Spring time is in the air, and the desire to throw open the windows and bring in delicious flower-scented air and sunlight into my home floods through me.

There's a reason why Spring Cleaning has been a tradition for hundreds of years. After a cramped dark winter, energy gets trapped in your home, and can become suffocating for people sensitive to toxic energy build up. This happens normally to everyone, although some of us may not be aware that clutter building up in your home is a sign of toxic clutter building up in your soul as well.

So it is with renewed energy and conviction that I set about trying to discover the source of the clutter in my home. The picture above is my kitchen counter after a two trips through of throwing stuff away! Yikes!! And my whole house isn't much better. There is stuff, and piles and junk everywhere, and the frustration I've been feeling trying to deal with it finally exploded this morning as I decided I was getting to the bottom of what was going on!

As The Rolling Stones sing, "I can't get no Satisfaction, no no no!" Can't you just hear the frustration pouring out of Mick's big pouty lips? I can relate, let me tell you!!

So I sat down to pray and go inside to see what was going on. I discovered a world of emotional clutter deep within my heart charkra (the area right in the center of your chest) and my 3rd chakra, the center of one's personal power, located at your solar plexis. I've been having trouble breathing these last couple of weeks and also have been waking up scratching around my 3rd and 4th chakras. The itching has been so intense i wanted to scream, but nothing I did made it stop. It was a deep internal, beneath the skin type of itching.

As I looked with in, I could see the cluttery build up of smokey-black-gray energy all around these chakras, and realized I was carrying around so much toxic emotion, it was literally suffocating me from the inside out.

It's no wonder that my home felt like a disaster area! One of the Spiritual Laws of Attraction is, "As Within, So Without". If you're a mess on the inside, chances are your physical surroundings are going to reflect that back to you with piles of clutter and junk everywhere, that, no matter how many times you try to get rid of it, it just seems to come back.

I saw where so much pain and unworthiness and self-loathing had bubbled up in my 3rd and 4th chakras. I've regularly been giving my power away unconsciously to those I felt were better than me on some level. And self-love? I had none.... it was depleted as I ran myself ragged these last few months trying to give outwardly to others what I so desperately needed to give myself: some love and tenderness and compassion.

I've been unable to make decisions about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with my life for a while now, and it was finally catching up with me. That state of being in a holding pattern meant nothing could come in, and nothing could go out. I was so paralyzed by fear and indecision, that I sat stewing in all that toxic indecision until my body and my physical surroundings started to reflect my emotional state.

Have you been trying to lose weight, but not making any progress at all? I certainly have. Carrying around twenty extra pounds feels like hell, but because I was carrying around all this toxic emotional baggage of unworthiness and undeservingness, my body held onto that weight for dear life, reflecting the emotional clutter, heaviness and turmoil I was feeling to the outside world.

I could see the damage for myself; hanging onto toxic anger, blame, hate, competition, unworthiness and fear not only build up in one's energetic and spiritual body, but also in one's physical space, in one's home.

Look around you. If you see piles of clutter that seem to never dissipate despite diligently throwing things away, recycling and donating, take this as a clue. Look within. What are you hanging onto emotionally? Where are you stuck, and not making a decision? What toxic energy is building up within your chakras that you are ignoring, hoping it will go away? Are you holding onto blame? A Victim mentality? Anger? Unworthiness?

Be gentle with yourself. Close your eyes and send a prayer out to The Universe for help finding the source of your physical clutter and excess weight (if that's one of your issues). Notice what you notice. It may come to you as a picture in your head, as a gentle whisper inside your brain, or as a knowing....what hurt or anger or fear are you holding onto that you haven't been able to deal with?

Do some emotional spring cleaning by writing down those insights, and then go outside and burn them to released them from your auric field. Be kind to yourself afterwards, maybe taking a bath, or a walk, or buying yourself some flowers. And just notice how your outside world starts to shift in reflection of this inner healing.

Then when you feel you have the energy, tackle one small pile of clutter with the intention, "As Within, So Without" and know that pile of clutter will never come back again. Congratulations!! Enjoy the fresh air!!

This last month has been one of struggle. I've been so angry about a series of events that have taken place in my life, I've been unable to express myself the way I really wanted to.

When people behave in a way that you don't think they should, there's nothing you can do. You have to accept individuals will behave how they want, not how you want them to. Likewise, when circumstances in your life are not going the way you want, you need to step back and pray to see what the lesson buried with in it is.

One of my favorite authors is Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön. She teaches the "middle way" as a path to discovering an inner awareness, strength and healing. Her book When Things Fall Apart offers this advice:

"The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution; loneliness, boredom, anxiety (and i'll add here for myself, anger)....we want victory or defeat, praise or blame....we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is....The middle way is wide open, but it's tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. What we want to do is move to the right or the left....We don't want to sit and feel what we feel. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken to the bravery that exists in everyone with out exception...."

As a gardener, I've had to sit with this theory in more ways than I can count. You plan, and envision and prepare and get everything just right, and then the exact opposite of what you expected to happen occurs. The seeds don't germinate, the lettuce comes up but the slugs eat it, the color of the flower planted isn't what I expected, the plant dies, and there's no time in the growing season to go back and replace it....

The demand for resolution rears it's ugly head and there's nothing I can do except sit with it and allow it to be what it is. I have to just look at the lesson of frustration, loss, destruction or whatever is occurring at that moment and just let it go. It is what it is.

This last month, when I experienced attack and hostility on a scale unlike anything else I've experienced in my life, my initial reaction was to lash out, to tell those people how messed up and wrong they were, and to try to show them just how infantile they were by throwing anger and hostility back at them. I wanted to prove I was superior to them in every way by defending myself and proving how right I was and how wrong they were.

But a little voice deep down kept saying to me "You accomplish nothing by throwing anger back at them. Just sit with it, and learn the lesson." That's when the parallel between gardening and finding the spiritual path of the middle way popped into my head. The lessons buried in this situation started to bubble up into my conscious awareness.

I don't blame the plants or the wind or the slugs. I take every precaution to prevent certain outcomes in the garden, but in the end, it's going to do what it does. You can build a solid foundation by creating a healthy base for the plants-rich organic soil filled with compost and nutrients, plenty of light and water, and a firm pole to climb up or to support the plants.

But in the end, a plant is a living thing. Soil is a living thing. The surrounding environment is a living thing, and no amount of control can prevent nature from behaving the way nature will behave. All I can do is sit with it, look for the lesson, and apply that information to the next time.

Gardening forces you to surrender to present time. And being fully present is one of the hardest things for us as humans to sit with. Looking at this situation with the people who felt justified in calling me  names and attacking me the way they did, all I can do is sit with it in present time, and try to be in the middle. Neither becoming aggressor or victim, but simply seeing that they will behave the way they feel they must, and no amount of anger or frustration on my part will change that. All I can do is find the humor, accept that their truth is for them, not for me, and move on. Engaging and trying to be victor just perpetuates the drama, and it is the drama that is causing pain.

Forces move in and out of our lives on a daily basis. Nature is in flux constantly, perpetually. It is neither wrong nor right. Just as I trust I have created a healthy foundation for the plants to bury their roots deep into the rich soil and grow big enough that a little nibble from a snail won't decimate the entire structure of the plant, I trust I am doing the same for my spirit. There's always another lesson around the corner.

Awaken to the bravery buried deep with in you. Practicing the middle way, whether it's gardening or fighting can be life changing in enhancing and deepening your spiritual health and awareness.

Lessons come to us in many different ways.

Sometimes they come gently, with an awareness that blows into our lives like a gentle spring breeze.

Sometimes they come to us in joy and exuberance; having an experience filled with such pleasure and laughter, you know you totally made the right decision!

And sometimes, lessons arrive shrouded in pain, dark clouds, misery, and heartbreaking disappointment. However the lessons arrive, our job as spirit having a human experience is to notice, become aware, and learn to receive the lessons that we decided to learn long before we took a body to experience them.

We all have many lessons we need to learn, and we can tell this if situations keep coming up over and over and over again with the same outcome. A lesson I have struggled to learn is how to receive. Another lesson is "Letting Go and Letting God."

What does that mean? The two are inseparably intertwined in my life. As an out of control "people pleaser"  I have lived by the words of the infamous Jeff Spiccoli from the movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High, "I can fix it man, I have some tools!" In this particular scene, he has just crashed a very expensive car, and it's totally banged up, but being the optimist, he's sure with just a little banging and pushing, he can make the car good as new!

How many of you live like this? Feeling responsible and ever-optimistic that despite the dire circumstances surrounding you, you can make it better? It's really laughable now as I stand back and realize how obviously naive I am. There is a lesson here, and "fixing it" is not the lesson, no matter how often I am faced with this same scenario.

One of the definitions of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different outcome. By this definition, I am totally, completely insane.

I've been on the spiritual path to consciously heal myself for about ten years now. Despite the numerous classes, seminars, books, and whatever else I've engaged in, the lesson of "letting go and letting God" has eluded me, as has the lesson of receiving the good that I so long for.

It really boils down to one universal law that I also struggle with: Everything in Divine Perfect Timing.

Up until now, I have pushed pushed pushed to make things happen, to open doors, and to create new experiences for myself. It's been painful, and cumbersome and sometimes downright overwhelming. And most of the time, I'm completely exhausted by the end of one of these episodes.

There are the rare times when I've had an idea of something I wanted to do and experience and everything just flowed effortlessly and easily, and it's been a delightful experience, leaving me feeling vibrant and alive at the end of it. This is a really big clue!!

When you're forcing and pushing and trying to make things happen, and the doors remain closed, or the barrier refuses to move, or the situation just won't change the way you want it to, this is a hello from Spirit; the direction you're trying to go isn't right for you at this moment in time. Ding Ding Ding!!

This is when it's time to sit back and release the situation to the Universe, to the ever changing ebb and flow of the cosmic dance that is happening all around us. When you're trying to make something happen, you're coming from fear, not faith and trust and the belief that all will work out for your highest good.

I know this from first hand experience. Lots of doors were opening for me recently. But because I was so afraid to miss an opportunity, I was saying yes to everything, worried that if I didn't I wouldn't be able to pay my bills this month. But the funny thing was, I was overwhelmed and exhausted and completely didn't enjoy all the marvelous opportunities coming to me because I didn't trust myself to choose the right one, and more importantly, I didn't trust that I would receive exactly what I needed if I just relaxed and let go of the pushing and pulling and trying to fix my life and make it better!

Just because you have the tools, or the opportunity, doesn't mean you have to say yes to everything. Sometimes, you just have to say thanks, but not right now, and trust that if it's meant to be in your life, it will come to you again at a better time. This is Divine Perfect Timing in practice.

As spirits in bodies, we have free will. This means that as we check in with our higher self to see if an opportunity is in alignment with our dreams, hopes, gifts and skills, we can choose to experience it or not. It's not up to us to do this for others; they have their own free will to choose what works for them or not.

By letting go, being open to receiving the good that is coming to you all the time, and trusting that Divine Perfect Timing is always in operation, you will learn to flow more effortlessly with life and those around you; chaos will dissipate, and serenity will start being the norm, rather than the exception.

You just need to activate a little faith, trust and being open to receiving the good that is waiting for you. Then be willing to sit back and notice how much more gentle and fun your life can be when you learn to go with the flow.