Sunday inspiration: Out of clutter, find simplicity

Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

This quote, widely attributed to Albert Einstein but probably not his exact words, struck me this morning as I have been wrestling with the amount of clutter and discord in my own house. It’s easier for me to see my husband’s clutter, but I am realizing just how much disarray I am living with, and how much it affects my mental health.

The Moon has just entered Capricorn making this the perfect time to do the hard things. I found this blog article that helped me to internalize this three-line quote and turn the wrestling of my chaos into a zen practice.

Out of clutter, find simplicity.

“[L]ife is messy – not just the untidiness of papers stacked in an in-tray or equipment that hasn’t been put back in its place – the whole thing is incredibly messy because life itself is complex. There’s so much choice, so many decisions to make. There are so many things you could be doing, so much information you could be paying attention to, so many people who you could be networking with. …

“And this sifting through the myriad possibilities and choosing which to engage with is – potentially – a spiritual practice. When we have a sense of who we want to become, what we want to achieve, what legacy we want to leave behind, and when we consider what we need to be doing right now to make our goals a reality, making decisions becomes much easier. This kind of mental clarity, this constant bearing in mind of our goals, is a vital aspect of spiritual practice. Mindfulness practice can give us the mental space to create order out of the clutter or our lives.”

Dealing with clutter and too many possessions seems like an onerous chore until I think of it as a mindfulness practice. With this approach it now feels like a magical transmutation of dust and things into freedom and liberation.

From discord, find harmony.

[Seeking to avoid discord in life and in our relationships isn’t easy.]

It takes integrity – deciding not to engage in backbiting, deciding to refrain from exaggerating, deciding to focus on what’s most admirable in others.

It takes wisdom – learning to recognize which battles you can win and what you should let slide.

It takes empathy and compassion – realizing that the behavior we find difficult in others is their own response to suffering, their own reaching out for happiness.

Lovingkindness and compassion meditation can help us to find the empathy and generosity of spirit to create harmony in our relationships.”

Discord and lack of harmony appears in all areas of our lives, not just our relationships. Since I’m on an adventure to clear out the clutter, I also want to clear out the discord in my living space: Clothes I will never again fit into. Instruments I will never again play. Things that I bought too many of or spent too much money on.

Making the hard decisions requires the integrity to follow through on what we know is required. It requires the wisdom to understand what to release and what we are not yet ready to part with. Empathy and compassion for ourselves as well as others is essential! We are all doing the best we can.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

This is a very Saturnian/Capricornian statement, perfect for today’s Capricorn Moon (and my own Capricorn Mars). Saturn teaches that it is through doing the hard things that we get the good things, and Capricorn is ruled by Saturn and is instilled with these values of patience and endurance.

“Let’s avoid the avoidance game of analyzing in exhausting detail exactly why we never get around to doing this discomfort-generating task. Let’s just say that we’re going to accept that discomfort is okay – that we’re going to be prepared to learn the art of being comfortable with discomfort. Think about that task, and feel the discomfort, acknowledging that it’s there and that it’s okay for it to be there. And then start doing that task.

This is what we call mindfulness – the ability to non-judgmentally notice what’s going on in our experience: the ability to stand back from our experience so that we have freedom of choice, feeling the discomfort but not being controlled by it.”

It is this simple reframing of the task at hand from a soul-crushing chore to a liberating adventure that can be the very thing which helps us conquer a seemingly impossible task.

So I’m off to tackle my chaos and wrangle it into simplicity and peace. 💖