Clutter Mind Quotes

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds

Let us not keep on walking on the broken glass of despair with bleeding words of grief but transcend the viscous discomforts of life and clear out the mountains of clutter in our mind. ("Halt in flight")

The day we decide to drop the flimsy makeshift scenarios in our cluttered mind and eschew the ‘alleluias’ of self-importance, life can become genuine, lucid and graceful, like a flow of wellness in the glow of a new morning. ("Words flew away like birds")

While meditating, we are cleaning up clutter in the backyard of our mind, triggering a shift in our thinking, and reshaping a drained logic in our mental network, giving voice to fresh concepts and new emotions. ("An egg every day?")

Let us not be afraid of “saying” what we are “seeing” without censoring anything, or looking away and playing hide and seek. By naming things well, we avoid clutter in our mind and torment in the world. ("Man without Qualities" )

Meditation is cleaning up clutter in the backyard of our mind, triggering a shift in our thinking, and reshaping a drained logic in our mental network, giving voice to fresh concepts and new emotions. (The rabbit hole of Meditation)

Comes the tipping point in life, when we decide to a ‘stop and search’ and our emotional police bring us to a standstill. This allows us to scan all the little details in the spectrum of our being; scour all fuzzy or cryptic elements that are floating around in our mind and restore the fault lines in the cluttered tale of our life. ("The world was somewhere else")

It has always been on the written page that the world has come into focus for me. If I can piece all these bits of memory together with the diaries and letters and the scribbled thoughts that clutter my mind and bookshelves, then maybe I can explain what happened. Maybe the worlds I have inhabited for the past seven years will assume order and logic and wholeness on paper. Maybe I can tell my story in a way that is useful to someone else.

Don't compare your actual self to a hypothetical self. Don't drown in a sea of 'what ifs'. Don't clutter your mind by imagining other versions of you, in parallel universes where you made different decisions.

The most important thing we've learned, So far as children are concerned, Is never, NEVER, NEVER let Them near your television set -- Or better still, just don't install The idiotic thing at all. In almost every house we've been, We've watched them gaping at the screen. They loll and slop and lounge about, And stare until their eyes pop out. (Last week in someone's place we saw A dozen eyeballs on the floor.) They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnotised by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keeps them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink -- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES! 'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'What used the darling ones to do? 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books! The nursery shelves held books galore! Books cluttered up the nursery floor! And in the bedroom, by the bed, More books were waiting to be read! Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales And treasure isles, and distant shores Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars, And pirates wearing purple pants, And sailing ships and elephants, And cannibals crouching 'round the pot, Stirring away at something hot. (It smells so good, what can it be? Good gracious, it's Penelope.) The younger ones had Beatrix Potter With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter, And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland, And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and- Just How The Camel Got His Hump, And How the Monkey Lost His Rump, And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul, There's Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole- Oh, books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall. Then fill the shelves with lots of books, Ignoring all the dirty looks, The screams and yells, the bites and kicks, And children hitting you with sticks- Fear not, because we promise you That, in about a week or two Of having nothing else to do, They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something to read. And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did.

I sometimes feel like my head is a computer with too many windows open. Too much clutter on the desktop. There is a metaphorical spinning rainbow wheel inside me. Disabling me. And if only I could find a way to switch off some of the frames, if only I could drag some of the clutter into the trash, then I would be fine. But which frame would I choose, when they all seem so essential? How can I stop my mind being overloaded when the world is overloaded? We can think about anything. And so it makes sense that we end up thinking about everything. We might have to, sometimes, be brave enough to switch the screens off in order to switch ourselves back on. To disconnect in order to reconnect.

Stay positive. Sometimes you don't even realize you're blocking your own blessings by thinking negatively and holding on to the past. Learn to let go.

Om is that God of love. Like a loving mother Om cleans us of our clutters collected through many incarnations.

That's the thing about being a Labrador retriever - you were born for fun. Seldom was your loopy, freewheeling mind cluttered by contemplation, and never at all by somber worry; every day was a romp. What else could there possibly be to life? Eating was a thrill. Pissing was a treat. Shitting was a joy. And licking your own balls? Bliss. And everywhere you went were gullible humans who patted and hugged and fussed over you.

you clutter my mind thoughts of you, thoughts of me with you thoughts that keep me from rest that ull me to sleep at night your words are like butter they're smooth and they're rich and they make the bitter bits better

It's him, it whispered in the back of my cluttered mind. Some old instinct I'd long forgotten. See him. See him. And when I finally did, I knew him instantly. When I saw him, I recognised him straight away. Even if his face wasn't yet familiar to me. He was mine. He was everything.

My panic is rising again. My sense of isolation and worthlessness. And no other senses worth mentioning apparently. It's not nice being inside my head. It's a nice place to visit but I don't want to live here. It's too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I'm tired of it. That same old person, day in and day out. I'd like to try something else. I tried to neaten my mind, file everything away into tidy little thoughts, but it only got more and more cluttered. My mind has a mind of its own. I try to define my limits by seeing just how far I can go, and I find that I passed them weeks ago. And I've got to find my way back.

Clearing clutter—be it physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual—brings about ease and inspires a sense of peace, calm, and tranquility.

Many people carry this type of negative self-image for years, but it is swept away the instant they experience their own perfectly clean space. This drastic change in self-perception, the belief that you can do anything if you set your mind to it, transforms behavior and lifestyles. This is precisely why my students never experience rebound. Once you have experienced the powerful impact of a perfectly ordered space, you, too, will never return to clutter.

An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled with the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge.

Clear your stuff. Clear your mind.

He is full of adrenaline, his nerves are shot, and his mind is cluttered up with free-floating anxiety-floating around on an ocean of generalized terror.

My mind/a twist of clutter/ as i lie in bed imagining my life/ I watch the shadows on the ceiling./Memories sail across my eyes. / I need courage to see them. / I fight with myself/But then I close my eyes to the twilight/ And release myself to sleep. The scars you can't see are the hardest to heal. I'd rather be lucky than good. Good is just so overrated. Bad girls have the most fun. A fool empties his head every time he opens his mouth

Partly, he said, he enjoyed my company; it wasn’t often that he had a chance to talk to someone whose mind was so little cluttered with education or accepted opinions— (“You mean I’m stupid.” “Good heavens, no. Just ignorant.”)

There's memory clutter, which reminds you of an important person, achievement, or event from your past. I think memory clutter often gathers in the homes of people with some degree of depression. And then there's "I might need it one day clutter, in which people hang on to stuff in anticipation of an imagined future. Among these folks, I've noticed a recurring theme of anxiety...Maybe it's possible that the stuff we own and obsess over is the physical manifestation of the mental health issues that challenge our minds. --p29.

The lack of mindfulness often makes us carry the unnecessary possessions, stale ideologies and rotten relationships along, which unnecessarily clutter our lives and consciousness, and stagnate our growth.

The more time I spend with you, the more my mind is cluttered. I'm not used to doing nice things for anyone but all I want to do is make you happy.

Once you clear that mind clutter out, the doorways for what you desire are open.

Silence is noise to the cluttered mind.

Sleep comes slowly to a mind of cluttered thoughts in search of order and resolve.

If indeed the universe posessed a mind, it was a cluttered one. And if corners such as these thrived in that mind, then the custodian was asleep, or, perhaps, drunk.

Don’t compare your actual self to a hypothetical self. Don’t drown in a sea of “what if” s. Don’t clutter your mind by imagining other versions of you, in parallel universes, where you made different decisions. The internet age encourages choice and comparison, but don’t do this to yourself. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” said Theodore Roosevelt. You are you. The past is the past. The only way to make a better life is from inside the present. To focus on regret does nothing but turn that very present into another thing you will wish you did differently. Accept your own reality. Be human enough to make mistakes. Be human enough not to dread the future. Be human enough to be, well, enough. Accepting where you are in life makes it so much easier to be happy for other people without feeling terrible about yourself.

There is darkness on your lantern and pumpkins in your wind. and Oh, they clutter up your mind with their senseless bumping while your heart is like a sea gull frozen into a long distance telephone call. I’d like to take the darkness off your lantern and change the pumpkins into sky fields of ordered comets and disconnect the refrigerator telephone that frightens your heart into standing still.

An embrace of simplicity offers another potent and liberating opportunity. It allows you to reduce the number of commitments, material possessions, and unsupportive relationships we burden ourselves with. These tend to clutter the mind and weigh you down.

A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.

Cluttered minds think alike.

You cannot truly love yourself if you are constantly surrounded by clutter, chaos and bitterness. The time has come for you to de-clutter your mind and your environment.

A mind cluttered with past thoughts, old conversations and unhealed wounds can only serve to drag us down and compromise our ability to live free.

I feel cluttered when there is no time to analyze experience. That is the silt—unexplored experience that literally chokes the mind.

She sensed that what her aunt spoke of as love was something else—a bribe, a threat, an indecent will to power. She knew that the kind of imprisonment that love might impose was also, mysteriously, a freedom for the soul and spirit, was water in the dry place, and had nothing to do with the prisons, churches, laws, rewards, and punishments, that so positively cluttered the landscape of her aunt’s mind.

This is the beautiful secret of minimalism: It may seem like it’s about stuff, but once you’ve cut through the clutter and adopted a new frame of mind, you learn that it’s barely about ‘the stuff’ at all.

Whatever clutter may be getting in your way during a conversation or communication, use the simple acronym HEAR to enter a more spacious and less defensive awareness. HEAR stands for: hold all assumptions; enter the emotional world; absorb and accept; and reflect, then respect. H

Your greatest need is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters your mind. You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life, work on controlling your mind. In most cases, that’s the only thing you should be trying to control.

You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself:  … by comprehending the scale of the world  … by contemplating infinite time  … by thinking of the speed with which things change—each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows.

Touches of creative genius are simply exaggerated versions of what happens when our brains remove the clutter every night. With only important information left, the mind may then be free to make associations that it couldn’t see before.

If you wish to understand, know that a sudden comprehension comes when the mind has been purged of all the clutter of conceptual and discriminatory thought-activity. Those who seek the truth by means of intellect and learning only get further and further away from it. Not till your thoughts cease all their branching here and there, not till you abandon all thoughts of seeking for something, not till your mind is motionless as wood or stone, will you be on the right road to the Gate.1

There was organisation at work, but clutter, too. The mark of a logical mind that sometimes strayed.

Take time for the clearance of the mind, preparing for adherence to perseverance for the journey of another thousand miles.

If you have clutter in your real life, your tangible life, then it really adds to the emotional clutter in your mind.

When we set goals that feel safe and achievable, we are caving in to our own preconceived notions of what we are capable of.

books speak the truth our mouths are too afraid to voice, our minds too cluttered to parse out.

I no longer want to hold on to things that clutter my mind and cripple my soul. Please give me the wisdom and strength to let things go. Let me flow. Let me grow.

While play-acting grim scenarios day in and day out may sound like a good recipe for clinical depression, it’s actually weirdly uplifting. Rehearsing for catastrophe has made me positive that I have the problem-solving skills to deal with tough situations and come out the other side smiling. For me, this has greatly reduced the mental and emotional clutter that unchecked worrying produces, those random thoughts that hijack your brain at three o’clock in the morning. While I very much hoped not to die in space, I didn’t live in fear of it, largely because I’d been made to think through the practicalities: how I’d want my family to get the news, for instance, and which astronaut I should recruit to help my wife cut through the red tape at NASA and the CSA. Before my last space flight (as with each of the earlier ones) I reviewed my will, made sure my financial affairs and taxes were in order, and did all the other things you’d do if you knew you were going to die. But that didn’t make me feel like I had one foot in the grave. It actually put my mind at ease and reduced my anxiety about what my family’s future would look like if something happened to me. Which meant that when the engines lit up at launch, I was able to focus entirely on the task at hand: arriving alive.

Fasting clears away the thousand little things which quickly accumulate and clutter the body, mind and heart. It cuts through corrosion and renews our contract with God and Mother Earth.

IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK—HE ONLY SEES!

Stupidity and Madness The Tao is clear, yet this clarity requires you to sweep away all your clutter. At all times watch out for your own stupidity, be careful of how your mind jumps around. When nothing occurs to involve your mind, you return to true awareness. When unified mindfulness is purely real, you comprehend the great restoration. The ridiculous ones are those who try to cultivate quietude - as long as body and mind are unstable, it is madness to go into the mountains.

Unless you put prayer with your fasting, there is no need to fast. If it doesn't mean anything to you, it won't mean anything to God. I can do without a lot of things, but I cannot do anything without Jesus. Moses fasted. Elijah fasted forty days. Paul fasted fourteen days. Jesus fasted forty days. If the children of God do not fast, how will we ever fit into the armor of God? Fasting is not a requirement; it is a choice. It is a vow you choose to make to pursue God on a deeper level. The entire time that you are on a fast you are acknowledging God. When you are feeling hungry, empty, and weak, you connect with God without all the clutter. In that way fasting is a time vow. It is also a discipline vow. Fasting, especially a longer fast, strengthens your character in every area of your life. If you do not have the power of a made-up mind to honor God with your body, you will be at the mercy of the lust of your flesh. If failure is not a possibility, then success doesn’t mean anything. Prayer and fasting were a big part of Jesus’s life. Why should it be such a small part of yours? If Jesus needed to fast, how much greater is our need to fast? If we are not drawing closer to God, we are drifting farther from Him. I am not in this for what I can get out of Jesus. I’m in this because He loved me first and gave Himself for me. I have nothing to go back to. I crossed that bridge a long time ago. The enemy, this world, difficult circumstances—it doesn’t matter. I’ll still be in church. I am never going to walk away from God.

Meditation is a mysterious method of self-restoration. It involves “shutting” out the outside world, and by that means sensing the universal “presence” which is, incidentally, absolute perfect peace. It is basically an existential “time-out”—a way to “come up for a breath of air” out of the noisy clutter of the world. But don’t be afraid, there is nothing arcane or supernatural or creepy about the notion of taking a time-out. Ball players do it. Kids do it, when prompted by their parents. Heck, even your computer does it (and sometimes not when you want it to). So, why not you? A meditation can be as simple as taking a series of easy breaths, and slowly, gently counting to ten in your mind.

People are craving not just physical space but the space to be mentally free. A space from unwanted distracted thoughts that clutter our heads like pop-up advertising of the mind in an already frantic world. And that space is still there to be found. It's just that we can't rely on it. We have to consciously seek it out.

your mind at time becomes foggy, cluttered and unclear. This happens especially when someone does not endorse your views or when you are unhappy. The remedy is to look and work on cleansing your mind repeatedly — manasi vicintaya varam varam, with the understanding of the verse, ‘Bhaja govindam, bhaja govindam, govindam bhaja mudhamate.

The study showed that physical clutter in your surroundings competes for your attention, resulting in decreased performance and increased stress. In other words, clutter in your surroundings correlates to clutter in your mind.

Clutter is caused by a failure to return things to where they belong. Therefore, storage should reduce the effort needed to put things away, not the effort needed to get them out. When we use something, we have a clear purpose for getting it out. Unless for some reason it is incredibly hard work, we usually don’t mind the effort involved. Clutter has only two possible causes: too much effort is required to put things away or it is unclear where things belong.

As I worked I continued to be a bit terrified in the back of my mind that it would be awful in the end, a big mishmash of nothing in particular, and there I would be, having wasted a whole week of my life destroying things I wanted to keep. But I should have trusted the long history of women who've come before me making rag rugs from everything that wasn't nailed down because it wasn't like that at all. Instead it was like a big, incredible tapestry that just happened to--if you could decipher it--tell a million little stories from my life. I could look at it and see my old lace slip and the girls' party dresses and my high school rainbow tie-dyes, the Irish kilt and the Halloween clown pants and so many, many other things. It was all in there somewhere. I felt like the miller's daughter in the fairy tale, the one who stays up all night spinning straw into gold. But who needs yellow metal, anyway? The was way better.

I find sentences pushing their way into my brain - demanding to be listened to. Words arranging themselves into order, feelings tapping me on the shoulder and begging to be understood. My mind is cluttered and busy and I know I won't relax until I let them out (...) You can do just as much damage by not saying anything as you can by saying something.

All expensive items, but crammed together like this, they looked like junk. Taken as a representation of Barbie’s mind, it suggested a disordered inner world, to say the least. It made me think of chaos, clutter, greed—insatiable hunger.

There is humility in confession. A recognition of flaws. To hear myself say out loud these shameful secrets meant I acknowledged my flaws. I also for the first time was given the opportunity to contextualize anew the catalogue of beliefs and prejudices, simply by exposing them to another, for the first time hearing the words ‘Yes, but have you looked at it this way?’ This was a helpful step in gaining a new perspective on my past, and my past was a significant proportion of who I believed myself to be. It felt like I had hacked into my own past. Unravelled all the erroneous and poisonous information I had unconsciously lived with and lived by and with necessary witness, the accompaniment of another man, reset the beliefs I had formed as a child and left unamended through unnecessary fear. Suddenly my fraught and freighted childhood became reasonable and soothed. ‘My mum was doing her best, so was my dad.’ Yes, people made mistakes but that’s what humans do, and I am under no obligation to hoard these errors and allow them to clutter my perception of the present. Yes, it is wrong that I was abused as a child but there is no reason for me to relive it, consciously or unconsciously, in the way I conduct my adult relationships. My perceptions of reality, even my own memories, are not objective or absolute, they are a biased account and they can be altered. It is possible to reprogram your mind. Not alone, because a tendency, a habit, an addiction will always reassert by its own invisible momentum, like a tide. With this program, with the support of others, and with this mysterious power, this new ability to change, we achieve a new perspective, and a new life.

Non-duality is the essential quality of awareness, yet when we speak of three types of awareness—normal, meditative, and pure—we are speaking of a gradual experiential process that takes place from dualistic to non-dualistic states, from very cluttered minds to minds that are increasingly liberated from habitual reactivity and preconceptions about how things are supposed to be.

As we have seen, prayer, celebration of the religious offices, alms, consoling the afflicted, the cultivation of a little piece of ground, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, self-sacrifice, confidence, study, and work, filled up each day of his life. Filled up is exactly the phrase; and in fact, the Bishop's day was full to the brim with good thoughts, good words, and good actions. Yet it was not complete if cold or rainy weather prevented him from passing an hour or two in the evening, when the two women had retired, in his garden before going to sleep. It seemed as though it were a sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for sleep by meditating in the presence of the great spectacle of the starry firmament. Sometimes late at night, if the two women were awake, they would hear him slowly walking the paths. He was out there alone with himself, composed, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts that fall from the Unknown. In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night emit their perfume, lit like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of creation’s universal radiance, perhaps he could not have told what was happening in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him; mysterious exchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe. He contemplated the grandeur, and the presence of God; the eternity of the future, that strange mystery; the eternity of the past, a stranger mystery; all the infinities hidden deep in every direction; and, without trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, he saw it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him. He reflected upon the magnificent union of atoms, which give visible forms to Nature, revealing forces by recognizing them, creating individualities in unity, proportions in extension, the innumerable in the infinite, and through light producing beauty. These unions are forming and dissolving continually; from which come life and death. He would sit on a wooden bench leaning against a decrepit trellis and look at the stars through the irregular outlines of his fruit trees. This quarter of an acre of ground, so sparingly planted, so cluttered with shed and ruins, was dear to him and satisfied him. What more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure hours of his life, where he had so little leisure, between gardening in the day time, and contemplation at night? Was this narrow enclosure, with the sky for a background not space enough for him to adore God in his most beautiful, most sublime works? Indeed, is that not everything? What more do you need? A little garden to walk in, and immensity to reflect on. At his feet something to cultivate and gather; above his head something to study and meditate on; a few flowers on earth and all the stars in the sky.

It is, in fact, normal and necessary for us to “forget” in this fashion, in order to make room in our conscious minds for new impressions and ideas. If this did not happen, everything we experienced would remain above the threshold of consciousness and our minds would become impossibly cluttered.

Your health, your experiences, and your life do not have to be at the mercy of your negative emotions. When you consciously choose to focus on a thought or belief that is positive, comforting, or hopeful, you’re clearing out that emotional clutter that’s weighing you down. You’re energetically shifting yourself to a better place.

In the 1920s, there was a dinner at which the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to a toast ... 'To physics and metaphysics.' Now by metaphysics was meant something like philosophy—truths that you could get to just by thinking about them. Wood took a second, glanced about him, and answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea, he said. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it makes to him. He goes to the scientific literature, and the more he reads, the more promising the idea seems. Thus prepared, he devises an experiment to test the idea. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are eliminated or taken into account; the accuracy of the measurement is refined. At the end of all this work, the experiment is completed and ... the idea is shown to be worthless. The physicist then discards the idea, frees his mind (as I was saying a moment ago) from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else. The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded, is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.

We don't realize how excess stuff draws on our energy until it's removed.

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what. then, is an empty desk a sign of?

What went on in his mind belonged to him, no guardrails, no judgment from the grown-ups, no rules to break, just a private space in a cluttered world that was his and his alone.

Clear the clutter to clear your mind.

Live light. Offload internal and external baggage for peace within and peace without.

De-clutter your life by getting rid of unnecessary commitments.

WHY I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purpose of being able to answer questions, when I have men around me who can supply any knowledge I require?

She’s disoriented, her visions cluttered, random memories running adrift in her mind.

no matter how far you travelled, you couldn’t leave behind the fears and regrets and grievances that cluttered up the cargo hold of your mind.

Clutter is a state of mind when we miss simplicity and entangle ourselves in complexities.

The worst thing that ever happened to you could very well be the best thing that could have ever happened to you if you don't allow it to control your mind, and keep you shackled.

He was a psychiatrist, as well as a warm, whimsical, and witty man who had a mind like a cluttered attic.

Practice thinking peace. Remember, you become what you think about all day long. How often do you clutter your mind with thoughts of nonpeace? How many times a day do you say out loud how terrible the world is? How violent we have all become? How uncaring we seem to be? How racist we are? How little the government cares about us? All of these thoughts and their expression are indications that you have become trapped in a nonpeaceful mind and, therefore, a nonpeaceful world. Every time you bemoan the horrors of the world, or listen to media reports on all that is evil, or read tabloids that exploit the unpleasant facts about other’s lives, you are continuing the conditioning that takes you away from becoming an instrument of thy peace.

Danshari.” It’s a three-character Japanese word that means, in order of the characters,1 severing a relationship with unnecessary things (dan), purging clutter that overwhelms the home (sha), and achieving a sense of peace by separating the self from things (ri). Cleaning your home of clutter, the idea goes, also cleanses your heart and mind—regardless of where the stuff ends up.

Thoughts clutter his mind, too many to focus on one, as though they are all vying to be final. He thinks that if he is about to die he should have begun collecting his final thoughts earlier.

When normality becomes madness, the only way to find sanity is by daring to be different. Or daring to be the you that exists beyond all the physical clutter and mind debris of modern existence.

I’m an HSP to the core. I avoid violent imagery (I abandoned reading Elaine Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person on my first try because—in typical HSP fashion—I couldn’t handle the frequent references to sexual abuse). I’m very empathetic, and I feel as though my head will explode when two people try to talk to me at the same time. I have difficulty making dinner while the counter is cluttered with the morning’s dishes. I lose my mind when someone is singing while the radio is playing a different song. Watching the news makes me want to assume the fetal position and never get up.

not nice being inside my head. It’s a nice place to visit but I don’t want to live in here. It’s too crowded; too many traps and pitfalls. I’m tired of it. The same old person, day in and day out. I’d like to try something else. I tried to neaten my mind, file everything away into tidy little thoughts, but it only got more and more cluttered. My mind has a mind of its own. I try to define my

You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself: . . . by comprehending the scale of the world . . . by contemplating infinite time . . . by thinking of the speed with which things change—each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows.

I had never heard of it, but then I do not clutter my mind with trivialities such as tales of ancient sunken cities and such. They take up room that might be more usefully occupied by facts and theories related to solving crimes. I recall how Watson was shocked when he learned that I could not name the planets, and had no idea that they numbered eight. But really, of what use is such information? None.

Don't forget to get away every once in awhile, To lose yourself in a book Or in the woods behind your home Ride your bike into the sunset, Sit on your front steps and count the cars passing by, Lay on your roof and gaze up at the night sky, Drive along backroads with the windows rolled down Listening to nothing but the sound of rushing wind I hope you take the time to be alone, To sort through the cluttered shelves of your heart I hope you take the time to be silent, To close your eyes and just listen I hope you take the time to be still, To quiet your mind and experience the beauty Of simply Being

I could live for another minute or for the next eighty years and I would never stop loving him. He had become reason for my cluttered mind, hope for my hopeless spirit and the motive to keep my heart beating.

This is the beautiful secret of minimalism: It may seem like it’s about the stuff, but once you’ve cut through the clutter and adopted a new frame of mind, you learn that it’s barely about “the stuff” at all.

Every man whose business it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence. But in that helter-skelter which we flatter by the name of civilization, the citizen performs the perilous business of government under the worst possible conditions. A faint recognition of this truth inspires the movement for a shorter work day, for longer vacations, for light, air, order, sunlight and dignity in factories and offices. But if the intellectual quality of our life is to be improved that is only the merest beginning. So long as so many jobs are an endless and, for the worker, an aimless routine, a kind of automatism using one set of muscles in one monotonous pattern, his whole life will tend towards an automatism using one set of muscles in one monotonous pattern, his whole life will tend towards an automatism in which nothing is particularly to be distinguished from anything else unless it is announced with a thunderclap. So long as he is physically imprisoned in crowds by day and even by night his attention will flicker and relax. It will not hold fast and define clearly where he is the victim of all sorts of pother, in a home which needs to be ventilated of its welter of drudgery, shrieking children, raucous assertions, indigestible food, bad air, and suffocating ornament. Occasionally perhaps we enter a building which is composed and spacious; we go to a theatre where modern stagecraft has cut away distraction, or go to sea, or into a quiet place, and we remember how cluttered, how capricious, how superfluous and clamorous is the ordinary urban life of our time. We learn to understand why our addled minds seize so little with precision, why they are caught up and tossed about in a kind of tarantella by headlines and catch-words, why so often they cannot tell things apart or discern identity in apparent differences.

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men. —JOHN DEWEY

Things always happen as they should and when they should. Our intuition provides us with guidance on our true purpose. These messages come from the heart. We can only hear them when we're silent not through a cluttered mind.

Paintings, mirrors, and framed photographs were crammed together on the walls; little statues, vases, and other objets d’art competed for space on tables and dressers. All expensive items, but crammed together like this, they looked like junk. Taken as a representation of Barbie’s mind, it suggested a disordered inner world, to say the least. It made me think of chaos, clutter, greed—insatiable hunger. I wondered what her childhood had been like.

Choosing to spend energy on your relationships will be much more fulfilling than wasting it on unnecessary clutter and accumulating "things" that in the long run don't really matter anyway. Most of us will not be canonized in history books nor have monuments built in our honor because of what we owned or the things we accomplished at work. Our legacy will be found in the lives and endeavors that were enriched while we were passing through this life.

How to be happy (2) Don’t compare your actual self to a hypothetical self. Don’t drown in a sea of “what if”s. Don’t clutter your mind by imagining other versions of you, in parallel universes, where you made different decisions.

What is Required by Paul Allen (fragment) 1 All elsewhere being World, how many times have I stood in the bright shadows of a wood, no track or trail leading in, out- as though ground cover renewed as I went through? I sometimes own the moments where I stand alone. Everything else is air and arbitrary firings of neurons we call memory if they happened, fantasy if they didn’t- same pictures. Call it prayer, then, the moments where I’m not aware even of how lovely the moment is- not liking, not disliking- not aware there is a moment until I’m back in the world and remember it- construct it in my mind as having been beautiful. 4 I’m too often bitten by silence. My mother called it dawdling, the ex, brooding. My students call it absent-minded professor. The kindest students bring me back gently. But I live most when silence, shade, and light like this harvest me, a kind of prayer I’m gathered to, not the prayer I clutter with will or words.

The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing. But there comes a time when the kiss of acceptance is delayed until the mud is washed from our knees, the chocolate from our faces. Putting down our wooden spoon with a new uncertainty, setting aside our magical wand, we learn another system of values based on familiarity, on avoiding threat and rejection. We are told it is all in the nature of growing up. But it isn't so. Walking forward and facing the shadows, stumbling on fears like litter in the alleyways of our minds, we can find the confidence again. We can let go of the clutter of our creative stagnation, abandoning the chaos of misplaced and outdated assumptions that have been our protection. Then beyond the half light and shadows, we can slip into the dark and find ourselves in a world where horizons stretch forever. Once more we can acknowledge a reality that is unlimited finding our true self, a wild spirit, free and eager to explore the extent of our potential, free to dance like fireflies, free to be the drum, free to love absolutely with every cell of our being, or lie in the grass watching stars and bats and dreams wander by. We can live inspired, stirring the darkness of the cauldron within our souls, the source, the womb temple of our true creativity, brilliant, untamed

Good memory skill is the offspring of good focus. If you find yourself becoming a little forgetful, it is probably not because there is something wrong with your brain. Rather, it is simply because your mind is too cluttered to allow things to stick.

Leibniz raised his eyebrows and spent a few moments staring at the clutter of pots and cups on the table. “This is one of the two great labyrinths into which human minds are drawn: the question of free will versus predestination. You were raised to believe in the latter. You have rejected it—which must have been a great spiritual struggle—and become a thinker. You have adopted a modern, mechanical philosophy. But that very philosophy now seems to be leading you back towards predestination. It is most difficult.

Many families amass more objects than their houses can hold. The result is garages given over to old furniture and unused sports equipment, home offices cluttered with boxes of stuff that haven’t yet been taken to the garage. Three out of four Americans report their garages are too full to put a car into them. Women’s cortisol levels (the stress hormone) spike when confronted with such clutter (men’s, not so much). Elevated cortisol levels can lead to chronic cognitive impairment, fatigue, and suppression of the body’s immune system.

We sit as a practice for how we will act throughout the day. Mindfulness, however, involves more than sitting. It is moment by moment non-clinging to ego. It is the simplicity that results when we experience reality without the clutter produced by the decorative arts of ego.

All expensive items, but crammed together like this, they looked like junk. Taken as a representation of Barbie’s mind, it suggested a disordered inner world, to say the least. It made me think of chaos, clutter, greed—insatiable hunger. I wondered what her childhood had been like.

He walked back to St George's-in-the-East, which in his mind he had now reduced to a number of surfaces against which the murderer might have leaned in sorrow, desperation or even, perhaps, joy. For this reason it was worth examining the blackened stones in detail, although he realised that the marks upon them had been deposited by many generations of men and women. It was now a matter of received knowledge in the police force that no human being could rest or move in any area without leaving some trace of his or her identity; but if the walls of the Wapping church were to be analysed by emission spectroscopy, how many partial or residual spectra might be detected? And he had an image of a mob screaming to be set free as he guided his steps towards the tower which rose above the houses cluttered around Red Maiden Lane, Crab Court and Rope Walk.

the whole planet is having a kind of collective breakdown, then unhealthy behaviour fits right in. When normality becomes madness, the only way to find sanity is by daring to be different. Or daring to be the you that exists beyond all the physical clutter and mind debris of modern existence.

Most people’s lives are cluttered up with things: material things, things to do, things to think about. Their lives are like the history of humanity, which Winston Churchill defined as “one damn thing after another.” Their minds are filled up with the clutter of thoughts, one thought after another.

Look around your house and find an item you’ve tried to discard before but just couldn’t. Examine it and think about letting it go. What other thoughts arise? Does your mind struggle to stop you from getting rid of this item? Remember: You really don’t have to obey your mind’s command to hang on to it.

Taking the clutter out of your home can also help you to think more clearly. Living in a tidy home, where everything has its own place, actually gives you room in your mind to concentrate on more important things. It creates a home environment that is peaceful and harmonious for everyone that lives there. Having

What are the harmful elements you should remove? Everyone is different, but some of the common ones are as follows: Habits that are unhealthy or even destructive A negative mind-set that leads to frequent complaints Tendency to sabotage your own success Physical, mental, or spiritual clutter Inertia or indecisiveness that prevents effective action

Like the body, the mind and soul need time to digest and assimilate. Like the body, the mind and soul need time to rest. We create this rest by allowing space that we can breathe in. Not more clutter, but more space, space to reflect, space to journal, space for closure, space for imagination, and space to feel the calling of the life force within us.

The mantle of intellectual meaninglessness shrouds every aspect of our common life. Events, things, and “information” flood over us, overwhelming us, disorienting us with threats and possibilities we for the most part have no idea what to do about. Commercials, catch words, political slogans, and high-flying intellectual rumors clutter our mental and spiritual space. Our minds and bodies pick them up like a dark suit picks up lint. They decorate us. We willingly emblazon messages on our shirts, caps—even the seat of our pants. Sometime back we had a national campaign against highway billboards. But the billboards were nothing compared to what we now post all over our bodies. We are immersed in birth-to-death and wall-to-wall “noise”—silent and not so silent.

His attitude to the clutter of daily life was of a piece with his strategy for dealing with social demands. Unless you are kicking yourself once a month for throwing something away, you are not throwing enough away, he said. Everything that didn’t seem to Amos obviously important he chucked, and thus what he saved acquired the interest of objects that have survived a pitiless culling.

32. You can discard most of the junk that clutters your mind—things that exist only there—and clear out space for yourself: … by comprehending the scale of the world … by contemplating infinite time … by thinking of the speed with which things change—each part of every thing; the narrow space between our birth and death; the infinite time before; the equally unbounded time that follows.

Let’s imagine a cluttered room. It does not get messy all by itself. You, the person who lives in it, makes the mess. There is a saying that “a messy room equals a messy mind.” I look at it this way. When a room becomes cluttered, the cause is more than just physical. Visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder. The act of cluttering is really an instinctive reflex that draws our attention away from the heart of an issue. If you can’t feel relaxed in a clean and tidy room, try confronting your feeling of anxiety. It may shed light on what is really bothering you. When your room is clean and uncluttered, you have no choice but to examine your inner state. You can see any issues you have been avoiding and are forced to deal with them. From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change. That’s why the task of putting your house in order should be done quickly. It allows you to confront the issues that are really important. Tidying is just a tool, not the final destination. The true goal should be to establish the lifestyle you want most once your house has been put in order. Storage

To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK – HE ONLY SEES! “All right!” you’ll cry. “All right!” you’ll say, “But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children! Please explain!” We’ll answer this by asking you, “What used the darling ones to do? How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?” Have you forgotten? Don’t you know? We’ll say it very loud and slow: THEY … USED … TO … READ! They’d READ and READ, AND READ and READ, and then proceed TO READ some more.

I put the memory of that morning inside a large jar. I took this jar and carried it down, down, down, flights and flights of stairs, placing it inside a cabinet, locking it away, and walking briskly back up the stairs to continue with the life I had built. Now jars filled every inch of my mind. I had nowhere to put them. They cluttered the stairwells, could not be contained in cabinets. I was full of these sealed.

In Zen, such a glimpse is called satori. Satori is a moment of Presence, a brief stepping out of the voice in your head, the thought processes, and their reflection in the body as emotion. It is the arising of inner spaciousness where before there was the clutter of thought and the turmoil of emotion. The thinking mind cannot understand Presence and so will often misinterpret it. It will say that you are uncaring, distant, have no compassion, are not relating. The truth is, you are relating but at a level deeper than thought and emotion. In fact, at that level there is a true coming together, a true joining that goes far beyond relating. In the stillness of Presence, you can sense the formless essence in yourself and in the other as one. Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion.

Because of my love of excessive efficiency, my former decluttering efforts went something like this: Oh, this goes in the master bathroom. I’ll make a master bathroom pile here. That goes in the playroom, so I’ll make a playroom pile. These nails should be in the garage, so here’s a garage pile. Six piles later, life happened. I left the decluttering project to go take care of life with every intention of coming back as soon as I could. But I didn’t. Either more life happened, or I forgot. When I finally returned to the project a few hours (or a few days or a few months) later, those totally logical little piles had morphed into one big pile that was no longer the least bit sorted. The clutter that once drove me crazy while it sat behind the cabinet door or inside the drawer? Now it was out in the open, outside the area I was decluttering. I’d created a bigger mess.

STAR DREK Human beings are such slobs that, from now on, pigs must declare us the other white meat. Do you know that right now there is so much discarded trash in outer space that three times last month the International Space Station was almost hit by some useless hunk of floating metal—not unlike the International Space Station itself? So really, you’ve got to give the human race credit: only humans could visit an infinite void and leave it cluttered. Not only have we screwed up our own planet; somehow we have also managed to use up all the space in space. Now, history shows over and over again that if the citizens of Earth put their minds to it, they can destroy anything. It doesn’t matter how remote or pristine, together, yes, we can fuck it up. The age of space exploration is only fifty years old, and we have already managed to turn the final frontier into the New Jersey Meadowlands.12

Andrew stares pointedly at her. From the looks of it, thunderstorms and human traffic jams are cluttering his mind. Doors are opening and closing. He’s jealous. The realization makes her feel silly and squeamish. She can’t decide whether to glower or giggle some more. She feels like . . . a girl. She wants to punch him. In the face. Hard. Cover that watercolor with one of her own. Then she wants to kiss it, softly, until she has no more soft left in her. “Anger

Gazing into the heavens on a starry night a person sees the reflection of their own soul staring back at them. Perceiving our microscopic place in the revolving cosmos, we search to ascertain a meaning for our existence; we stretch our minds to comprehend a reason that justifies our fleeting journey in a universe composed of dark energy. Comprehension of a full-bodied meaning for living seems to lie just beyond my grasp. Perhaps I struggle dialing into a meaning for life because living entails adapting to a constant state of chaos. Can I harmonize the noisy commotion and distracting clutter in my life? I need to overcome personal inertia by learning to become comfortable with these changing times. In actuality, I have no choice but to capitulate to the evolution of facets in the world. Everything in the universe is undergoing constant change. Alike all humankind, I am also in the process of evolving. Who I was will undoubtedly affect who I will become. Who I am now is not who I will always be. The demands imposed upon us by the exterior world prevent stagnation of our interior world. We must all respond to change by either growing or dying. Even a blockhead such as me proves alterable, because inherent mutability ensures the survival of all persons. The entire world is interconnected; we are part of the cosmic consciousness. Many factors beyond our direct control influence us.

Keeping flat surfaces clear is perhaps the single most important thing to keep in mind for your kitchen—as it is for any room in the house. A clear countertop makes any kitchen look more organized. Once the flat surfaces start to disappear under clutter, you lose your motivation to keep the area organized and you open the area to attracting more dust and dirt, further compounding the clutter problem. Consider flat surfaces your preparation area—not your storage area!

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.

Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside. Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried. 'This is embarrassing,' I admitted. 'It doesn't have to be.' 'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said. The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter. In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family. I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.

Here are some questions to help you pinpoint the clutter in your life: What material possessions have I not used in twenty-four months? What is the most important thing I have procrastinated doing? What existing obligation or commitment would I not make if I had a do-over? What are the chronically stalled projects in my life? What current things in my life burn the most energy but return the least reward? What activities pull me away from what I most love to do? What single action would most increase my peace of mind?

They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnoti[z]ed by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keep them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? It rots the senses in the head! It kills imagination dead! It clogs and clutters up the mind! It makes a child so dull and blind He can no longer understand A fantasy, a fairyland! His brain becomes as soft as cheese! His powers of thinking rust and freeze! He cannot think-he only sees! 'All right' you'll cry. 'All right' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: They... used ... to... read! They'd read and read, And read and read, and then proceed To read some more, Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books!... Oh books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall... ...They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something good to read. And once they start-oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did...

Amos [Tversky] liked to say that if you are asked to do anything—go to a party, give a speech, lift a finger—you should never answer right away, even if you are sure that you want to do it. Wait a day, Amos said, and you’ll be amazed how many of those invitations you would have accepted yesterday you’ll refuse after you have had a day to think it over. A corollary to his rule for dealing with demands upon his time was his approach to situations from which he wished to extract himself. A human being who finds himself stuck at some boring meeting or cocktail party often finds it difficult to invent an excuse to flee. Amos’s rule, whenever he wanted to leave any gathering, was to just get up and leave. Just start walking and you’ll be surprised how creative you will become and how fast you’ll find the words for your excuse, he said. His attitude to the clutter of daily life was of a piece with his strategy for dealing with social demands. Unless you are kicking yourself once a month for throwing something away, you are not throwing enough away, he said. Everything that didn’t seem to Amos obviously important he chucked, and thus what he saved acquired the interest of objects that have survived a pitiless culling.

At a dinner many decades ago, the physicist Robert W. Wood was asked to respond to the toast, “To physics and metaphysics.” By “metaphysics,” people then meant something like philosophy, or truths you could recognize just by thinking about them. They could also have included pseudoscience. Wood answered along these lines: The physicist has an idea. The more he thinks it through, the more sense it seems to make. He consults the scientific literature. The more he reads, the more promising the idea becomes. Thus prepared, he goes to the laboratory and devises an experiment to test it. The experiment is painstaking. Many possibilities are checked. The accuracy of measurement is refined, the error bars reduced. He lets the chips fall where they may. He is devoted only to what the experiment teaches. At the end of all this work, through careful experimentation, the idea is found to be worthless. So the physicist discards it, frees his mind from the clutter of error, and moves on to something else.* The difference between physics and metaphysics, Wood concluded as he raised his glass high, is not that the practitioners of one are smarter than the practitioners of the other. The difference is that the metaphysicist has no laboratory.

Just like in the real world, the world in our minds is real. You cannot have both positive and negative thoughts at the same time. Negativity brings us down when we should actually be enjoying life and getting the most out of it. Mental de-cluttering is really about getting rid of your worries, bad memories, fears and disappointments, and starting on a new footing where the past doesn’t matter. You decide on what you are going to carry with you to a new and better life.   Remember, the more the baggage you carry with you, the more difficult life would be. Focus more on the things you have control over; if you cannot handle something now forget about it altogether.

[...] He also used his medical practice as a source of experimental data, but was not above using himself as a test subject. There is something so wonderful - and more than a little ironic - in this image of Snow the teetotaler, arguably the finest medical mind of his generation, performing his research. He sits alone in his cluttered flat, frogs croaking around him, illuminated only by candlelight. After a few minutes tinkering with his latest experimental inhaler, he fastens the mouthpiece over his face and releases the gas. Within seconds, his head hits the desk. Then, minutes later, he wakes, consults his watch through blurred vision. He reaches for his pen, and starts recording the data.

Break Up With Nightmare Clients “People either inspire you, or they drain you – pick them wisely.”  – Hans F. Hansen You know who they are. They make you cringe when you see who’s calling. You’ll do anything to avoid actually talking to them. They keep you up at night. They are the clients you wouldn’t wish on your worse enemy. If you ever want to achieve Business Zen, you have to break up with these people. You can’t control every aspect of your business and some days will just suck. But you can control whom you work with. As business minimalists, we strive to eliminate clutter and keep what has the most value. Breaking up with these clients is essential to achieving peace of mind, and reduce your stress levels. Dealing

Just because I, finite man, do not understand everything that God, the infinite, does is no reason to doubt God’s purpose. I may go into someone’s workshop and see all the tools and gadgets that are important to the man’s work. I may see laying on the table, for instance, a little tool that I can make nothing of and have no understanding of its purpose. But in the hands of the craftsman, that little tool has a well-defined purpose and does what it’s supposed to do. Just because the man’s worktable looks cluttered and as if everything is out of place does not mean in his mind there is not order and purpose. In the same regard, I am not going to accuse God of creating a lot of unnecessary things that have no purpose in God’s total scheme of things, just because I don’t understand them. I give you that

April remembered her hesitation when she first stepped into Marthe’s apartment and saw the dust-caked furniture clumped in groups and shrouded from the outside. Assessing so many pieces seemed dauntingly hopeless at the time, never mind the matter of how to make sense of the assets’ meaning and value. Still, April dug in and ultimately found what she needed. Provenance mattered. History mattered. But it could not guarantee what might happen next. Her marriage was no less overwhelmed, no less cluttered. This time, though, April knew what kind of courage would be required, the honesty it would take, to root around until her hands cracked and fingernails bled. After tackling Marthe’s chaos, her own did not appear quite so bad. There was value there. And unlike with Madame de Florian, there were only two people who needed to see it.

Einstein felt that he did not have great mathematical gifts and deliberately chose not to take courses and to continue in that area. The fact that I neglected mathematics to a certain extent had its causes not merely in my stronger interest in science than in mathematics but also in the following strange experience....I saw that mathematics was split up into numerous specialties, each of which could easily absorb the short lifetime granted to us....In physics, however, I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things that clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential. This capacity to pick out important issues dovetailed with Einstein's search for the most general possible conception. "In a man of my type," he declared, "the turning point of the development lies in the fact that gradually the major interest disengages itself to a far reaching degree from the momentary and the merely personal and turns toward the striving for a mental grasp of things.

Modern society is incredibly complex, complex even beyond human comprehension, if we grant its premises—property, "production for the sake of production," competition, capital accumulation, exploitation, finance, centralization, coercion, bureaucracy and the domination of man by man. Linked to every one of these premises are the institutions that actualize it—offices, millions of "personnel," forms, immense tons of paper, desks, typewriters, telephones, and, of course, rows upon rows of filing cabinets. As in Kafka's novels, these things are real but strangely dreamlike, indefinable shadows on the social landscape. The economy has a greater reality to it and is easily mastered by the mind and senses, but it too is highly intricate—if we grant that buttons must be styled in a thousand different forms, textiles varied endlessly in kind and pattern to create the illusion of innovation and novelty, bathrooms filled to overflowing with a dazzling variety of pharmaceuticals and lotions, and kitchens cluttered with an endless number of imbecile appliances. If we single out of this odious garbage one or two goods of high quality in the more useful categories and if we eliminate the money economy, the state power, the credit system, the paperwork and the policework required to hold society in an enforced state of want, insecurity and domination, society would not only become reasonably human but also fairly simple.

Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man’s providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s? When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any carload of fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allow—would it not be a singular allowance?—that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab’s, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning’s work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man’s morning work in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.

Dear Spider web, Why won’t you let me go? I will not accept your silky web as my resting place. Your web might be soft, but there is nothing comfortable about you. You have my mind entangled with doubts. You have me feeling helpless as you tie down my hands and feet. Let me go! I am not your prey! Spider web, you captured me, and then you abandoned me in your web. You are just like my mother; she left Kace and me in her old and damaged cobweb. She selfishly left us to figure out life. Furthermore, just like you, she will not let us go. You covered me in your web to the point you made me invisible and empty inside. Partly because of you, people used a broom to swat me here and there because they see the webs all over me. They look at me as a nobody, an invasion, a pest, or a rodent who is trying to destroy their home. You confuse me because I know that I am not damaged and used, but there are many days I feel like I am no good for myself or anyone. Your web has cluttered my mind; I am disturbed mentally because I have never felt complete or good enough. I’ve been fighting so long to get out of your web—I am tired. However, I have come this far, and I am going to hold on a little while longer. When I hold on to your thin web tightly, something or someone uses the sharpest knife to cut it down. While it is swinging left and right, I try to jump and break free, but you catch me and wrap me back in your web again. I’ve been fighting for so long, and I will continue to fight because you cannot keep me here forever. I am creating thicker skin.

[What to do with] Unwanted Gifts This can be a very sensitive issue for many people. However, here’s my very best advice on what to do with unwanted presents: get rid of them. Here’s why. Things you really love have a strong, vibrant energy field around them, whereas unwanted presents have uneasy, conflicting energies attached to them that drain you rather than energize you. They actually create an energetic gloom in your home. The very thought of giving them the elbow is horrifying to some people. “But what about when Aunt Jane comes to visit and that expensive decoration she gave us isn’t on the mantelpiece?“ Whose mantlepiece is it anyway? If you love the item, fine, but if you keep it in your home out of fear and obligation, you were giving your power away. Every time you walk into the room and see that object, your energy levels drop. And don’t think that out of sight, out of mind will work. You can’t keep that gift in the cupboard and just bring it out when Aunt Jane is due to visit. Your subconscious mind still knows you have it on the premises. If you have enough of these unwanted presents around you, your energy network looks like a sieve, with vitality running out all over the place. Remember, it’s the thought that counts. You can appreciate being given the gift without necessarily having to keep it. Try adopting a whole different philosophy about presents. When you give something to someone, give it with love and let it go. Allow the recipient complete freedom to do whatever he wants with it. If the thing he can most useful he do is put it straight in the trash or give it to someone else, fine (you wouldn’t want him to clutter up his space with unwanted presents would you?). Give others this freedom and you will begin to experience more freedom in your own life too.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man.

Reading – Be whisked into another world if you want a temporary escape from your current mental clutter. Read for pleasure, escapism, and entertainment when you want to declutter the mind. Surround yourself with words, ideas, and concepts that take you into a different mental world altogether temporarily. Walk – Going for a long, leisurely walk outdoors to grab some fresh air, and oxygenate your brains. Natural greenery and other earthy wonders can do a whole lot of good when it comes to clearing your mind.

When you can identify the behaviors that led to too much in your home, you can begin protecting the space between your things.

Sometimes, we figure out our next move when we release what it won't be.

Most of us are overwhelmed by stuff that is not essential to our lives and is out of alignment with our true spiritual nature. Although our souls are inherently free, we also have an ego-mind that orients us toward fear, scarcity, self-preservation and holding on. With the ego-mind in the driver’s seat of our lives, we accumulate clutter. Physical clutter is the most obvious, but we are also burdened with mental, emotional, energetic, and relationship clutter. All forms of clutter reflect the same thing; a soul not being true to itself.

Exhale clutter, inhale clarity.

Don't underestimate how one's living space affects heart-mind. It is like water. Does yours flow, or is it like a stagnant pond birthing a hell realm of gnats, mosquitos, fruit-flies, and clutter? - from "Prescriptions," The School of Soft-Attention

That damned dissertation, stuck in the same place for over a week while he struggled to elucidate the connections between Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde, only to find the whole thing, even what he thought were his most original points, laid out, item for item, in a monograph over twenty years old. What was the point, he thought, of sitting in that stuffy library all day, every day, grinding out dozens of pages of useless “scholarly” prose, to be read by dyspeptic Frank Dunlop, and three other people in the department, and then buried forever in the stacks of the university library. Why was he wasting his time, his mind, his life itself. When he’d tried to explain what he was doing to Leah, one day when she brought him his lunch on a tray, she’d regarded him with a look of such utter incomprehension—not confused, not respectful, not derogatory, just uncomprehending—that he’d been paralyzed in his chair for hours after. Maybe hers was the legitimate, the reasonable, reaction to what he was doing, the reaction of anyone who knew what life was all about—that it wasn’t dropping into a chair each day, banished from the sun and the sky and the trees, to pound a tinny machine and clutter up sheets of paper. More and more, he had been feeling the urge to spend his time outdoors, to breathe the air off the water, to bask in the sun, even to run, barefoot, across the lawns and through the groves of trees.

These fears are the voice of your inner critic, who is scaring you into not hitting publish. Remember, anything new is bad in her mind, and as the sensitive, vulnerable part of you, she is hesitant to put herself out there.

We clutter our minds with so much data, we’ve lost the ability to think critically about what we actually know;

DO NOT BE WEIGHED DOWN by the clutter in your life: lots of little chores to do sometime, in no particular order. If you focus too much on these petty tasks, trying to get them all out of the way, you will discover that they are endless. They can eat up as much time as you devote to them. Instead of trying to do all your chores at once, choose the ones that need to be done today. Let the rest slip into the background of your mind so I can be in the forefront of your awareness. Remember that your ultimate goal is living close to Me, being responsive to My initiatives. I can communicate with you most readily when your mind is uncluttered and turned toward Me. Seek My Face continually throughout this day. Let My Presence bring order to your thoughts, infusing Peace into your entire being.

What both Greenberg and Funt are identifying is the need for all of us to have more time when our minds aren’t cluttered. It’s obvious how doing this will positively affect our mental health. But what’s less obvious is how it will also dramatically improve our focus and our productivity.

You should think of the space around your altar as temple grounds. You would never litter or clutter up the sacred area around a temple or a church, and so you should treat your butsuma the same way.

the beautiful secret of minimalism: It may seem like it’s about the stuff, but once you’ve cut through the clutter and adopted a new frame of mind, you learn that it’s barely about “the stuff” at all.

A Tidy and Organized Home… Makes you feel calm. You can relax and unwind in a tidy home. There is space to do things, and you know where everything is. When you walk into a hotel room, you immediately feel a sense of peace because the environment is tidy and organized. Makes you feel healthy. Dust and mold accumulate in messes. Are you always coughing and sneezing? Do you suffer from allergies? It’s probably because you are breathing in all the dirt in your home. Give your home a spring clean and your health issues will improve. Makes you feel in control. How does it feel when you know where everything is? Clutter prevents positive energy from flowing through your home. Remember, energy attaches itself to objects, and negative energy is attracted to mess, which creates exhaustion, stagnation, and exasperation. What does it feel like when negative energy is stuck in your body? You want to lie in bed and shut the world away because everything becomes more difficult and you can’t explain why. Here is how decluttering your house will unlock blocked streams of positive energy: You will become more vibrant. Once you create harmony and order in your home, you will feel more radiant and present. Like acupuncture, which removes imbalances and blockages from the body to create more wellness and dynamism, clearing clutter removes imbalances and blockages from your personal space. When you venture through spaces that have been set ablaze with fresh energy, you are captured by inspiration, and the most attractive parts of your personality come to life. You will get rid of bad habits and introduce good ones. All bad habits have triggers. Do you lie on your bed to watch TV instead of sitting on the couch because you can’t be bothered to fold the laundry that has piled up over the past six months? Or because the bed represents sleep, and when you come home from work and get into bed, you are going to fall asleep instead of doing those important tasks on your to-do list. Once you tidy the couch, coming home from work will allow you to sit on it to watch your favorite TV program but get up once it’s finished and do what you need to do. You will improve your problem-solving skills. When your home has been opened up with a clear space, it’s easier to focus, which provides you with a fresh perspective on your problems. You will sleep better. Are you always tired no matter how much sleep you get? That’s because negative energy is stuck under your bed amongst all that junk you’ve stuffed under there. Once you tidy up your bedroom, you will find that positive energy can flow freely around your room making it easier for you to have a deep and restful sleep. You will have more time. Mess delays you. An untidy house means you are always losing things. You can’t find a shoe, a sock, or your keys, so you waste time searching for them, which makes you late for work or social gatherings. When you declutter your home, you could save about an hour a day because you will no longer need to dig through a stack of items to find things. Your intuition will be stronger. A clear space creates a sense of certainty and clarity. You know where everything is, so you have peace of mind. When you have peace of mind, you can focus on being in the present moment. When you need to make important decisions, you will find it easier to do so. It might take some time to give your home a deep clean, but you won’t be sorry for it once it’s done. Chapter 5: How To Become an Assertive Empath The word assertive means “having or showing a confident and forceful personality.

a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” (Albert Einstein) would be copied as “Ifacluttrddskisasignofacluttrdmind,ofwhat,thn,isanmptydskasign?

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” (Albert Einstein) would be copied as “Ifacluttrddskisasignofacluttrdmind,ofwhat,thn,isanmptydskasign?

Once you have familiarized yourself with the basic structure of the model, continue reading to gain additional insights into the various components depicted in Figure 4.

• I have strong power of concentration. • I am focused. • I easily focus on any task or activity I choose. • My mind is alert and attentive. • My mind stays on tasks and activities without wandering. • I pay attention. It is easy for me to pay attention. I enjoy paying attention. • I calmly focus my full attention on tasks at hand. • My thoughts are controlled and organized. • I am free from mental clutter and distractions. • I naturally ignore distractions. • I can concentrate on any chore, assignment, errand, goal, or project with ease. • My mind is aware and observant at all times. It pays attention to what it reads, hears, and sees. • I hear everything that is said in conversations with others. • I register every sentence of any material I read. • I pick up everything that I hear or see. When

Two things must happen to partake in this mindset of non-judging so that we can start dealing with stress better and gain greater well-being. Don't get angry at the little weirdo doing its thing. Be like, "whatever I don’t mind." Continue to bring your attention back to the song that you play. Feel the sound vibration. When you meditate, all kinds of thoughts and experiences will come up. Patience: understanding that growth happens in its own time. The mantra therapy session will clear your head and make you happier and brighter and relaxed and free of anxieties–these results are pretty instant. Yet, the meditation's long-term objectives including self-realization, liberation from fate, jumping out of the reincarnation loop... those don't happen overnight. We have a lot of karmic baggage from who knows how many lifetimes of gazillions. Don't overemphasize development. Be rest assured it will happen. Beginner’s mind: a mind that is willing to see everything as it is for the first time. The cornerstone of mindfulness practice lets us catch the "extraordinariness of the ordinary" of our perceptions of the present-moment.  This mentality encourages us to "be able to see everything as if it were the first time" Critical for practicing and participating in organized meditation practices, such as body scan, yoga, meditation, this sort of open-mindedness to new experiences "helps us to be receptive to new ideas and keeps us from getting stuck in the rut of our own wisdom, which often thinks it knows more than it does." They have no assumptions resulting from past experiences with the mind of the beginner.  This reminds us that every single moment, by definition, has unique possibilities.  The subconscious of the novice is working as de-clutterer.  With it, we can see, witness, hear, and learn of our universe's beings, places, and stuff, as they really are and in the moment.  Our ideas, feelings and desires no longer filter or place a curtain on our everyday lives. Trust – No Imitations, Live Own Life, and Honor Own Feelings, Intuitions, Wisdom, and Goodness An integral part of the training and practice of mindfulness includes the development of a simple trust in yourself and emotions.  Guidance comes from within you— your own instincts, your own strength.  The foundation involves looking inward rather than outward.  Your mindset here indicates that you value your own fundamental intelligence and goodness.  Your thoughts are honored.  An analogy here may be linked to backing off a stretch during yoga practice.  The mindfulness ethic "accentuates being your own human and knowing what it means to be yourself" Being your own individual means you are not mimicking someone else.

It can be an old belief that’s been playing in your mind since you were a child, telling you that you don’t have what it takes to get it done or that others’ needs must come first.

invite you to continue your journey with an open heart and an open mind. Your resistance will, without a doubt, pipe up. She’ll tell you that nothing in these pages will make a difference, that this will just be another book you spent money on and did nothing with, or that there’s no fixing lazy. Well, guess what? Your resistance is a liar. Okay, maybe that was a bit harsh. She’s not a liar, per se, but she’s a frightened child who would be much happier staying in the cluttered world that is her life. She knows how this life works. She knows what to expect. She knows it’s safe. If you start clearing things out and making space for some magic, you’re going to rock her world. And even if you know for certain that life on the other side of clutter is so much sweeter, she’ll need convincing. More than that, she’ll need evidence that you’ll take her hand and keep her safe as you go.

Whenever your mind drifts to the notion that “I’ll never get all of this done,” pull yourself back to the present. To counteract fear, ask questions that call for the details of the present moment, like “What time is it?” or “What color socks am I wearing?

Joy of Conscience (The Sonnet) Conscience brings joy, Conscience brings relief. It's a different kind of joy, sanctified by bouts of grief. Conscience causes content, unsurpassed by material excitement. Only through conscientious moderation, shall we overcome shallow derangement. Materials are needed for sustenance, beyond that point it becomes poison. Cluttering the mind with toxic waste, it separates the human from human. Conscience brings joy, untainted by shallow glee. Surrounded by ritual compromise, conscience alone can set us free.

Hitler was that classic ‘know-it-all’. His mind was cluttered with minor information and misinformation, about everything. I believe that one of the reasons he gathered so many flunkies around him was that his instinct told him that first-rate people couldn’t possibly stomach the outpourings.

Sonnet 1433 No such thing as an uncreative heart, If you are alive, you are creative. Unless cluttered by status quo, Every heart is by nature creative. Heart alive is heart creative, Creativity is a sign of life. Uncreativity is pulselessness, Symptom of a heart anemic of life. I am not creative, I'm just alive, Creativity is just a byproduct. If you don't impose limits of norm, Every blood vessel is creation-duct.

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what then, is an empty desk a sign?

Mindfulness focuses on taking our attention away from something emotionally stimulating and anchoring our mind to something else happening in the present moment, for instance, our breathing or what we can feel around us. It emphasizes the importance of considering our impulses before we act them out, as well as converting self-damaging thoughts into positive ones.

you have felt how hard it is to stay focused on one thing, internally beating yourself up for not being able to concentrate like your friends. Maybe you can even relate to the exhausting feeling of a constant racing mind, all while trying to remember coping strategies and ways to process emotions accurately. The daily life of a neurodivergent individual is one that can feel overwhelming and draining, but with a loving support system and an abundance of self-care, it is a unique path that we must embrace.

This vicious cycle of hyper-focusing one week to not focusing at all another week, mixed with a million and one negative feelings, grew exhausting. However, deep down, I knew that with the right strategies, our unique minds could overcome any struggle, including converting chaos into calm.

Another step to success with cleaning is prioritizing self-care, meaning it is time for you to start investing in your well-being. Practicing activities like exercising, meditation, and mindfulness are amazing for your brain.

If you’ve ever heard, “Clean your room!” as advice for coping with stress, it’s because of this very reason. Clutter, be it at home or work, is generally a significant cause of anxiety because it subconsciously acts as a reflection of yourself. Things like the quality of lighting, the smells and noises you’re exposed to, the colors of the walls, and the people occupying these spaces with you can all cause or reduce anxiety and stress levels depending on how they’re managed. You might be surprised at how much of an impact good lighting, pleasant aromas, and walls with calming colors have on your anxiety levels.

Life and Abundance (The Sonnet) A person to take refuge in, a purpose to be driven by, that's all you need to lead a good life. A roof to take shelter under, couple meals to feed our hunger, that's all you need to lead a good life. Brain at the base of the mind, Heart at the base of existence, Character at the base of the shoulder, that's all you need to lead a good life. Materialism normalized as abundance chains freedom, and renders life a cripple. True abundance instills content not clutter, Actual needs of life are rather little.

My mind is cluttered with an imagination of thoughts.

[Henry Ford] I have a row of electric push-buttons on my desk, and by pushing the right button, I can summon to my aid people who can answer any question I desire to ask concerning the business to which I am devoting most of my efforts. Now, will you kindly tell me why I should clutter up my mind with general knowledge, for the purposes of being able to answer questions, when I have people around me who can supply any knowledge I require? p81

You're thinking in book lingo again, I tell myself. But that's only because books speak the truth our mouths are too afraid to voice, our minds too cluttered to parse out.

It’s all about balance. Your mind cannot be free of clutter until your home is.

For mind health, breathe in creativity, breathe out clutter And for gut health have clarified butter, Purity maximised, get #Mickeymized!

The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds and makes of all political and social life a mass illness. Without this housecleaning, we cannot begin to see. Unless we see, we cannot think.” —Thomas Merton

My mind is cluttered with imaginary distractions.

When we think of the charge of escapism often leveled at videogames, we picture vivid imaginary worlds and wish-fulfilling power fantasies. But there's another way that games can be escapist. Thought is painful, our minds are cluttered with the endless chatter of consciousness, and Go is like a single note, a pure tone created by striking this tiny corner of the universe, and it reverberates forever, filling your mind with something like silence.

Zen is much more about stripping away than it is about adding anything. Lao Tzu also said that the Tao the sage follows is a taking away, the World an adding on. We don’t have to read sutras or agonizing koans to get Zen. Neither do we have to buy robes or beliefs, and especially not meditation cushions or gilded buddhas. “Your mind is Buddha,” said Bodhidharma, “so you don’t need a buddha to worship Buddha.” A cup of tea will do just fine. Zen is also much more about the letting-go than it is about learning or any of the other spiritual catch phrases, like “insight” or “enlightenment”. We cast off the body and mind. The real withdrawal from the World of Dust is this detachment. And it isn’t just about letting go of the clutter in our homes, but more importantly (or perhaps exclusively) the clutter in our minds: opinions and beliefs, thoughts about the way we think people or things “really are”, thoughts about “clutter” and “simplicity”—even the idea of Zen as an ‘ism’.

Keeping your space clutter-free aids in achieving mental clarity.

God sees everybody. I wanted to be special. I guess I thought it would be very fine if everybody said, ‘There goes Brother Gregory; he may only be a second son, but he’s really illuminated.’ But that just turns out to be Pride.” He sighed. “I guess you can’t find God by looking.” “I think—I think you can by asking. And—by listening …” She curled up in the covers and closed her eyes again. Gregory tucked his knees up, and put his elbows on them. Resting his chin on his cupped hands, he peered into the impenetrable darkness. He listened. First he heard his own breath coming evenly in the quiet, and the soft pulse of Margaret’s beside him as she returned to sleep. Then he heard the little uneven puffs of the baby in the cradle, and through the walls the children and old Mother Sarah and Cook and even the neighbors. The little thoughts that cluttered his mind like busy ships moving to and fro in the harbor had been swept away in the listening, and he no longer sensed himself as he listened. He wasn’t turning over old sins like moss-covered stones to see what was underneath; he wasn’t addressing prayers to the Virgin or imagining the Passion; he wasn’t naming the seven virtues or praising the mighty deeds of God. Not a thought of last night’s supper or tomorrow’s breakfast flitted past like a distracting moth. And still he listened, until he could hear the deep and ageless sound of the earth breathing. And beyond that, nothing. As he entered Nothing, a strange warmth sprang up in his breast, somewhere around the heart. And he didn’t say, Aha! this is described in the Incendium Amoris but not in the Scala Claustralium, but instead, Let it be. It kindled and sprang higher until he was ablaze with it. It reached high up, outward, and inward into the Nothing. Pure love, on fire. It blazed, for a fragment of a moment, all the way to God, like a spark rising in the darkness. And as it died down, he could sense that everything on earth was softly glowing with it. “Astonishing,” said Gregory to himself as it faded and he returned. “I must try this again sometime,” he mumbled, as he rolled over and sleep overtook him.

A cluttered home leads to a cluttered mind.

She aches to rest her mind and body but dreads her bedtime, knowing that she won’t be able to make herself go to bed, even as exhausted as she is.

I’d go for an em dash here,” he said. “Some writing books tell you that an em dash clutters up the prose and disrupts the sentence. But it can reflect a mind interrupting and refining itself, one that’s able to hold more than a single thought at the same time. Think of it as a fork in the sentence’s road, creating tension for what comes next.

You are energetically connected to everything you own. When your home is filled with things that you love or use well, it becomes an incredible source of support and nourishment for you. Clutter, on the other hand, drags your energy down and the longer you keep it, the more it will affect you. When you get rid of everything that has no real meaning or significance for you, you feel lighter in body, mind, and spirit.

I soon learned to scent out that which might lead to fundamentals and so turn aside from everything else, from the multitude of things that clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential.

If you truly wish to reject entirely all belief in God, and to do so with real intellectual integrity and consistency, have enough respect for your own powers of reason to read atheist philosophers of genuine stature and ability. If you have cluttered your shelves or (God forbid) your mind with the arguments of the New Atheists or similarly slapdash polemicists, then you have done yourself a profound disservice.

From the airport, we caught a taxi to the apartment building on South Beretania Street where Barack had lived with his grandparents during his teenage years while his mother was mostly away, doing anthropological fieldwork in Indonesia. I remember on that car ride being struck by how surprisingly big and urban Honolulu seemed to be, a city stacked next to a body of water not unlike Chicago was. There was a freeway, traffic, and skyscrapers, none of which I remembered seeing during the Brady Bunch’s visit, nor had they factored into my daydreams. My mind clicked furiously, taking everything in, processing it like data. I was twenty-five years old and seeing this place for the first time, alongside this guy whom I felt I knew and yet didn’t fully know, trying to make sense of what all of this was. We passed a series of tightly packed high-rise apartment complexes, where you could see terraces cluttered with bikes and potted plants, people’s laundry strung up and drying in the sun. I remember thinking, Oh, right, this is real life.

Material possessions radiate a certain type of energy. They are not neutral. The more material possessions you have around you, the more distracting and draining those objects can become. If the outside world dominates your thoughts with responsibilities, worries, and conflicting energies of all sorts, then your mind and spirit will not have the space to allow the creative force to flow and flower.

Movement is the language of the brain. Through mindful action, we engage the body’s deepest intelligence, transforming clutter into clarity

Men concerned with matters of mind often find themselves in better control of space, energy and matter. Men concerned with matter often find themselves in small spaces, devoid of energy, stuck in a cluttered mind.

Clear Your Mind   Clearing your mind is the same as clearing your environment. Seeing a lot of stuff cluttered on the floor or disorganized in your cabinets can make you crazy. Your mind becomes confused with a lot of things that you see and this might cause you headaches. Try to organize your things in boxes, clean your room, fix your bed, sweep your floor, open your curtains to let the sunshine in and arrange things according to size or color. If you work on your desk, this is the best time to organize documents into folders, arrange them properly in drawers and throw out those that are not needed anymore. Making a habit of cleaning your environment can clear your mind and can make your life easier.

Geranium   Geranium is used to help relieve tension throughout the body. If you are so stressed that your muscles ache, you should look into Geranium to help remove this tension.  Often times if you can remove the tension from your body and mind.  This combination allows Geranium to help clear up a cluttered mind allowing you to focus.

If we establish good habits—such as keeping lists, returning items to their proper place, and reducing clutter in our homes—we can relieve the clutter in our minds.