*********************************************************** SPIRITUAL HOUSECLEANING: MAKING SACRED SPACE ***********************************************************

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SPIRITUAL HOUSECLEANING: MAKING SACRED SPACE
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by Kathryn Robyn (from "Spiritual Housecleaning: healing the space within by beautifying the space around you," pp. 10-11)

So, why cleaning?  Four words: "Chop wood, carry water."  This Zen axiom suggests that the way to inner peace is through the work of daily maintenance.  It proposes that by meditating on physical essentials, the disciple will gain spiritual enlightenment, or at least liberation from the torments of the human mind.  I have found the same process to occur with cleaning.  But there is resistance to this extraordinary truth.

Why don't we teach, "Wipe counters, scrub floors"?  Well, probably because these chores are menial, thankless, and frankly, unmanly.  They do not inspire exercise or adventure; they don't provide heat or quench thirst.  Wiping and scrubbing don't create; they remove.  Comparatively speaking, chopping firewood is romantic, even glamorous; carrying water is noble, altruistic.

Cleaning, it seems, is not even respectable.  Sexism and value judgments about power hold fast when it comes to cleaning.  Mothers do it after the dinner has been devoured and abandoned, until they can pawn it off on their children.  Maids and domestics do it while their employers are engaged in the weighty pursuits of money or learning.  Dismissed as "women's work," it produces nothing, only destroying the residue of creative activity.  Who wants that?

Well, I do.  Because it's like healing.  And if that's traditionally been women's work, then we're hoarding something special.  Cleaning creates an empty space where something new -- life -- can happen, leaving a free area for a fresh approach.  It creates neutral ground.  More than that, this is sacred work, creating hallowed ground -- a space that is returned to its cleared wholeness.

But it requires a specific kind of attention -- the decidedly Zen attention of emptiness.  Here is dirt, get rid of it.  Here is garbage, take it out.  Here is dust, brush it off.  Wipe away the grime until the surface clears.  It is valuable work. It maintains the life of a house just as healing maintains the structure of a life.  With the proper attention, it leaves behind a sacred space in which to heal.....

....Healing is clearing the sacred space inside you, where you live.  If you have had even minor trauma in your life -- and who hasn't -- there's likely to be debris in that place, a residue of feelings from incidents that separated you from that sacred place.  Those ashes that, now cold and forgotten, smother the fire of your life force.  If these remains were in your house, you might recognize the mess and eventually get around to cleaning it up....

As it is, you just carry on, ashes piling upon ashes, threatening to put out the fire that surrounds your soul.  Healing is giving that spark within you enough air to relight the fire, enough substance to keep it burning slow and steady.  Healing is building a broad range of supporting resources to help your maintain the embers when the living gets too cold or too hot for you to handle on your own.

Healing has many pathways.  Generally, it builds on the view that physical health, mental health, emotional stability, and spiritual well-being are connected, because healing is wholeness and wholeness is, well all of you....Of course wholeness is elusive, so healing means being committed to the pursuit of balance and having faith in the common belief that, with the right balance of stimulation and stillness, the body heals itself; that, with love, the mind finds its own way; and that, with memories and stories, the spiritual reignites, intact.
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"Some men's lives are solely occupied with the things of this world; their minds are so circumscribed by exterior manners and traditional interests that they are blind to any other realm of existence, to the spiritual significance of all things.  They think and dream of earthly fame, of material progress.  Sensuous delights and comfortable surroundings bound their horizon, their highest ambitions center in successes of worldly conditions and circumstances.  They curb not their lower propensities; they eat, drink, and sleep.  Like the animal, they have no thought beyond their own physical well-being.  It is true that these necessities must be dispatched.  Life is a load which must be carried on while we are on earth, but the cares of the lower things of life should not be allowed to monopolize all the thoughts and aspirations of a human being.  The heart's ambitions should ascend to a more glorious goal, mental activity should rise to higher levels.  Men should hold in their souls the vision of celestial perfection, and there prepare a dwelling-place for the inexhaustible bounty of the divine spirit....  Let your ambition be the achievement on earth of a heavenly civilization!"  ('Abdu'l-Baha, "The Reality of Man," p. 42)

"American culture doesn't allow much room for slow reflection.  I watch the working people who are supposed to be my role models getting pushed to go, go, go and take as little vacation time as possible.  And then, often, vacations are full of endless activity too, so you might come back from your 'break' feeling exhausted.  Canning tomato sauce isn't exactly a week at the spa, but it definitely forces a pause in the multitasking whirl of everyday life.  It's a 'slow down and do one thing at a time' process: now chop vegetables, now stir them until the sauce thickens, now sterilize the jars, make sure each ring is tight.  If you're going to do anything else at the same time, it had better just be listening to your own thoughts.  Anything else could cause you to blow the entire batch.  Canning always puts me in a kind of trance.  I reach a point where stirring the bubbling sauce is the world's only task, and I could do it forever.  Whether you prefer to sit on a rock in a peaceful place, or take a wooden spoon to a simmering pot, it does the body good to quiet down and tune in."  (Camille Kingsolver, 18 at the time she wrote this for her mother Barbara Kingsolver's book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: a year of food life," Harper Collins 2007)