--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > TurquoiseB wrote: > > > > Packing up one's stuff is debilitating. You learn > > very quickly how much of your stuff owns you, as > > opposed to vice-versa. I've got eight boxes of books > > just on the Cathars and medieval stuff! Teaches one > > a bit about attachment. > > Oh I can really relate to this. When I bought my house > 7 years ago I got rid of tons of stuff in my apartment. > I couldn't believe it could hold all of that.
Tell me about it. > Still boxes of crap moved with me as I am a low energy > kind of guy and it took about a month for me to get > ready for the move which might take the average person > a week. I've had to deal with it as if I were really a professional at my profession. Because of the timing of the leases, I have to move in the middle of a product deadline, which are sacro- sanct to me. I just don't *miss* deadlines. I never have, and if I have any say about my life, I never will. So I've had to juggle my move with about 300-400 pages of new documentation; the release is that radical. (The next one is even more so, from an in-house GUI to Eclipse.) So I've been forced to do what I rarely do -- plan ahead. I've had to squeeze the packing into the off moments from my work schedule. It makes it a tad less painful, BTW. You get to spread out the packing time over time, as you did. > Now I've been spending this summer "downsizing" so my house > is very minimalist except for things that aren't that big > a deal to move or get rid of during a move including the > 53" HDTV which I would sell at a bargain price and replace > it with a new one. Zen is good. As far as I can tell, there really is a value to spartan. > I'm not ready to move but it would just be nice to have less > clutter. Thing is I'm a creative person and creative people > are not known for anal retentiveness. What's that old saw? > "A clean house is the sign of a wasted mind" or something > like that. Another variant of this olde saw is, "Occultists often have messy houses; Zennists rarely do." It's not a status thing, just a Castanedan first attention thing. As much as I might tend towards messy, given no rein on my predilections, I've actually found that the atates of attention I frequent most often have a lot to do with how impeccable my house is. If I've got boxes piled up in storage, still not dealt with, that's how my mind looks. I tried to get away with this shit for decades, but in the end I found that it didn't really work for me. Some part of my attention was always in those boxes in storage, and I couldn't let go of it until I let go of the boxes. Your mileage may vary. > My garage has a wall lined with boxes from my move 7 years > ago. Someday I will start sorting those. Everytime my > garage door is open the neighbors wince but I don't know > why. I can park my car in my garage and theirs is so full > of stuff they can't. :) Different kinds of stuff. I still remember the day I took all my TM-related stuff to the dumpster. Suffice it to say that the walk back was lighter than the walk there. And, even though the Rama guy had suggested this exer- cise, when I did it with *his* stuff a decade and a half later, it felt *just* as liberating, so I think it may have actually been good advice on his part. > And these days in the US you just can't throw stuff into > the trash can. Tell me about it. Cleaning out my storage locker in Santa Fe and deciding what to send to Europe and what not was a real *trip*, man. Not only did I have to factor into the scenario the weight and physical size of the objects, but the viability of getting *rid* of them if I decided not to send them. Good Will and the Salvation Army in Santa Fe only take certain shit -- shit they approve the smell of -- and only at certain hours of the day. I plead guilty to dumping some of my unwanted stuff in condo dumpsters. :-) > No, no, no, it has to be all sorted out and then you have > to shred anything that has any personal info on it. That > really slows down the process. If you put stuff on the > sidewalk for free it usually justs sits there until the > cops come along and tell you to move it. That's one of the cool things about living in a relatively nice but also relatively poor area of France. The people here, whether they work or they are on the dole, are on the whole 'way past feeling bad about seeing something they need on the side of the street and taking it home. They *appreciate* being able to take it home. It makes "move recycling" so much more fun. > I know my neighbors tried that and it didn't work. I often > see people putting out old computers and monitors for free > trying to avoid the $25 charge per unit for disposal. I hear it's more like that in Spain. After having been down there only a couple of weeks, I was lamenting the absence of flea markets to a friend. He told me that in Spain people would -- on the whole -- be ashamed to buy anything that had been used because they'd be perceived as Gypsies. I had honestly never realized the extent of the Gypsy backlash in Spain until that moment. I *like* flea markets. I rarely buy anything, but I just love the rare things I fall in love with and have to buy. It's like they are there seeking a new incarnation, and I just happen to be the ferryboat captain across the Styx that day. So I also don't mind contributing my old objects into that same circus, one way or another. If another person finds joy in something I found joy in, I say 'way cool. I have no problems with this, and thank the stars for laws that make it possible *to* re- cycle in such a manner easily. > The spiritual angle on this is interesting as I know both > packrats and spartans who are on spiritual paths. Ayurveda > can frequently explain this as the spartan folks are > usually the vata types and the packrats kapha (or are > running these imbalances). I'm glad *something* can explain it. Me, I'm just stuck with being the kinda mover I am. If it hasn't proven its value in my spiritual and worldly sadhana since the last move, it probably isn't going to. Let it go. What Ayurvedic thingy would that make me?
