This blog post about “mental house cleaning” is written by Reverend Jeanne Hoffman. Rev. Jeanne spoke these words during her Creative Talk in the month of January at the Center for Spiritual Living Granada Hills.
Ernest Holmes said: “Your final emancipation will be written by your own hand.”
That is the good news and the bad news! I have to get started! And what better time to do that than now?
I just love the month of January. It represents Beginners’ Mind – a fresh start, a new year, a new book filled with plenty of blank pages and a clean white canvas ready for new tubes of paint…..
It is also a time for me to begin cleaning. Not just early spring cleaning, but the most important cleaning I ever do: the cleaning of my mind and my thoughts.
Something that is a helpful gift to me is to be on a retreat of some kind. A retreat where there is plenty of silence, and I am a “retreat-ant,” not the facilitator. It helps me keep my cup overflowing and gives Creativity free reign.
I am doubly blessed this January! Last weekend I did a poetry retreat with David Whyte at Asilomar, and, yesterday, I did a contemplative writing workshop in San Gabriel. Beautiful spaces with beautiful people, accessing what is deep and good within, lifting thoughts and often changing them.
What would you think if you were only one thought away from changing your life? Here and now I declare that January is my month for mental house cleaning.
I’m ready to sweep, scrub and flush away the thoughts that linger in the recesses of my mind that negate my life,
AND
I am ready to allow my creative self, my true self, to throw caution to the wind, ignore what is tried and true, and express something untried and maybe not yet true! (But then I won’t know that until I try…!)
Miles Davis said, ”Play the notes that are not there!”
And Audrey Hepburn said, “Nothing is impossible; the word itself says, I’m possible!”
January is my month to hit the refresh button and remember that my true nature is creative; I cleanse every thought from my mind that keeps me imprisoned when it whispers in my inner ear that I cannot do or be what I am called to do or to be.
I invite you to join me by mixing unlikely colors on your canvas and writing words of praise, love, and compassion on the pages of our own hearts, our own lives, those blank pages offered to us for this new year.
Please repeat after me – with resounding vigor and enthusiasm:
“I am possible!”
“I matter!”
“I surrender to the beautiful Creation within me!”
“The Universe only says yes!”
And so it is!
This post is a Five Minute Talk presented on a Sunday morning or Wednesday night at the Granada Hills Center for Spiritual Living. Talks are given by Licensed CSL Practitioners who invest at least four years in learning and applying these concepts and ideas in their daily life. For more topics like this one, please join us at our Center for one of our Sunday services or for our Wednesday evening service at 7 PM.
Photo by Eric Ferdinand on Flickr. Some Rights Reserved.
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