Clean Sweep

(In an effort to continue last night's theme of playing my edge I'm sharing a post that I wrote a while back but for whatever reason haven't felt comfortable sharing it.   I'm stepping gracefully out of my comfort zone)

Ever watch that show on TLC called Clean Sweep? The show's crew shows up at some random family's home and cleans out some area of the house that is over-run with clutter. They remove everything from the space and sort it out into 3 categories.

* Stuff that's useful and supports the general theme of the space - stays

* Stuff that's useful and helpful to someone else is sold and the money
   made is used to add things to make the space more beautiful

* Stuff that's not useful and only creates clutter is thrown away

The end result it a peaceful, organized, comfortable space for the family to live in. What we need is for the Clean Sweep crew to help us with the clutter that we have in our emotional body that is preventing us from living a peaceful, organized, comfortable life.

The first step is to empty the space of the junk so that we can sort it with detachment. That'swhere yoga/meditation come in. Once the "space" is empty we sort through our emotions and decide what to do with them.

* Is it useful and supports the general theme of peace? - Love and contentment I think would
   fall into this category. Okay so those things stay.

* Forgiveness, compassion? - Those things are helpful and add to the beauty
   of the "space" (our emotional body)

* The throw away gets a little more complicated. At least for me. Some things we can part with easily like the lady who keeps hitting you in the ass with her shopping cart or the person who cuts you off on the road. You're hurt feelings when your kid tells you he hates you - toss. It's not so easy, however, to dispose of the toxins - like the old cans of paint you have in the shed, these toxins need to be disposed of properly or they may contaminate the environment.

Anger, resentment, these are the toxins I'm thinking of. If we just throw them out they can hurt our environment and the others around us. We can't keep them. They don't support the peaceful, organized, comfortable space we are trying to create. There isn't enough room in the emotional body for love and anger without creating clutter so anger has got to go. But how?

Okay, here's where sometimes we need to the help of the professionals. What is the proper way to get rid of anger? Hiding it in the bottom of other "trash" (emotions) isn't the right way. Throwing it out the window (temper tantrums) isn't the right way. Holding on to them isn't right.

I was really hoping that by the time I got to this point in this post that I would have had an epiphany and I would know exactly how to finally get rid of anger and resentment. I'm sorry to say that the answer hasn't come yet.

Until it comes all I can suggest is that you recognize these emotions as toxins and at the very least don't throw them out the window as in temper tantrums. My gut reaction is to keep them tightly sealed so that nothing leaks out but I know that's not the answer. Keeping them tightly sealed I feel like just causing the toxic fumes to build up to the point that eventually they will explode and cause even more damage. I'll keep doing sadhana and keep opening up to the grace of the Divine, trusting that the veil of maya will lift and I'll see the answer clearly right in front of me and when that happens I'll be sure to share it.