SYTB 22: Speak Now
Why having nothing is the best place to start.
When you have been hurt by someone in the past, you must look forward with a vision in your heart mapping your course to your next destination. Looking back can make you salty. It will dry up your joy and destroy it inside and out. The Bible story of Lot’s wife perfectly illustrates this. As she looks back upon Sodom and Gomorrah with longing in her heart for what was or what might have been, she turns into a pillar of salt.
Pictures, mementos and other little reminders you may have around inadvertently keep you looking back. While you may get to a point when thinking of the past no longer holds strong emotions for you, it’s a safe bet to put these things away, at least for the time being until such healing is reached.
Possessions hold energy. Mostly, they hold the energy we give them.
Decluttering is a crucial part of clearing the field for the unfoldment of new things. The word de-clutter is to focus on the past, on the thing to remove. This is part of the process, but as with all my teaching, I recommend we begin with the end in mind. The end goal of de-cluttering is creating space.
Space is more than the final frontier. Space is the primal frontier. In the beginning, the earth was void and formless, and all forms of life sprang forth from this void. Everything must spring from a void. In Feng Shui, they say, “space creates a vacuum.” The idea is that when we remove something we don’t want, something that doesn’t serve us in our environment, we draw to us that which may serve us better, that which we choose to create. Many call the process of creating space and removing clutter “down-sizing” or “de-cluttering.” I call this concept “up-spacing,” space being generative, creative and expansive. When space is created in the environment, it effects the mind in powerful, immediate ways.
I looked into Feng Shui after my family initially moved to Utah. Feng Shui is the ancient art of clearing and moving objects in space to create a proper flow of energy in any environment. When we first moved to Utah, we were living in a small apartment and getting creative with storage solutions. I had my bed angled into a corner of a very small room to have enough space to walk around easily. My bed was not flush against the wall. In the corner space behind the bed, I kept extra blankets and such. Under the bed, I kept clear plastic storage bins filled with mementos of the past. I learned from Feng Shui principles that keeping any clutter under the bed or behind the bed could affect my sleep and my energy. The things left behind or under the bed were representative of mounting troubles and worries. Mine were collecting lots of dust, too, which wasn’t healthy for my airways. I learned that if I wasn’t sleeping soundly, I would be tired in my waking life. I was. I was always tired at the time in my waking life.
So I decided to remedy the issue by going through all the ghosts of my past. I removed many mementos. Those I wished to keep were put in a place I could easily see them or in my closet shelves. I removed everything under and behind my bed and cleared the space completely. The next day, I had my life back. I woke up feeling renewed and restored. I had energy to wake early each day from then on and to move toward my goals and visions. My life was transformed literally over night. As I saw the value of creating space, removing the burdens of dust collecting, storage items, I continued up-spacing throughout my home. I became more orderly. I sorted things in beautiful ways. The possessions I kept held places of importance and value. They became visible and distinctive in the surrounding space. My life took on a new quality of importance. My home looked like a picture in a magazine.
As I looked around my home, I could see space on shelves, space on counters, space on desks, space in drawers, space in closets and space in cupboards. My home became simple, elegant and full of potential. It was a space from which to create, not just in my home but out to my future.
I remind you. I had a choice when I was drained of energy to keep hanging on to the mementos of the past, to use my fatigue as an excuse to stay put in my position looking backwards and to slowly become a pillar of salt. Instead, I grasped what energy I had available to go through the boxes a little each day. I sorted out my possessions, and I made the most of what I wanted to hold on to and carry forward into the future. With the new clarity, I advanced my position over night.
Where can you make space today? Where can you expand your value? Look around and commit to making a difference in one area this week. Spend 15 minutes per day carefully considering your mementos, your papers, your coupons and your wardrobe deciding what fits in your picture. You are that character in the future film of your life demonstrating an exemplary success. What of you now and your possessions fits that vision of the future? Bless and release each item you choose to surrender to the void, knowing with this release, a vacuum is being activated to draw that out-picturing more clearly into focus.
Use your word. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God” says John. The Word made manifest in flesh becomes Jesus. This is the process of manifestation. I see no reason to doubt that the Word is just that, the literal voice of the Almighty, speaking all creation into existence with His voice. The act of Creation, the Spirit if you will. God as a verb is the power to transform emptiness to thought form and thought forms to speech forms and speech forms, measurable sound waves of energy to mass and matter, material form. You were created in the likeness and image of the Divine. You were endowed with these same gifts and abilities to think a thought from nothing, to give the thought the energy of sound, making it a measurable wave and the wave of sound can manifest as the materiality of manifestation, into a dense physical form. You have the power of the Word within you. Your dream is waiting to be thought. Your thought is waiting to be spoken. Your voice is waiting to be received by ears and translated into a tangible, physical demonstration. Speak now from this space of infinite potential or forever hold your peace.
What will it be?