Beautiful, Useful, or Sentimental: The Spiritual Practice of Letting Stuff Go

Minimalists proclaim the motto that we shouldn't keep any possessions in our home that aren't either beautiful, useful, or sentimental. Letting things go physically is a good metaphor for letting other things go that should also be released, like resentment, anger, grudges, jealousy, and conflict you can't remember who started. It turns out that letting some things go that we no longer need is really good for our emotional and mental well-being.

I got started thinking about this letting go of stuff process as my husband and I prepare for the big annual garage sale that's held in our community each October. We both had households before we met, so now we have my set of stuff, his set of stuff, the stuff we've accumulated together, and all the memorabilia it took to launch three great children up to college age. Now that's a lot of stuff! Seriously, with the kids all at college or beyond, the blow-up pumpkin on the front lawn for Halloween is a bit over the top. Time to release that to some nice family with little ones.

I've heard organizers say before that we should each go through our closets once a year and donate anything you haven't worn. Chances are that Goodwill, or the charity you like best, needs it more than you or I do. It feels wonderful to easily be able to find what you are looking for in the closet. Some fashion writers recommend taking two items out of our closet to donate for every one we purchase or add. The same thing could be done with household purchases.

From a parenting perspective, what a great lesson to teach our children about the joy of releasing things you no longer need and giving them away or selling them. That's a lesson that can help them learn to be organized, keep track of things, take good care of their possessions, and release things they no longer need. That's a hard lesson to learn if Mom and/or Dad don't role model it for them.

Letting things go----emotionally and physically---is a healthy way to travel lighter through life. Being focused on people, relationships, and the present is a much healthier mindset that holding on to stuff. Travel light, let love and unneeded items flow from you to others, and focus on collecting beautiful moments.

Letting Go and Moving On

Holding onto perceived hurts, grudges, and resentment is bad for us. It can ruin your sleep; make you anxious or depressed. It can cause physical health problems-- elevate your blood pressure and heart rate, cause you digestive problems, or give you headaches. It can keep you from being present for the loving relationships in your life, and the beauty of things around you. Holding onto the bad stuff keeps us from experiencing the goodness available to each of us.

Sometimes you don't have a choice in an emotional cut-off of a relationship, where a family member or friend abruptly stops all communication with you. Emotional cut-offs actually take a great deal of emotional energy to maintain. You may have to stay angry to feel justified in your position. Both loving and hating someone else take far more psychic energy than being in a neutral position towards another person.When someone does an emotional cut-off with you, it may be important to release them with love. Send them off with evisioning white, healing light around them. Try to forgive yourself, and forgive them as well.

Not all the relationships in your life can go the distance with you across the rest of your life. If a relationship has become toxic, where the other person is critical, judgmental of you and others, destructive to themselves and others, abusing alcohol and/or drugs, blaming, and attacking, you may NEED to let go. There is no way you can safely stand by. You may want to be emotioanlly brave and explain briefly and honestly why you are letting go.

One of my favorite writers/speakers is Gerald Jampolsky, MD, who wrote the classics Love Is Letting Go of Fear and Goodbye to Guilt: Releasing Fear Through Forgiveness. Jampolsky is a psychiatrist, and also a deeply spiritual man. He writes in a beautifully simple style. He teaches us that people come from one of only two places: love and fear. If you are not coming from love in your relationships with other people, then you are coming from a place of fear.

People who are coming from a loving place don't need to compete with others. They don't need to feel bad when something good happens for someone else they know. They don't need to sit in judgement of others, or criticize and speak poorly of others behind their backs. In contrast, when you are coming from love as your emotional point of reference, you can be supportive of others and not feel threatened or diminished by it. You can forgive others and yourself for NOT being perfect. You can see the best in others. You build others up through authentic encouragement of other people's strengths, progress, and good efforts. You see yourself as you are, imperfect, and in this journey of life to learn things, and to change and grow.

Letting go of things? It's not only good for our closets and homes, it's also good for our personal growth to let some things go and move along our path.