KS&L 325 Can We Be Too Clean?

There is a new product called a Nano-Steamer. This newest ‘nano’ device literally goes beyond clean. It cleans your facial pores to the ‘nano’ level. This device is for those souls who have decided that you cannot be too clean and want to take it to the extreme level.

It is important to understand the meaning of the word ‘nano.’ Nanotechnology means that something is built from the molecular/atomic level up. It is important to consider that a molecule is so tiny that it cannot be seen. It is smaller than a virus or a bit of bacteria. This is the coming technology. So, back to our device: the point of this device is to clean down to the molecular level – which gives new meaning to the obsessive/compulsive need to be clean.

Can we be too clean? This may seem like an odd question when we consider that cleanliness is next to Godliness because it is a key element in removing negativity. However, it also begs the question about focusing on the minutia of life and missing the big flick altogether. Even Feng Shui discusses the need for cleanliness within balanced limits. Western culture values having things clean. This is a good thing. But again, does this issue beg the question: have we become too obsessed with being clean?

Advertising has caused to be fearful of every germ, every nano particle around us. We use thousands of products to keeps us as utterly immaculate as possible. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It is both --- and neither. Some people literally bath two to three times a day. That may be reasonable if you are a Yoga instructor and it is your job to become hot and sweaty several times a day, but for a regular person not in a hot steamy environment, bathing over 1-2 times a day may be seen as obsessive or excessive. Some new parents are terrified of all germs and keep such an immaculate house that you could do surgery on every surface. Usually that attitude changes after the second child. Reality is a practical teacher.

Back to our question: can we be too clean? What are the consequences of being super clean? Consider the following examples:

• Feng Shui discusses the concept associated with infertility. In Chinese metaphysics, a couple must have a certain amount of 'ling' under the bed. 'Ling' translates to an 'ignored bit of ordinary dust.' Couples who have a bit of that dust under their bed usually have no trouble getting pregnant. However, to more sophisticated Feng Shui practitioners this isn't just dust under the bed, it is the settling of life force, of understanding that there is nothing that is perfect and a bit of dust here and there is OK. Life force in this concept has to have a place to be. People who have no 'ling' under their bed, because it is perfect, immaculate to the point of obsessive have a terrible time getting pregnant. So, the more immaculate the location, the lower the birth rate. The higher the amounts of dust under the bed, the higher the birth rate. Third world countries are a classic example of this. We have become so focused on perfection of the immaterial, that we have forgotten to focus on literally the down to earth elements of the greater good, the balance in all things.

• Illnesses are another great example. If we are utterly immaculate on every conceivable level, we never give our immune systems an opportunity to operate. It is rather like having a Ferrari in the garage, but never driving it. However, when you need it to go, it will not work well because it has never been driven, the pipes, valves and mechanisms have not had a chance to go into action. In that scenario, our bodies can be utterly bombarded by something powerfully foreign because these bodies never had a chance to work in a normal, non-super clean world.

• “Out dammed spot!” is a focus on trying to clean an emotional problem by physically cleaning our surroundings. Like Macbeth’s wife who could not wash the blood off of her hands, we may be trying to wash away guilt, hurt, pain and anger instead of facing it directly. If our focus is perfection, we may be forgetting to have fun, enjoy our friends and family members and live a happier life. Sometimes excessive cleaning may be an issue of reconstructing the hole in the donut: meaning we are completely unable to see the larger picture.

• Children have to ‘get dirty,’ to have a normal childhood. Part of childhood is playing outside: getting sweaty, grimy, getting grass stains on our clothes and dirt on our faces. Dirt is part of having fun. We can clean up later. However, if we are never allowed to ‘be a bit dirty’ in the normal day-to-day of life, we never get to feel that supreme pleasure of enjoying childhood. The irony is that those times of getting dirty were times when our young immune systems were learning how to deal with dirt, germs, bacteria and viruses. If we grow up with our bodies never learning how to deal with those things, how will our bodies know how to keep us well?

Let us be clean, by all means, but let us also be wise and not become alarmed with a bit of dust here and there. Balance in all things – wait – let us be ‘nano-balanced’ in all things: balanced right down to our very molecular/subatomic level.

KS&L 311 House Creep Part 2

Surely this is a no-brainer: you are the House Creep and you are creating House Creep and you are the reason your house feels creepy! What a concept!

Bet you are wondering what this has to do with karma. Karma is all about balance. When you are the Creep and you feel creepy because of the house creep around you, physically, emotionally and spiritually, you are radically out of balance. Being out of balance puts you in a place of not being at ease, or being “not ease”, or the correct grammar is: in dis-ease. This is where illness begins. This is where you feel that tiny pieces of you are unraveling. It starts slowly at first, but then it builds. More and more negative things also happen both at work and at home and the feeling of being powerless begins to ‘creep’ into your consciousness. Finances also increasingly become problematic.

Things aren’t going well anywhere. You are late to work, late coming home, behind in your bills, not the friend you want to be and chronically tired. It is very difficult to have a restful sleep in chaos.

You feel as if you are behind the power curve and nothing in your life is working, all from a bit of creep.

Take charge by deciding that while you may not be able to change many things about your life, you can definitely change yourself so decide to be different! Take a day off from work and start to take your life back.

• Begin your life change in your kitchen, by cleaning it from top to bottom. Vow: clean up your kitchen every single night before you go to bed. A few dishes are manageable. You will now come down to an immaculate kitchen and start your day out right. The night before, pack a lunch and identify your breakfast for the next day – if you have a spouse and kids, this will pay huge dividends. Delegate to them: one person does dishes, one person dries and puts away and one person packs lunches.

• Next, clean your den/living room. Identify a place for new magazines and catalogs. Recycle the old ones. If you look at a new catalog and you know you will never use it, recycle it immediately.

• Analyze your home office area. Collect all of your mail from your car. Bring it into your office and vow that you will never open mail in the car again. From now on, you will bring the mail in and put it in your ‘to do’ basket. Schedule desk time/bills times. Do them once a month. This will save overdue fees and frustration throughout the month and ultimately give you more free time and a much cleaner car! A cleaner car, inside and out requires fewer repairs.

• Your bedroom needs to be your sanctuary. Find a place for some outside-your-closet hooks. One is for nightclothes, one is for clothes you just took off and one is for lounge clothes. Nothing will ever just go on the floor again. Your dog will have to use his own bed. Have a laundry hamper and put dirty clothes there. This system will save time in the morning so that you always know where things are. When you go to change clothes at the end of the day it takes the same amount of energy to put things away as it does to put them on the floor. The time you will have saved in the morning will be well worth it. Upon awakening in the morning, take a few seconds to disappoint your cat: make your bed! Imagine coming into a real sanctuary that is neat and ready to welcome you!

• Once a week or so, go around your house and just pick up and put away things that are out of place.
• Once a quarter, do your garage. Keep it neat. Tools will then always be available when you need them. Check out your car as well, keeping it cleaned out. Wash your car once a week if you can, at least once a month if you can’t. Every now and then, take your car in for just a checkup to preclude major repairs.
• Check your yard now and then for things to be put away, the condition of plants and the condition of your home as well. If repairs need to be made, schedule them.
• Take some time to de-clutter your office at work, as well. Often the first impression anyone gets from you is your desk and if it is a disaster, really, is that the message you want to send about the kind of professional you are?

The payback from this is that you will feel completely in charge of your life. Cleanliness is next to Godliness because it gets rid of negativity. De-cluttering your life will make room for new things to come to you. You have to make a path for light to find you and if it is horribly cluttered, filled with the daily soot of house creep, you will be invisible to the good things that can come. Become beautifully visible to all that life has to offer and you will begin to always feel at ease and blessedly karmically balanced!

KS&L 310 House Creep Part 1

Everyone is living very busy lives these days and managing a house of any size is a challenge. The busier you are, the more easily House Creep can begin to take over.

House Creep is that unseen, unheard, unnoticed take-over of things in anyone’s house [or yard, or car or office] by – well, the House Creep. House Creep is a feeling, a person, an action and a sense. It starts everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time. So, let us examine a typical day and see what and how this is.

You wake up, begin to do hair, makeup or, shave and then dress. You are busy, so you don’t make your bed. You stumble over the shoes you took off from the night before, as you look for a scarf or tie a to wear. You have to rummage through a pile of clothes to find it, desperately wishing that you had put it away, the last time you used it. You can’t remember if the clothes on the pile are clean or dirty. Can’t find what you are looking for, so you pick out something else. You almost trip on the wet towels from last night. You are now late, so you hurriedly remove your nightclothes and they drop to the floor. Your dog smiles at you and curls up in your nightclothes, happy to find a still warm bed that smells delightfully like you.

As you dash into the kitchen for a quick breakfast there are dishes in the sink from last night’s broiled fish. Lovely scent that is! Well, you’re too busy to clean that up now. Gulp down tea or coffee, swallow yogurt or a breakfast bar and off you go to the car. More dishes left in the sink.

Your car smells like the previous day’s sour coffee, left over from yesterday morning when you had no time at all for breakfast. As you throw you briefcase in the passenger’s seat, you notice the mail you forgot to bring in the house last week. To your horror, you notice that your credit card bill is due. Have to take care of that later.

You toss your breakfast bar wrapper on the floor of your car and hurry into work. Your desk Creep greets you: the paper piles precariously perched in such a threatening way are cause for concern. Heaven help you if you have an earthquake, you’ll never find anything again!

You return home at the end of the day, exhausted from the work pace and the clutter that surrounds you and everyone else you work with. You plop down in a chair and turn on TV. However, you cannot enjoy your TV show, because you smell sour milk. Finally you realize that that smell is coming from the glass on the table next to you that you didn’t finish before you went to bed. You couldn’t find it at first because it was covered with newspapers.

You go upstairs to put on something comfortable and you drop your clothes on the floor, too exhausted to determine whether they are clean or dirty. Once on the floor, though, they are going to smell like dirty clothes for sure, especially after the dog nests in them.

Time to make supper, so you have to clean up last night’s dishes to even get to the sink. You wipe away the ants who have invaded the fish smell. You decide that you have to do better because it is no fun to live like this. There are piles of papers everywhere, there is just ‘stuff’ all over the place whether it is magazines, newspapers, overcoats, sweat pants, smelly work out clothes and mats, possibly toys and on and on. You can’t remember the last time that any of your counters, your car or heaven help you, your garage were clean.

If you have a spouse and kids, you also have multiple House Creep and creeps. Add to this mix, your animals. Didn’t make your bed? Maybe your cat left you a hairball as a present on your pillow. Cats, bless them, do that.

As the House Creep escalates, you find that your house feels dirtier and messier, and you feel like you have less and less time. As a subtle sense of loss of control grows, you find you are becoming increasingly irritable with the creepy way your life looks to you and you are not at all happy with your finances. AARGH! Time to kick the Creep out!

Part 2: removing the Creep!