Recently I was listening to a program on the radio and the presenter was talking about addictions. As I was driving I felt how relieved I was that I did not have an addiction: it wasn’t until later that I felt how, if I spend money in an irresponsible way, regardless of what I am spending it on, then it is no different to any other addiction, all addictions are the same. They just play out differently.
This felt huge and very exposing but also empowering.
Later as I walked through our home, I could feel things that I had bought that were fillers. Things that I had used to fill the space in our home, they usually didn’t have a place that felt right for them and I would be continually rearranging, trying to find their place when there wasn’t a place for them. I began to see what I was doing in a different light.
I remember years ago we went to the bank to get a Home Loan, the manager offered us a Line of Credit Loan. At the time I remember thinking that this was really bad – it was like having an open purse. I knew at the time it was something that I did not want to sign up for but I didn’t express what I was feeling. Later I realised how it took away any responsibility for my spending. It was like giving myself permission to go on a spending spree. And that is what I did.
What I’m feeling is now becoming much clearer. My body had been telling me for a long time, but I had not stopped to listen. I realised that in these moments I was in a momentum that felt like it came with the force of all my past spending, and this is why I had not brought myself to a complete stop.
This is such a great observation. Stop and reconnect – first to me, and then my list.
I felt that there was something under this that I had not been getting, this feeling that I was not enough… I have to be more, buy more, eat more, more of everything. But more is never enough. This plays out in all different ways by wanting to spend money, wanting to eat too much, wanting to fill up my space with things. I love order and detail, having a place for everything and everything in its place. This feels glorious. I’m getting this picture of a mouse going around and round in a wheel, forever chasing its tail:
I buy, fill my space, de-clutter and then get rid of things in a never-ending cycle.
When I’m focussed and go shopping with no need, there is more clarity and presence around my shopping and I don’t come home with things that I will later return to the store.
Ten years ago, I would never have considered that a stop was needed. I thought that what I was doing was normal. I would have continued on my way, buying and never stopping to consider that there may be more going on under the surface. It’s interesting because I do de-cluttering with people and always tell them it’s not about the clutter, it’s about what is under the clutter – what it is that is driving the need to bring things into their lives to overwhelm and complicate. I just realised that this is exactly what I had been doing.
When something comes up for me that can feel uncomfortable and I don’t know what it is, I can run to the pantry, or want to go shopping or a hundred other things to distract myself. What if it’s not that I need food or clothes, but it’s because I have felt something deep inside me that feels so amazingly exquisite but I don’t know where to go with it; it feels unfamiliar.
What if this is the exact moment to STOP, way before I go shopping or go to the pantry? What if I were to allow myself to really feel this exquisiteness, to sit with it, allow it to become familiar to me instead of running away. What if this is normal? This is what life is truly about. Then I would not want to fill myself, my wardrobes or my home with STUFF… I could fill my world with me, knowing that I am already enough. If not, then enough is never enough – I will always be looking for more.
Since attending presentations by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, I realise that there is always an opportunity to look deeper and to take more responsibility for what is really going on in my life. This journey that we are all on is about returning to a place within us and realising that with this comes a greater understanding and appreciation of the wisdom we are all connected to.
Now if I feel that I want to go shopping, need to spend money, I clock that moment when I try to distract myself and take myself away from that divine settled feeling. That is the true STOP moment that allows me to make different choices in my life.
It’s about being responsible for every part of my life. I am responsible for loving and caring for myself first, then that supports me to make more loving choices in my everyday life. Then there is no need to run anywhere. I don’t have to try to fill my house or my wardrobe or my pantry.
This is life changing, a new foundation. Every moment is an opportunity to make more loving choices that deepen the quality of the next choice that I make. Catching those moments when I have such clarity, those ‘aha’ moments that support me to make lasting changes in my life. This is the quality that I now choose, it’s a quality that I’m building, and that quality is divine. Baby steps, forever unfolding.
By Denise, Organiser, Supporting people to Eliminate Clutter, Stylist/ Wardrobe Makeovers, Wife, Mother, Grandmother
Further Reading:
Clearing Out Clutter – The Room at the Back of the House
Making Space
De-cluttering my Flat and my Life: A Forever Deepening Amazingness
44 Comments
To really understand the truth in ‘more is never enough’ is an incredible revelation that starts a process of extraction from behaviours that have been fueled by the notion that there is always something out there that will fix/ease the disquiet we feel. This is a great article that offers much insight and opportunity to reconsider… thank you.
Denise I totally understand what you are saying here
“I felt that there was something under this that I had not been getting, this feeling that I was not enough… I have to be more, buy more, eat more, more of everything. But more is never enough. ”
The more which is the empty space that we are needs to be filled continuously because by the laws of physics there can be no empty spaces, they are filled with something. So, what are we choosing, we get caught seeking outside of ourselves to fill our emptiness and nothing will change until we understand that we need to reconnect to ourselves and fill that space with the everything that we already are. Or, it will be filled with the everything we are not.
“When something comes up for me that can feel uncomfortable and I don’t know what it is, I can run to the pantry, or want to go shopping or a hundred other things to distract myself.” I really appreciate this line Denise, I can relate. But what I hadn’t clocked is that it’s not just uncomfortable things like situations where we feel hurt, but also the times when something amazing is emerging within us, and we may not know how to share or live that in the world.
I was visiting an old glass blowing factory where everything had been made by hand for years, but they were getting pushed out of the market because it was cheaper to make glass objects in different countries where the skills of hand glass blowing was not wanted. I went into sympathy while watching a glass blowing demonstration by an elder man and it was fascinating to watch how a small blob of molten glass can be shaped by hand into something so delicate and fine, here was a skill that would die out when this man passed over. So I looked all around the shop to find something to buy to assuage my guilt that we let these traditions pass away. Having bought the piece of glass I took it home but I couldn’t put it anywhere in the house that felt it had a place because I realized it didn’t have a place because I had not discerned the energy it was bought in. It taught me not to buy something out of sympathy for another.
I can totally relate here Mary, I’ve bought things and then a few weeks later taken them to the charity shop or put them in the bin. I still have stuff that I purchased when I was feeling empty and wanting to distract myself but I am loathe to just give them away just in case one day I might want to use them! I guess one day I will stop worrying about how much I spent and clear out my baggage which will leave me more space for more space!
Gosh this is a brilliant and expansive addition to this article. Be honest about the details behind any moment that we find ourselves shopping, eating, walking in a way to appease a tension.
What if that tension we feel and want to distract ourselves from is the next level of expansion we are being asked to go to, and instead of distracting ourselves we did just sit and instead feel the tension and allow that to melt away and rediscover a part of ourselves we had kept hidden from the world for fear we would not be accepted in the glory we are; the glory we all are and come from but live our lives in the complete opposite.
I have gone through a challenging but evolving financial journey in relationships. Often as the main financial supporter in relationship and at times, because I want to help or rescue them from the consequences of their previous choices, I put myself and my own financial situation into very stressful states. However, I have come to realize how I always go into this rescue or fix it mode with everyone in my life and it’s not only with money even if it compromises myself, my health, my wellbeing or quality of life. Since money is kidney energy, it also highlights to me where I have been incredibly and superfluously generous to the point of being indiscriminately wasteful of my energy at the expense of my health (no wonder I have been having lower back pain for years despite being barely 30!).
Another realisation I got while reading your article is that even though the financial stress is there, it has been constellated to reveal the pernicious mentality I have towards money and remind me of what is most important and precious to me. It’s taught me that my poverty consciousness is not the frugality and wise money-spending choices it makes it out to be since quite often I will go on shopping spree of expensive and unneeded items to de-pressurise. It’s taught me how I have fallen to the trap of owning a credit card and the opening that creates in both my bank account and my thinking towards money. It’s taught me to communicate and express my thoughts, feelings and needs to my partner. It’s taught me to be more responsible with money as well as what I choose to engage in – no more gossip news, no more Facebook scrolling, no more Netflix marathon, no more aimless YouTube clicking bonanza, all of which consume both my time, space and energy, draining me of the life force that would otherwise fuel my fire and joy for living and connecting with others. Have less money in my account also asks me to be so much more deliberate, wise and specific in my shopping and planning for grocery as I can’t keep buying random items in excessive quantities just because I can to then end up throwing them away. I have also learnt about balancing my sense of self-worth and claiming my worth and value with chasing after money/higher salary which could mean being away from my partner and everything else that is important to and supportive for me. And there are so many more other little changes and understandings about not only money but life that I have gained. It has truly been about so much more than just money.
Great sharing Long. I’ve been there with the credit card, the buying things I don’t need, the loans, the overdraft. Yet a strange thing has happened, the more I connect to myself, the more my relationship with myself has changed and I no longer feel the need to buy buy buy for the sake of it, in fact I find it quite refreshing to be able to prioritize my spending and definately have the feeling that less is more.
Thank you Long, that was very beautiful to read and supportive in helping me to understand myself as well. You have shared so many insights, and very inspiring to read about the way you are healing these things.
We use money to hold ourselves back in so many ways. Buy now pay later philosophy allows us to avoid where we are today, dwell in a false reality and escape the challenges and obstacles we are here to learn from. We end up so much poorer this way.
Absolutely Joseph, the more we bury ourselves under stuff, the more we bury stuff in our bodies. I used to distract myself with shopping but now due to what’s going on in the world with self-isolation, I realise actually how little I need, but I also realise how challenging I am finding it not being able to just pop out to the shops and just being still with my body. Very revealing.
I agree with you Sandra that these last few months have shown me how little we actually need to support ourselves. This has shown me how simple life can be.
Since attending the workshops and presentations of Universal Medicine I have been on a personal journey of rediscovery of me. Not what I have been told is me by family, school, work colleagues, actually it is quite amazing the amount of people who want to tell me I have got it wrong or misread a situation when actually I have known exactly what is occurring and why. There is so much to uncover that at times I go running to the fridge to find something sweet to take the edge of the power and beauty that can come through me it is so unfamiliar because I have put a huge lid on this part of me. Believing other people’s opinion of me rather than backing myself to know what is true and what is false.
We all cap ourselves when at the same time we don’t even realise we are capping ourselves. Blowing the lid takes a huge wake up call and thank goodness you blew the lid Mary, because otherwise we wouldn’t have the sweet, delicate reflection of an elder woman who lives with authority and grace.
This is a great blog that invites lots of reflection around money, spending and any moment where we feel to pursue without ‘True Purpose’. Everything is everything and having the willingness to reflect on our choices can lead us to the ‘pot of gold’ that lays hidden within each of us.
The ‘pot of gold’ that lies within is worth more than all the money in the world. Yet in our physical world we need money to function as a society, and it’s our relationship with money that counts, whether we use it wisely and ‘on true purpose’ or flippantly and to fill our lives because, and I’m sure you will agree Christine, we are missing our inner ‘pot of gold’.
I’m recently realising that buying connected to myself and the clear purpose of shopping, brings me expansion and the feeling that something completes and enriches with it. However, when there is no purpose but escaping by buying, I feel contracted and really unsettled, as I can’t feel fullness at all, but the increase of the craving I was pulled with in the first place. When this happens, making a stop and honestly feel what drives me to buy, allows me to clock if there is true need of buying or not.. and if I feel going to shop anyway, the quality in which I move and choose is significantly different. In the end, it’s not ‘what’ we buy that fills or drains us, but the quality we choose to be filled with before, during and after that action.
When I was younger and was searching for truth I used to go shopping when I didn’t really need anything. All I wanted was to buy something sparkly! I now realise that this need for something sparkly was my bodys impulse to wake me up to my Inner Sparkle. Took me a while to realise this, but when I did my need for unnecessary shopping began to cease and my entire life began to take on a different purpose, one of re-connection to my true self.
I have re-realised lately that my spending money lacked purpose, I was in this holding pattern waiting for someone else to activate what my body felt was required instead of taking the lead and responsibility to commence an action that would get me and the other person out of the holding pattern, the ingrained behaviour and arrangement we had been for some time. I got to a point where no amount of money I spent was changing anything and I really could not buy anything more, I already had enough and appreciated it all. The next evolutionary step required me to commit to spend quite a chunk of money that I felt I did not have and was the last hurdle I needed to get over to commence the next step. Our bodies do know the answer long before we are willing to admit it and there is an outplay of steps we need to deal with to take back to that point that we denied ourselves the expansion on offer and that is an energetic decluttering where things simply fall into place and we naturally discard the excess we have accumulated be it our weight, in our home, in relationships, work or family. No beating up required … a truly amazing way to live!
Thank you for a great insight into irresponsible spending. I can see clearly now where I spend money that I do not have, by my impulse buys for others. It makes me “feel good” to buy something that I feel is needed (and often isn’t) which results in me having to return the purchase or give it away, or back to charity.
I used to buy things for my daughters when I would go shopping , things that I thought they would like or need. I stopped this as I felt how imposing it was to make choices that were there choices.
I’ve done this too Denise, buying things for others thinking I was being kind and loving, when in reality, the only way to truly love them was to return to the true love within myself which doesn’t cost a single penny!
Denise, I nearly got caught in this trap recently buying something for another because I felt they would like it but actually underneath there was a need to be liked or accepted. I put the item down and walked away from the shop, Thanking myself that I had not given my power away to another just to be liked or to fit in.
“Every moment is an opportunity to make more loving choices that deepen the quality of the next choice that I make.” There is always a choice to be made but are we listening to where the offer is coming from?
To be able to discern where the offer is coming from, we have to have the awareness that we have a choice of where the offer is coming from!
Over the years I have come to realise when there is an urge to spend money that it is covering up a feeling in the body that I don’t want to feel. The spending only works for a short while and then the feeling of tension is back and I have objects that I really didn’t need but there is no appreciation for these objects or joy for having purchased them.
“what it is that is driving the need to bring things into their lives to overwhelm and complicate.” Thanks Denise, I really appreciate your blog, it’s a great topic and one I need to look at and make some changes in as I have a lot of clothes. Your quote above is a good one, I’ve realised that lack of order in my home dulls down my ability to be me in full as the energy of my environment is not supportive or holding me. I can also see direct correlations between certain parts of the house being messy and areas that relates to in my life, and how it affects me in return making the issue worse.
I love what you share about the uncomfortable feeling is “because I have felt something deep inside me that feels so amazingly exquisite but I don’t know where to go with it; it feels unfamiliar.” This flips feeling ill-at-ease on its head. We fight that feeling without considering it could be a key to the amazing exquisiteness lying just below that gunk.
I really know that unfamiliar feeling when something beautiful within me is emerging and it feels new. My mind will play out all sorts of dramas to prevent me from accepting it, and then I can lose my connection to what’s inside me if I react and go with the thoughts.
Lucy How silly are we that when we feel within that amazing exquisiteness that we do not know where to go with it. For me I start to feel like a cat on a hot tin roof I feel very disturbed. What I can do now when these feelings come up is to stop, just stay steady until the feelings of exquisiteness start to feel familiar and not so alien. What it shows me is that I haven’t chosen this way of being for a very long time.
A few years ago I wasn’t on the best of wages. When I did get money spare I’d try to spend it as quick as possible so I could go back to struggling in poor mode. Anything I bought in this was either the wrong size, or poor quality or broke in seconds. Sounds crazy doesn’t it. But understanding underneath it all there was an avoidance of my true worth and distracting myself in pretending to be worth-less and poor.
Thanks Leigh, I appreciate you writing this as I hadn’t looked at my own behaviours with money this way. I also wonder if some people get rid of their money in wasteful ways to avoid the jealousy of others?
A subject I have recently been reflecting on lately as well .. spending money on things I don’t need. And in reading this blog wondering what am I trying to fill or fulfill in buying things I do not need! I do know that when I clear things out or let go of things I have been holding onto my body feels much more expansive.
Everything has an energetic starting point, it’s either impulsed from the fullness of who we naturally are or it’s belched forth from the emptiness of who we’re not. The activity can be the same for both e.g. shopping, dancing, speaking, getting dressed, driving, singing, cooking, anything really but the feeling of the activity and the outcome/product (if there is one – say singing a song or baking a cake) will be very different depending on it’s energetic starting point.
Alexis I came a cropper because my body told me that the food I was eating was not right for my body, something was off. However I dismissed this feeling and ate the food anyway. Some hours later it all came up. I was as sick as anything for quite some time. I was ill the whole day. This was a big lesson to heed when my body says no don’t eat it to actually listen. The energy that the food was cooked in was felt by my body but I dismissed the feeling in my head. Our bodies feel energy all the time. I just don’t listen. It was a great lesson in choices and consequences.
I so relate to this, thank you for sharing and writing this Denise. I am lessening the filling up of my house and am becoming more and more aware of when I am filling up myself (with food or other things). It is baby steps – a loving work in progress.
Denise I totally understand what you are saying and I had a stop moment to reflect that it is very possible that we do distract ourselves in a myriad of ways so that we do not get a sense of the beauty that lies just beneath the surface as we have not been brought up in a way that we have been adored just for being who we are. Instead we are encouraged at every turn to look outside of ourselves for validation and so our beauty sleeps within until we make that choice to reconnect back to our inner beauty and not the false persona we show to the world.
When we are feeling that amazingness within our self, it is like walking naked in public without any apprehension. There is almost a childlike freedom of, this is all of me and nothing else is needed. Then we grow up and our choices make us the ball in a pinball game, that we let ourselves bounce, rebound and get battered by outside forces. What if we never pull the lever to launch the ball into the game?
Love this analogy, Steve. And I loved this from your writing, Denise….”What if it’s not that I need food or clothes, but it’s because I have felt something deep inside me that feels so amazingly exquisite but I don’t know where to go with it; it feels unfamiliar.” How crazy is it that the feeling of being exquisite is unfamiliar? Or is it possible we are just experiencing a tension that shouldn’t exist but does because we live in a world that says we must attain ourselves from outer sources? So much to consider here.
Such a great comment Steve, love what you have shared here about the two options – the joy and freedom of being in our essence and open like a child, or the disconnection from that and entering the game of life feeling like the pinball – I know that one too well.
‘What is under and behind the clutter’ is a great question to ask – as with overeating or any behaviour that we would rather not engage in, clutter is only a symptom for something deeper and disturbing going on that is well worth attending to, should we want to have a more joyful and expansive life, a truer life.
I agree this is a great question to ask ‘What is under and behind the clutter’ and as you share; something we can apply to anything in our life .. that is getting under the behaviour of why we do it in the first place after all everything is energy and because of energy so lets take it back to energy.
The tricky thing is that so many of the ‘behaviours’ that we engage in to cover up something inside that is decidedly unsettled are behaviours that are encouraged by society and that we ourselves actively seek. We use all manner of things to actively distract ourselves from feeling even the slightest hint of anything unpleasant going on in the inside but we dress it up as ‘life’. What about the opera, what about art, what about reading a book, what about board games, what about holidays, what about hobbies? Sure we love them all but are they bringing us closer to us and each other or are we simply distracting ourselves? Yeah sure we’ve become really good at kidding ourselves. As the mother of a boy that loves sport I’ve heard the ‘sports so good for camaraderie’ spiel many times but if you’ve ever looked into the eyes of the losers then you’ll know that there’s not an ounce of truth in that belief.