I was giving an interview about my book yesterday. The interviewer said, "Your book says that "you" are sacred, and "your things" are not. Does that mean there is a spark of divinity in each of us?"
I said, "There's an inferno of divinity in all of us. Who we are is a force of amazing. When we get tired and overwhelmed we forget. We feel lousy. When we let go of the clutter in our lives we get back our clarity and peace of mind and we feel amazing. We feel like more than enough. We don't need anything to make us feel bigger and better. There's no becoming a better you. It's already in our experience."
I was recently working with a client in her home. She was feeling sad and tiny as she talked about how badly she was feeling that she couldn't take care of her paper work. There were many piles of it on her desk. She had the money to pay her bills. But she didn't get around to completing it. She said she tried but got tired and always gave up.
I ask her a few questions and she reveals she doesn't want to grow up. She was feeling that being responsible meant she couldn't enjoy life, and she was sacrificing an important part of herself. To protect herself she would go into a trance. While paying bills she suddenly felt lethargic and depressed and would walk away. She said, "What's wrong with me?"
I said, "Nothing. You just got into a habit of shutting down. We have all kinds of ways of dealing with being overwhelmed. Yours made you not finish completing your paperwork. The funny thing is, to avoid the pain you felt, you did something that caused much more pain. By looking at your process, we unravel it. Clutter is tangled. Let's de-tangle. How about a new definition of growing up? Maybe taking care of things so you can have more fun. It's only a few minutes. You scratch some numbers on some papers. You add stamps. You click to some websites. You type some numbers. Then it's all done and you feel really good. That's the great thing about being an adult. Since you're in charge, you can figure out ways of doing things that suit you. Things get streamlined. Your life flows much better and you're happy."
She really liked the new concept of being grown up. She went through one bill at a time and completed all of them. She looked strong with inner stability.