I always remember the words Sydney Banks shared in the Missing Link along the lines of “you must empty out the old to make room for the new”. There’s something in that quote that, when I first read it, resonated at a deep level. Like any truth, it was already known yet somehow temporarily forgotten.
This last week, my husband had the week off, and we found ourselves committing to a decluttering of the house and garden. It’s not a job I relish, yet once started, I find myself unstoppable.
The contents of long unexplored, and ignored, cupboards and drawers were opened and released onto the floor. Some surprises were found (a small sieve I never knew I had, lurking at the bottom of a kitchen drawer, giving me two having bought one a few weeks ago. One clearly had to go in the ‘charity shop’ pile because nobody needs two little sieves!)…and a lot of fluff and ‘bits,’ leaving me wondering what that even is and where on earth it comes from.
Anyway, I digress.
What I notice about this process of ‘decluttering’ is how many stories can arise in the mind about the unearthed objects.
“Oh, I can’t get rid of that because it’s been in the family since the turn of the century.”
“It might come in handy one day.”
“I remember when I bought this/made this/they made this” nostalgia
Or my husband’s most popular one: “it might be worth something in a few years if I just hold onto it.”
And yet, without these apparitions of thought, the objects are simply, well… objects.
The heavy burden of meaning innocently placed upon them, makes the process of decluttering somewhat painful. The objects become a Something that can somehow make us feel something…which if you’re reading this, you already know isn’t true!
It’s like a child placing security on a teddy bear.
As adults we know teddy bears can’t make us secure, yet how many of us have other objects, like money or possessions, that we think can make us feel a certain way? It’s so easy to slip into the thought coma and be hypnotised by lies.
So, for me, the process of decluttering, like anything life throws our way, is an opportunity to come back to see what is true…that there is no past or future, or indeed, ‘me’ as I think myself to be – they are all creations of thought.
There is just this Knowing, now (which I sometimes like to call ‘intuition’ because most people understand what that is – an effortless, non-intellectual, inexplicable ‘thing’).
There’s the Knowing of thoughts, of a body and fingers typing, of a floor covered in stuff, of birds singing and the putrid smell of muck being spread on the fields wafting in through the open window. All of which appear equally to Me, the knowing of them, now.
In my book, The Truth Beyond Thought; Experiments to Rediscover Peace & Freedom, I present several ways to find this out for yourself. Because, as we know, being told these things doesn’t make them so! It is direct experience that enables us to see for ourselves what’s real.
And, I know that many people don’t want to know for themselves, they’re happy to be told what’s true and what’s not by their families, teachers, doctors, guru’s, society, religion and culture. I certainly was for many, many years; living an unquestioned reality full of pain and suffering.
But if you’re reading this, my guess is that you have a curiosity about life that can’t be quenched by simply being told things.
So, I invite you to notice next time you look at an object, even the ‘body’ object, what stories arise innocently in the mind about it. And how life might be…without them. How much simpler, more peaceful and freer can your experience of life be when you realise who or what you really are, before thought?
That is the true ‘decluttering’!
To connect with Vicki Montague and find out more about the work she does, please visit the link: https://freefromlimits.co.uk
If you would like to spend time with speakers like this in person and hear them share their wisdom and experience in a beautiful setting in Albir, Spain in November each year, you can find tickets here www.thevivaevent.com/registration