In many ways what we’re doing right now is a giant review. We’re making sure we see and touch every item in the house, recognize it for what it is, and make a decision about it. We’re going about this slowly and methodically for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, we want to be conscious about all the things which are in our lives. Some things are precious: select pieces of our daughters’ schoolwork, wedding mementos, or a heartfelt card from a friend on a special occasion. Many other things? Not so much. We’re finding that our current state of clarity surrounding who we are and what our life is about has made it easier to make decisions. Most of all we want to make sure that we are only carrying those things which we’ve consciously chosen because their energy supports our life.

Secondly, we want to take stock in where we have been. We feel that we’ve lived much of our lives up to this point in a kind of fog, and now that we feel more conscious and aware, we want to look directly and unflinchingly at our past choices so we can recognize them, own them, accept them and learn from them. Many of the papers and acquisitions which we are now choosing to leave behind tell a story and we want to be sure that we hear and remember that story before we let go.

Finally, we want to make sure that we are not only keeping things in accordance with who we are, but also that we are discarding things in accordance with who we are. We find it is more difficult to dispose of things consciously than it was to acquire them unconsciously as we did in the past. As much as possible we want someone else to gain pleasure and use from things which we no longer need so we are trying to find new homes for our stuff when we can envision possible new owners. As for those things which are no longer useable, we want to recycle as many of them as possible. This, too, takes time. We have to make extra decisions to sort the recyclables from the non- as well as clean and organize them away from the trash, but how could we be “friends of the earth” if we didn’t take the time to do this when we’re in what we hope is the largest purge of our lives?

If our current work were all about just moving, we could have ordered a trash trailer for our driveway and dumped everything in that we didn’t want (as a few folks have suggested to us). We could throw out anything we haven’t looked at for a year with a fair certainty that we wouldn’t miss it. And yet, we would miss out on this whole experience of learning and living who we are — we would be deferring, yet again, living our true purpose for the sake of expediency. We are training ourselves to slow down in order to build something that lasts: anything worthwhile takes time to build and just as long to perish. We are learning that slowing down and taking the time required to align ourselves with our values is what we need to do at this time. It is all part of the process that is unfolding for us, and there is no shortcut around it.

If Soul Play Family is about anything, we’re about living our true life in this very moment and not allowing any excuses to push that true living off even a single day.