Beautify Your Spirit

Constantly we tend our physical possessions--scrubbing, cleaning, waxing, polishing, ensuring they sparkle and shine.

We dust our houses, we wax our cars, we hose off our driveways and tidy our rooms. And all this we do towards ensuring our material possessions endure through the test of time and remain beautiful as possible.

Yet there exists bitter irony in all that devotion towards arranging things material, because whilst most of us remain quite obsessed with keeping our physicality pristine we tend neglect effectuating a similar cleansing of our most important possession: our spirit.

So whilst we scrub and clean and wax and polish all things external, we oft ignore any similar cleaning of our inner state.

We keep doing rude things unto others, we keep saying mean things unto others, we keep behaving through ways in which we wouldn't want others acting towards us. And all the while we continue putting near-constant energy towards keeping our things and environments pristine whilst letting our spirits wallow in states of imperfection and decay.

This is backwards thinking and a misallocation of energy--because none of your material possessions will be following you into the next world. Only your spirit will come with you, thus you should put maximal effort towards keeping it clean and polished and shiny and sublime long before you worry about dusting your room or waxing your car.

And neglecting your spirit becomes especially silly once you realize you can keep it clean and polished through acts simple as scrubbing a floor or washing your clothes. All you need do is make yourself refrain from acts of rudeness, of inconsiderateness, of darkness, of evil.

All you need do is abstain from performing any negative behaviors, and automatically your spirit will shine brighter and brighter.

So truthfully there remains no excuse for neglecting that most precious of commodities. There exists zero reasons why you should tend the physical and neglect the spiritual side of yourself.

Thus henceforth from this moment forward--start beautifying your spirit by refraining from all negativity.

And when this life is over, I guarantee you'll be more proud of the results than you are of any waxed car.

a reply to: Trachel
It depends how you see or where you are seeing it from, if you see everything as a mirror. It means you like to keep the mirror clean. If you see it as your house, a material thing! then the polishing is the same but the reason why one does clean differs. So the reasons why someone cleans are not always so apparent. Some feel they are dirty and that is why they clean, others feel they can just see life and perspective much better with a clean space. So hard to say really! One thing for sure spirit doesnt need any apps or updates its a case of uncovering the vails. Cleaning helps that but the spirit is imaculate.

I once heard a casual friend comment :

"Our homes are clean and clear....like our minds."

Oh gracious, were it only so easy. A beautiful sentiment, but even when my workspace is in order it is sometimes difficult to maintain a focused line of thought in respect for certain creative works. I have known many artists who cannot paint, or write, or draw when they are in spaces that are "too tidy".

Conversely, I have had friends and acquaintances whose homes are very "lived in" and others whose homes are borderline hording chaospheres, and somehow they manage either just wonderfully with regards to their works and endeavors.

It was once a very popular school of thought that a tidy and clean home was the only acceptable environment by which the measure of a woman could be made, however, any woman in her right mind will tell you that while, yes - a tidy space is indeed desirable - it is not always possible, and sometimes, even detrimental to more important matters.

I forget which psychologist is was who made the correlation and suggestion that one's possessions were akin to psychic anchors of a sort - material constructs that correlated to internal ideas, and that the house and it's various rooms akin to another manifestation of the mind itself....may have been Freud, but don't quote me on that.

Personally I have found that striking a workable balance between the mental, physical/tangible and spiritual has been the most productive when it comes to caring for various considerations.....and each has their own way of finding that dynamic which works the best for them.

Like, right now....I know I could very well polish the silver and leathers, but....really....it's not the most pressing thing I need to focus on at the moment. There was a time where I would become exceedingly stressed if I did not tend to those tasks as THEY dictated, and it's nice to be returning to a more relaxed relationship in regards to care taking rather than obsessive slavery to tasks that are not immediate and pressing concerns.

As it was once said by another :

"Do not let yourself be ruled by your possessions."

Wise words.

a reply to: Trachel

You can't "clean" darkness, only brighten it with Light.

Stronger Spirit = Stronger Light

Darkness is just a very dim Light which is why scientists can pull out Light from a so-called "void".

When you focus all of your attention on loving others, then your attention will not be focused on doing harm to others.