Spring Clean Your Mental Home Too
Let the light in.
The sun shone through the window for the first time in what felt like months.
What it revealed was startling.
What had previously appeared as a clean window, dusted furniture, and swept floors was a very dirty window, dust where I hadn’t noticed it before, and previously unseen dirt on the floor.
Suddenly, the term “spring cleaning” made sense.
It is the feeling of starting fresh after the winter and the awareness that cleaning needs to be done.
Light does that. It reveals—both in our house and in our thinking.
What happens next is up to us. Here’s where our choice, or free will, comes into play.
We can choose to leave the dirt alone.
We can pretend that it’s not there.
We can acknowledge that we see it.
We can punish ourselves for not doing anything about it.
We can decide it’s not our problem.
We can even enjoy the fact that we are leaving a mess.
There are so many choices.
And if we choose to clean up the dirt, we can either be grateful for the revelation that something exists we don’t want in our lives, berate ourselves for not seeing it sooner, or be mad because we have to clean it up.
Each choice determines the quality of our day and, eventually, our lives.
This is not just about how dirty our houses are and our choices about what to do about them; it’s about noticing how “dirty” our thoughts are when light illuminates them.
As we each practice spiritual perception, knowing we are the light of God, that light—like the sun—shines on the “dirt” in our lives, revealing what was unseen before.
Spring-cleaning our homes is the same as spring-cleaning our mental home, perceptions, and beliefs.
We have the same choices around cleaning up the ideas, past events, thoughts, and behaviors that we discover when we shine the light on our lives that we do in our homes.
Whichever choice we make absolutely determines the quality of our lives and the joy of the day. It either brings more light or rolls in more mist that hides the light.
While we clean, it’s important to remember that we are never the dirt revealed by the light.
You are the light, not the dirt.
No matter how aggressive the temptation is to believe the loud voice that says we are the dirt, we can always rest assured that any “dirt” the light has revealed is a lie about who we are.
That dirt, or lie, has been there, clouding our perceptions, and once it is revealed, it can be dissolved and washed away.
Instead of dismay, let’s celebrate the uncovered dirt and bring out our tools to clean our homes and perceptions.
We use dust cloths and cleaners to clean our homes. To clean our perceptions, we remind ourselves of our point of view and hold steadfast to it.
Choosing the point of view that everything that exists is in Realty Love Loving Itself works the same way in our mental home as in our house. What remains has always been there, just hidden by the dirt.
As we sweep away false perceptions, we bring our state of mind into harmony with our point of view.
We have many tools to do this, including meditation, music, affirmations, 360-degree soft vision, walking, sitting quietly in nature, and working in the garden.
There are endless ways to silence the “monkey mind” and return to an awareness of the innate perfection of all that we see.
The still-small voice within each of us gently guides us forward, holding us safely in its love while we clean.
Listening only to this voice, we will find the courage and wisdom to sweep away any lie about ourselves and to acknowledge ourselves as we are, the Light of the Divine.
Remember that you are not the window through which light passes, but the light itself.
We might even find ourselves “whistling while we work.”
Ultimately, we will feel the delight of a clean home and the deep joy and peace of a clean perception that enables us to see what has always been present. Everything that we need. Here and now.
Knowing that, let’s start cleaning!