Here is another excerpt I find very inspiring, it helps us question what is truly essential when we get buried under ‘stuff’.
“Then a mason came forth and said: Speak to us of houses. And the prophet answered:
Your house is your larger body.
It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; it is not dreamless.
Tell me, what have you got in your houses? What is it you guard with fastened doors?
Have you got peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power?
Have you rememberances, the glimmering arches that span the summits of the mind?
Have you got beauty, that leads the heart from things fashioned of wood and stone to the holy mountains?
Tell me, have you these in your houses?
Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house as a guest, and then becomes a host, and then a master?
It becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron. It lulls you to sleep. It makes a mock of your sound senses. The lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. But you, children of space, restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed.
You house shall not be an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.
You shall not bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fold your wings that you may pass through doors.
You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. Don’t dwell in the seasonless world, where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
And though of magnificence and splendor, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing.
For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and silences of the night.”
From: Khalil Gibran, The Prophet
More inspiration at www.clearofclutter.com
