The real problem with clutter is not just that it stagnates the energy in your home and makes you feel stuck in corresponding aspects of your life. Or that it can make you feel ashamed, makes you more likely to put on weight, more prone to procrastination, and can be a major cause of arguments between partners.
It’s not that it can cause you to run up debt acquiring a home full of things you really don’t need and don’t have the time, ability or willingness to organize and keep tidy. Or that it can make you reluctant to invite people over, makes it hard to find things when you need them, and makes cleaning more arduous. Or even that it can weigh you down, make you feel tired, and make everything you try to do more difficult to achieve.
These physical, mental and emotional aspects are all associated with clutter and affect each person who has it to a greater or lesser degree. But far more serious is the effect it has at a deeper spiritual level that most people are not even aware of.
What is spiritual clutter?
Spiritual clutter is whatever gets in the way of a person following their spiritual path and doing what they have incarnated here on earth to do.
In my book Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui I explain:
The higher purpose of clutter clearing is to help clear the debris that prevents us from connecting to the high spiritual realms from whence we came and to which we will return. It is all too easy to lose the plot down here, get immersed in materialism, and come to believe that this world is all there is, when in fact being here is only a short interlude in the spiritual journey each of us is on.
Clutter clearing in all its forms helps to restore clarity and simplicity. When you keep around you just the things you need for your personal journey instead of burdening yourself with things that obscure your way and hold you back, it makes it much easier for you to connect with your spiritual path. And when you have the sense of peace and purpose that comes with that, you will never feel the need for clutter again.
Spiritual clutter clearing
Physical clutter clearing can be fairly easy and straightforward for some people and completely overwhelming for others because of limiting beliefs or sentimental attachments that need to be addressed in order to let things go.
Some forms of clutter are purely mental and emotional, such as worrying, gossiping, holding on to grievances, and other forms of emotional baggage. These are more difficult to resolve and can take many years of personal development work to unravel.
Spiritual clutter is on a completely different level and only becomes apparent after serious inroads have been made into clearing physical, mental, and emotional clutter first. It’s done top-down rather than bottom-up, and is orchestrated from your Higher Self, from the part that remembers your purpose in incarnating here on earth.
Finding your spiritual path
In the busyness of modern life, finding one’s spiritual path is seldom given the importance it deserves. Many people are born, live and die without ever discovering what they are here to do or how to connect to the spiritual forces that can help them achieve that. It’s the single most important thing in life but may never be prioritized. Hence, no matter how much money a person makes or how many possessions they acquire, their life may ultimately have no meaning if they never discover what the purpose of it was.
A spiritual path does not have to be a religious one. It involves understanding that first and foremost you are a spiritual being having a human experience, not a human being with the option of having a spiritual experience. The essence of a spiritual path is being connected to your Higher Self and navigating through life from that perspective.
However, most people hardly even glimpse their Higher Self or experience what it feels like to be spiritually connected because the veil of their astral body (their mind and emotions) is too dense. They live immersed in an endless chitter-chatter of thoughts and accompanying emotional reactions all the days of their life, not knowing that any other state of being is even possible.
New Age teachings suggest that anyone can easily connect to their Higher Self at any time. But this simply isn’t true. It can happen in rare flashes, but to be able to connect to your Higher Self at will requires many years of developing subtle body structures and working through samskaras to be able to see beyond the reactions of the astral body and the illusion of all the types of conditioning we have.
Conscious navigation
Spiritual clutter clearing is about consciously navigating the big decisions in life that can affect your destiny. It’s about making wise choices from your Higher Self instead of just letting things happen. One of the most dangerous traps is trustingly accepting that something is “meant to be” without questioning whether it is really right for you.
Conscious navigation involves questioning where you live, who you are in relationships with, what you spend your time doing, what you believe, and every aspect of how you live your life. Spiritual clutter clearing is being willing to make major course corrections if you find that any aspects of your life are not aligned with your higher purpose.
This may require the courage to move home, move countries or even move continents. You may discover you need to change your partner, your friends, your career, your lifestyle, your beliefs, or your way of doing things. Spiritual clutter clearing is about changing whatever needs to be changed to get yourself on track.
Restoring integrity
Spiritual clutter clearing is the most challenging type there is. At this time in the history of the world, it’s all too easy to live a spiritually disconnected life because there is such an emphasis on materialism and so few spiritual leaders of any note.
Spiritual clutter clearing is also the most rewarding type there is because it restores the highest level of integrity to your life. The satisfaction you can experience after doing physical decluttering is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the elevated levels of joy that spiritual clutter clearing opens.
Copyright © Clear Space Living Ltd 2020, updated 2022
Related article
Willpower from a spiritual perspective
Recommended reading
Sleeper Awaken – A novel by Samuel Sagan
Resources
Clutter clearing online courses led by Karen Kingston
Personal insight sessions with Richard Kingston
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