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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Praise for Your Spacious Self

Posted on06. Aug, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

I love pleasant surprises.  I got a really nice one the other day in the form of an unsolicited review for my book.
This one is by someone named Austin S. on Goodreads. I don’t know who Austin is, but I’m grateful for the time he took to write about my book, and what it has [...]

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Homes are Like Us (They Respond Well to Love)

Posted on29. Jun, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

When I read the Preface to a wonderful little book called Being Home by Gunilla Norris, I realized that my love of doing repetitive housekeeping tasks, like washing the dishes or putting away the same things in the same places every day, wasn’t me just being a hopeless anal-compulsive as I might have believed (and [...]

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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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Connecting the Dots

Posted on21. May, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

This post is the continuation of a series on reinventing ourselves. It follows this last one: “Making Friends with Not-Knowing.” **  Enjoy this excerpt from Your Spacious Self: Clear Your Clutter and Discover Who You Are:
Just days after this big moment of clarity, a book about clearing spaces was delivered un-beckoned to my front door [...]

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Stepping Out of Comfort into Not-Knowing

Posted on14. May, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“There is a grief that occurs when who you thought you were begins to disappear.” – Ram Dass
As I prepare to pitch my book and my message to the folks sponsoring the Next Top Spiritual Author contest, I’m being reminded of the moment my life took a radical turn that led to my becoming an [...]

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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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The Next Top Spiritual Author

Posted on16. Apr, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

This just in!
I am pleased to announce that I’m being considered as the Next Top Spiritual Author. It is a contest sponsored by James Twyman and Robert Evans, designed to showcase and bring new talent into the spiritual arena. The grand prize is a book contract with Hampton Roads Publishing – and, of course, a golden opportunity [...]

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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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Clearing the Past Clears the Present

Posted on26. Mar, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

What would happen if you sat in a circle with a few people and together you took a minute to tune into a person or a thing with what I call “spacious detachment”? You could be tuning into antique bowl from the 18th century that “doesn’t feel quite right,” or a stoic-looking person in a [...]

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Different Faces of Clutter

Posted on26. Feb, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

This is Message #2 from my free thirty-day email message series. Enjoy!

As I see it, clutter comes in many forms and has many faces.

There’s the physical stuff, of course: The junk that spills out of the closet and the piles that we wade through every day just to get out of the door. It’s the stuff [...]

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Reducing Stress & Clutter: A No-Brainer?

Posted on19. Feb, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

At the risk of sounding a bit like one of those late night infomercials, I have to say there’s more!
This is a follow-up to a post I wrote  a month back entitled “No Home No Have.”  If it didn’t inspire you to start picking up after yourself, you might consider the positive effect that repetitive actions have [...]

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Cultivating Ease

Posted on12. Feb, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Ease.
For such a little word, it lingers and expands if you say it out loud.
Repeat it slowly – with awareness – and you might even feel your nervous system relax.
Insert the phrase “I choose ease” into any daily routine, or a difficult situation, and you may notice the feeling of “expanding into” other [...]

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Enough

Posted on05. Feb, 2010 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Enough?  Not enough?
There’s a series of phrases in my book I call softening attitudes. One set in particular is designed to ease the mind’s tight grip on the idea of  “having” and “lacking.”
Three simple phrases that don’t look like much on paper, but have magic powers when you drip them – with awareness – into [...]

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Cultivating Simplicity

Posted on06. Nov, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Here’s something I don’t understand: Seeing a drainer full of dry dishes getting piled onto by a layer of wet ones because nobody bothers to put away the original set. Am I the only one who feels this way?
This is not about blame. I’m sure I have my own share of unconscious behaviors that drive [...]

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Minding the Chatter Clears Clutter

Posted on11. Sep, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

“There is nothing either good nor bad,
but thinking makes it so.”
–Shakespeare, Hamlet
Have you ever stopped whatever you were doing to simply observe your thoughts? Yes, to do nothing else but watch the nonstop activity of the mind without doing anything to fix or change what’s going on in there?
If you took that experience and multiplied [...]

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Soak in Salt and Soda

Posted on24. Jul, 2009 by Stephanie Bennett Vogt.

Here is a wonderful remedy to help you integrate deep clearing work – or any time you feel jangled, stuck, or plain fried after a long day. This remedy came to me from a healer and colleague, Desda Zuckerman, who adapted it from Edgar Cayce.
Taking a Salt and Soda Bath or Shower is the third [...]

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