If you can’t see the room for the objects in it, the chances are this is reflected in your life. And even if you can, it’s worth checking to see whether the objects are in the right place and bringing you the most luck.  Ralph and Lahni De Amicis explain why cluttered rooms invite dysfunction and give practical remedies to invite benevolent ch’i into your living space, and by extension, your life

In the course of life we gather things together. These are the objects we need for our daily life, our comfort, our work and to reinforce our connections with others. ‘Things’ are a part of life and, supposedly, each has its purpose and place. Life is fluid and ‘things’ come and go but when they come and don’t go problems arise, with rooms filling up and life losing its focus. 

There is the clutter of the room and the clutter of the soul and they are intrinsically linked. When you see stagnant accumulations of junk appearing in a room, it can represent trapped fear or pain in the person’s life. These feelings tend to immobilise a person and make them resist change.

When we resist change we enter the dreaded land of procrastination! Clutter is a way of dragging your heals to slow down the arrival of the future. When you clean out your closets and corners, you’re free to embrace new opportunities. But what if you’re not too hopeful about what’s ahead? Don’t worry, there’s a way to change that program!

There are three steps to eliminating clutter. The first one is simple and practical but the next two are interrelated and require a bit more understanding of how the universe is woven together and how we wear it.

The first step is to make sure that nothing is blocking the entrance way, or stopping the door from opening as completely as it was designed to do. Remove anything hanging from the back of the door or jammed into the narrow space behind it. Imagine you’re entering the room wearing a flowing, open weave robe.

Are there any furniture corners near or pointing at you that could snag that gauzy fabric? If there are, they will snag your aura so rearrange them to allow a more emotionally comfortable entrance.

Also, avoid having any chair-backs facing the door since that is read by the person entering as a hand being held up telling them to halt! A chair facing the door is read as the open and welcoming hand. (This is an important thing to know when setting up a sales office.)

It’s helpful to think of the ch’i energy flowing into the room as a stream of water. If the flow is reduced to a trickle by a cramped entrance way, you are very limited as to what you can do with it. If the flow is slow, some areas may, dry out, starved of energy. In other areas, murky energetic puddles may form, which causes anxiety. Is that really something you want happening in your living room?

The next key is something that many practitioners have spoken about – creating a strong focus for the eye when you first enter the room. While this is an important factor in itself when your aim is reducing clutter and procrastination, there is an additional refinement that needs to be considered. Why is that eye focus so important? When we walk through a door, our aura is compressed. When we step inside the room, the aura springs out and ‘reads’ the room. Whatever message it receives creates a unique reaction.

This reaction is an energetic pattern that the aura paints on the entrance way. If there is no strong focus for the eyes they’ll stay in motion, scanning and searching for a reference point. The fight or flight reflex stays active and this highly charged anxiety-fraught signature is transmitted. Everyone who follows in this pathway will feel it and certain automatic reactions will take place. One of the reactions is to empty the hands.

This is why piles of things tend to accumulate on the furniture nearest to the door. Another reaction is to move quickly through the room to a safer haven. This means you never spend relaxed time in the room to infuse it with your nurturing energy. You don’t want to spend the time there to put it in order.

People are very easy to program, entire cultures are programmed by the advertising on their televisions. The first thing you see when you enter a room programs you, so if there is no clear focus, you feel unfocused. That’s a euphemism for messy! When you spend a lot of time in that space, your life is infused with that unfocused energy.

So place a strong focus for your eyes when you first walk into every room. But while that will create more focus in your life, it will not necessarily eliminate accumulation and procrastination.What will? That’s the third step, placing that focus in the correct spot!

Here we get into sorting the strands that make up the fabric of our universe. Our environments are reflections of our physical and energetic body as we are creations of proportion and dimension. There are two especially important measurements at work here. One relates to whether we choose to hold onto things or share things and this is determined by the difference between the left and right sides of the body.

The left side is where we hold onto things. It’s where our stomach gathers food, our spleen gathers energy and where we feel the emotions that come from our hearts. When you hold a new baby you place their head over your left breast so they feel the beating of your heart. If the focus for your eyes is to the left side of the room or to the left of your body, the room tends to hold onto stuff and that means you’ll hold onto the past. This is why rooms with entrance doors on the left side tend to become more cluttered and chaotic.

“Choose the images or objects for your focus well. They are your instructions to the universe so don’t be timid, be optimistic.”

Paradox

Here’s a little paradox to ponder. Often, very profitable businesses deliberately have their entrances left of centre. This is partly because the focus landing on the left side of the space means that they are able to accumulate profit and increasing business. On another level a left of centre entrance tends to encourage innovation. Put that together with the tendency to accumulate and you understand the expression: “In chaos there is profit”. However, if you don’t want your home looking like a discount store, change your focus.

The right side of the body is where we find the liver and gallbladder. These are organs that transform and share the resources. It’s the social side of the body and the right hand that we offer in greeting. It’s the future side of the body because the transformation of others from strangers to friends is a movement into the future.

If your environment is overstuffed and you feel stuck in the past, place the focuses on the right side of the room and definitely to the right of your body. Your eyes and ears project energy. Where that energy goes is significant. When you gather the light energy that pours from your eyes and splash it in the direction that your body reads as the future, walking that pathway becomes much easier. Locking onto things that hold you in the past becomes less appealing.

The other important dimension is the height of the body. There is the head, the torso and the legs. The mind is concerned with the future, the heart and stomach with the present, and the knees and feet with what was accomplished in the past. The height at which you place that strong focus for your eyes determines which part of your life you concentrate on.

This is why moving into a new home can be so disruptive; everything is on the floor, or leaning against the wall. As long as it stays there, you stay stuck reliving your past choices. If you want to get on with life, put up your pictures first. That will increase the energetic flow on the higher levels; the present and future.

We’re great believers in placing the focus at heart level. That keeps you comfortably in the present and moving towards the future. In general, placing pictures and reflective surfaces at heart level helps keep love an active element of your life.

Physiologically, if the focus is low, the head has to dip and the spine has to bend to observe it. This decreases the optimal flow of electrical energy up the spine. In businesses, it’s wise to place the focus at eye level to encourage people to stand straighter, feel more poised and clearly pointed towards the future.

Choose the images or objects for your focus well. What you read is what you’ll write! They are your instructions to the universe so don’t be timid, be optimistic. Decide what part of your life you want to focus on. You have the choice of me or we, and the decision to live in the past, present, or future.

Put the image where you decide you need it. Then maybe nudge it just a little higher and to the right, in case you’re underestimating what you deserve. Courage, the barricades of the self, melt away when the pathways to the future are assured.

FSML’s top ten tips for de cluttering your life:

1. Know the difference between storage and clutter.
2. Never have anything blocking the entrance way. Keep it wide, open and clear. Nothing should impede the flow of ch’i coming into the house.
3. Ensure the energy flow through all your living spaces is good. Too many nooks and crannies will cause obstacles to your flow. Be sensitive to how you are being made to move within your space.
4. Always place a strong focus for your eyes when you first enter the room.
5. Dissolve the sha ch’i of cluttered open shelves by clearing the clutter and covering them so that no poison arrows are emitted.
6. Try to arrange furniture in such a way that minimises seats backing the doorway or windows. Keeping seats against solid walls gives everyone an increased sense of security.
7. Get rid of things which no longer have meaning or value to you. You cannot carry your entire life on your back, so be brave and start clearing.
8. Art is food for the soul, choose images and settings that have personal resonance for you.
9. Change clutter into organised systems. Discard what is not necessary and then organise what is left. Information has
no meaning unless it is organised.
10. Do not ignore clutter in lofts (representing your future) or basements (representing your past).