Unclutter Your Mind (repost)

This is one of my early Tao postings, from November 2004.

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Beginners acquire new theories and techniques until their minds are cluttered with options.

Advanced students forget their many options. They allow the theories and techniques that they have learned to recede into the background.

Learn to unclutter your mind. Learn to simplify your work.

As you rely less and less on knowing what to do, your work will become more direct and more powerful. You will discover that the quality of your consciousness is more potent than any technique or theory or interpretation.

Learn how fruitful the blocked group or individual suddenly becomes when you give up trying to do just the right thing.

Tao of Leadership

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I think a lot of people are running around with cluttered minds these days. We worry about what to do about the direction the country has taken, we worry about how best to deal with personal situations in our lives, we worry about work, way too much. Perhaps the way to unclutter our minds is to stop worrying and start taking more direct action. Talk to the people around you, find out their real concerns and help them find some answers. Take your own problems and solve the ones you can, without worrying about whether you are creating the optimum solution. Get out of your head for a while and take a walk somewhere full of nature.

For me, my uncluttering spot is in my garden. I go outside and wander in the garden for a bit, and find myself feeling better about things. No matter what worries and concerns I have, they are small compared to a day full of sunshine and flowers and growing things. It helps living in San Diego where I can almost always count on a beautiful sunny day.

I think Americans really have a disease about getting things right, though. We want to live in the right house, drive the right car, send our kids to the right schools, live the right moral values. Yeah, sure we do. But how many people do you know who are simply happy with their lives? How many don’t worry about having enough money, even though we are among the richest people on the planet? Do you hear many people saying, “I have enough, I think I’ll just relax this year and not work too much?” No, we just go on with our disease, not realizing that if we stopped caring about having the right things and living the right way, our lives would be so much easier and better.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to focus on what is left. What’s left of my life, where I would like to go, what I would like to see, how I would like to live. Not what other people think is right, or even what I may think is right, but the things that are left out of most people’s lives. Beauty, simplicity, artful living instead of filling our houses with cheap crap. Time spent learning and growing instead of watching TV or spending yet another day working at jobs we hate to buy more stuff we don’t need. Why can’t America be about spreading fun and laughter instead of spreading war and trying to control everything? We have enough, people. Let’s learn to enjoy it, instead of wanting more. Unclutter our minds, our houses, our lives, and let’s learn to live again. Let’s share a new American dream – one about making life fulfilling again instead of filling our gas tanks, bellies, and houses full of crap.