Simplicity

♫Simple Gifts♫

Simplicity: Straightforwardness, ease, easiness, simpleness, effortless.  -- on-line dictionary

I took this photo yesterday through my front room window.  We'd seen a deer limping through the clearing on our property last week, so I wondered if this might be it.  When I went outside to get a closer look she got up and jumped over the two-foot-high fencing we have in place to keep our dog in the yard....

I've always thought to live "simply" meant you got rid of all your clutter.  Mark Nepo has given me a new way to think of simplicity in today's reading in "The Book of Awakening".  He asks this question, "What does it mean to be simple?"  He says the act of simplicity is the act "of living directly, which is that things appear, at last, as they really are."

He uses animals and nature as examples:  "The leopard trying to scale the mountain strains and shows its effort....The wave mounting toward shore saves nothing as it bows and spreads itself over and over against a shore that openly crumbles...."  And the deer in my yard "acted simply" when she reacted to my coming out of the house by getting up on her three good legs and "high-tailing" it out of there because she's learned not to trust the human scent.

Nepo goes on to say, "Only humans say one thing and mean another.  Only we go one way and wish we were somewhere else."  He ends his entry with this meditation:

• Breathe slowly and recall a time when things were direct and uncomplicated.
• Keep breathing slowly and recall a time when things were indirect and a burden.
• As you inhale, feel the burden.
• As you exhale, feel the simplicity.
• What did the burden take from you?
• What did the simplicity awaken in you?

Is there something in your life that feels like a burden?  Perhaps you are saying or telling yourself one thing while meaning or doing something entirely different.  What might you do to "uncomplicate" the situation?  In other words, what would you have to do to match your thoughts/intentions about something with what you are actually doing?  How would a straightforward approach make a difference?

Decluttering is still a good idea.  It can help to uncomplicate your life so that you CAN live more simply, at least in your "day-to-day operations".  But unless/until you start saying what you mean and meaning what you say, your life itself will continue to be complicated and therefore burdensome.

Father, You have said your yoke is easy and your burden is light, but we somehow miss the fact that we must first take on your yoke before the burden can become light, and having done that realize that we must be honest in all our dealings...first with ourselves and You, and then to live truthfully.

Link to scripture:  Matthew 11:30

Take action:  11 Easy Ways to Uncomplicate Your Life