Day 3
There are these shows on tv, Hoarders and Consumed, about people who fill their houses and basements with stuff, and grow attached to this stuff, and it becomes part of who they are. Being that I am new to the concept of daytime tv, I've only watched one complete episode of Consumed, (actually the same episode twice in one day) Which now using it as a comparison in my writing I know why.
We all know the concept, help shows up, the hoarder becomes kind of nutty, wanting the help but yet resisting losing something that defines her. The show progresses, all the clutter is gone, everyone is happy, small kids running through the newly cleared out living room playing with the one leftover box...happiness and freedom flows through the air like a summer breeze. For the icing on the cake, they uncover a treadmill, she starts working out and sheds 20 pounds before the end of the episode.
We all love shows about human transformation....
So todays cleansing lesson is exactly that.
...time to release all of the thoughts that have robbed us of a strong mind and body.
Yes, cleaning out the basement by yourself, you'd go down, get overwhelmed, give up, go back up and lock the door.....only to know that no matter how hard you pretend its not there, during times of stress, "this stuff" will rear its ugly head and beat you when you're already down.
But you have help now, you know your desires, you've moved your inner garbage outside, now its time to release these toxins.....
Plus I personally have cleaned out a lot of basements in the last few years, and the "crap" that people keep will never cease to amaze me.
The stuff that lives in our cellar is like toxic mold.
Everything anyone has ever said to us...
you're selfish..........................What kind of a mother are you?
you're demanding...................Why can't you just love me the way I am?
you're crazy...........................You and all your books, can't you just be normal?
you're never here....................If I send you to the yoga ashram, will you come back normal?
(the last one is especially hysterical to me, four hours of yoga and two hours of meditiation a day, as well as a week of being around spiritually enlightened high vibrational energy yogis.....I returned anything BUT normal.)
Let's not forget the stuff we say to ourselves,
You're not strong enough, smart enough, skinny enough, pretty enough.....you don't cook very well, you indeed are selfish, impatient, impossible to please, have unachievable expectations of people and live in chronic disappointment....and you roll your eyes way too much....
Add these all up, we've got a serious mold problem in the basement.
Now that we've determined that the "stuff" in the basement, the boxes of crap covered in mold, the nasty stuff hidden in the rafters, are indeed poisoning us, we MUST clean it out, sweep it away.
We are asked to define it somehow, make it external...outside of us...draw a picture of what this mold looks like, maybe it's a monster, maybe a blob of black goo, maybe a box that you can beat with a baseball bat...
For me, I equate this toxicity to a huge weight I've placed in my backpack. I lug this around on my back like a burden. When we hiked the other day, my backpack was sooooo heavy. All that was in there was a few kleenex and a half litre of water, but the emotional crap I was carrying with me that day weighed a ton. It was an easy hour and half hike, I couldn't make it to the top. The burden was too heavy.
It was then I realized, not only do I carry around my own heavy pain and guilt, but I carry Lifepartners pain as well. Every single ounce of it.
It was that day, that I removed the Backpack, asked Yoga Teacher for help and received this book.
So we must RELEASE this clutter in our basement, haul it away, shred it, burn it, or simply take off the backpack of burden.
Then go run around that beautiful empty basement, enjoy it, write a new story, fill the boxes with a new future, dreams and memories....
for we are released...
