Recently my son’s car was stolen. He had parked it outside of his work after lunch and when he went out that evening it was gone. It has been a disappointing ordeal for him. He had invested a lot of time and money into his car in rebuilding it and had just recently primed the whole car getting it ready to paint. It was looking really good and evidently the local chop shop thought so also.
Many folks right now have just lost everything they own through the devastation of hurricanes, flooding, and wind. It is an horrific thing to lose all that you own. You can suddenly feel stripped of your identity and life force. The interesting thing is that we come into the world with nothing and we leave with nothing, but in between we accumulate a lot of stuff.
We are energetically and emotionally attached to our stuff so that when we lose it we feel that we have lost a part of ourselves. We invest a lot of ourselves into what we own. We actually love our possessions!
This idea of how much energy our stuff takes up in our lives is an interesting one. I have recently been working on having less stuff. It is not easy to get rid of our stuff. It seems to be stuck to us, almost like a cord is attached to us, so that we have a hard time parting with our things. They don’t necessarily even have to be nice things.
I ran across a quote from Stuart Wilde from his book, Infinite Self, which offers some sage advice at how we might view our possessions.
This is a powerful concept that is more easily said than accomplished. But how important that we learn to gain some perspective on our stuff. We are spirit—a spark off the Divine—and not one iota about who we are is about what we own.
Part of our spiritual practice should be about learning to give away what we have on a regular basis. It doesn’t mean that we are supposed to be destitute although many spiritual students have learned to practice “voluntary simplicity”. By learning to keep our possessions in perspective in regards to the whole bigger scheme of life we actually gain freedom to grow, learn, and become a larger version of ourselves. Our possessions can trap us into a smaller reality.
In another post I will share a little more about my exploration of this and in de-cluttering your life and how this facilitates de-cluttering our minds and emotions and can help us along on the spiritual path.
Many folks right now have just lost everything they own through the devastation of hurricanes, flooding, and wind. It is an horrific thing to lose all that you own. You can suddenly feel stripped of your identity and life force. The interesting thing is that we come into the world with nothing and we leave with nothing, but in between we accumulate a lot of stuff.
We are energetically and emotionally attached to our stuff so that when we lose it we feel that we have lost a part of ourselves. We invest a lot of ourselves into what we own. We actually love our possessions!
This idea of how much energy our stuff takes up in our lives is an interesting one. I have recently been working on having less stuff. It is not easy to get rid of our stuff. It seems to be stuck to us, almost like a cord is attached to us, so that we have a hard time parting with our things. They don’t necessarily even have to be nice things.
I ran across a quote from Stuart Wilde from his book, Infinite Self, which offers some sage advice at how we might view our possessions.
Everything you have is in the care of the God Force. If you came home and the stereo is missing, you can say, “Ah, they’ve come for the stereo,” rather than getting uptight about it. It’s just gone back to the God Force. Somebody else has it now. That leaves space for another stereo to come into your life. Or it leaves space for no stereo at all. Now you’ll have the silence to meditate and think about who you are and what you want in this life.
This is a powerful concept that is more easily said than accomplished. But how important that we learn to gain some perspective on our stuff. We are spirit—a spark off the Divine—and not one iota about who we are is about what we own.
Part of our spiritual practice should be about learning to give away what we have on a regular basis. It doesn’t mean that we are supposed to be destitute although many spiritual students have learned to practice “voluntary simplicity”. By learning to keep our possessions in perspective in regards to the whole bigger scheme of life we actually gain freedom to grow, learn, and become a larger version of ourselves. Our possessions can trap us into a smaller reality.
In another post I will share a little more about my exploration of this and in de-cluttering your life and how this facilitates de-cluttering our minds and emotions and can help us along on the spiritual path.
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