Too clear out means both to remove and to make room for. In terms of loving yourself, clearing out is making a space of clarity for yourself. . . . When you clear out, you create a clearing — in you psyche, in your environment, in your brain, in your house, on your dancecard, in your closet, on your kitchen table, in the clutter of your conscience mind, and in the dark rooms of your unconscious where you hold yourself in bad opinion. The term clearing itself is a very beautiful word. When you think of a clearing in nature, you think of a clearing in the forest, a beautiful space where sunlight can fall, in which new things can grow.
A number of years ago when I was traveling in Germany, I had the pleasure of driving mile after mile through soft rolling hills that were covered with tight-knit forests of tall, black trees. From time to time there would be a clearing in the forest, an open expanse of land where tree by tree the land had been cleared so that a village could be built or a beautiful vegetable garden planted. As I saw these gentle spaces in the midst of the forests, I contemplated the magnitude of energy, the many hours of sheer manpower, the number of saws and axes and horses and wagons required to make peace and space in the middle of these dense forests, the labor of love by which a clearing had been made.
On your own path to self-love, it will be both good and necessary to make a clearing in the darkness of your inability to love yourself. Like the beautiful openness in the forests I traveled through, making a clearing is not an easy task. It requires energy and steadfastness and strength. It will require courage and intention. To clear out from your life what doesn't belong will require devotion, not only to the task, to the labor of clearing out, but also — and above all — to yourself.
— Daphne Rose Kingma, Loving Yourself