Releasing excess (December 28th) …
December 28 – Releasing Excess: Go through your home and gather five (5) items that you would consider to be “luxuries” (e.g. gold jewelry, china dish-ware, crystal glassware, the “good silver”, furs, fancy watches, leather coats, etc.). Lay all of them on the living room floor, put on a blindfold, and give away the first two (2) you happen to touch. Note: More than a few families do not have any typical “luxuries”, and yet everyone I’ve ever met (including myself during the time when I lived “on the street”) owns a number of cherished items that are irregularly used &/or have no “true purpose”. They are owned merely to own them – more for the status of owning them than for their substance. These qualify as “luxuries” as well …
For many, “luxury” can be difficult to define. To some, it means pleasurable things that one doesn’t need at all to survive, while for others it means those possessions that one doesn’t regularly use. As a Peace Pilgrim, I have chosen to give away the vast majority of my things over the past five years, and I started doing so with my own “luxuries”. While I was doing so, I found myself flowing through a steady progression of “awakening” with regards to “owning things”.
Originally, I simply believed that to own lots of stuff was a great thing; something to feel proud about and hopefully feel grateful of on occasion. After all, the reptile brain inside every human head truly believes that the more things it “owns”, the better its chances for survival. So excess was originally seen as a good thing – It wasn’t really even seen as excess at all.
Then I “graduated” to an awareness of the practical effect all my “stuff” was having on my life. I came to understand the very real “drag” that regularly unused or uncherished possessions place on our energy stores. As I looked around my apartment one day, I suddenly comprehended that a significant portion of the things I owned were only “just in case” items – things to be stored in order to “be prepared” for some future occurrence that might or might not ever happen. They had absolutely nothing to do with my Here&Now – they were simply sitting there collecting dust.
The more I returned to this reality over time, the clearer it became that a large portion of my daily unhappiness was at least indirectly tied to maintaining these stores of “useful someday” items – organizing them, cleaning them, repairing them, or even acquiring more of them. So rarely did I ever get any real enJoyment from them, much less use them to serve another. I started to feel them as the draining source of dis-ease they actually were …
And then I came across the concept of “Space Clearing” – that consciously removing the “dormant items” from our environment actually frees up enormous stores of energy that we can then use to live happier, more productive & more Caring lives. So I started to give things away. Sometimes I donated them to a social service organization, sometimes I wrapped them up and presented them to others in person, and sometimes I simply left them to be found. The point was, the more courageous I was with letting my possessions go, the wealthier I felt.
After engaging this cleansing for some time (giving away a little bit here, and a little more there), I realized at some point that the majority of the Joy I was receiving did not come merely from “cleaning out my life” (though removing unused items from my home did add to my personal sense of well-being). No, the true boost of energy and happiness seemed to come during those moments I was giving those things to others. I also realized the phenomenon that the more I gave away, the more things kept coming into my life; that even though my ego kept warning me that I would soon “run out of stuff” to give away, I never did (and I still haven’t). Indeed, even in those moments when I did not possess any particular thing to give away, I realized that I could always pause and give away my Kindness (a kind smile to a stranger was always more than enough).
So today I remembered these things while looking for items in my life that were superfluous. I was happy to find very few – only three, actually – and I decided to give them all away …
See You when I see you …
… and until then, Be Now!
Scaughdt
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