writing for self-discovery

Capricious gales blow through the 20 feet of open doorways in my house, and the clear blue vista that stretches over rooftops for miles makes my 500 sq. ft. apartment feel like a broad, windswept palace. It’s fall in Bali. Temperatures hover in the 80’s during the day and drop to lower 70’s at night.

When I let go of 60 years of accumulated treasures, and left the old life behind in two plastic storage bins, I committed to a lifestyle of basics. Just the essentials, I told myself, but beautiful, meaningful essentials!

My sofa is a treasure. It’s the bali blue bed that I wrote about in an earlier blog, excavated from beneath a heap of logs in Ketut’s family woodcarving workshop. It’s a beautiful, meaningful, essential.

The carved Balinese door frame with a mirror behind it defines my sleep area and creates an illusion of vast expanses of space. The frame is pure Balinese artistry, beautiful, functional, and meaningful.

Then there’s a set of four, hand carved dining chairs and the few dishes and glasses that reflect the blue color of the bed, necessities, all. I created virtually no storage options, no cavernous closets, no built-in cabinets, no pantry, no spaces to fill with non-essentials.

But things somehow materialize in a material world and I found myself utilizing the empty space under my bed as a holding station for a very long rectangular woodcarving of a cremation ceremony. It fascinated and repelled me, but I couldn’t quite let it go. First there was just that and it lay flat and almost invisible on the floor. Then three decorative carved pieces that had no purpose, two extra yoga mats, a long broom, and a feather duster joined the growing collection.

Stuff is an interesting phenomena. Tucked almost entirely out of sight, I tended to forget about it. When the floor under my bed was cleaned the broom and mop went around the stack in the back since moving it was an effort.

But this morning I sat in a different chair for breakfast. The view under the bed was unobstructed, the mound of non-essentials a shadowy specter, gloomy, brooding. Revulsion filled me as the dark energy of it slithered into the room. In a frenzy of purpose I pulled the bed away from the wall, hoisted the cobweb latticed decorative pieces out of the way, moved the duster and broom, slid the beastly heavy slab depicting the cremation to the front and shuddered. Geko leavings, dead ants, wads of hair and old fashioned dirt clogged the narrow channel behind.

About that time Ketut walked in. “You want take out?”

“Yes! Take all this stuff away. Please!”

An hour later, the space sparkled. Breezes cavorted in the wide open area under the bed and the whole room breathed new energy. Whatever had been stuck wasn’t stuck anymore. I experienced the feeling as a physical response in my body, an expanding in my chest, a lightness, a freedom to move. So I danced, and the mischievous spirits of innovation and possibility danced with me.

Purging the old creates an energetic opening and makes room for new to enter. It’s a crazy principle that works. Is something not moving forward for you? Do you want to make changes but don’t know where to start? What’s stacked in the basement? Do you have storage closets, or storage rooms packed full? How many non-essentials are dragging your energy down? What brilliant future is stuck under YOUR bed?