This morning, in a hurry and late for
train I saw something out corner of my eye that stopped me cold and had me running for broom. Right next to chair in front of my faux fireplace sat three very tiny, very fresh rat, er… let’s call them raisins. Anybody who knows me knows that I have a borderline phobia about vermin in general and rats and mice in particular. The very sight of one tiny mouse would have my 230 pound frame up on bed not willing to come down until I was sure that it was gone. I’ve always known that there were rats in my house but I’ve been willing to ignore them (i.e. pretend they weren’t there), but these rat raisins revealed very real presence of one of my biggest fears.
No doubt about it: it was time to clean house. It was time to clear my space of anything that a rodent could eat or live in. My sloppy living habits were keeping me from living a clean, healthy lifestyle, and this paralleled my spiritual “house” as well.
After all cleaning and laundering and sweeping was done, my room looked halfway decent, but I knew that rats were still “out there” somewhere. Action had to be taken to see to it that no rat would ever find my domicile comfortable enough to live in again. I made a list of things to do and before I knew it I had a plan. I noticed that with a slight adjustment, plan could be used to clean up my life; my spiritual “house”.
This is blueprint I used to clean house, both spiritually and physically.
1.Admit that I have rats: Those “raisins” by my chair were evidence that I had rats; just as certain behaviors and attitudes I harbored were evidence that I had “rats” of negativity in my life. Despair and loneliness, as well as a host of other negative feelings were evidence that there was something gnawing away at me spiritually. The first step to sweeping away filth of my personal rats was to not close my eyes to evidence.
2.See What Needs to be Done: My next order of business was to do something to clean up my room. After admitting that there were rat raisins, I looked around and saw that I also had cobwebs in corners, and also dust on all surfaces, a refrigerator that needed cleaning and a myriad of other things that needed doing.
I sat down and made a list. One by one I examined my room and wrote down what was wrong with it. By doing this I could see exactly what needed to be done. In same way, I could make a list of things in my life that are wrong and see exactly what needs to be done with that.
