Daring Monday: Cleaning It Out

I should preface this post by being very clear here: I am not a house cleaner. I am, probably, the absolute worst housewife in existence; Wakizashi and I have frequently joked that he should be the one to stay home while I go out to pay the bills, as he is much more likely to do the housework. Frankly, housework holds a low priority for me. I’m more concerned about my son, my soul, my mind, and working with all of you than I am with the state of the dishes. I mean honestly, if you need them washed, wash them yourself. I just thought, that before we got into this post you should know that I am not the kind of woman who would dare to judge you for the state of your home.

That said, there’s something to be said for a good old fashioned cleaning; there is a surprisingly immense amount of spiritually/subconscious power in gutting and reorganizing something. (It’s interesting to note that even though I dislike cleaning I do really like organizing things, like books and papers, I get a strange kind of satisfaction from the work.) I happen to be one of those odd people who believe in the existence of this vague thing most commonly called “energy” and find that any exercise that creates an opportunity to clear and move the energy in a space helps to create all kinds of internal flow for me, too.

A little while ago I had the opportunity to go to work with Wakizashi for the day (I live in a small to middling city, but Wakizashi works in a nearby Big City and I occasionally like to visit); I knew going in that my one priority was to visit the Labyrinth in the city park there. I’ve been walking a small labyrinth on a regular basis at home, but I’d been slacking for awhile, plus it would be nice to walk a much larger one. While walking I found myself pondering the fact that it was so easy to slip into practice here, an hour away from home, but at home I had been putting off all my practices for sometime. I lamented to the Divine that it seemed I was stagnating – I literally felt myself being trapped in a swamp-like quality when I thought about starting the day at home.

The answer that came to me was two fold. First, that we had been through a rather difficult transition over this last year and a bit; that a lot of major things had been going on, shifted, overcome, and moved, and as such there as a lot of old energy (worries, doubts, and habits) that had accumulated in our home (and selves). Second, that I was letting myself get stuck in a rut and I now needed some kind of wedge to jump me out of the quickly-becoming-well-worn-path.

It’s Time to Clean Some Stuff Out

It seemed pretty clear to me that I needed to go home and do some cleaning, and there’s nothing like literal house cleaning to help with the figurative stuff too. To carry the swamp analogy out, imagine what would happen if you redirected a moving river through the stagnating pool…fresh clean water – which is exactly what I needed.

In the world of symbolism (dreams, divination, psychoanalysis), your home can often be a synonym for your inner self. Your home is where You live and rest and so makes a good symbolic representation for the state of your soul – where the true You lives and rests. I’ve had, for about a decade now, a variety of dreams that center around a house and have always been messages about the state of my Self. It’s actually not all that infrequent then for the state of your actual home to reflect how your Self is feeling. (My propensity to ignore the basic chores and let things build up also reflects how I deal with my Self, too. I’m still working on finding that balance.)

This, of course, is of no surprise to anyone whose done any reading on Feng Shui, which claims that the clutter hidden under your bed and the placement of your knick knacks both says a lot about the state of your Self and affects the energy flow you have available to you (remember the river and the swamp? The question is whether you have a measly trickle or a great rushing flow available – I am obviously simplifying this ancient art, but you get my drift.).

If you are one of those people who are willing to believe in larger things and greater connections, but are still being cautious about being tripped up by the woo woo and are wondering where my logical explanation of this phenomenon is I need to apologize to you. The truth is, I don’t know how or why this idea of connecting (and cleaning) your home and your soul exists. I just know that it works.

Making Space

Over the next week Wakizashi and I worked together (because the lessons over the year, and the changes that we wanted, had happened to and for both of us, and because we share a home) to literally clean the house. We threw out garbage, tidied, organized, vacuumed, and washed where necessary. The dishes and laundry got done, and the piles scattered around the house got put away.

When we were done with the whole physical cleansing, we walked through and cleansed all the energy too. We flung the windows wide opened, and went through each room blessing the space, praying and releasing anything we felt needed to be released. We invited flow and lit candles or incense throughout the house; we did it silently, but together.

And I was right, there is a lot of relief in doing the work. We aren’t too worried about keeping it spick and span (in fact, I had to go collect up garbage again today after a lazy weekend), because the point wasn’t to have a clean house. It was to create a ritual of making space and of showing respect. And you might be surprised at just how powerful this kind of “ritual” can be.

Why not try it yourself?

You (and your house) might appreciate a full-fledged, top to bottom cleanse (like we did), or you might just pick one particular closet, or a space that belongs specifically to you (I most often do this ritual within my own office space). You can pick something arbitrary, something that’s been annoying you for years (can you say Junk Drawer?), or let your subconscious direct you. Likewise, you can have a specific inner target in mind: trying to create flow in your creative life, feeling stuck in your relationship (in which case you might work in the bedroom), or maybe it’s just a general ickiness you want to target – or you can just set out to do it as a kind of internal “spring tidy” and see what comes of it.

I’m really not sure how or why this kind of activity works, but if you are feeling stuck, stagnant, in a rut, or like you are generally lacking the benefits of flow there’s nothing so effective as a little housecleaning. I dare ya to prove me wrong!