Un-Cluttering My Life

By Satya Sarada Kandula A Wanderer and A Seeker

This book grew out of an experiment to remove the clutter from my life. 2

All kinds of clutter, stuff, tasks, thoughts and so on.

It shares the interesting things I found.

These results were first published on my blog ancientindians.wordpress.com.

Now, they are presented with a little formatting and a little editing.

This work is protected by traditional copyright. 3

All Rights Reserved.

Satya Sarada Kandula 30th Nov

Un-cluttering Space
Stuff is wealth. We work hard to acquire stuff. Suddenly there is stuff everywhere and no space left. Stuff that was wealth is now junk! Space is wealth. To acquire space, we must get rid of stuff. We must leave gaps between stuff. We have to give away some stuff and throw away some stuff that no one will take off our hands. It took me months to regain space from stuff!

Un-cluttering Time
In comparison, it was easier un-cluttering my room. I moved stuff out, threw/gave stuff away and spent months re-organising the house. The next step is to un-clutter ones day. There are the must-do-s. Cleaning, Cooking, Exercising, Giving Time to loved ones and so on. I also wish to read and sing and travel and so on. Since the 24 hours a day are fixed, what can be tossed out of ones day? TV, movies, seeing the same movies over and over again.

Perfectionism. Sacrifice perfect cleanliness and cooking over-ambitious meals.

Dont suffocate people with time and attention. They also need some time to themselves right?

Facebook and Chat. Data connectivity on phone means, people can and will reach out to me any time, and I am so tempted to engage with all my friends, all day long. If people have to come all the way home to see me, only neighbours will be left. Facebook represents my desire to be in touch with my friends all the time to share thoughts and events as they occur. That desire could be limited to say half an hour every afternoon or

something. What Ive done is shifted to 2G on my phone. This makes FB a frustrating experience it never 10 loads. I hope this will eventually act as a deterrent! To un-clutter a room, we increase the space between things. To un-clutter a day, we increase the time interval between two events. This may be contrary to high achievement, which is doing much in ones life span because in the rest intervals all you will be doing is breathing, digesting and so on. Just as un-cluttered space requires few possessions maybe of high value, un-

cluttered days can mean few achievements but of great value! 11 Very interestingly, that is what the universe is doing also. It is increasing space-time from nothing to huge-beyondcomprehensible. So there is a lot of space between stars and other stuff. Many Possessions and Many Achievements/Experiences and Clutter are often linked together. While there are a few people who can handle free space, there are very few people who can handle time. That is why the phrase killing-time and time-pass. However they do wish to have as long a life or time on earth as possible.

Surprising?

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Un-cluttering Mind
One of the disadvantages of interacting with random human beings you have never met over the internet alone is that they have no idea how deeply their behaviour or words are hurting you or disturbing you. A few are malicious and deliberately hurtful, but many are unintentionally hurtful. Their words show that they have only heard what is already in their head and not what you are saying. God has not yet gifted them with logical thinking, memory or analytical capabilities. They can only say and do what their brains

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have been programmed or hard-wired to do, by nature and nurture. 14 At the root of my expression is a desire to be heard and understood and every interaction shows that people do not indulge in careful contemplation of my words. They only hear what has already entered their minds through other channels. When I am thus hurt and disturbed, the pain rankles around like an echo in an empty room and gets amplified, because of the space and time carefully created in my life. Thus, it becomes necessary to withdraw from internet-interactions (that means from people who do not see me as a person).

Krishna said that, for a competent person, the greatest pain is the pain of being misunderstood or being considered 15 incompetent. When people seek to advise or correct me, not having paid careful attention to what I write, it hurts me, because I see the futility of my effort in expression and at the same time it is evident that they are advising me since they consider me incompetent. People will not change. They are not obliged to. Out of inability or for political reasons, they will stick with their views. So I need to limit my interactions. I have disabled comments on my blog-posts and gained a lot of time. I may not deactivate my

facebook account this time, but I will cease activity for a while at least. 16 No facebook posts means no checking to see who has responded to my words. This will also help un-clutter my day. Un-cluttering my room, helps to un-clutter my day. There is less stuff to dust and take care of! Un-cluttering my day helps to soothe my feelings. Calmness will help me think clearly and un-clutter my thoughts.