Today Mickey Singer provides yet another generous heaping of spiritual teaching brilliance. This one is about how we can visualize our insides as a house — in both good ways and bad.

Let’s start with the unpleasant truth of what most people do. In short, we collect bad experiences and then hold onto them.

Smelly cheese on the living room floor

Mickey says it’s no different than if we found the smelliest cheese out there, took it back it to our house…and placed it on the living room floor. And left it there. Not just for days and weeks. We’re talking years. Decades.

This is equivalent to that awful ex-husband of yours…who you divorced fifteen years ago. Unfortunately, that smelly cheese ex of yours is still stinking up your inner house.

How is this happening? Because you collected these experiences with him and held onto them.

Bob the ex still tormenting you

So that when you go to a party and are introduced to a guy named Bob, you immediately shut down because that was you-know-who’s name. Maybe the guy you meet isn’t named Bob, but you find out he’s an avid golfer and…Bob loved his golf.

All because you kept that stinking blob of Bob cheese on your living room floor.

Sticking with the house analogy, how should we treat our inner worlds? By making your house a nice place.

Light scented candles and put them in your bathroom, kitchen and living room. Keep your kitchen clean by doing the dishes every day and mopping the floor once a week. Open the blinds and let the sun shine through the huge windows you paid good money to have installed.

WE are responsible for keeping a nice house

Take care of your house! As Mickey always says, you’re the only one in there and therefore the only one with the ability to take care of it. Sure, therapists, yoga teachers, friends, siblings and lovers can help, but ultimately we are responsible for taking care of our inner house.

Great, so what’s the equivalent of candles, cleaning dishes and letting the light in? Most important, pick up all that smelly garbage that pollutes your psyche and chuck it in the dumpster.

How? First, by not bringing in any new cheese or leaving any new pizza boxes on the floor. Which means when a new challenging experience occurs, relax with it, lean away and let it go. Don’t experience it and hold onto it as we’ve done with all the others.

Let go of the old cheese when it comes up

Most important, when an old ‘hunk of cheese’ comes up, instead of giving in and engaging with it, let it go. So when you’re introduced to Hal and find out he loves to play golf, relax. Immediately. Lean away. Breathe.

Hal is not a philandering schmuck like Bob just because he likes to play golf. That’s just the cheese talking.

Each time you relax and let go when one of these Bob situations comes up, you slice off and get rid of another bit of smelly cheese stinking up your inner house. Until one day you meet a guy named Bob and you realize it doesn’t even faze you. The cheese is gone.

How else to fix up your inner house? The obvious. Meditate regularly and practice mindfulness. They’re the equivalent of doing the dishes and tidying up your house every single day.

And exercise. Even if it’s just a ten-minute walk. The soul/spirit/psyche/inner world — call it what you want — loves it when the body moves around and gets the blood flowing.

The takeaway

What to take away from this? That your inner world is yours and yours to take care of. Like your house.

Most of us have made a mess in there for a long time. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that it is wholly within our power to clean up that mess. And make our inner house a pleasant, peaceful place to live.