Personal Growth - Dump Your Junk

by Akber Ayub

When you open up space in your life, you make room for the things you really want

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This rather contemporary metaphysical truth is as powerful as any old adage. Put simply, the concept of space clearing avers that when we remove clutter from our lives we open ourselves up to good things. This applies to bodily, emotional, and spiritual clutter. It is an accepted fact that when we clear our mind of old emotional cobwebs, irrational fears and other inner clutter we open ourselves to positive thoughts, inspirations and emotional well-being. However, what is amazing is how well it works at a physical plane.

Karen Kingston, in her book, Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui, says that space clearing will create new vistas for the renewal and revitalisation of any home. Kingston avers that clutter is stuck energy that keeps us stuck in undesirable life patterns. Therefore, we can “sort out our life by sorting out our junk.” More than just junk, clutter has a negative symbology and collects stagnant energy. So when we free our space of stagnant energy we free up our life. That means when we clear out that which is no longer useful to us, we bring more good into our life.

Feng shui is the ancient art of enhancing and harmonising the flow of energy in our surroundings. There is a specialised branch of feng shui called ‘space clearing’ which deals with the techniques of clearing bad energy from our home or workplace and creating space for good energy to take its place. There are specific methods to enhance the flow of positive energy into any space we live or work in and thus, it seems, create happiness and abundance in every area of our life.

	"When we clear our mind of old emotional cobwebs, irrational fears and other inner clutter, we open ourselves to positive thoughts, inspirations and emotional well-being."

Bali and Chinese feng shui believe that one’s home is a ‘magical manifesting machine.’ They teach how to consecrate space, use feng shui cures and enhancements like mirrors and wind chimes to create balance and harmony. Also, eliminate clutter and clear ‘stuck’ energy by the simple expedient of rearranging furniture and discarding the dregs and oddments accumulated over a lifetime – tossing out stacks of dog-eared magazines, prized books unopened for ages, piles of clothes, accumulated gifts and other similar detritus. At work, it would mean storing half-finished projects and throwing out old files and other scarcely used accumulated office clutter. Doing this not only makes us feel fresh and revived; it also helps us discover new things that we want. We thus create not only a sacred space but can also engage physically with the new energy of our home or workplace. It is important that when we have cleared a space, we leave at least part of it empty for, like a breath of fresh air, it will act as a reminder of the other ways we can continue to open ourselves up for the things we really want.

We let junk pile up in our closets, drawers, and even our garages. At times, we realise that we should throw it out; yet, we don’t seem to be able to part with it. “I might use it someday” or “It might come in handy sometime” holds us back. Over time, it buries what is really useful to us, making it difficult to find what we are looking for. Now, compare that to our lives, for an amazing insight! Isn’t that true of our lives too? Old hurts, bad habits and hang-ups pile up like waste and prevent us from truly living. Kingston avers that clutter is more than just the result of sloppy housekeeping. It is rather a manifestation of our negative inner states such as ambiguous purpose, unfinished emotional business, negative family traditions and conflict with others.

	"If the divine is not flooding our lives with its light, it is because of our limited capacities"

Unlike psychotherapy where we do the inner work first, with this approach we organise first and then look at what our reactions tell us about ourselves. Apart from bringing plenitude, ridding ourselves of clutter can sometimes act as a mirror to our own inner world, prompting us to begin removing old layers of psychological and emotional sediments from deep within us – old patterns of behaviour, old issues, old guilt, old shame, old resentments and old rivalries. The emotional baggage holds us back in our life’s journey. The more of such detritus we discard, the more of our true, authentic selves we recover. Sometimes this also makes us question our priorities. Are there people in our life that we may need to let go? Could there be friends and acquaintances that we have held on to for too long? Are all the people in our life really for our highest good? We might then be prompted to release the negative, destructive ones so we can spend less of our energy trying to make those people fit into our life. So if we find that there is not enough room for good things in our life, perhaps we need to do a spring cleaning in different areas of our life.

Akber Ayub is a mechanical engineer by profession, an ex-marine engineer, ex-industrialist, member of a college faculty, and finally, following his heart, now a writer.

Contact: akbersait@yahoo.co.uk
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