Cleaning Out The Corners of Your Mind

My business, The Transition Point, gives me the great privilege of working with clients as a spiritual companion and organizer. My belief is that each person’s life operates in seven year cycles, and as the journey shifts and changes, my work focuses on companionship during the unknown transitional times, which become known soon. I stayed up late one night, re-reading my journal. You see, I’d come to the last page in this journal, and I realized that it had covered four years of my life. This surprised me, because it seems like I just started writing in it such a short time ago. My journal holds the messages I had heard during my meditations, as I asked “what do I need to know?”, heard from Spirit messages such as “the Truth”, and “Quiet thyself and Listen”, and “We create the worlds we have”, and “You have so many gifts…use them”. It also said “when you stop dancing, the dance will stop”. Now you KNOW it wasn't me doing the talking! As I listened to the Seattle rain outside my windows late at night, I read over the last four years of my life to see if I had made any progress. What I noticed somewhat disturbed me. I noticed the “stuck places” in my own thinking and in my own life. I am a counselor, with a spiritual perspective, and a personal organizer. I deal with the “stuck areas” of a person’s mind, home, and life. I work by referral only, and when a client calls me, he/she has not met me, but has HEARD about me. I never know who or what I will see when I walk into anyone’s home or office space, but I can bet that it has something to do with ME and what I have yet to learn. What I know for sure is that the Universe conspires to show each of us the way, and to send us down the paths of our highest and greatest good. Spirit puts the perfect people, lessons, and events in front of each of us to guide us along the path of enlightenment and greater consciousness. No matter who I end up working with, as a counselor or as an organizer or as both, before I ever meet the person and see the situation, I sit in my car, outside of their house, and I pray for guidance. I pray to get myself out of the way so that the One true power of this Universe can flow through me for this person’s greatest and highest good. Then I proceed into their space, have them walk me through it, and I listen intuitively for the guidance I will use to address my client’s situation. This makes my job very easy. I don’t have to know what to do for the client, I simply follow Spirit's guidance as the work is done through me. At the end of my day, I’m actually energized, because it wasn’t actually me doing the work! What I also ask is “what is there for ME to know”? What will this person be teaching ME today? I was raised on a farm in Eaton Rapids, MI. My parents were very hard-working people, who raised their kids to believe that life was hard, and that you had to work very hard for everything you wanted. I actually believed this for most of my life. I recently decided to give up this belief for one that resonated with me. Today, I believe that life supports me with ease and abundance, and that I don’t have to work hard to experience joy, harmony, love and prosperity. They are already there for me, by divine right. Yet I have taken with me a very important aspect of my upbringing. I understand the value of my life lessons now, and how to apply this wisdom to my life and to the lives of others. My parents split up the chores evenly, and the boys did the “outside work” and the girls the “inside work”. Our Saturdays were spent cleaning the house, getting into the dark corners, cleaning the farmhouse top to bottom, while the boys mowed the lawns, mucked out the barns, handled the chores of our large Michigan farm. There was a lot for each person to do each Saturday morning, and we all took certain areas to work on and did not rest until our tasks were completed. In other words, we cleaned out the "stuck and dirty areas” of our farm in order to start fresh for the week. It was good training for my life’s work ahead of me and for the way I would address my own stuff. What is a stuck area? It’s the thing we’ve walked around, ignored, walked past, what we said wasn’t there, even though it was. It’s the thing we wish someone else would do FOR us, and it’s the very thing we HAVE to do for ourselves, even if we choose companionship along the way. It’s the one area of our home, office or life that we just aren’t happy with. It's that irritating thing that brings everything else good in our lives down to its level. In other words, it’s the thing we’ve left for last, and it’s what we’ve been avoiding for a very long time, which will haunt us if we ignore it further. It sits like an elephant in the middle of our living room until we just can’t take it anymore. We either drag it outside and quickly lock the door, or we coax it out, bit by bit, with treats, from the space it is taking up in our lives, convincing it to go live some other place. We finally just deal with it, box it up, shoot it, or remove the collar and let it go. It’s time to transition to our next stage, and nothing is going to stop us. As I read my journal, I could see my valiant efforts to address my own “stuck spots”. I could see me dissect things in my mind, analyze, get help, and identify it. I could see me name it, and point the finger, and forgive people about it, and yet, at the end of my journal, THERE it still was, sitting in my life. Here it is, sitting in the middle of my own living room. I get after myself and say that I’m supposed to help others, so how can I not understand how to help myself? Here's the strange thing! It’s EASY for me to help others. Someone else’ situation is always crystal clear to me, and I know just what to do! After working with a client, that client thanks me, calls me to tell me of their relief and joy after I work with them. They tell me of their new lives, and of their great outcomes. They waltz on down the path of their lives, even giving me credit for having helped them to move along. So why does my stuck area remain? Did I follow all of the steps and do the homework that I give my clients? Yes, I find I did. Did I follow my own advice? Yes, I did. So what remains? What keeps the stuck spot in the middle of my own living room, after all of this personal effort? It comes down to the HIDDEN BELIEF SYSTEMS operating in each of our lives. And I mean HIDDEN! There, tucked away in the dark places in our minds, bodies, and souls hide the Hidden Beliefs, buried deeply and operating fully, whether we know it or not. I note that I have most definitely addressed my own belief system along the way. I have reviewed every single thing I could dredge up from the depths of my soul, my liver (where emotions are kept), and my heart. I have given myself credit for all of the hard work I have done so far. Yet am I living happily ever after? It seems not quite yet. I have great compassion for my wish to be finished, because I like to complete tasks, but my work isn’t all wrapped up with a neat little bow on it, as I have hoped for. It’s a work in progress, just as it is for everyone, and I have compassion for myself now, as I do for every client and every person that I know. I’ve uncovered SOME of my hidden beliefs, and replaced them with NEW beliefs that serve me better, but there is more to do. There are many more transition points coming in my life, in the lives of everyone, and I now know...and I now realize it just never gets all done. For each person, the next layer is only now revealing itself for more scrubbing and cleaning and moving out. But I take solace in knowing that I never walk alone. I have been told by Spirit, all along my path, that I am never alone. I am always guided in gentle and kind ways to wake up, and I am succeeding in doing so, and am happy for how far I've come. I feel great compassion for the people who have crossed my path and shared this life, and for my teachers who have helped me along the way. I feel great joy in knowing we get to journey together, uncovering the things we are most afraid to look at as we begin living as the powerful Spirits we actually are. I know deep in my heart that there is something for all of us to know, within the individual areas we are here to work on. My joy is in being the voice of compassion that says out loud, “you are not alone”. It’s the journey of a lifetime, and I will say that it’s not a journey for sissies. It’s a journey of fellow Spirit’s, operating in human bodies, waking up to the fact of just how powerful we actually are! And isn’t it good to know you are never alone? My business is to be that person walking beside you, carrying a flashlight and a roadmap, armed with certainty and adventure in her heart! ***Kathryn Lengell is a Practitioner with The United Centers for Spiritual Living, and is the mother of two fabulous kids, Lizzie, 32 and Zachary who is 16. She lives in Woodinville, Washington.