Day 11: What is Awareness?

"Awareness, as it relates to clearing in this course, is the ability to tune into and observe an experience with the five primary senses (smell, taste, touch, hearing, sight) and the sixth sense of inner knowing - in present time.

Feeling and witnessing a task or a stressful situation in the present moment does a magical thing: it releases stuck energy, quiets the mind, helps us detach more easily, and creates openings that weren't there before."


Today's lesson is an invitation rather than a "to do" to get out and practice it! Looking at clearing my space as an invitation rather than a dreaded obligation or a sense of overwhelm and then avoidance. Because it is in looking at the dread or overwhelm or avoidance, I get to tune into my senses as well.

Right now, as I notice that reaction, I smell the lovely lavender lingering on me somewhere, I taste the slight and pleasant aftertaste of a green smoothie I just had, I'm touching this cold keyboard on a cool overcast damp day, I hear the chimes in the wind, and I see before me my altar I created on my deep windowsill, sparkling subtly, realizing that I created this altar a few weeks ago as a way to clarify my intentions for the coming year.

I then can start to relate with gratitude for the home that shelters me and all of its contents and ask myself, why wouldn't I want to care for it and clear away the clutter. It has provided me with so much. Or, what if I took on being curious about my piles? Hah! Look at that curious little sculpture of willy nilly papers mixed in with some whatnot! How can I reassemble this? Hmmmmm. When I can look at my home space as an emerging sculpture that also functions for my life, I can get real creative and make it fun.

So on this last day of the year, I'm inspired to honor my space and it's contents, thank it and sweep away what's in the way and create clear pathways for the new year to come in. Then by tomorrow in the new year, I will set my intentions that I have been crafting and place them on by Abundance gua to give a charge to the year!

Day 10: Nothing to Do

Okay, this may be a spoiler for some of you if you have not reached Day 10. Or it may give those who want to get ahead on the days a glimpse into what's coming up (for better or worse!)

What is key for me in this exercise is that awareness is everything. It naturally causes a shift. No forcing, just observing. This is the source of causing deep change.

Day 10: Nothing to Do

What are you feeling right this second? Nothing to do but notice and allow all sensations to arise - without doing anything to fix or change them.

Are you aware of any sensations moving through your body?

Earlier when I did this exercise, I felt jaggedness, unevenness and chatter in my head. So I did yoga (and I was critical of the yoga teachers style on the video!) and still as I came back to this exercise here, I now feel even keel energy. Then a fluctuation into warm tears of gratitude for my family.

Your hands: are they hot? Cold? Prickly? Tingly?

My usually warm hands are a little cool on this overcast day, after days of rain and clouds. I am remembering burning my fingertips last night on a hot pan because I wasn't being aware and in the moment. So I realize I have trauma in my hands and why they are cooler than usual. As I bring all this into awareness, my hands start to warm up.

How's your breathing? Is it shallow, or deep? Is it tight or relaxed?

When I tune into my breath, it seems I am barely breathing. So then the little voice starts to judge and says BREATHE! I don't like that nazi voice telling me what to do! But when I notice that is how I perceive it, then I choose to take a deep breath like it is the most glorious gift I could receive!

Day 9 Clearing is not what you think.

Day 9 Clearing is not what you think.

The dialogue here is very rich. I also hear some confusion, frustration and impatience to get on with it,  going on among some of the new participants especially. Consider that it may be part of the design of this clearing program to allow to surface whatever is there for us anyway around decluttering.

These questions get me to see how I'm being in the matter, how I relate to my accumulation and disorder. If I go about fixing and anxiously or begrudgingly clearing my space, it brings on more disgust and shame, then avoidance, and then I'm back to where I started. It's kind of like getting caught  in the same old habits of abuse in a dysfunctional family or relationship.


I have been in the clearing process for a few years. For me, it's about having compassion and changing the context. My intent is to make my living space sacred in the way I tend to it, as if it were an actual living being, coming from gratefulness for the shelter over my head and the things that make my life function with ease and joy. It's about looking at the old habits, acknowledging them before moving on and establishing new ones. Stephanie, the founder, talks about this on her website. She gets down to our amygdalas and how we unconsciously go into fight, flight or freeze. How can we relate to our living space and their contents in way such that we are not doing battle with it? I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to relate to my space as a battleground!

If anyone wants a quick fix, Marie Kondo's Tidying Up book is one way to go. She'll whip you into shape if that's what you prefer. I suggest going to the website of the originator of this process we're in. www.spaceclear.com with Stephanie Bennett Vogt for more of a background or to get into more action, get tips, etc. But I assure you, she will have you looking more deeply than that. That's why I chose this.

And of course, if you're not happy, you can get your money back! I encourage you to just be with it. Are you using your journal to hash out your frustration and reading the helpful comments in this discussion?  I can bet you will discover something that will open a door for you to get "in action" in a new way.

Day 8: Awareness Changes Everything

Awareness is everything--from that, everything flows and the necessary actions become self-evident. In my awareness, I can see my self-sabotage and reoccurring patterns. Like being aware of debris on my path I walk or on the road I travel. When I see it, I can choose to swerve or altar my step, move it out of the way or choose and/or carve a new path. I find this course is about altering patterns at a deep lasting level so it is the a slow drip method that can create long-lasting results.

Yesterday I wrote about my loss of connection to my local community. In being aware of that and feeling into that, honoring with compassion however I was about that, I found later how much I really am connected. Had our big family Christmas gathering and cherished each interaction I have in the amazing family of which I am part in a new way. The moral of the story is, we are surrounded by abundant love, it is a matter of looking and being grateful, then more of the same shows up.

Right now as we go back to somewhat normal time, interholiday, I am aware of getting out of the loop of actual clearing and releasing, letting go. Creating abundance of clearing and thankfulness of the stuff so I can release it and send it to its appropriate place.

I want to start with this video from Stephanie Bennett Vogt, the originator of this course we are all in.

http://ayeartoclear.com/reduce/

Day 7: Check In � Departing

What is beginning to bubble up as you contemplate a yearlong journey of clearing?
Have you been aware of any revealing dreams, shifts, synchronicities, or ah-has since you signed up for this course?

This has established a rhythm of writing. The aha is that even though I have far to go in making my home harmonious and functionable the way I would like, I have come a long way and my life has been simultaneously unfolding. What is bubbling up is my awareness of being on a cusp of something about to emerge. Things closing, ending—the year 2015, various trainings and group processes; also my 1851 childhood home, where 5 generations of our family have now lived is being dismantled reverently piece by piece.

I also notice how I have built connections with people far and wide especially over the past year but also the past several years in the trainings and groups in which I've participated. I am present today to how something is lacking at the local level for me and my husband, a lack of intimacy and sharing that I have experienced not as present as with those I have established connection with in places farther than me. I am aware of the way people meet and/or stay in touch and build their lives through the cyberworld. My interactions have been through this cyber/phone way more frequently than the actual physical presence contact. I never dreamed this was coming 20 years ago! After tending a somewhat local venue last night, where we didn't actually know anyone and it was a disappointing event anyway, I am left feeling like a foreigner in my local area of my childhood and ancestral roots to which I have returned to 20+ years ago. Where is the balance? My husband and I have been living rather hermit-like the past several years as we deal with feeling our home is not up to entertaining others. (Previously, as an example of ecological building design and energy use, we were often open to the public for learning but we burnt out from the existence of going back and forth between living hermit-like and then being publicly known.)

Today we have my big family Christmas gathering--my 12 siblings and families and grandchildren. I choose to cherish the stability and steadfastness of my family of origin during this time, especially as our homeplace dismantles.

My niece has been posting pictures of the dismantling process of our family homeplace. I am remembering the new light shining through lined up in the doorways and windows on a picture taken near winter solstice. Generous sun pouring through the pinhole. Getting glimpses on on a pinpoint of light.

Day 6 – Can you imagine a life where there is no friction or resistance? What would it feel like?

If there were no friction or resistance, I would not be existing on earth plane. The tendency to resist will always be there; it is a matter of how I choose to respond and disappear or transform the energy of it. Maybe if I continually redefine the context of resistance, maybe one day I would wake up and say “Wow! I haven't been resisting for a month now!”

If there were no resistance, I would pick up my clearing process I have been doing at varying intensities in the past few years, as if it were a fun exhilarating daily practice, something I look forward to. I would jump out of bed and get started on it right away early in the day because I love to experience the tranformation.

With gratitude, curiosity and delight, I would regularly be looking at my bank account/s, planning and balancing my money and my life, creating space for more abundance and generosity, all wisely managed.

I would be grateful for my home and its contents, consciously place things where I can easily find them to use next time. For items that don't fit where they are or are no longer useful, I would thankfully move them in the direction of their final destination with love and compassion, yet firm resolve.

And finally, the big one, our attached greenhouse will be completely dismantled and reconstructed with grace and ease and be the missing link that transforms our home and our lives.

Being cluttered and disorganized, and victimized by my feelings and thoughts of shame, confusion and overwhelm would eventually dissolve as I simultaneously uncover my true life purpose which is found in the process of honoring myself in this moment by moment and daily practice of clearing space. One of the aspects of it seems to be about writing (Thanks Barbara Dean for confirming something I've known in the back of my mind.) Any need to declutter and be organized would become an instantaneous practice that takes less time.

Day 5 New You

Day 5 New You. Sometimes I deny the new self that is emerging because I see how much there is not accomplished of what I set out to "do". The critic comes in and tells me I'm lazy, I spend to much money on my self-development and what do I have to show for it? "Bad girl, you deserve lumps of coal in your Christmas stockings! You've been a lazy bum!" says some critical inner parental voice.

Like this morning, I look at my smartphone before getting out of bed, which I've been "trying to discipline" myself to avoid. I open yet another email from Daily Om (now I'm on their email list and get all this other great juicy personal development stuff to addict myself to!) I take the brain quiz, realize I have to get my lazy ass out of bed and weigh myself and to my surprise I have lost a few pounds and have gone below my current goal! Even during this holiday eating time and not doing as much exercise. I am at the lowest weight I've been in probably 15 years!

This reminded me of how many amazing accomplishments I have had in many areas of life this past year which are worth celebrating, all by adopting small practices in my daily life for my health and home environment and other areas. I think of Maya Angelou's quote (or is it Marianne Williamson or Nelson Mendela) that our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. I experience it as a dance between the dark and the light within me. Giving and receiving, the darkness and the light are one big infinity loop ∞. I choose to stand in and bask today in this gratitude and greatness, which ironically is very humbling. Today, I will play with this on this Christmas Day.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Day 4. What is Clutter?

Day 4. What is clutter? How does clutter show up in my life?

Clutter is my life, my achilles heal. It is the thing that can hold me back from fully living and I can let it cause shame and confusion like a dominating monster taking over my physical space, my cyber space and my head space. Yet until I face it head on with an open heart, put on my armor of compassion, acceptance and playfulness, I am able to embrace it as my palette for creation and discovery.

There seems to be 2 types of clutter I deal with, those which are the articles I interact with on a daily basis that go willy nilly in random landing places that I later have to dig through and find, digital doodads vying for my attention, and the other category are artifacts of the past, accumulating like flotsam and jetsam in some corner or box or covered up by old quilts taking up space or floating in cyberworld.

I call it Being on an Archeological Dig through the Treasure (or is it Treacherous) Chest of My Life. Every day, I get to create newly my context as this crafty monster (which is an opinion about it all that really resides inside my head!) is always finding ways to defeat me, distract me or say it's useless.

Today on this Christmas Eve Day, the sun shining brightly, I will make merry, go for an initiating walk, come home, put on Christmas music, make beautiful smells occur with essential oils and honor the space, creating harmony out of chaos, open to the cheer of the season when sometimes I'd just rather jeer. I'm getting the imaga of the transformation of the Grinch, write now. ;}

I have come to accept that my relationship to clutter is like a sacred wound, as Rumi says “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” I am learning to invite this journey as exhilarating. Just in the writing of this I have entered a new space. Gosh, I'm finding my unintended puns and typos that I'll just let be, like achilles heal (heel) and imaga (image) and write (right) now.