Decluttering and the Mist Filled Path

I started a book called The Mist-Filled Path, Celtic Wisdom For Exiles, Wanderers, and Seekers by Frank MacEowen about a year ago. I was trying to share the book with my mom, which never works because she doesn't share well , when I finally had to go get my own copy. In any case, in the beginning of the book MacEowen brings up a very important point that I would like to discuss. He begins by discussing the 'sleep walkers' who are people who walk from day to day without substance. Night fades into day, day into night becoming a large blur. Sleep walkers are people who aren't 'alive' in the sense of living life with a purpose. Sleep walkers feed on 30 second soundbites and quicksilver images that promise them a much better and fulfilled life if we just had a Slider Station or some other 'convience' contraption. We slowly fill our homes and our sacred spaces up with these devices until we drown in our own clutter. Eventually, the clutter is cleared out and placed in yard sales, taken to the dump, or to Goodwill - giving the person a good feeling and a few moments of peace from all the clutter. But its quickly replaced with more clutter, more technology to make life easier because after all that's the 'good life' right? In the end all it is, is clutter. All these 'conviences' and must haves are not life. They don't deepen our existence, purpose, or wonderment. These objects weigh us down, forcing us out of our homes, our sanctuaries, to seek areas that are more simplistic in nature - a vacation from all the clutter.

Of course, I'm not stating that a person should live in an empty home. Some objects are objects of comfort such as a bookshelf, plant stand, an antique desk, our favorite coffee mug, etc... But one must realize the difference between objects of beauty that make us comfortable and objects we think deepen our lives but only add to clutter. A person can go out and buy themselves a meditation pillow and the CD's to go with it but if that's as far as they go to deepen themselves, then in actuality all they have done is to create clutter. It then becomes something else to throw in a closet, under a bed, or into the trash.

Its odd how an introduction to a book can really make you think. I've always been a woman of simplisty. In fact, most ever corner in every room of my house is clean because I've always felt clutter begins in the corners. But then again my family lives on a fixed budget and I have not been able to buy modern gadgets and 'as seen on tv' products. After some pondering on the intro to this book, I am more cautious what I bring in the house. My home is my sanctuary and as such my goal is to make sure clutter does not rule it. And of course, another goal is to make sure that objects don't become an obsession or social status in my life.