A few months ago I woke up with a start at 4am. They say this is the hour that our souls are yelling at us, because they have our full attention. Or that’s not a saying, but that’s what they say. So if you keep waking up at 4am, maybe get a piece of paper and go sit in the kitchen and ask your soul what it is that it is trying to tell you. Write down whatever comes to you. It seems silly, but if I was a betting woman, I would say that you will get a better nights sleep moving forward. Also I have absolutely never done this before, but it seems like such a good idea.

On this particular 4am a few months ago I shot up from a deep sleep and I heard, You can’t hear the universe because your life is too cluttered. I was on Kauai and I have since learned (yesterday) that my moon line in astro cartography runs right past Hanalei, so things are starting to make sense. I don’t know how I feel about Astro Cartography, but I knew the universe was exactly right.

I had a therapist when I was in my early twenties who recommended the book Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston. I read it in one weekend and got to work clearing the clutter in my life. It felt amazing!! Now I should say as a disclaimer that I come from a home that was both very woo woo and very scientific. My mother was both a hippie and a Mensa genius, so I was very lucky in that regard. I was allowed to design a god of my own understanding. I was inundated with history, art, travel, theater, articles on Scientific breakthroughs, and asked to form my own opinions on all of it. My mother gave me Francine Shapiro’s book on EMDR in the late 90’s because my PTSD was so bad, and she thought it could help. My mother loved to cut out articles for me from papers, magazines, anything that she thought was interesting. We also listened to so much Wayne Dyer and Caroline Myss, and I absolutely adored them. My mother was obsessed with the working of humans and humanity and the universe, and she passed that down to me.

So CLEAR YOUR CLUTTER… let’s go. This is how I think of clutter, it’s like the spare tire between you and the universe. We hear so much about manifestation, about creating our dream lives, and I am all for moving toward more and more alignment with ourselves, unfurling our dharma, going after our dreams, but if we are covered in crap the universe can’t get to us with as much ease as it’s designed to do. Like have you ever had a storage unit? And have you ever needed to get something at the back of the storage unit, so you tip toe, you hit your head on great aunt Blanche’s grandfather clock, you curse at the clock, you have to move boxes of baby clothes, maybe you hurt your back by accident - it’s like that, the universe cannot quite reach you, the flow can’t get you! So one of the most important things we can do for our lives is to clear out our clutter.

When my mother died I was so scared to be alive without her. I didn’t want to be in the flow, because I was grasping for any kind of control I could get, and flow takes trust. You cant have both control and trust. I also had an intensely strong biological need to stay as close to the time and space that she existed in. I also had guilt at being able to be alive when she could not be. I wanted stillness, because that felt safest, and so, in many ways I tried to stop time, but you cannot stop time. I grieved and mourned and worked my ass off to build trust in myself and the universe again, and little by little I wanted to be in the flow again.

And I have found that one of the fastest ways to get into the flow is to clutter clear, to clean up our messes; it helps our spirit get unstuck! There’s lots of kinds of clutter, junk drawers, old papers, phone calls not returned, taxes, apologies to be made, books that we will never read, books never written, paintings half way done, hard choices we have been avoiding, doctor’s appointments. Start small. Or do whatever you want. It is, LIKE LITERALLY EVERYTHING, a process. I have found that when I have been afraid to face myself or my life, these little steps of courage have been a door to the universe and myself.

I feel very clunky this week. I hope I said one thing that helped just one of you.

but I love you,

Jenny

Boy’s Room, 2013

Feng Shui Bagua Exercise

OKAY. Go get a piece of paper and a pen. Draw the floor plan of your home. Draw the basic bird’s eye view of your living space with walls and doorways. Then turn the paper so the main entrance is aligned with the lower edge of the plan. If the building is square or rectangle divide the space into nine squares, like below, and label accordingly. Or put whatever your shape is into a square. Notice where there is clutter in these spaces. Does it align with areas that feel extra sticky in your life?Do an experiment and clean out a drawer or a closet and see if anything happens!

See if anything feels different. Play a little, make it a game. Build a relationship with the universe that surprises the hell outta you. I am pretty sure it’s waiting for you!