Lunchtime musings: Clutter and the processing of ... stuff

While I’m sitting on my balcony with my lunch bowl, enjoying the autumn sun, my gaze falls onto my opposite neighbour’s balcony.
It belongs to a lady who moved in a few months ago. Since she spends a lot of time moving things to and from her balcony right opposite mine, I couldn’t avoid watching her from time to time.

There was A LOT of - what looks to my eyes - clutter. Old blankets, broken stuff, plastic flower bouquets, broken kitchen appliances.

Sometimes she would move things, sort things out and clean up the space, only to fill it up with new old stuff.

I talked to her briefly (more shouting friendly words from one balcony to the other while the sound of traffic interrupting the conversation). She seems like a very kind and lovely person.

So while I’m sitting here with my lunch, I’m contemplating the chaos… From a Feng Shui point of view this would likely count as clutter (well, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, by all means!).
But as a therapist I wonder: what is this brave woman processing? She seems to process a lot of stuff - only to clear out and bring in more stuff to process… What is her history, her story?

Clutter / stuff is so much more than just… well, material objects. Its a reflection of what we accept into our lives, our energy field.

We all have clutter. Our clutter can be old, broken, dirty stuff, it can be unpaved bills, digital clutter on our devices, clothes we dont wear, magazines we never read, mind clutter… you name it.

One of my teachers, Karen Kingston, has written her famous book ‘Clear your clutter with Feng Shui’ about it and many have followed her with their own books, TV shows and advise.

While I do help people to clear their clutter, I have also realised over the years that clutter stands for something deeper which more often than not needs to be looked at more closely.

Clutter represents our shadow. It makes out shadow visible. The shadow we want to hide. That we are ashamed of. It shows that we are not perfect. And there it is, visible to all, in the form of our clutter.

Thats why clutter is such a shameful subject…

Instead of hitting yourself over the head with that big shame hammer, I rather suggest to make yourself a nice cup of tea and sit with it. Contemplate your clutter without immediately jumping into action (or avoidance). Sit with it. Watch it. Observe yourself: what comes up? Breathe… Sip your tea.

And eventually, when the time is ripe, you could decide to take action. But please, be kind with yourself about it! Have patience with yourself.

Finding the right colours for the North-East sector

One of the trickier bits during a Feng Shui consultation is to find a perfect colour match for spaces that encompass the North / North-East and East sectors within one room.

See, pithing the 5 Element theory we have the Nourishing cycle:

WATER -> WOOD -> FIRE -> EARTH -> METAL.

The Controlling cycle:

WOOD -> WATER -> METAL -> EARTH -> FIRE

and the Destructive cycle:

WATER -> FIRE -> METAL -> WOOD -> EARTH

While the North sector stands for the WATER Element and the East sector for WOOD (which follows the WATER), we suddenly have the Yang EARTH Element of the North-East in-between.

And since EARTH is in conflict with both Elements WATER and WOOD, what do we do?

I have asked this question to my various Feng Shui teachers over the years and never really gotten a satisfying answer from any of my teachers. So this is what I came up with:

North-East sector / KEN / Yang EARTH, The Mountain

The North-East sector (KEN, the Youngest Son / Mountain) forms the lower end of the Tao line that connects the Yang and the Yin part. The upper part ends in the South-West sector of K’UN, The Mother and Yin EARTH sector.

KEN is also known as ‘The Mountain’ and represents the youngest son of the 8 Trigram family. He stands for Wisdom, Knowledge, Self-Development and Study. The time on the clock is 3am and his sector stands for early spring.

You could picture KEN sitting in deep meditation on the top of a mountain in a remote place of the Himalaya. On the far horizon, being so high up, you can start to get a glimpse of dusk. The night sky slowly merging with the very early morning light. Picture soft pastel colours such as a soft yellow, pink, slightly green and light blue. The space is very quiet, crisp and clean.

Recommended colours for the NE sector

These are the colours and the atmosphere that I often recommend for this sector. Through the softness the colours feel like they are merging the WATER, EARTH and WOOD Elements in one room very nicely. The colours also go well with the rather cool morning light that shines through the windows of a North-East sector.