Possessions, of All Sorts

Who owns whom?

Hello, dear subscribers! As you know, normally I provide an audio version of my work. But since I’ve moved, I don’t have a place yet to record. I hope to have something set up by next Sunday’s offering.

Thanks for being here, and for understanding.

xox M

On the morning of the last day we owned our house in New York, I sat on the smooth wooden floor to meditate for the last time within its four walls. The rug was rolled up and stowed in the POD, along with the scant furniture we didn’t sell or give away.

For years I’d talked a big game about letting go of materialism, of embracing a simpler lifestyle, but I had espoused it from within a relatively unexamined environment. I don’t have a lot of stuff, I thought. I’m not someone who shops for recreation, or who delights in accumulating possessions.

Before I started packing for this move, I had looked around at my surroundings and thought, Hell, I’m practically a minimalist.

And then I started packing.

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At first, it was easy. Certain items were begging to be tossed: the broken basketball hoop, the never-worn or outgrown clothes, the framed artwork from a Christmas grab-bag gift exchange I felt compelled to pretend to like. I carried bag after bag of the easy stuff to donation centers, feeling virtuous and productive. My house grew leaner by the day.

I carted many of the family heirlooms I was told in my youth would be WORTH A LOT SOMEDAY over to the local antique dealers who told me most of it was virtually worthless. I sold all manner of stuff at our garage sale, and gave away even more afterwards.

The more I unearthed and divested, the more the house somehow seemed to offer up more stuff. It was like the parable of the loaves and the fishes… except not as happy. My husband would carry more and more out of the living room, only to return to a filled room a day later. “Where is it all coming from?” he’d ask gamely, but with a note of increasing desperation.

“It’s a miracle!” I’d say, hoping that he’d keep smiling. He did, for the most part.

But then the real miracle started to happen. As I released more and more of my belongings, I became more and more joyful. How could I not? Here are just a few of the responses of the individuals who took stuff: “I was just about to go buy a Havahart trap!” “My step-father really needs this keyboard now that he’s retired.” “Oh my gosh, this mirror will be perfect in my apartment!”

Even the non-verbal reactions delighted me: the portly older man, improbably dressed all in khaki like a zookeeper, who gently tucked two stuffed animals under his arm (a fluffy panda and a ridiculous chicken) and carried them solemnly to his car; the little girl who lit up when I told her she could take all of the tiny wind-up toys for the quarter she proffered.

There was the young Muslim family who had recently moved to Buffalo from Bangladesh and needed everything.

After they selected a few items and our son tied down the queen-size bed and boxspring to the top of their car, I offered them a piece of artwork that my mother had loved and I hadn’t. The chador-clad mother beamed. She didn’t speak much English, but she didn’t have to. Her eyes said it all.

And there was the couple who bought our dining room table. Knowing they had four children, we threw in a huge stuffed animal dog that 20 years ago our kids had lovingly named “Babe.” The mom sent me this photo, telling me he was a hit and had been renamed “Jack:”

I thought, I am getting good at this! Letting go of possessions feels great!

Then things got real.

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Let’s look at the word “possession.”

It is defined two ways. One is the “act or fact of holding, occupying, or owning.” It comes from the Latin possidere, which is probably a compound of potis, which means "having power," + sedere, which means "to sit."

My possessions, then, are the things I sit in power over. They are the objects over which I am master. I own them; they are mine.

But what about the second definition? That one, from the 1500s, describes a state of being possessed, by something other than one’s own self. Phrases such as: "What's gotten into you?" or "What possessed you to…" allude to this definition, which really refers to a demonic or spirit possession.

Stay with me, here.

In much of the mainstream, spirit possession is dismissed as totally out there, woo-woo nonsense. Yet the concept of spirit possession exists in many cultures and religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Haitian Vodou, Hinduism, Islam, Wicca, and Southeast Asian, African, and Native American traditions.

I was certainly raised to think this kind of possession was found only in Hollywood movies like The Exorcist. But then I married someone who became a hypnotist.

My husband Peter routinely works with clients who have struggled with anxiety, insomnia, depression, anger, or addiction for decades, people who have tried everything allopathic medicine or traditional therapy has to offer and have received no relief.

Many of them turn out to have one or more spirit “attachments,” spirits who have attached themselves to the patient/host in order to gain something: companionship, perhaps, or just the experience of physical embodiment. Once those attachments are released, the ailments disappear with them.

Now, you may be experiencing extreme skepticism at this point. That’s fine. You’re not alone. What Peter has discovered is that even when his client experiences extreme skepticism about the whole event, the process of removing the attachment still creates the cessation of the ailment.

Your belief in the validity of what I’m sharing isn’t the point; I’m not trying to convince you of anything. (If you are interested in knowing more, here’s one of Peter’s videos on the subject.) What I do want to do, however, is point out the charged relationship between the two seemingly opposite definitions of possessions.

We think we possess all these objects that we own. But in reality, like a spirit attachment, they possess us.

Studies of toddlers have shown that a child will cling to her cherished toy, a stuffed bunny, let’s say, even when offered the exact same bunny in exchange. There’s no functional difference between the new and old versions, yet to the toddler, there is. She has imbued her toy with relevance and meaning it doesn’t, and can’t, actually hold.

The glass case that my grandmother owned is functionally no different from the same item in an antique store, yet I’ve clung to it as the toddler does to her bunny. I’ve made it special by associating it with a loved one, and in doing so, I’ve given power to it, paying movers to drag it from house to house to house over the span of 30 years.

My god, I don’t own that case; it owns me.

Two weeks ago, my sister and I spent two entire days sifting through multiple generations of family memorabilia — diplomas, letters, etc. — and photos. Stern visages peering out above stiff, formal suits and starched dresses asked us to identify them; often we could not. I held up huge portraits of distant relatives, or of glam pictures of our parents, airbrushed to the hilt, as we tried to decide which ones to keep and which to get rid of.

Tossing the college degrees wasn’t fun, but it wasn’t nearly as excruciating as getting rid of the pictures — even pictures of people we had never met. Why? Why did I feel beholden to them somehow?

I’m not a big reader of the Bible, but I do know that the Second Commandment prohibits the making of “graven images.” Is this why? Is it because we can be so easily duped into thinking that a representation of something real and true and alive is actually real and true and alive?

My sister and I looked at each of the thousands of photos, shared some tears and laughter at the memories they evoked, held on to some of them (okay, we probably kept a few hundred), then blessed and released them. We decided that burning them would be the most sacred way of disposing of them.

And so, on the last night of my residence, I carried a huge box down to the blazing bonfire my son had lit in the pasture. The word “bonfire” comes from the Middle English banefire, "a fire in which bones are burned."

I like that. I also like the French word for public bonfire, which is “feu de joie.” It means, literally, "fire of joy."

I watched, sad yet relieved, as the frozen images of my ancestors exploded into stars and took to the night sky, free to blend into the heavens from whence they came.

The next day, seated on the bare floor in my empty house, I closed my eyes. Almost immediately, I noticed with some surprise that the echoey silence of my hollowed-out home was deeply comforting. It was as though the emptiness surrounding me was creating a welcome emptiness within.

After meditating, I opened my eyes to see sunlight filling two angels facing the dawn: a mobile that I had made years ago to hang above my daughter’s crib was waiting to be packed. There was still work to be done.

Eight hours later and two hours after the closing, I was still frantically tossing my possessions into a rented U-Haul when the new owners and 20 of their family and friends suddenly showed up to celebrate their new house acquisition.

I was horrified. I felt like vultures had descended on my not-dead-yet body.

One of them said kindly, “Your house is so beautiful,” and I nodded, then turned away to hide a sob that overtook my whole body. It’s not my house anymore. Grief that had waited patiently for its opportunity to present itself, poured out of me.

I sat in our pickup truck and sobbed as the world kept spinning around me, then pulled myself together, helped put the last remaining molecules of stuff into it, and drove out the driveway for the last time.

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On the long drive to Florida, I had plenty of time to ponder the lessons of possessions.

I realized that letting go of material stuff — even the cherished glass case, sold to those aforementioned local antique dealers — is helping me peel back layers I didn’t even know I had, to reveal the essence of who I really am underneath. I’m no minimalist, but I’m making progress in that direction.

I learned that the more we clear out any structure, even our own psyches, the more we can see into the corners and recesses: “Oh, look, a thing I didn’t even know existed, under that sink. Do I need it anymore? Probably not.” Like the “miracle” of the re-filling living room, more space within us creates opportunities for other issues to present themselves, to be either embraced or sent packing.

No matter where I live, I want to continue to empty myself as I’ve emptied this house — lovingly and patiently, forgiving each item for outstaying its welcome and then sending it on its way. It’s a never-ending process, one that I know is freeing me.

Like Trevor Hall says in his beautiful song, “Don’t you carry stones in your bowl of light.”

Two days ago, I dreamed I was flying. I just stretched out my arms in front of me, ran a few steps, and just leaned into the breeze. Up, up, up I went, giggling to myself: why has it been so long since I did this? It’s been here, this flying thing, all along!

My niece appeared in the dream and asked me, “How did you do that? Isn’t it scary?”

I replied, “No, it’s not. It feels perfectly right. And we all know how to do it, we just forget.”

Today, it’s still not my house anymore. But today I know: it never was.

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Thank you for reading The Art of Freedom. This post is public so feel free to share it.

I’d love to know what you’re thinking. Let’s chat.

As always, keep your light shining bright.

Mary