The winter cleaning in eastern Europe. Often the locals take their carpets out in winter to beat the dust out of them and then they use the snow to clean them. Much of these cleaning tasks are done before the winter holidays in order to get the homes ready for visitors.
Today it felt appropriate to use this as an image for our exploration of our day. Cleaning the home and cleaning the mind have very similar motives. They do say that a tidy home denotes a tidy mind. Sometimes it is important indeed to air out the mind, in order to allow for new ideas and new ways of being to emerge. Last year we spoke a lot about the importance of clearing old patterns, old thinking processes, in order to allow for new thoughts to emerge.
We spoke about how important it is to explore old ways of thinking, and accept what needs to be accepted in order to move on.
Just like the rugs in our home, sometimes out own internal “carpets” can be clogged up with many unimportant emotions, memories, thoughts that are just on repeat with not much link back to our lived experience. Our inner world sometimes stagnates because we are much more content in staying in the same place in ourselves, because it confers familiarity and confers a somewhat calm environment. Familiar equals a calm state of being, it appeases our flight or fight systems and therefore helps with homeostasis. But of course when things become stale, when they become overly familiar, this can also lead to highly strung emotions.
So just like the man in the image, perhaps it is time to take the rugs out to dust and clean them. Perhaps it is time to clear away the old and allow for new to come in.
How can you cleanse all the old thoughts?
How can you clear away old, stale emotions?
How can you clear the mind of views/ thoughts and emotions?
Time to take out your diary and take some notes when answering the questions.
