She returns to the utility room which she has just cleared. It has taken five hours but looks so different now. The space excites her. ‘Look at it!’ she declares with unconcealed joy. ‘With all that junk gone I can see where everything is!’
The local tip had had a busy day.
And there’s a great sense of freedom, elation and energy when we de-clutter a space. Socrates said, ‘There is so much I have no need of,’ and here is the de-clutterer’s mantra. We rid ourselves of things we have no need of so we can see more clearly and move more freely.
In this piece, I’ll reflect on de-cluttering not our physical homes but ourselves. I’ll focus on our internal scenery, our emotional ‘stuff’. Could you do with a clear-out?
Let us first understand the challenge: we’re pretty cluttered right now. Many of our lives are powerfully driven by emotional responses to circumstance; and once a response is born and given room, it is difficult to handle. Emotions like anger, hurt, anxiety, resentment, despair, malice, regret, fear and sadness can spread like wild fire, consuming everything. So what is to be done?
We start by noticing the moment. Someone might say ‘I feel hurt’, for instance, without being aware that in this moment, a specific energy transaction is taking place, which doesn’t have their name on it…yet. Their reaction to an event – on this occasion they feel upset – is as much part of nature’s order as the rising of the moon or the turning of the earth. It’s just a feeling. Nature is a series of non-purposive events that occur as part of the natural order of things. The sun rising isn’t personal – and neither are our thoughts. Like night follows day, our thoughts and impulses occur in transactional response to events.
And this is hallowed ground; a burning bush of revelation. It is hallowed because here is the weak link in the egoic press in our lives. Here is an opening that gives us both agency and hope. The 4th century monk and ascetic Evagrius put it like this: ‘It is not in our power to determine whether we are disturbed by these thoughts, but it is up to us to decide if they are to linger within us or not and whether or not they are to stir up passions.’
These are not words which will gain much traction in the hysterical psyche of the 21st century west, which gorges on self-justifying emotional turmoil. (And, if they can give it a label, even better!) But the words remain accurate.
Evagrius discerns that while thoughts, impulses and associations appear constantly within our psyche, they are not yet emotions. They are just natural impulses like the incoming tide on a beach. It is only when we give them a helping hand, offer the thoughts or impulses energy, that the emotion is born, grows and begins to clutter our inscape. The natural ebb and flow becomes a tidal surge.
So, sometimes our de-clutter is to stop the clutter at source. We let go of the thought or impulse before it becomes a passion. This requires patience and practice; one day at a time. A good walk helps or some other physical activity. And slowly we become quicker at noticing the moment, the hallowed ground…and let the thought go.
If we are too late to do this, and the emotion is born and cluttering the place, we simply speak with it, as to a character from a play still strutting its stuff on stage when the show has long closed. ‘You no longer have a role here, my friend; no role at all. You’re abusing the space. You can go now.’
Emotional de-cluttering is gentle but firm. We let it go, we un-attach. We wish it well but send it packing. We don’t say to the dominant emotion, ‘Hey, carry on – you’re really great. You have so much to teach me and you’re taking me somewhere really helpful!’
The weak link in the egoic press, the truth the ego hides from us, is that we do have choice. Here is the burning bush. Here is the locus of human free will – this moment between thought and emotion. And practice, while rarely making perfect, does make things better. And so daily we return to an empty stage. Daily, we ask actors from old shows to leave. Daily, we become spacious people again; space for receptivity and creation.
To this end, we may wish to engage in some relational de-cluttering. Can we begin to un-attach from ‘high demand, low support’ relationships, whether family or friends? If a relationship makes us feel anxious or guilty or weary or depressed or un-free – these are warning lights. Part of our de-clutter is putting in boundaries, so the relationships leave less mess in our psyche.
We may also wish to de-clutter information junk and the debris of data. Here I speak of the obsession with social media and news outlets and what is referred to as ‘doom scrolling’. My phrase – less charming, I agree – would be ‘a head fuck’. It describes a process that weakens the mind, dissipates the will and nurtures disassociation from a present and intentional life. Contrary to what many tell themselves, information has nothing to do with wisdom… nothing. There is no link. As with gambling or alcohol, information can become an addiction, a netherworld of escape and avoidance. But here’s the miracle – many have closed down accounts and stepped free of their deathly grasp. And free is exactly what they feel.
We started with a utility room being cleared. And a de-clutter of our physical space goes hand-in-hand with our soul space. The hoarder’s house is a reflection of the hoarder’s spirit and each encourages the other. The physical speaks with the spiritual. So let the spiritual also speak with the physical as we simplify, simplify, simplify. They support each other.
I’ll stop there. This feels like too many words. As Socrates said, ‘There is so much I have no need of’. It’s the de-clutterer’s mantra…and it includes words.
There may be initial difficulty in this clean-up. A seasoned de-clutterer observed that clearance causes more mess, not less, to begin with. For a moment, everything’s everywhere and all over the place and we begin to question our endeavours. But brief mess for the gift of space and freedom?
It’s worth it.
