As within, so without

I'm taking a Science of Mind course at our local (fabulous!) Religious Science church, and in yesterday's class we did a little exercise: we each wrote down two questions as if we were new to the center and new to the ideas espoused there. Then we drew random questions and answered them.

One of my questions that I wrote down that I had actually asked years ago when I was new to these ideas was, "why am I not demonstrating what I'm thinking about?" I still ask this question from time to time. The woman who drew my question answered it brilliantly thus: "you're always demonstrating. You're getting what you're thinking and feeling about. Just because you're not getting what you want, doesn't mean you aren't demonstrating." Duh, and which was revealing in a stunning way to me. I hadn't actually said to myself, "look around you. What are you demonstrating?" So I mentally looked around my house, car, office, business, musical life and love life, and saw that what I'm demonstrating in spades is confusion, indecision, clutter, stuckness, and incredible complexity. Absence of flow. Stagnation.

Yikes.

Physically there's stuff everywhere, stuff I don't know what to do with, or stuff that makes me despair when I look at it. Too much stuff for a little house. Too much stuff for a little office. Too much stuff for a little car. It never moves from place to place because there's nowhere to put it. No filing system, no organization, no flow.

When I was a kid and singing evenings at the Baptist church with friends, the (rather severe) father of one of my idols, a gorgeous older kid who has a really beautiful soul, said of him one day as he heard us complimenting his son, "his room is a mess. It reflects the messy state of Scott's mind and his unclear soul."

I was mad and shocked that a dad would say that about his son, about someone I idolized. And I didn't either believe it or want it to be true. But now, looking around my own life and my own digs, I think that it is :-)

So. I'm now looking to learn how to create simplicity and clarity, for good flow and for great feng shui in all aspects of life. To pare life down to the lovely basics. Why live with clutter and extra when what is essential is often the most beautiful? It's scary to give stuff away, also to change your thinking and jettison ideas and concepts that aren't working for you anymore. But when I do that I'm always left with something that's better, smoother, leaner, more comfortable.

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