I don’t mind cleaning. I’m not lazy. So how is it that messiness and clutter reigns in my house?
When I walk into the house, there’s a pile of half unopened letters on the dining table, notes for groceries and chores next to the plants I still have not potted. I see snacks and supplements crowding the kitchen counters, left out for convenient access. In the living room my latest art project all over the coffee table, books I’m reading lying here and there. In the entry way, the vacuum cleaner left out because I was interrupted and didn’t finish vacuuming.
Self-help can take you part of the way.
I read books like “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo, that helped me prune my wardrobe and kitchen items down to what I actually use and enjoy. “Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui” by Karen Kingston taught me about clutter zones and how setting up a basket for mail and file cabinets for the mail/letters that we keep, prevents clutter from building up.
These books provided good guidance and advice but somehow, I just could not implement the advice and make it stick.
Meditation helps uncover the real problem.
I practice a meditation method that has taught me how to do deep introspection, and really get at the roots of the problems in my life. One day as I was meditating about life in general, I realized something that totally shocked me: I don’t feel that I deserve a beautiful, organized and clutter free home.
I looked around the rooms in my home and for the first time, saw the mismatched furniture and the $20 IKEA end tables that I paired with my expensive couch and chair. Looks like I don’t allow myself to go all the way and buy nice things that all match either. I remember buying the couch and thinking that I can’t afford the matching end tables.
I didn’t realize it at the time but I felt undeserving and guilty about buying such an expensive couch and chair. What gives me the right to own these beautiful things when so many people don’t have groceries?
So, one way to be able to accept the nice things in my home is to create a mess. The mess brings it down a notch and makes it more along the lines of what I felt I deserved.
As I continued to do my regular meditation, other things surfaced around this area of messiness and clutter. Turns out that I also felt that I don’t deserve to have things without expending a lot of work and energy. I don’t deserve them if I have not earned them past any reproach.
So, if there is some messiness on the kitchen counters, that somehow lowers the value of my large beautiful kitchen. Somehow having that lower value makes it more attainable. It signals that I have worked enough to have earned it. It’s a silly idea but I felt that I would lose the things I have not earned.
These crazy thoughts only existed in my mind.
These crazy thoughts were once running around inside my mind keeping me from having a neat and clutter free home. Luckily, there is a way to both identify and get rid of these crazy, false thoughts.
This meditation practice gets rid of those thoughts.
Meditation has helped me to round up these false thoughts, beliefs and fears and permanently get rid of them. Today, I no longer feel guilty for doing well or undeserving of the nice things that come my way. Today, I find it easy to organize my home and keep it free of clutter and I don’t mind when a little clutter happens either.
The lesson here is that good advice will take you a long way, but until you get all the stories and experiences that are recorded in your mind, cleared out, you won’t be able to fully implement the advice. So don’t hold on to these crazy things in your mind and start this meditation practice.
I want to know what is coming next. I want to feel prepared.
So when my plans for buying a house fell apart, it affected me a lot!
Thank goodness I had my meditation practice to help me get through all the uncertainty that ensued.
Finding a new job in a new city
Our house was up for sale and I drove an hour and a half to a couple of interviews right before Christmas in the new city.
First, there was the uncertainty of getting a job offer in a tight job market. At this point, I had been out of work for 3 months and starting to run out of savings. Only one company had shown any interest in my skills and after the first interview said a second interview was required. Would I get the job?
Housing Market Uncertainty
Then, there was the uncertainty of selling our house in a buyer’s market. We had watched the house down the street sit for sale for 7 months before someone bought it. They had brought their price down at least 2 times. Our house had been on the market for 4 weeks and only 1 couple had come by only to say it was their second favorite.
Thoughts about what’s in store for us kept coming up throughout the day. It’s very natural to want to know, will I get the job? Will we sell the house?
When we worry about what’s going to happen, we are trying to know the future. The higher the level of uncertainty, the more we want to plan and be prepared.
It is unnerving not to know what’s going to happen
We imagine different outcomes and if you’re like me, most of the outcomes you imagine are negative. So, there we are living out imaginary futures in our minds.
Luckily my meditation practice brings me back to the present moment. And at that present moment in December, I still had savings. The bank was not foreclosing on our house. I had hope for a very good job in a city I really liked. This meditation grounded me in the present so I could stop worrying and enjoy Christmas.
Uncertainty causes fear
Then it started up again, the uncertainty of my situation continued on through New Year’s Eve. I pulled some of my 401k to fund our cost of living through February and fears about going bankrupt set in.
We were already practicing frugality but now buying groceries or getting gas for my car brought up fears about running out of money. Fears about spending my 401k. How will I ever retire?
Writing this down, I realize how crazy those fears sound. But they were very real to me at the time and my meditation practice helped me get past the fears. This meditation helps me see what is imaginary and only exists in my mind. These fears were not reality. I wasn’t bankrupt and I still had resources.
Meditation turns fears into gratitude
Meditation helped me change my fear of spending all of my retirement savings into gratitude. I was grateful to have a 401k as a resource in this time of need. So many people don’t have this luxury.
Two weeks into January I accepted a job offer and started driving the hour and a half to work every day because my house was still for sale.
I felt a new urgency to sell the house as I was now feeling the pain of living far away from my job. I wondered how many weeks will I need to keep doing this? Only 2 couples had come to see the house and they said it was nice but not their first choice. The uncertainty of “will my house sell?” made me feel unfortunate and I went around feeling sorry for myself that first week at work.
Once again, meditation helped me
What meditation teaches us is acceptance of what is, rather than to be upset or frustrated about things not being as we think they should be. If you really look at it, with acceptance of reality we can always be happy but wanting things to go our way will leave us unhappy most of the time.
I was able to change how I saw my situation and feel gratitude for the new job and that I had a nice house to come home to. I learned to enjoy the long drives and use the time to listen to podcasts and music.
I started to feel fortunate and even considered keeping the house and committing to the long drives for a year or so.
On the second week at work, we got an offer on the house. The closing date was set so we had 4 weeks to find another house closer to work.
After one week of house hunting, we found the perfect house! We put in our offer and everything seemed to be so certain once again. We could plan again! Having things go as planned makes us feel safe. A plan gives us certainty and we draw confidence from feeling safe and certain.
Nothing in life is guaranteed 100%, but we live as if it is
Our realtor and lender said we could close on the sale of our house and the purchase of the new house on the same day. Easy transition.
To my surprise the buyer backed out and the seller of the house we thought would be so easy to buy did not accept our offer. The double disappointment was very hard to accept and felt down right discouraging.
My meditation practice did not allow me to lose my courage.I was able to see that even though the loss of the deals was a very emotional event, nothing was really lost. I still lived in my house and I had learned how to enjoy the commute to work. And there were many other houses for sale in our price range. We would just keep looking.
My meditation practice did not allow me to lose my courage.I was able to see that even though the loss of the deals was a very emotional event, nothing was really lost. I still lived in my house and I had learned how to enjoy the commute to work. And there were many other houses for sale in our price range. We would just keep looking.
Uncertainty is not always a bad thing
When we don’t know what is coming, we often imagine the worst things are coming. In this case, a better offer was coming.
A week went by and we got another offer on the house. $5000 more than the previous offer. Wow. With a new closing date on the sale of our house, the race was on to find a new house. We looked at 8 to 10 houses in our price range every weekend and kept coming back to that one perfect house with the unwilling seller. Uncertainty started to creep in again. How long is it going to take before we find a house? I felt a little lost.
We had gone back to the seller with our offer and each time they asked us to make one more change. They asked for more earnest money, a different title company, a different closing date and even things like presenting the dollar amounts as percentages in the contract. This back-and-forth dragged out for 5 weeks.
We closed on the sale of our house and took shelter at an Airbnb that was willing to allow pets.
Negotiations with the seller continued. The seller continued to ask for changes in our offer and drag out the process.
We couldn’t plan. We rented the Airbnb tentatively a week at a time not knowing how long we could continue to live there. Not to mention how expensive it was becoming.
The uncertainty of our situation made me feel like a victim. I was angry and frustrated. I found myself thinking of the sellers as enemies who were just making my life difficult.
Unveiling the Truth is the goal of this meditation
We tend to create imaginary situations full of drama in our minds. We get all caught up in our imaginary situations, it is difficult to see the truth. But this meditation helps us step outside our mind and see it.
I was able to see that I was not a victim
I was a resourceful person who found temporary housing, close to work, cheaper than a hotel and that would accept my pets.
I was a smart person who could have considered houses in higher price ranges, and perhaps avoided this unpleasant situation but understood what I could comfortably afford.
The seller was not an enemy. They were simply looking to make a deal that they were comfortable with.
A happy ending
It was finally in March that we were able to buy the house and move out of the Airbnb. I am grateful to once again live in a nice house and have a nice job and a nice short commute. Most of all, I am grateful for this meditation practice that constantly brought me out of my anticipation and worry and back to reality, and reality was pretty good after all.
What I Learned About Navigating Uncertainty
Looking back on this journey, I’ve discovered that uncertainty, while uncomfortable, can sometimes lead to better outcomes than we initially imagine. The practice of returning to the present moment helped me see my situation clearly, without the distortion of fear. When we can separate our imagined fears from our current reality, we often find that we have the resources and resilience to handle whatever comes our way.
The next time you face uncertainty in your life, remember that the present moment is where your power lies. The future, with all its possibilities, hasn’t happened yet—and our imaginings about it are often far worse than reality.
Great question that the band called “War” posed in their song hit, “Why can’t we be friends?”.
With so many different political, racial and economical stands in this world, the simple question appears to have a very complex answer. However, the answer is really not complex. The reason why there are so many different stands is simple, it’s because we live inside our minds.
All people, live inside their own, unique, mind world. Thus, everyone’s mind world is different from everyone else’s.
Every one of us began life, creating copies of the world on the day we were born. It is part of our human condition to do this. Our bodies are like cameras, taking pictures of everything we see, hear, taste, smell and hear and using these pictures to build our mind world; and we build it according to our own life experiences. There are no two minds alike.
Our mind worlds are such a complete copy of the world around us, that we don’t realize we are living in our own minds. We believe that we live in the real world, along with everybody else. But even the people with whom we interact each day are only copies of those people that we took into our minds.
The fact is that we each live alone in our own minds, separate from everyone else on the planet. Sounds a bit like Science Fiction, and yet, this is the simple reason why we can’t be friends with everyone around the globe. As long we are stuck living inside our own minds, living our lives out in our own separate mind worlds, it is not possible for us to truly, ever, live as One.
People are not only separated from each other but also separated from the real world. We are trapped inside our mind worlds and not able to experience the real world.
Luckily, we live in a time where there exists a meditation method that gives us a way to stop living in our mind world and start living in the real world.
The Universe has a Mind of consciousness and a Body of emptiness. All that is seen and unseen, springs from the Universe and It is the everlasting and never changing truth. Our own personal copy of the world, however, does not exist in the Universe. Our mind world exists only in our minds and is not truth.
If we all transformed, forsaking our own mind worlds for the Universe’ Mind, we would all live in the real world, together. With nothing separating us from each other, we would truly live as One and be friends with everyone around the world.
I live in South Korea. There’s big trend of eating and showing off on social media as well as broadcasting. We watch everyday and everywhere. It seems getting bigger nowadays, such as corona pandemic. It looks like it’s not easy to lose weight unless we escape from the trend.
In my childhood, I grew up in the family of mixture of puritanism and Confucianism. My grandparents and parents lived pre and post Korean war years. They didn’t have money and food as well. So I also had to endure my desire to eat what I wanted. I remember when I was primary school girl, I share a dish with my younger brother. That memory was in my head very long time and at that moment I made up my mind that I would earn money and buy food as much as I wished.
After delivering baby, I had a eating disorder for a while. I gained more than 40 pounds and I couldn’t lose at all. As I earn money, I paid for food for all. I had binge eating habit and always feel guilty about eating too much. I hardly shared my food with others. I liked to eat alone and enjoyed my extravagant flavor. My thoughts were focused in ‘what am I going to eat today?’, ‘where is the hot place to go?’. Furthermore, I always missed the food that I ate the dishes while traveling in abroad. So, my mind was busy to find out similar dishes in my country and wandered about. I felt thirsty about my desire to eat delicious food.
As I kept my eating habit, my health got worse and worse. I was getting snappy, selfish, and inferior. I hate myself. It was time to change! I did everything, going to gym, jogging early morning, taking medicine, even oriental thing. Going on and off diets repeatedly made weigh control difficult and there was simultaneously yo-yo.
I felt I should change my eating habit and my attachment to food. So the last thing I tried was doing meditation. While doing meditation, I looked back myself and my childhood. And I realised I didn’t move enough or exercise and attached to the taste of food.
And now, I exercise everyday for 1 hour, do house chores with delightful mind. I cook meals for myself and my kids rather than go to restaurants. As much as I do my meditation, I feel less stress. The attachment of eating has been disappeared slowly. The more my mind is lighter, the less my weight is. That’s why I wanted to share my story with you all. Thank you for your time to read this article. Have a nice day. Be prudent!
Have you ever experienced before? Financial crisis! Yes, of course I have. I and my hubby were in debt to a bank. We had to manage to pay off our debt in a year. Every thing looked like gloomy. I felt starved as well as stuck. I experienced that I had big problems to communicate with my partner when we had a financial problem. At that time, we had bitter quarrels over money matter and sometimes we hadn’t spoken each other for days.
Everything didn’t fit from my perspective. I felt angry and wanted to fight. I seemed to listen to him and agree with his opinion but I never gave up my theory. We talked a lot and listened to each other seemingly. But surely, I had never listened properly. I just pretended and I insisted that he must yield up to me.
As you presumed we couldn’t solve our communication problems. We were parallel for a long time. I hadn’t understood that we had to work hard and save money to solve the financial crisis rather than to have a row. Luckily we now settled prudently. Thank god! We both have worked diligently and concerned carefully when we spent money.
I’m now mid 40’s. Since I have a self-centered mind, even if I pretend that I understand other people’s saying, they don’t trust me. I could see how much I was mean, narrow-minded and thinking only myself. If I didn’t meditate. I couldn’t see myself. I look back myself. It was heartbreaking but divine! When I threw away my own thoughts, selfishness, hatred and carelessness, I was able to accept the others. I didn’t try to do so, but I became that state.
To communicate effectively, I do listen carefully without any judgement. When I talk to others truly, they listen and accept my will. It seems very difficult. but we know there’s no result unless we persuade others. We have to have true minds, and then we can move others’ heart.
