Spiritual minimalist practices are healthier than following a religion. By decluttering the mind, we reveal healthy from unhealthy beliefs and values. The benefits of spiritual minimalism may surprise you. Come and see for yourself.
The practice of minimalism has positive psychological effects. Reducing physical and mental clutter reduces our cognitive load. It’s simple: When you have less of what burdens you, you have more time and room for the things that matter the most. Doesn’t that sound good?
What is Spiritual Minimalism?
The spiritual minimalist mindset is a lifestyle emphasizing simplicity and intentional action. This is a philosophy based on practicing spiritual decluttering. This helps us to focus on what truly matters. It requires us to let go of harmful and excess beliefs. It’s a process based on scientific research. When we remove distractions, we create space for inner peace, clarity, and a deeper connection with oneself and the world.
This strategy has strong opposition from a culture based on religious and material consumerism. Unfortunately, these harmful elements are so pervasive in our culture that most people don’t see them. Spiritual decluttering starts with recognizing them. Then, we can then replace them with healthy inclusive beliefs and values.
The Goal of Decluttering the Mind
Key aspects of spiritual minimalist practices include:
— Meditation and mindfulness. Practicing being aware and being present in the moment. By practicing meditation and mindfulness, you can experience the benefits of spiritual minimalism. A meditation process like Japa will help you enter the tranquility of the transcendent.
— Intentional living making conscious choices that align with healthy values and purpose. Positive values are non-sectarian, inclusive and operate with empathy and compassion.
— Decluttering and mind removing mental and emotional clutter to focus on the essential. Clarity of our thinking helps us unmask the unhealthy aspect of religion and commercialism.
— Cultivate a gratitude mindset and attitude of thankfulness for what you have. This mindset helps us to resist the false desires and fears of religion and commercialism.
— Encourage Inner peace. Understand the lives of the greatest stages. Look at the lives of the greatest sages. You’ll see them embracing spiritual minimalism out of necessity. Yep. Their possessions comprised what they wore and not much else. Their greatest spiritual breakthroughs occurred in private, mostly in the wilderness. This philosophy is the opposite of everything Western theology commercialism stands for. (4)
— Authenticity. As you live in alignment with positive values, you strengthen your resistance to unhealthy to external expectations or societal pressures. In a culture dominated by social media, decluttering the mind becomes a daily task.
Examine Attachments
The process of examining attachments involves inspecting the emotional bonds and connections we form with people, objects, beliefs, and even habits. This process helps us understand how these attachments influence our thoughts, behaviors, and overall well-being.
Decluttering the mind means assessing relationships. You may find people who have unhealthy beliefs and they will have a negative effect on you. So, this process will require some courage, but the benefits of spiritual minimalism are worth it.
Identify Attachments means recognizing what or whom you are attached to and why. This could be relationships, material possessions, routines, or beliefs. We attach ourselves to religious beliefs because of tradition and fear.
Assess the impact and evaluate how these attachments affect your life. Are they contributing positively, or are they causing stress, anxiety, or dependency?
Understand the origins of your attachments and reflect on why these attachments formed. Often, they are rooted in experiences, needs, or fear.
Set healthy boundaries and determine if they need to be adjusted to maintain healthy relationships and interactions.
Remove unhealthy beliefs and attachments that are no longer serving you. This is the essence of practicing spiritual decluttering. You remove unhealthy connections to create space for new, healthier connections and experiences.
Cultivate healthy attachments that promote growth, well-being, and mutual respect.
By examining attachments, you can gain insight into your emotional landscape and make conscious choices to foster a more balanced and fulfilling life.
The Benefits of Spiritual Minimalism
Practicing spiritual decluttering teaches us how to get the most out of life by focusing on what is essential. This approach requires assessing and eliminating things that are not healthy or positive and take up valuable space and time. This lifestyle gives you more time and resources to enjoy what matters.
You don’t just get rid of all your possessions—that is not healthy either. It means examining your relationship with things and people. This assessment can be emotionally difficult because it forces us to examine our attachments. Here’s a short list of what it can do for you.
1. Reduce Stress
Scientific research tells us there is a direct correlation between clutter and disorganization and the level of the stress hormone cortisol. (1) Why should we care about cortisol levels? Simple, when these levels are elevated, you are at risk for various health issues such as depression, digestive problems, headaches, and migraines, heart disease, sleeping disorders, weight gain, and cognitive impairment.
Cluttered environments can cause cognitive overload, leading to stress and anxiety. It’s the same with a cluttered mind. Simplify spaces to promote relaxation and a sense of control.
The Abrahamic religions contain of hundreds of rules, regulations, and practices based on mythology and superstition. When you are involved in Western religion, you enter a maze of contradictory and illogical beliefs which create a heavy psychological burden.
Spiritual minimalist practices eliminate all of this for processes that open the mind’s capabilities. One of the key benefits of spiritual minimalism is reduced stress. Processes that encourage spiritual exploration of consciousness give us spiritual autonomy.
2. Increases Focus and Enjoyment
Feng Shui has been so popular for thousands of years because it works. (2) When we are in a well-organized and decluttered environment, we are calm and focused. It means we enjoy more of what we are doing.
Research shows (3) how simplifying the environment improves both focus and productivity. By reducing visual clutter, we create an environment where we can concentrate with less effort.
3. More Time and Resources
When you have fewer expenses, you have more freedom. You have more freedom to live without a high-stress corporate career. When your life is not owned by a corporation, you have more freedom to travel and be a human being instead of a human doing.
You have more time and resources to spend on yourself instead of supporting a religion.
Fewer spiritual things to worry about. No imaginary friends or enemies. Less stress means time to enjoy the simple things in life.
No more spiritual baggage of heaven and hell. It means you have a new level of freedom and spiritual autonomy. With freedom of thought, you can explore other methods of consciousness development and create your own spiritual path. A more healthy mindset is free of sectarian bias and prejudice. You may even become a freethinker or a volunteer supporting an important cause that helps humanity and the planet.
4. More Free Time
Because you have less to take care of and fewer social obligations related to organized religion, you have more time. If you take minimalism and decluttering the mind seriously, you will find you need less space, not more. Less truly is more.
5. Smaller Carbon Footprint
When you stop buying things you don’t need that end up being thrown away, you make less of an impact on the world. One of the benefits of spiritual minimalism is making the world a better place. Intentional living helps you discover that most of the things the culture wants you to invest in have little or no lasting meaning. They are trappings of religiosity and commercialism. Once you see all the sacred books, temples, and churches as monuments to religious commercialism, then you are at a crossroads. You can make smart choices.
6. Counter to Consumer Culture
Minimalism challenges the notion that more possessions lead to greater happiness. Instead, it promotes intentional living and valuing experiences over material goods. Religion is the basis of the consumer-oriented culture. It starts with purchasing your way to heaven. You pay with your money and your time. You pay by following their beliefs and values. We see the effects of religious consumerism codified in the religious right conservative mindset.
The Art of Practicing Spiritual Decluttering
If you take the minimalist approach to life, soon or later, you will find it has spiritual implications. Every item you remove gives you space—not space for other things, but space to enjoy those things that matter.
The things we fail to have time for in our modern world are a time to meditate and time to contemplate. That’s too bad because these practices help recharge our physical and spiritual batteries.
It is the difference between what you need and what you want. To answer this question, you must determine your real needs versus the programming of the cultural narrative. It is hard to distinguish between these two because most people have been exposed to religious propaganda and programming.
A lot of people were indoctrinated into their religious beliefs as children. They did not make an informed decision to join a religion. They had no choice in the matter. For this group of people, their needs have been reprogrammed by the needs of the religion. In that case, they believe they must support their religion regardless of whatever facts or logic challenge it. So, they often require the help of someone to help guide them in the process of unpacking their religious baggage. We call this the unconventional approach to saving a believer. You can start the journey by asking what is spiritual minimalism.
If you can get someone to start asking questions about their beliefs and doing some independent research. In that case, you have a good chance of helping them overcome the self-hypnosis of religious indoctrination. If the answer is believing and supporting my religion, you know you have some unnecessary religious baggage to lose. This is the heart of practicing spiritual decluttering. The more baggage you lose, the healthier your mental health will become.
Embracing spiritual minimalism is a lifestyle and mindset that emphasizes simplicity and living with intention. It involves focusing on what truly matters, and letting go of excess material possessions, mental clutter, and distractions to create space for inner peace, clarity, and a deeper connection with oneself and the world.
Embracing Spiritual Minimalism
Spiritual minimalist practices help distinguish genuine spirituality from the often rigid and dogmatic aspects of Western organized religion by focusing on personal growth, inner peace, and authentic connection.
1. Assess Your Values
Practicing spiritual decluttering starts with an assessment of your current situation. Assess your values in relation to spirituality and materialism. Materialism focuses on the accumulation of things as a measure of socioeconomic status. The more you “buy into” this philosophy, the less you are likely to enjoy the things you acquire (5).
Learn to distinguish between spirituality and the false spirituality of Western organized religion. Spirituality deals with the spirit and the soul. In today’s language, the spirit and the soul equate to consciousness and awareness.
Western religion uses spiritual language, but is all about the belief in imaginary friends and enemies. The belief in myth and superstition has nothing to do with the spirt the soul, consciousness, and awareness.
Assess your living space. Again, most Americans have houses much larger than they need, which means they spend unnecessary money on upkeep, heating, and cooling. The smaller house phenomenon is an extreme alternative, but many people who choose this route find they don’t miss all the extra space. It gives them more life choices because they aren’t tied to a huge mortgage.
By practicing spiritual decluttering, you discover what you use and enjoy. Give away clothes you can’t wear or don’t wear. Most Americans wear less than 20% of the clothes they own.
What is spiritual minimalism? It is all about making yourself a priority. Minimalism has its own challenges, but it is worth the effort to get beyond religion and commercialism. Remember, a spiritual minimalist does not carry around a belief system.
2. Decluttering the Mind Eliminating False Spirituality
The process starts with eliminating the false spirituality of Western organized religion. Think about it. There must be something inherently wrong with a set of beliefs that promotes extremist ideologies. It starts by believing in an imaginary friend. This belief is a slippery slope to other cognitive distortions. So, no more sacred books, no more meetings, and no more identification with the false light of spirituality.
It’s hard because you’ve likely cultivated many relationships with those involved in the religion. Those who are truly your friends will stay in contact, while those who only use the relationship to support their beliefs will leave. Embracing spiritual minimalism will bring clarity to the basis of relationships.
It is easy to spot this negative thinking. It culminates in sectarianism, bias, and racial and gender prejudice. If you have any of these biases and prejudices, you need to remove them and the source from your thinking.
3. Spiritual Minimalist Practices
Decluttering harmful religious beliefs, especially those tied to conservatism and right-wing extremism, involves a thoughtful and intentional approach. Here are some steps that can help.
1. Educate yourself. Understand the origins and impacts of these beliefs. Knowledge can help you critically evaluate and challenge harmful ideologies.
2. Seek other perspectives. Engage with a variety of viewpoints, including those from different religious, cultural, and political backgrounds. This can broaden your understanding and reduce the influence of extremist views.
3. Study and practice critical thinking skills. Question and analyze the beliefs you hold. Ask yourself why you believe them and whether they align with your core values and principles.
4. Engage in open dialogue. Have conversations with others who may hold different beliefs. Approach these discussions with empathy and a willingness to listen and learn.
5. Focus on healthy core values. Emphasize universal spiritual principles such as inclusion, diversity, equality, equity, love, compassion, and justice. These can serve as a foundation for a healthy, positive belief system.
6. Limit exposure to extremist content. Be mindful of the media and content you consume. Reduce exposure to sources that promote divisive or extremist views. No more Fox News!
7. Join supportive communities. Connect with groups and communities that support spiritual decluttering and promote positive and inclusive spiritual practices. This can provide support and reinforce healthier beliefs.
8. Engage in spiritual minimalist practices. Spend time in healthy spiritual practices to gain clarity on your beliefs and values. This can help you identify and let go of harmful ideologies. Here are the links to several you can learn by reading articles on this website.
— Critical Thinking Analytical Tools
— Different Types of Meditation
— Awareness Expansion Tools
— Natural Healing Modalities
By taking these steps, you create a more balanced and compassionate spiritual life. It is the antidote for the influence of harmful extremist beliefs.
All you need are tools to explore the inner world of your consciousness. Many of these tools are free on this website. You can find everything from beginning to advanced forms of meditation to Lucid dreaming, Shamanic Journey scripts, and Third-Eye Activation.
In Conclusion
There is no better time to begin your minimalist journey than now. It reminds us of the ancient adage, when is the best time to plant a tree? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
References
(1) For better or worse? Coregulation of couples’ cortisol levels and mood states.
(2) Feng Shui: A Comprehensive Review of its Effectiveness Based on Evaluation Studies.
(3) Interactions of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Mechanisms in the Human Visual Cortex.
(4) Minimalism: a step towards peaceful living.
(5) Against accumulation: lifestyle minimalism, de-growth, and the present post-ecological condition.