight and then forgotten. Once boxed, they never get processed. This means they never leave the system. They sit in the space, blocking freer movement.

Image credits Creator:bmarinic

Like unprocessed traumas or relationships that ended with poor or unsatisfying closure, these piles of unprocessed possessions block up space that might otherwise be available for something we value more. They don't just take up physical space, they take up mental and emotional space too.  Every time we see that box or bag we are reminded of our inability to deal with whatever it is.

What I often observe in myself when I have to sit down with a pile of hard-to-process stuff is that I get overwhelmed. Even when I sit down with a clear head and resolve and a can-do attitude, the very first item I grab can land me in quick-sand.  

"Oh yes!" I think to myself. "There was a reason I never put this away."
It is waiting for an answer from someone.
I simply didn't know if it was important, and if so, where it should be stored.
I didn't know how to let it go.

There is something about the stuff that bogs me down and is keeping it all in limbo.

(Ugh. I get a stomach ache just thinking about this stuff.)

Because I get stuck, I quit, and the pile sits there and grows.  And I ignore it because pushing through those unanswerable questions is just too hard. It isn't any fun.  It rarely feels rewarding.

However, I don't experience overwhelm with a client's stuff. It feels good to sit with a client and ask clarifying questions that help them know what to do. It feels good perhaps because I am offering something I wished I could have had myself.  In fact, helping clients find solutions to their roadblocks often helps me have more insights into getting through my own.

One bite at a time. 

I am helping a client dig out from physical and emotional traumas and multiple deaths in her immediate family. She has been overwhelmed for many years and is finally getting the help she has always deserved. She had several boxes worth of swept-aside mail and paperwork when we started. 

One bite at a time, we got through all but one big box. Much of the mail has emotional ties that make it harder for her to process.  Letters of condolence. Hospital bills. A death certificate. 

We turn over a paper and under it is a picture of her brother who died, and we stop. She talks and she cries. She talks some more. I let her process the feelings as much as she needs. Only when she is ready do we pick up the next thing.

This client was so overwhelmed that we made a commitment to start each session with one hour of paperwork. She was freshest in the morning.  Plus there was a known stopping time.  We didn't have to finish all of the paperwork; we just had to stick at it for one hour. Then we'd close the box, tidy up any loose bits (follow-through) and move on to easier things.  You can bet this was WORK. You can bet that her sitting with all those feelings and my witnessing with compassion and patience all that grief was a spiritual practice.

It took several sessions, but we got through all of it.  ALL OF IT.  The box is empty now.

Her home is finally the safe, clean haven she has deserved for several years.  It took patience. It took persistence. And it took faith that it could be done.

My parents' house was full of stacks of things. Mom called them "horrible heaps". One of my jobs, when I was cleaning for my parents, was to straighten up those stacks.  I just thought it was a normal thing to have stacks of paperwork everywhere in the house. I was too young to wonder what these things were or if it was necessary to have them all over the place. They were things that grown-ups had. Everywhere. All the time.  

But I know now that not all grown-ups have piles of stuff everywhere.  Lots of grownups figure out how to deal with that part adulting and manage it well. And for those who struggle with it, there are folks like me, who need to earn a living too, and who love to help.

Because cleaning up and helping each other get through burdens and hard places is absolutely a spiritual practice.

For the other entries in this series, see below.

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 1

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 2

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 3

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 2

Releasing

A spiritual practice is an activity undertaken on a regular basis for the purpose of inducing spiritual insights and encouraging spiritual growth.

So ... clutter clearing ... as a spiritual practice?

It can be.

Think about it:

Clutter clearing invites us to release things.

I have seen three things that block us from releasing things back into the universe: 

1. A sense of responsibility for the item.

2. The fear that one might need or use the item in the future. And
3. obligation or sentimental attachment to the item.

1) A sense of responsibility

Some clients have trouble releasing items because they want to know what will happen once they are out of their keeping. There is a sense of responsibility to see that the items "get into a good home" or are otherwise properly cared for. (This is admirable, but too often is harming the client's ability to get free.)  

The spiritual practice asked of these clients is TRUST. Can we trust that the universe (God/Providence) will get the item to its proper place? Can we let go of feeling responsible for the item's future (without any shame or self-doubt?)  Can we let go of worry about the item, setting it and ourselves free, and trusting that all will be well? 

2) The fear that one might need the item in the future.
Some clients have trouble releasing items because they are uncertain whether they might need the item in the future. There is an unwillingness to let go of even long-unused items in case they want it later.

The spiritual practice asked of these clients is also TRUST. Can we trust that the universe will provide what we need when we need it? In this abundant culture, with flea markets and Amazon and community swaps and Freecycling, can we believe that we could probably find just the thing we need in the future, should the need arise? 

"Then Jesus asked them, 'When I sent you out without a purse, bag or sandals, did you lack for anything?'  'Nothing,' they answered.  Luke 22:35

3) obligation or sentimental attachment to the item.
There is nothing wrong with having a sentimental attachment to our possessions. It isn't so good if the attachment begins to dominate what is best for us. Sometimes we have items we do not enjoy but feel unable to release due to their origins.  Perhaps something was a gift from a loved one or belonged to an ancestor, and letting it go feels uncomfortable, even though we don't actually want it.

The spiritual practice in relation to sentiment and obligation is "saucha."  Saucha is a word from Sanskrit which means a purity of focus or clarity of vision. Saucha pulls us back to our core self. When we are grounded in our core, we can discern most clearly what serves us spiritually.   Items of sentiment and obligation can be the most sticky and difficult to release. Yet in our deepest core, we know that we don't need to remain attached to anything physical for our wellbeing.

Rarely do we have to endure the loss of all our most treasured possessions.  Only those in massive fires or earthquakes, or refugees from war and famine, may suffer the loss everything they own.  However, it is a healthy practice to be willing to release everything that burdens us or stands in the way of our best life.

When it comes to items we hold due to obligation we must ask ourselves, "Would I want someone I love to carry around something they no longer need or use simply because they fear to hurt my feelings?" If our answer is "No," we must trust our friends and loved ones to be as wise. Let it go! (I don't want anyone to feel obliged to hold on to some unneeded item just to protect my fragile ego. God willing, my ego is far more resilient than that.)

The preceding are just a few examples of how clutter clearing invites us to do spiritual work. Try it, and you may find that the regular examining and releasing of physical items can help you feel clearer and lighter in non-physical ways too.

To be continued.

For the other entries in this series, see below.

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 1

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 3

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 1

Too Much Stuff

I have been clutter-clearing since I was a teenager, probably since I was born.

I have been a professional clutter-clearer since 2002.

My mentor clutter clearer told me that 90% of my job would be counseling.

She told me that my clients' biggest challenge would be shame---shame over having so much stuff, shame over the stuff being "out of control", and shame over the apparent inability to deal with it.

She was right.

I don't think the shame is deserved---not at all. In fact, I think it is part of the problem.

But in a culture increasingly ready to call someone a "hoarder", it takes extra courage to ask for help. I admire my clients for that. It takes courage to face a problem for which we are ashamed (unjustly). It takes a certain spiritual maturity to be ready to sort the old from the new, the broken from the whole, the no-longer-needed from the necessary.

Our north-american culture has an overabundance of STUFF.  We get gifts and give gifts all the time. Then we feel obliged to keep them. And everywhere we go, someone is trying to sell us something new, or cute, or something that will magically fix our life, and we fall for it.  Again and again.

When we open our mailbox, stuff pours out. Most often it is advertising---special offers and discounts on things we might need, or feel we might need, or read, or use...some day....

Our culture inundates us with stuff. And who has the time to sort and decide about it all? So we set it aside "for later," into another pile of stuff we intend to get to "when we have time."

The bigger the space we have, the more likely it is to fill up with stuff that we intend to get to. It happens faster than we can imagine.

Yet every client I have helped is NORMAL. Because we all have this struggle in our culture, and only a few of us have the time, AND energy, AND mindset to keep continuously processing all that stuff OUT again.

I have needed help with my stuff, so I do not judge. I am an expert due to a lifetime of necessity. Most recently I had to downsize from a three-bedroom home to about 100 sq. ft. (To move in with my college sweetheart who had a fully furnished 400 sq. ft. unit in Manhattan.) It was HARD. It hurt! But it was worth it. I survived. In fact, I'm thriving.

But still, clutter-clearing as a spiritual practice?

Oh yes.

Read on....

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 2

Clutter Clearing as a Spiritual Practice - Part 3

Redundancies, Illness, and Spiritual Self Care

Dearest fellow humans,

A few years ago I had my old laptop in the shop due to its increased slowness and occasional freezing sessions.  I asked the technician why a computer slows down, rather than just stops when it is near death. It is a machine.  Why does it go from speedy to sluggish, like a human, rather than just stop working?

The technician explained things this way:  New computers have many redundancies built in.  If the information can't travel by one path, it takes another, or another, until it finishes its journey.

But as computers age, wear and tear on the circuitry begin to eliminate some of the redundancies. There are fewer and fewer paths for the information to travel on, which makes for traffic jams and longer, more complicated journeys.  The circuits get overwhelmed---rather like baristas at high-traffic Starbucks when mobile ordering became a thing.  It takes more time to do the same things it used to do with speed.

Whether this is an accurate metaphor for the inner workings of an old computer or not, it struck me that it serves as a metaphor for human functioning---especially for the functioning of humans with invisible illnesses.  We seek to function as normally as possible, but we have far fewer "redundancies" upon which to rely, and so we get slowed down and overwhelmed far faster than those blessed with robust health.

Then I began to reflect on the probability that a lot of us have found one or another of the demands of our society overwhelming, and have had to find work-arounds to keep on going.  I think of those with dyslexia, or those with brains that refuse to do math (tax time!) or those with PTSD that only surfaces under certain conditions---or any other of the myriad hurdles any one of us might live with on a daily basis. Perhaps ALL of us have some imperfection or another that we don't even realize we have adapted to because we have not been sufficiently blocked by it to pay attention?

I also noticed again how fruitless and ignorant it is to judge someone who is slower than we are---someone who struggles to do what we find easy.  We are such a judgy species!  What does the judging accomplish? Are we trying to shame them into better functioning?

I often judge myself when I am struggling to function.  It is my number-one, go-to response with myself.  "If I am hard on myself, I will try harder."  I use a stick, not a carrot. I know better, yet I still do it.

This capitalistic, "just try harder and go faster and be better" society urges me in more ways than I can count to earn more, strive more, learn more, "succeed" more, WANT more, have more. Though I know better---I truly do---I get caught again and again in this rat race, leaving behind my spiritual practices: meditation, yoga, contemplation, reading, writing, and art, for more shuffling of financial shells, more fear of debt, more running and working and worrying....

Yet I ever must DO THE OPPOSITE THING.

REST.

"But!  But!  But!"

REST.

My redundancies have been removed and removed until I can do very little BUT rest these days, despite the urgent inner voices clamouring about all the ways I am not enough.  My lack of redundancies are forcing me to face my most fearsome of demons: my own imperfection.  Though I know with my whole head that I am lovable just for existing, the message absorbed deep into my being (and that of many others, including, I suspect, a certain 5 year old that is running the country) is that I am not good enough, and must keep doing and achieving MORE to ...

...what?

Finally be lovable?  Finally be worthy?

Perhaps ... finally to escape the cruel and relentless voices of that inner demon.

That inner demon is the stick, the CLUB, the BASEBALL BAT WITH SPIKES behind us.

Meditation and compassion and the intentional side-stepping of fear and worry in order to see clearly is the carrot, the platter, the BANQUET calling us forward.

When I practice spiritual self care, the whole world changes.  My perspective changes.  My sense of ease expands.  My creativity in problem solving multiplies. My ability to transcend and find work-arounds for spiritual barriers grows and unfolds.

An abundance of paths to my heart's true desire are unveiled where before there had only been great walls. The spiritual "redundancies" abound.

But keeping my eyes clear requires continuously returning to my spiritual practices, even when the demon behind is screaming at me.  Simply getting onto my yoga mat or picking up my pen has become part of my spiritual practice, for it feels like work!  Why do I forget and resist so persistently?

For today, I remember.  For today I am grateful for the illnesses---or lack of worldly redundancies---that point me to my spiritual practices.  I forgive my forgetting.  I rejoice when I find myself again.

"No matter how much I get done, or is left undone, at the end of the day
I AM ENOUGH."

-Brene Brown

I'll see you on the mat.

What I Can Handle; What We Can Handle; What God Can Handle

I was sitting in my addictions counseling class yesterday reflecting on our cultural assumptions about what each other should and should not be able to handle.  One classmate is working with a gentleman who has been so long trapped in the addiction cycle that he is a year (or two at best) away from death due to damage to his liver.  He lost his family long ago, he lost his job; he has no self respect.
He has relapsed so many times and been told he is killing himself so many times that he simply "doesn't care" any more.  I suspect that  the pain of his existence---the pain of his "failure"---weighs so heavily upon him that escape from that pain by any means, including death, seems far preferable than trying AGAIN to show up in his painful, broken existence, to pull himself back together again for ... what?

It is so easy to judge someone like that.  It is so easy to assume that we, in his position, would do differently.

I wonder.  Would we?  Would I?

I DO know that western society used to judge (and many still do judge) hyperactivity, obesity, depression, alcoholism, homosexuality, and other politically incorrect human traits as spiritual and moral failings.  But now we see them as inborn traits, some to be accepted as is, and some that may require medical and/or therapeutic support in "correcting" them.  We have come a long way from telling a depressed and suicidal person to "pull up your socks and get it together!"  We have come a long way from judging to hell someone who succeeds in a suicide attempt.  Their life was already hell enough already anyway or they never would have gone that far.


I have also seen myself be brought absolutely to my knees by life circumstances and what seemed like unbearable emotional pain.  If I'd had the courage and opportunity, I would have killed myself.  I certainly have repeatedly swan-dived into chocolate or ice cream or jelly beans or macaroni and cheese (etc) to escape the pain.  That my method of escape from pain doesn't wreck my body as quickly or make me get in a car and kill someone is only a detail.  It's a roll of the dice.

Here is my question:  What if some traumas and circumstances truly are more that some people can handle?  What if we just stop judging so much?  What if the shame that drives us all to hide from each other and feel unlovable and abuse ourselves is a LIE?

"God never gives us more than we can handle" is a common platitude.  Sometimes that message can give people the hope and chutzpah to get through a really tough time.  But sometimes all it communicates is that if we are falling down and "failing" (nervous breakdown, poor choices, complete emotional freeze-up---you name it) WE are failures because "God is doing His part...."

I heard a wise minister say and I fully agree with him, "Actually, God frequently allows people to go through more than they can handle; it is just never more than God can handle."

That new way of phrasing it helps me SO much.

I have frequently felt like I was being asked to deal with situations, traumas, and information that was far more than I could handle.  I have broken down several times.  I know many people who have had nervous breakdowns, and those breakdowns SAVED them from continuing to try to deal with things that were untenable and unmanageable, but shame and "shoulds" and fear of looking "broken" made them keep trying.

All I know is that I'm still standing, or back standing again, and it isn't because I've handled life superbly.  It is thanks to just enough support at just the right times.  It is thanks to the fact that I haven't died yet, and that the human body and spirit is astonishingly resilient and capable of healing.  It is thanks to a good start, and many amazing people along the way and a decent mind that processes information pretty well.  I have been in WAY over my head, but I keep being set back on my feet, so I will keep trying.

Can you even imaging God saying to that poor broken man when he finally stands before his Maker, "Well done, good and faithful servant," because he had far, far more than we can possibly imagine stacked up against him, and what he did really was his very best?

For those of us overwhelmed by shame, the very thought can bring us to our knees.

Go gently with yourself this day,
Alison