Try, if you will, closing your eyes and doing your best to let your thoughts float for half an hour or so, perhaps when you first wake up in the morning but any time will do. Notice what comes up when you really allow your mind to wander. Then, whatever those preoccupations, tell yourself this about that thing before it forms into much more of a thought: “It doesn’t matter”.

Do it again and again, whatever comes up, be it a piece of family anecdote from years ago, or something you know you have to get done soon, that disagreement or worry to do with your offspring, the fact Christmas wasn’t as ideal as you perpetually imagine, that story you often run around a particular friendship or money or your work or whats on the news…whatever it is. Notice how some of those older thoughts are the same ones that always pop up, no matter how long ago they first happened in the past; allow a small ironic smile at how repetitious you are. Realise how its the thought that turns those things into “matter”, like solid bits of ugly furniture you never seem to get past but have to learn to live with, stuck there in the middle of your room. Allow that you can, indeed, let them go now…then dissolve them with that phrase again: “It doesn’t matter”.

Trivial-sounding yet incredibly powerful, for many of us this is the process we think we already know about and even kid ourselves we do…yet, most of the time, we don’t follow though diligently; but now feels like the time to get serious. We make substance with our thoughts, endlessly, and this narrows the range of our experience all the time; leaving us locked into a kind of experiential cell, like that small bit of room that is left over when all the unwanted furniture in our minds is piled up around the room. When we realise that’s all it is – thoughts – we get to dissolve that matter into molecules and sweep it all away; simple as that. When we do it diligently, repeatedly, each time those thoughts arise (not just some of the time), we create a whole new landscape for ourselves in remarkably swift time. In just a few weeks, we are standing there looking at a vista so expansive and unlimited that we are quite amazed that we didn’t do this sooner. So yes, we are, for a moment, completely amazed…yet entirely forgiving of ourselves (since there is nothing to forgive…) and are, by necessity, quick to move on, because we don’t want that to be the next thought we fixate upon. See what I mean; it’s this flow in the process that keeps it going.

At first, when you do this, you may feel some resistance, like you are trivialising things that are important or letting somebody, maybe even yourself, down by not preserving this piece of thought-baggage from a life gone by. Yet when you realise that who you are now…which is the ONLY thing that really matters…is the direct result of all that past “water under the bridge”, you can let go of all other matter and allow it all to be just that; water, flow…something soft and fluid, even necessary at the time, that got you to where you now are and that is all. Made more substance of than the feather-light matter of appreciation and respect for what has been, matter becomes like boulders in the stream; it then forces us to flow that particular way, around the obstacle, over and over and over again, repeating history with dizzying weariness. All you really need from the past is that sense of movement, of progression, a journey…as all your life has been to date; not to keep repeating that very same journey over and over again; which is where we get stuck. Yes those boulders of things we fixate upon get eroded slowly over time as we diligently, with great effort, tweak at this and that; but how much more effective, even effortless, is it just to dissolve them instantly with the assertion: “It doesn’t matter”.

Once that resistance phase is done with in your reverie (the guilt trip where you feel like you are “doing something wrong” by even saying this phrase about things that really mattered to you before), you may notice sensations washing in to your awareness. Perhaps you experience a great heat rising in all of your cells, like a kundulini flame up the spine until you break a sweat. Try not to worry; this is just your body burning up all those clouds of dust mites left behind by so much unnecessary substance that had been choking up your energy field; like an incinerator mulching through the content of vast filling cabinets full of old documents that once stored what it was quite unnecessary to hoard. Your body will feel so much better for it; so give it time to adjust, which may take hours, days or even weeks but it will.

Then, you might feel oddly disoriented, like you are free-falling through space or somehow without handles to hold onto, no footing or grasp onto anything that has familiar substance. Again, allow this…its just all that spaciousness that is meant to be yours, only you have lived with your space so cluttered-up for just so very long now that the feeling of sudden liberation is bizarre, like one of those dreams where you are flying without the need for wings. In time, you will get used to the feeling; will learn how to direct your flight, how to head for exactly where you want to be heading with the merest of suggestions…practice this whenever you can. Start within the body then, as you feel comfortable, allow the “lid” of the body to open up so you can fly in unlimited space, transporting wherever you place your focus. Entertain the fresh thought, in the “now” of your experience, that this is your new normal, that you like it and that you are starting to sense its potential rather than be alarmed by it. And when those cluttered feelings come back in from time to time…and they will…simply do the exercise again: “It doesn’t matter”. It will be like when you have deeply spring cleaned your house and made it so pleasantly minimalist that you can find everything you and relax all the time, then someone leaves their cup or a pile of clutter on your coffee table; you will want to clear it away very quickly now and doing this will be so easy compared with before that there will be no effort to the tidying process or to keeping your space the way you like it. You will have become a convert to this way of being and it will start to stick in ways that will serve ou far better than those old matters of the past.

Doing this is not some guilty pastime, though your ingrained thinking may initially try to tell you it is “wrong” or “irresponsible”. It is not ceasing to be real, or involved in life, or to care, is not giving up on compassion, is not to do with negating family stories or your collective history, not about letting anyone down, nor is it becoming vacant or spaced-out, self-centred, withdrawn or deluded. Its modelling a new potential that could be the saving grace of the collective if we could all but do this en masse; cutting ourselves free from all the distorted patterns of history and all the cultural grudges that currently exist as though preserved in stone, in order to move on into a new era of creativity, cooperation and love. Its not something you have to convert others into doing, since you doing the process is enough to spiral its effects out to anyone you have dealings with, though you may find yourself saying it outloud more and more when people give rise to so-called issues in your presence: “It doesn’t matter”. Organically, it will generate situations where you allow others to walk free from situations that would otherwise have anchored you both to the past as “it doesn’t matter” quickly puts an end to what would otherwise become part of the age-old blame and retribution game. It’s the ultimate self-nurturing act since it gives your nervous system the break it needs to carry on; and your spirit the space it needs to continue with its human evolution. As such, it’s probably the most responsible thing you could be doing to gain back your health and wellbeing, for yourself and everyone around you since we are all being impacted by how overwrought we have become as a collective. Its learning from the past, taking from it what is most important and useful, then moving on from that; upcycling the lessons into new potential, a different future without anchors to a past that is, otherwise, as heavy and unwieldy as a sack of rocks.

Especially if you are hypersensitive, an empath or a synesthete, or perhaps all of the above as I am, you can allow yourself to let go of all this surplus matter, knowing full well that you will have filled yourself up again in no time at all; because that’s what we do, collecting minute sensory associations that attach to each other and cross-reference in every imaginable way. This makes every sensory cue in our present experience into a potential reminder of something else that once happened, bringing it back to life as though the experience is current…which means that, much more than other folk, we become filled up to the brim with such data, until it becomes nigh on impossible to continue. We, of all people, are in danger of anchoring ourselves to those very things that “once happened” for the longest time, by replaying them through every sensory cue we experience, over and over again, until we are haggard with the weariness of it. Yet when we do this simple clearing process, we allow that data to refresh and for all the wonderful progress we are making in our present lives to become the multiplication factor instead of what is old and defunct. And I do believe there is an evolutionary advantage, a gift, to being this sensitive…but we are not yet getting even close to realising this potential while we continue to anchor ourselves to old  or repetitious “matters”; so, perhaps we are the ideal ones to learn for ourselves how to unhook from what is old and obsolete so we can show others how to unleash a vastly more fulfilling experience.

So, if you feel like an experiment, join me in this new years resolution of sorts and let the old matters go. Simply let what used to matter (and you will instinctively know the difference between that and what really matters to you in this moment...) to go soft then dissolve away; simply don’t hook your thoughts onto it when it arrises. Choose to dissolve the electrical charge around certain issues, imagine you are looking at them through the eyes of a born-again joyful person; like someone who has been told he has recovered from cancer and now loves and forgives everything and everyone, slate washed clean. This won’t make you vulnerable to repeat attacks (even without holding onto old grudges, you’ve gathered and integrated far too much understanding for that); rather, it will make you stronger, more balanced, better poised on your human “feet”. It will also make you lighter, more spacious, less exhausted and probably quite brimful of freshly creative potential; you will feel, somehow, cleansed inside and out, softly radiant in all your cells, new and excited about life. The fires of catharsis (which you still may turn up from time to time) will mostly settle down into a gentle glow of blue-violet light around the whole of your physical body that you wear like a brand new aura. Enjoy.