SpaceClear Reflections

It’s Only Weather

Posted on07. Sep, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.” –Pema Chodron
I often use the metaphor of the weather to teach a key principle of letting go I call spacious detachment. It tickled me to see it being used in the very same way by a world-renown Buddhist teacher.
Enjoy this beauty of a message:

How to [...]

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Starting Over

Posted on31. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

September. It’s my favorite month of the year.
More than just it being one of the most beautiful and bountiful months in New England where I live, September has always been a time of shift and new beginnings…
An invitation to show up, regroup, renew, start over.
But you don’t need to wait until September or New Year’s [...]

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Remembering

Posted on27. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

I came across this poem recently tucked deep in a file on my computer I called “Remembering.” I know nothing about the author Jonathan Leavy,* or how this poem found me. It must have been one of those emails that went around the block a few times. Written on the morning of the famous 2004 [...]

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The Spacious Ways of Lincoln and Einstein

Posted on24. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“Once we change the very way we see, we may begin to experience the connections that tie us all together.” –Lynne McTaggart
What do Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, William James,Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Schweitzer have in common?
Lynne McTaggart, author of The Field answers this question in a blog post entitled “Transcending the [...]

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The Truth of You

Posted on13. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Beautiful video. Gorgeous images. Timeless wisdom.
Use the flaws  (i.e. misspellings) as another opportunity to observe attachment and… let it go!
Passion. Not perfection.

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Managing the Mountain of Mail (or Whatever Burdens You)

Posted on30. Jul, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Another good question came the other day:
I am following your practice of clearing one item each day. My question for you is what about the stuff that comes into your home- like mail? I can never seem to get through it and it piles up – then if I clear only one thing, a [...]

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One-Minute Clearing Practice

Posted on16. Jul, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Try this experiment: Watch the 3-minute video below and see if adopting a simple daily practice in home tending doesn’t help bring new energy into your home and  life.
Even better: Set an intention before you begin your one-minute practice and repeat the exercise every day for a week. See if it doesn’t lead to creating new openings in [...]

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Expanding and Contracting

Posted on13. Jul, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

I adore this line by the poet Rumi:
“Your deepest presence is in every small contraction and expansion, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.”
As it relates to clearing the clutter in our lives, it resonates so much for me. So I went online and found the poem. Enjoy!
Birdwings
“Your grief for what you’ve lost lifts a [...]

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Living the Answers

Posted on25. May, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

This is the last in a series of posts on reinventing ourselves,* excerpted from Your Spacious Self. Enjoy!
Quitting the career and job that defined me for two decades detailed in the last three posts* led to a long period of fumbling in a foggy netherworld I call not knowing. I still find myself visiting that [...]

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Coming Clear: Confessions of a Packrat

Posted on11. May, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“I want to shed my waste with quiet reverence like the pine…
Keep me mindful of what I take into my home, the items brought to substitute
for real living…Help me slowly to surrender all excess.”
–Gunilla Norris, Being Home
I’m a packrat.
There, I said it.
Yes, squirreled away in the dark recesses of my house I still have boxes [...]

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Gathering Your Clearing Mojo

Posted on23. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

What needs gathering in your home or life that you can do in one minute or less?
My spring newsletter might inspire you.  The theme this quarter is about “gathering” – as in loose ends, all those papers cluttering up your desk, the clothes that you no longer need or love…
Gathering steam… gathering your self.
Click [...]

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Love, Earth

Posted on22. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Hugh MacLeod is a cartoonist with a beautiful, if quirky message. I subscribe to his daily cartoon blog: Gapingvoid.
Below is his message for today. Happy Earth Day everyone!
“Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Volcanic Eruptions, She may not be happy right now, but she’s all we’ve got.
Let’s take care of her.”
–From Gapingvoid
Cartoon image: “Love Earth” by Hugh MacLeod, available for [...]

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Simple Rituals of Clearing and Letting Go

Posted on12. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“To the unconscious mind, ‘real life action’ and and ‘conscious intentional ritual’ are the same thing!” –Your Spacious Self
If you think of dreams as the way that your unconscious mind communicates to you in special symbolic code while you sleep, ritual is one way you can consciously communicate back to your unconscious while you’re awake. To [...]

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Lost and Found in Letting Go

Posted on06. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“An organized clutter of thoughts consumed me – pulled me through the fog of grief that had settled….and then the memorial was done.  There was nothing left to organize, nothing left to do…” –Reflections from a reader
Recently I was invited to guest-blog for a week on DrGreene.com. As part of my series on “cultivating spacious detachment,” [...]

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Extreme Clearing vs. The Slow-Drip Effect

Posted on02. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“Change happens slowly, then all at once.” – Unknown
Thanks to Mother Nature and major flooding in our area, we got a head start clearing the junk in our basement this year. Not easy. Not pretty. Not ideal. This form of “extreme clearing” is not worth waiting (or hoping) for. It’s too consuming and jangly.
I favor the [...]

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The Grace in Gathering

Posted on30. Mar, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.” – Anne Lamott
It’s springtime: A return to my rituals of gathering.
Gathering clothes I no longer love (or can wear) to take to the Goodwill. Gathering and tossing the growing [...]

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Who Are You, Really?

Posted on12. Mar, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“When how a person occurs to himself alters, everything else shifts as well.”
I believe that “spaciousness” is something that expresses itself in infinite ways. Here’s an example. Enjoy this beauty of a piece:
Colin Wilson, the prolific and influential British writer, was born to working-class parents from a relatively poor community in Britain. Although his [...]

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