DECLUTTER AND SPARK JOY IN THE NEW YEAR

Minimalism, Jamestown, NC

As we turn our planners over to another new year, I’ve always noticed an underlying sense of mild anxiety whenever I have been so busy and focused on a project deadline that clutter has invasively entered into my life.  That goes for both the mental and environmental elements that shape daily life.  And many of us always seem to find that rectifying this situation is a very responsible and priority item on our New Year’s resolutions list.  Then life happens all over again as we blast off on yet another trip around the sun!

As I was preparing the house for holiday guests, I found all manner of clutter that had accumulated around my life in the form of an excess of magazines, books, unnoticed canned goods past their expiration dates, household accessories that had reproduced in the dark hours of the night, clothing articles hanging innocently inside a walk in space which had not been selected in over a year ( and some that had their seams taken in overnight by woodland elves named calories), dust bunnies that were producing offspring faster than their mortal namesakes, bedding and bath textiles that had been replaced by fresher linens but retained on unvisited shelves, unfiled paperwork in my office that rose to new heights of unorganized stacks, etc.  There’s no need to even mention the storage room and the garage space, although I had methodically carted off numerous items to charitable groups all year.  But apparently its been observed that drinking and priming has deleterious consequences that manifest themselves on your doorstep in the form of those ubiquitous Amazon boxes that occasionally attract those pesky porch pirates.

Unbeknownst to me, all of this clutter had crept into my life generating this undercurrent of unconscious uneasiness.  Fortunately, clutter is one of the easiest life stressors to fix!  The attributes of Minimalism focus on simplicity, clarity, and singleness that motivates us to intentionally retain those things that bring joy to our being and enables us to release all the other things that do not.  It clarifies our vision to see the deceit of our consumer culture and opens up the possibility of redirecting our attention to nurturing relationships and our very own souls.  Jesus taught that we should not store up treasures on earth but in heaven, for where our treasures reside, there our heart will be also.  This eternal truth also applies to how we spend our time.

The Japanese traditional culture of Zen philosophy centers on simplicity.  Their principle of Ma refers to empty or open space and reduces everything down to just the essentials.  Marie Kondo has made an international name for herself with her method of decluttering and organizing which she has dubbed “KonMari”.  She promotes only keeping those things that “spark joy” in our lives.  And joy trumps life stressors every single time!       

ADAPTING TO LIFE EVENTS

Fork in the Road, Greensboro, NC

I had just cleared the on ramp to the interstate highway and was at full speed to merge to the right as the road forked shortly afterward. A formless gray overcast sky was spitting cold rain drops on my windshield. The SUV ahead of me was scattering a fine mist from its rear wheels onto my car as well. As I was focused on the road ahead a rather large white pickup truck raced past my left side to barely make the merge to the right. As he passed my car and abruptly cut in front of me a small pebble was thrown into the mist and hit my glass windshield in the lower section of the passenger’s side.

A few weeks earlier, I had violated one of my present rules of life to never again purchase a new car. I’m quite alright letting someone else pay the depreciation penalty to drive one off the dealer’s lot. However, as I was bargaining for last year’s model, I had to complement the salesman on his finesse in playing one of the most artful games of “bait and switch” that I had ever personally participated in. And now I was experiencing that first ding in my new automobile.

Fortunately, I had recently finished a book on Zen and the Art of Happiness where the author revealed a similar circumstance. It occurred to me that I had two choices; either burst into an uncontrollable fit of road rage, run the offending pickup off the road, pull the driver outside, rip his heart out and spend the rest of my life in prison or I could apply a lesson I had learned from the book; “A situation only becomes favorable when one adapts to it”. I resolved to respond to the event not as a “bad event” but a “good event” which determined what it became in my life.

I’m no longer anxious or a bit stressed waiting on that first painful ding on my new possession. Now I can go somewhere without parking in the far corner of the mall lot and walking half a mile to pick up a new pair of socks. Now I don’t have to drop back thirty car lengths in heavy traffic to avoid getting my windshield inevitably dinged for the first time. Now I can actually use my new acquisition for its intended purpose with less stress in my life. I followed the author’s advice and wondered “what good could come from this”? We can’t unring a bell and we can’t unding a windshield, but we can always choose to respond positively to keep our life between the ditches.

WAKING THE WATCHER

Daylight Stillness, Kiawah Island, SC
Twilight Stillness, Grand Lake, OK

The founder of modern philosophy, Descartes, rendered a famous answer to the ageless question, “Is there anything I can know with absolute certainty”? He replied that “I think, therefore I am”. He was equating thinking with being, but he had actually defined our ego. The ego is constantly chattering about all the things that we need to be doing to maintain our survival and perceived identity. Three hundred years later Jean-Paul Sartre examined these words and concluded that the consciousness that understands “I am” is not the same as the ego that thinks. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be capable of knowing we are thinking. That discovery of awareness led to an emerging new dimension of consciousness.

Once we begin to exploit that voice in our head that seems to be constantly in the foreground, we can position our consciousness in the background and observe the voice. By waking the watcher, we are now beginning to comprehend our true consciousness apart from the ego that dominates much of our thoughts and thinking life. And we begin to free ourselves from our ego and its need for form and self importance. When we learn to listen to the voice we soon discover our own conscious presence apart from the mind. We are then on the true path of human beings, our essential identities as conscious beings.

It’s been said that stillness is the language God speaks and everything else is a bad translation. When we focus on being still and quieting the ego within, we can then become even more aware of our true conscious self beyond our ego. We cannot become aware of it through thinking, but silently observing. It truly becomes an “ah ha” moment when we are able to consciously observe the mind raising up another thought that competes for our attention. That’s the moment we comprehend the separation between our ego and our conscious self. When we are still, we become aware of the formless, eternal, consciousness we will be when our bodily form dissolves. The Psalmist knew this when he was inspired to write Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God”.

THE CHANGING RIVER OF LIFE

Headwaters of Valley Creek, Valley Forge, PA
Chicago River into Lake Michigan, Chicago, IL

The voices of Zen philosophy reach back into human thought for over 6,000 years. Those voices don’t erode my present views, but enhance them, especially the meditative thoughts of our place in the universe. I like the view that our lives are like streams that become rivers moving with ever increasing pace and acquired knowledge as we grow and eventually merge into a universal sea of consciousness.

We are the gateway through which the path of our lives is charted. Our personal job description is to build our character that will determine how well we negotiate the path and transcend this mortal life. The only way to make sense of change is to believe that I can benefit from it and I can bring some good out of it by staying in the presence of the conscious creator of the universe. Neither joy nor stress is contained in things or situations in this life. But how our mind responds to them can result in one or the other. When you can keep your head about you when all around are losing theirs and remain positive in the face of adversity, then you have attained joy in life that will sustain you. Being accepting of my present circumstance, but always seeking growth and challenges in order to adapt to the new normal, is a river that will provide smoother sailing.

And we can never sail on the same river twice, for by then both the river and we have changed once again.