Sweeping Changes

potholes & spring cleaning

Today we’re going to keep things light and airy and leave some space for some spring sunshine and deep contemplation.

I really LOVE the time of year when BOTH the furnace and the air conditioning are turned off and the cool spring fresh air blows through our windows. I can hear the birds now signing their beautiful songs in the darkness before dawn.

I was thinking this morning looking at all the clutter in our main living area that spring cleaning rituals are seriously underrated as a spiritual practice. It feels energetically cluttered when there are teetering piles of cookbooks and the counters are covered because the cupboards are full or disorganized. We all know on some level that when we take time to clean and clear the cobwebs in our physical environment it seems to affect us on a cellular level. The act of decluttering our junk draws, and donating what is no longer in use or sparking joy in our closet is a way for us to energetically free ourselves and make space for more of the new. More creativity, joy, and change.

True.

HOWEVER….this year I’d like to put a bit of a new spin on this for us in the Field.

There’s something even more wonderful for us to discover in our messes too.

They point to something that our egos may not be allowing us to see and we can easily miss it if we control our environment and live our whole lives quietly suffering in ways and patterns even we don’t realize. Or we stop even believing that happiness or change is possible for us unless others change. Or our circumstances do. It’s like we accidentally wash away the clues from the crime scene. Simply allowing our closets and junk drawers to be and to be seen in the light of day, can bring peace and sweeping positive change into our lives.

What is it that we can realize about ourselves from our own messes?

It’s when we slow down and surrender to what is that the light can come in and the fog begins to clear. That includes our homes, our relationships, and our bodies and allowing them to be what they are in this moment so that we can have an honest look or a clearer picture from above the tree line of what’s really going on and how we can make peace with it all so it can transform.

Love it as it is.

Then and only then can it be permanently transformed with that love, not from a place of control, judgment, fear, or disgust and distrust.

Once we stop wanting so badly for things to be different and trying SO hard, we can then begin to notice the traps we keep falling into over and over and the thinking that comes with it that causes us pain. We’re eventually guided to a more permanent and sweeping kind of change that’s the one we really yearn for all along, not just a picture-perfect home or a perfect relationship or a tanned after photo for a brief honeymoon high and then back to our usual chaos.

The catalyst for changing anything more permanently seems to keep coming back to our acceptance of what is. And maybe what needs to change isn’t our organizational systems or our physical environments but rather something found inside of ourselves.

We can begin to see that this idea of being organized and spring cleaning is not just for our homes and closets, but it’s metaphorical. Just because there is some extra clutter when life gets busy, a big mess when your kids have friends over or an extra layer of dust does not mean anything. We add the meaning. Things don’t need to be different outside of us for us to feel free. The dog hair, the laundry, the full inbox, and our weight are not the problem, our thinking is.

When the pressure cooker (of HAVING to do something) is turned way down, we feel freer to live and we’ll be drawn to order naturally. We’ll be more present to what is and we can shift gears more easily.

There is a philosophical saying I love. Do you know the best and quickest way to get what you want?

Stop wanting it.

Things may not be as we want them to be but we’ll feel more clear-headed and free and have the wherewithal to find new creative ways to cope with life’s messes without feeling upset, or angry at our family, and let’s be real, no one really wants to ever witness another one of our re-enactments of the “out damn spot” meltdown scene in Lady Macbeth when we lose it.

We’re watching “Beef” right now on Netflix and I read that it’s based on a true story of road rage. Obviously taken to an extreme, but it shows brilliantly how we can project our deep seeded anger and resentment with ourselves and or discontent with our lives onto others and it brings out the worst in us and never make things better.

I’ll admit I’ve had some real inner meltdowns over the years with kids drawing with permanent markers on our cupboards, more sports equipment than space, and just a general sense of feeling out of control or having to do things myself if they were going to be done at all. It’s no wonder we feel we need to double down to get a better grip. We think a better time management system, a cleaning schedule, and making things clean and organized means we’ll solve something bigger beneath the surface.

There’s a saying in A Course In Miracles that “You’re never upset for the reason you think”.

Do we really believe that new label makers, better systems, and becoming more organized and cleaner humans will give us what we really crave?

Maybe. I certainly have found them helpful and I think I innocently believed that for years. Maybe being more tidy and organized is what you really need, but I’d like to share another truth to consider.

How you see things in your environment causes everything you experience to stay the same or change. It has less to do with changing or controlling our spaces as we may have been culturally led to believe.

I’ve observed over the years that our egos operate in all-or-nothing land. The land of controlling everything… our bodies, diets, exercise, and even the behavior of others. We love improvement projects, renovations, and transformations. It’s no wonder there has been such a swing towards minimalism with our levels of consumption it’s like the energetic pendulum has taken a wild swing from wanting more, more, more and hoarding what we have to give it all away or fantasizing about having our own tiny sustainable home in the trees.

But what if we are just happy with what is? As it is? We keep dreaming of a nicer or better home, but what about shifting our perception of it all today?

When we dig 7 layers down into our desires it’s not that we want what we do for the reasons we think. What we really want is to feel some peace of mind and the simplicity it promises. We want to be loved and to love others. To have fun, be happy, and experience joy. We really want to feel free.

The good news is that we can.

Right at this very moment and it doesn’t matter if you live in a 5000-square-foot home overlooking the sea and have had the Home Edit crew color-block your closets and bookshelves, or if you are buried in credit card debt and have less than $200 in your bank account living above your parent’s garage.

Peace and freedom are available at any moment.

I should probably come clean and tell you I have had a complicated relationship with tidiness, but today I’ve shifted my view of what is really going on beneath the surface when I do.

You may want to spring clean after you read this and that’s great, but maybe you won’t and despite the title, that’s not even what this reflection today is intended to do.

It’s simply to become aware of the possibility that our environment and how we perceive it can change with our permission. There is a promise in what I’m going to share that affects how we can all care for our living spaces in a way that’s more life-affirming for everyone in our lives. How simply shifting how we see something can help us see and experience that something in a new light.

Including our homes, ourselves, and our loved ones.

When I was a teenager my dad bought a door knob holder for my room that said “Bless this mess” or something saucy like that. He used to even come in and even take pictures of it laughing which I remember naively thinking -I don’t get it, what is so funny about this? About me being untidy? I’m sure I parroted what every teenager has probably said since the beginning of time…” What’s the point in making our beds, Mom, we’re just going to sleep in it again and mess it up?!”. I was green under the gills with no real appreciation for the power of clean sheets and a well-made bed in my life.

I suspect looking back, in my desperate search for the perfect outfit that would promise admiration and approval from total strangers at my high school, I would have a pile of cast-offs and rush off to catch the bus without even looking back or thinking about the implications of having to deal with it later. I may not have agreed at the time, but it was clearly an extension of what was going on inside of me. It would eventually get so bad that I couldn’t find anything and I would get fed up with it myself and spend hours and hours to make it perfect. I can remember that elated feeling of a job well done truly being its own reward.

But it was more of an all-or-nothing perfectly messy or ready-to-list but these days I’m starting to see the beauty of the in-between zone as a really great place to exist too. Ideally, things are kept in order to create harmony, but to give up feeling upset or stressed about the messes in life is an incredible gift.

The power of simply accepting wherever we are or where others in our family are and putting down our pitchforks, bribe money, or bullhorns, and stopping trying so hard to change them. Love them as they are and trust that they will get it someday, or maybe they won’, t but we won’t keep criticizing and feel affected by their behavior by seeing it all differently.

Life can get messy and my attempts at controlling my environment have only resulted in my own disappointment, anger, and stress. Making everything look “perfect”, is not really going to really make any marked or lasting improvements, it’s just a temporary surface fix that really does feel good at the moment, so it’s easy to see why we would move toward the assumptions we have.

When I was 18, I finished school a bit early and moved out to Alberta to spend my last free semester skiing and working at the picture-perfect Chateau Lake Louise. What I remember most about that humbling job was some of the rooms were so messy that some days I wanted to take a photo myself! Other rooms and beds barely looked like anyone had stayed the night. Clothes were either folded neatly or strewn on the floor and it felt like I could get a sense of the inhabitants’ state of mind and character by the status of their space.

What is this really about?

I even noticed the smell, noticed how it made me feel so walking in seemed like an energetic imprint of its inhabitants. I’d clean a room and soon after there would be a quality control manager coming in to look over my shoulder with a scowl and a clipboard, so there was pressure to do a good job and I worked harder to please her but it was mostly for the money for school and I caught on that if I put my nose to the grindstone and cleaned my assigned rooms quickly and efficiently I could get out on the mountain and get strapped into my skis that much sooner.

At first, I was probably more motivated by the fear of getting fired, but over the winter months, something shifted in me and just being of service and noticing the effects of how it felt to help clean up something out of order, to meticulously fold a washcloth, to make a little scalloped “toiletgami” art with the TP roll to delight the occupants, it just felt fulfilling and joyful to leave a place better than I found it and to imagine the relief the inhabitants would feel as they stepped back in after a long day on the slopes.

I took pride in the quality of my work and the better I got, the better the tips seemed to get and they moved me up to higher floors and fancier rooms. I left handwritten notes and people stopped me in the hall to say thank you. Mind you, it didn’t make me change my own personal habits, it was just something that affected me on a deep level. I had gained insights or an intimate peek at how others lived.

Years later my life lessons on cleaning would continue when I would visit a yoga ashram or a Zen monastery, a Vipassana center, or a spiritual retreat things began to make more sense.

After an early morning tea and meditation, even breakfast in silence there would always be a “work period”. Very often no one was able to talk so I was always puzzled about how to join in. I’d just find something and start cleaning. No one was bossing anyone around, there was no oppressive quality control or needing to be told and yet you could literally eat off the floors. The same tasks seemed less daunting and more uplifting. People seemed to love scrubbing on their hands and knees and they didn’t look the least bit put out or upset. I loved seeing others’ work in their own way and style and how everyone joined in together without being asked and no one sat out. Everyone cleaned in a zen fashion with their whole hearts and minds focused on the task at hand, and by simply being mindful, there was something both intoxicating and sobering in it all. I felt connected to them and space in a way I never imagined possible like we were sharing more than just a physical space and some chores. There was a reverence in the air for what was and an appreciation and worship in our care.

This concept of how we can feel more connected through the ordinary showed up again later in my life in the form of raking leaves at the cottage with my family. I have a theory that everyone loves to rake. Even little kids. When you rake you get to watch your mind. Not unlike a Japanese monk in a zen garden who observes their thinking in a detached way.

We rake not because we have to, nature will take care of things without us of course by composting and enriching the soil, but as family-friendly physical activity in between meals, working quietly side by side with everyone pitching in and the warm spring sun before the bugs arrive, there is more to it than meets the eye. Having a big pile to jump in before it gets bagged up is usually the highlight but I have been trying to reflect on what makes it feel so good.

I’ve observed in myself and others a distinct feeling of well-being afterward. The satisfaction and fulfillment of looking back to where you’ve just been with bare ground and lines from the forks on the rake. It’s not something forced on anyone and oddly the same children that have trouble getting their dirty clothes to land inside the actual laundry hamper and not on the floor beside it are the first ones out the door. Maybe it’s the approval or praise from their grandparents which of course makes them sit up a bit taller at the dinner table and suddenly they see the blisters on their hand as more of hard-earned boy-scout badges but I don’t think that’s it at.

There’s a kind and simple wisdom available to all of us that can elude our productive linear minds if we are not present with the task at hand. Cleaning and gardening are not just chores but more of a cleansing. They are a direct pathway to relaxation and a deeper more meaningful function with life and harmony with our surroundings.

As the decades have passed, I can only assume that I have experienced an inner shift of my own somewhere along the way because I’m no longer that super messy young girl that slept in until noon with the unmade bed. Now I ironically get up before dawn and make all the beds in our home and no one is asking or expecting me to. It feels good to me to be in a beautiful clean space and to share it with others when I can, and sometimes I let it go and I don’t.

In the past few years or probably since covid, I’ve discovered that I enjoy doing chores. I love and appreciate clean and organized spaces in ways I never imagined possible, but I’m also okay when they are not. But even better, I no longer judge or have a ticker tape of dissatisfaction when I walk into a messy room or keep score in my mind like I used to. There are (barely) any egoic resentments replaying in my mind. No expectations from others and when I do project them onto others I can see that it’s more about me and my own discontentment with something in my life than it is about them.

Being trapped in that thinking or mindset is what we mean when we say we are in hell. Hell is a metaphysical concept, it’s not a geographical place we go to after we die, it’s in our own minds. There is probably not a worse place than it COULD be if we are so identified with our thoughts and we are convinced that everything we think is true. It’s a one-sided subjective perception at best.

The other sign that it’s spring here is the state of our roads. In Canada, the roads can take a beating in the winter. We joke that there are only two seasons here: Winter and Construction. Last week I was walking without paying attention and I tripped in a giant pothole and did a MAJOR faceplant. The kind where the palms of your hands sting from where the tiny bits of sharp gravel have implanted themselves and your knees have been skinned and they are actually bleeding. I did the old jump-up quickly-nothing-to-see-here routine. I confess I probably deserved it because I DID have my nose in my phone.

The point of my pothole story is that it’s not the first time it’s happened and I should probably know better. It got me thinking about how we change (start or stop) a behavior, stubborn thinking pattern, or habit beyond our ego’s mandate which is to restrict and control.

Whether we think we’d like to be tidier or if we’d like to loosen our expectations of others and stop feeling like a slave to our compulsive need to clean up every crumb before we go to bed or leave for the day is really up to us.

Just for today, Sunday let’s decide to see our spring cleaning with new eyes.

Instead of seeing it as a chore or something we have to do maybe it could become something we are shown and want to see and experience for ourselves. As more of a spiritual check-in or a compassionate inquiry on how we’re feeling in our lives to get the messages trying to come through to us in our messes.

Let’s put down our pitchforks and judgemental ways today and just ask what’s really going on inside of our minds and in our homes.

Stand in the middle of your living space and whatever you see is your assignment. The areas where clutter has been collected, the taxes that still need to be done. The piles of unread or finished books. The clothes that don’t fit but you can’t seem to let go of. What are they trying to show you?

One thing I know for sure is that we CAN change anything. Any pattern, any compulsion, any addiction, clean up any mess.

No matter how bad things seem or what pickle we’re in because we have the ability to change our own minds about what we see.

The journey may not go as we expect, but we can surrender and hold it all loosely to allow what is and then take one step, dip, tram, bridge, and ladder at a time to overcome any obstacles in our path and keep moving forward.

This is a poem by Portia Nelson that is from her book “There’s a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery”, I’d forgotten all about it until I saw it on a whiteboard in my friend Amie’s workspace this week. I’m so glad because it aligns perfectly with how change seems to happen for all of us.

The fact that I did an embarrassing faceplant in an actual hole in the sidewalk was all the synchronicity I needed to know that there was something here for all of us to see.

Our awareness of how change ACTUALLY happens and the incremental nature of change can be life-altering in as few as five chapters. It can happen in one chapter but it won’t be forced and it will take as long as it takes no matter how many relapses we’ve had we can loosen our minds and allow new ways of seeing to seep in.

ps. Thankfully my pothole was smaller

Chapter I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit… but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V

I walk down another street.

Let’s all cut ourselves some slack this spring and allow change to unfold at whatever pace or time it takes. To hold all of our lists, time management tools, and forcing loosely and allow the power of life to guide us to our next stage of evolution.

"At first, dreams seem impossible, then improbable, and eventually inevitable."

Christopher Reeves

For so many years I never realized that my need to pack 2 of everything came from a place of fear and lack. I see it clearly now and I’m starting to shift and pack and live more lightly. It hasn’t happened yet but I get the sense now that taking a carry-on for a week’s holiday is going to eventually be an inevitability. Maybe even this year, because I’m ready to try a different street.

If what I’m saying is possibly true, then maybe the beauty of life can be found not necessarily by packing up and moving away, or changing partners and selling our children (kidding, that’s illegal!) but rather they could be as close to us as cleaning our windows. Shifting how we see the world and clearing our own inner vision.

Love, kindness, and serenity always come from within not outside of us and the view changes when we connect to this first.

To be a good companion is to relate to and respect our environments and who we share our spaces with including ourselves. Our quiet attentiveness and softening with the care of our homes can help reveal to us our own inherent worth.

Spring cleaning doesn't need to happen on a single weekend, in fact, it’s something that plays out privately in our own minds every single day.

There is always more for us to see.

There is such freedom and peace available to us when we attend to our homes with a different mindset. When we take the pressure off making things perfect or look magazine worthy and just humbly serve the good of the whole. Finding an orderliness that is functional and frees us from the inside out.

I can focus on loving these old cupboards, sanding them, preserving them, and keeping them or I can tear them out and start from scratch to have a more modern aesthetic but if I sit with it I’ll see that I just want to feel better. To feel more satisfied with my life and then the inevitable realization after 5 decades of life that nothing in this world and no kitchen on earth will give me this feeling. THAT’S the ego’s illusion. It really has nothing to do with my kitchen.

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with renovating or moving, it’s just that it’s not always ultimately what we really truly are after. To teach our kids that it’s not the gold star or the allowance that is the reward, but because caring for each and ourselves just feels really good.

Our homes are extensions of ourselves and if our home is in turmoil then chances are our life and our mind are in turmoil too. Life may be showing us that it’s time to make a shift.

Not to judge the mess or find the culprits that left the dirty dishes, but just a compassionate inquiry into ourselves and how our lives have gotten so out of order. When we slow down we can find our footing a bit better and the peace, order, and feelings of satisfaction are just quietly tucked beneath the cobwebs and clutter, the dust and the weeds waiting to reveal themselves to us.

We connect through the ordinary, not just the extraordinary.

It seems that all along the holiness of our lives is right there in the mundane so maybe the doorknob holder WAS right. Blessing our messes this spring may well be the very best use of our time. Allowing ourselves to be shown what needs tending to in our lives, where weeds need to be pulled for us to bloom is all we really long for.

With love,

Nona

ps. Before I sign off…do any of you have any burning questions in your minds and hearts that you’d like a response to next week?

I have one at the moment about a detachment practice that I will tackle from a reader but I’d be happy to add a couple more if there’s anything you’d like from me.