An Act Of God...

Saturday morning...

Surrounded by stuff, some in boxes, more waiting to be packed up and moved...

Thank god it doesn't all have to be done in one day, though it would make the utmost practical sense to get it over and done with...

Stuff...

Hate it...

It needs caring for, cleaning...

 - though cleaning could be considered an act of genocide, with each swipe of the cloth killing billions of microbes!

It takes up energy, time, attention, space...

It cramps my style - I can't just get up and go whenever an amazing opportunity for new adventure comes along...

It's a ball and chain around my ankle...

I want to do what I challenged others to do on a Facebook thread about the global energy/food crisis and our own personal responsibility in that - reduce all my possessions down to 20% of what I have now, and live in a space that is 20% of  what we now occupy...

Better yet - give it all away and walk the earth with nothing but a begging bowl, doing what I can where I can...

 Stuff...

Love it...

It gives me a 3D sense of continuity, of travelling my life path, of connections I've made, places I've been, people I love and who love me...

I've got a gift for 'arranging' it, decorating houses, creating warm, inviting, calm spaces that people tell me are like a "sanctuary" and they say they wish they could do what I do...

It brightens my world with beauty and light, with imagination and memory, with colour, texture and sound... 

- though I'm surrounded by that in every dimension, in all of the eternal now, if I have eyes to see and the awareness to be awake to it...

In some weird way, it makes me real, solid, in 3D... 

Or I think it does...

As though my stuff is me?

Who am I without my stuff?

Would I cease to exist?

Would I have existed at all, if I don't leave any stuff behind as evidence?

- and does any of my stuff mean anything to anyone else, or will it just be nuisance clutter, to be given away, dumped, discarded, after I cease to be physical?

 

When I took my first family of kids to live in Australia in 1996, we were without our 'stuff' for more than three months.

Through some mistake, our own 'stuff' sat in a container on a wharf for that time, instead of being shipped to Brisbane.

So I had to rent and buy basic household necessities while we waited for our 'stuff'...

Three months without art, music, books, knick-knacks, personal items filling the space we were inhabiting...

We didn't miss it at all...

And then the boxes etc were delivered and there was the fun of unpacking and remembering and choosing where things would sit/fit best energetically...

And in a week or two, it was all being taken for granted again, a backdrop to the routine of living... 

In many ways a limited and limiting definition of who we were, as individuals and as a family...

A self-created prison... a mask, a facade, a half truth and a half lie of who we are that we present to ourselves and project out to the world...

My higher Self wants to let it all go...

My small self wants to hold on...

I would not grieve if an Act of God destroyed all our earthly possessions...

Do I have the will and strength to be that Act of God?

Do I have the right to make this choice for my son?