How to Create a Right Relationship with “Stuff”

For the past five or six years, I’ve become a maniac about letting go of physical stuff. If I no longer use it, I’m all about finding a new home for it, whether it’s donating it to Salvation Army, giving it to a willing recipient, or selling it in yard sales.

I began this practice after reading that it’s spiritually beneficial to “live simply”…something that’s primarily taught through the practice of letting go of our attachment to things.

Prior being exposed to the idea of living simply, I thought about the act of getting rid of something as one sided (me losing something). Definitely ego-based thinking.

However, in learning more about living simply, I was invigorated by the idea of  letting things go as a way of “breathing new life into them” by allowing someone else to benefit from their use (especially if they’d been dormant in my closet or packed away in a box).

To this day, it’s what spurs me to “cut deeper” when it comes to going through stuff. In fact, it’s turned a once sprawling DVD collection into a shortlist of “go-to” movies and an overflowing library of books into a select few.

When it comes to going through stuff, nothing is off limits…not even the “sentimental stuff”, which is why I’ve also been accused of being called unsentimental. However, I don’t see it that way at all…

I’m motivated to release these things (especially if they’ve been out of sight for a long time) in hopes that someone will stumble across this item at my yard sale (or Salvation Army) and feel it’s the perfect gift for someone special in their life.

To me, this shows sentiment…it just might not be in the way that we normally think about the word.

Instead, we often think that letting go of something given to us by another is somehow an affront to the relationship, so we hang on to it. I think a better approach is to see that the energetic exchange that occurred through the physical exchange of the gift lives in our hearts, not in the “thing” itself.

Focusing on creating this “energetic” relationship is the actual intent behind living simply…

We often (mistakenly) think the act of letting go of stuff proves we’ve accomplished the spiritual goal of living simply. This is far from the case, and if we’re not mindful, ego can quickly find an identity in this new way of being.

Anytime ego finds an identity in something, it uses it to separate itself from others through judgment, which is the opposite of any spiritual goal. My ego found this loop hole in no time flat. (There’s never a dull moment in our journey to disassociate from ego, which is why we must always be on our toes)!

The intent behind living simply is to create a right relationship with physical objects, which is not to be attached to them or the idea of letting them go, which is where ego tends to come in the backdoor.

The practice of physically letting go of things challenges two main attributes of ego: a physical attachment to the item itself, which is ego’s way of knowing itself through having said object (I have a signed baseball by some important player) and ego’s investment in scarcity versus abundance (what if I need this in the future? I’m going to have to buy it again. That’s a waste of precious money.).

If our goal is to align with spirit, we have to be willing to know ourselves outside of any ego identification and we have to be willing to align with abundance (both within and without).

Contemporary spiritual teacher and author, Wayne Dyer, famously released his attachment to his most coveted possessions by handing the key to his office to his secretary and asking her to find a new home for everything in it, which included a library built over a lifetime and personal mementos from a thirty plus year career of being in the public eye. He was willing to face his attachment head on.

However, it’s not necessary to physically take these measures in your own life to achieve a right relationship with things. A right relationship is created when you’re able to drop your attachment in an instant (or you’re in a position to not create the attachment in the first place).

If someone were to glimpse my personal mentor’s vehicle or home, they’d (wrongly) assume he was attached to a lot of stuff, since he’s surrounded by it. His vehicle is filled to the gills with “stuff”, and though I’ve never been to his house, I know it’s a replica of what his vehicle looks like.

Yet if something of value went missing, he’d be able to drop his attachment in an instant. This is the goal of creating a right relationships with things.

If you’re not willing to take as drastic of measures as Wayne Dyer and know you’re not (yet) where my mentor is in your relationship with things, there’s still another option: “the Yeti cup approach”…

This past weekend my cousin and I had a yard sale, where I was happily finding new homes for my “stuff”, hoping that someone would stumble across the perfect item, maybe for themselves or as a gift for someone else, when my Yeti cup went missing (it was not for sale…I’d been drinking water out of it).

This cup is ahhh—mazing. It’s been my constant companion throughout the hot summer months, keeping my water at the perfect cool, refreshing temperature.

One minute I had it and the next minute it was gone. I panicked, wondering if someone had snagged it, then frantically searched for it on the tables with stuff for sale (I’d left it there earlier), on the hood of the truck where I’d sought shade and under the truck thinking it may have fallen off the hood.

Nada. 🙁

I tried to stop a full on panic by mentally encouraging myself to “drop the attachment”, but I definitely wasn’t dropping it like it was hot! It was a clear indication that I still had work to do.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending…

Once we’d broken down and gone back to our respective houses, my cousin found my Yeti cup in the back of his truck!

These “Yeti cup incidents” are great opportunities for us to work on creating right relationships with the things we possess. When they go missing, whether it’s temporarily or permanently, they provide ample opportunity for us to work on dropping our attachments.

It doesn’t mean we stop looking for the lost object; it just means we can work on letting go of our energetic attachment to the object.

With time, the ego energy that is fed through attachment will wear down and open us up to a totally new energy system, one based in spirit, where attachment has no role…a place where we freely give and receive without impeding the natural flow of energy.

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To creating a right relationship with things,

Shanna