Are You a Hoarder?

In this week's Listening2Wisdom call we were discussing how our unexamined thinking keeps us from feeling the aliveness of life. And it suddenly occurred to me that most of us fit the description of being mental hoarders - we just don't know it.
One of the definitions of hoarding is the "persistent difficulty discarding of parting with possessions because of a perceived need to save them".
When one of my aunts died, the younger members of the family took out 52 large garbage bags of "stuff" she had never bothered to get rid of. And I've heard stories that were far worse.
I wonder how many garbage bags of old, moldy, dusty thinking we could throw out of our own minds? It's just that there's we don't even see them for what they are.
And we're convinced those thoughts are harmless if we just avoid or walk around them.
Trouble is, they aren't harmless. They pile up in the nether regions of our minds and make it difficult to bring anything new and expansive into our lives. And when those thoughts are keeping us limited and restricted (often on a subconscious level), it's reflected in the way we live our lives.
What if we could really see how our unquestioned thinking is not only not necessary, but would give us a new "lease on life" if we did a thorough mental houseclean?
When we're willing to see things as they really are, and if we know that we don't really need to hold onto anything, we can begin to live in the flow of abundance that life is always offering us.
And, as Byron Katie says, "the way is clear but only when the mind is clear".