Following the vast response to my latest blog I had lots of conversations around the metaphor of "creating (mental) rubbish" in our lives which I would like to take a bit further today....

Imagine a young couple starting a new family. They live in a beautiful house and life smells promising and fresh. But like all human beings, during the years of marriage they will probably not only create nice experiences but also some rubbish ones in their lives. And the longer we know people, the more beliefs/views/opinions we have in 'storage' about them, plus the memories of past experiences and what a person has done/said (or not)........ etc.

If we don't know how the system works (the bin men arrive Mondays), the rubbish of all such 'negative storage' will pile up all over the place more and more. We will come up with some way of storing the rubbish in hidden places and try to get through as good as we can without getting sticky. Lets say it takes some years before we start to take notice, but by that time we really have difficulties enjoying ourselves. An increasingly unpleasant smell disturbs us until it can no longer be ignored. 25 years in we are completely stuck. Not just as a couple but probably as well on the personal level which can also show up as various health issues. If only one of the people in the household discovers that the bin men come every Monday, it will eventually clear. 

It is the same with our mental "rubbish". If we know that our mind also has a natural self-cleaning mechanism, which is automatically built into the system, we can move from being completely stuck to flowing freely (which is our natural default setting) just by understanding how it already works within us. It's as easy as clearing the drain when it is blocked.

People asked me, why it is not necessary to know what the (mental) rubbish exactly is. Simply because the system works independently from the content of the bin. Problems only ever occur when we don't understand how to get rid of rubbish because it disturbs the free flow. So there is no need (and indeed no sense) in going back into the past, phew!!

There is another aspect to this. Sometimes we fill a whole bin (or more) with just one piece of rubbish. It starts with one single rubbish thought! Like in my flat LOL After doing my housework everything is nice and tidy for a few days (or hours sometimes). Then I'm in a rush and I leave one thing lying around. Next I notice that I don't seem to be able to keep it tidy (have I given in??)....... lots more things pile up and before I know, the place looks a mess!! Until I 'wake up' and start taking care of things again. It's the same with our thoughts. Leading on from the first initial thought we add more thinking around it and create a mess which we then see as a given 'reality'.... For example the first thought is "I don't like this" then it is maybe followed by something like  "I want XYZ instead!!", "It will never change", "I cannot put up with this any more!", "She is taking the mickey!!!", "I should have stopped this a long time ago!", "It's about time that I smell the coffee!!" and so it is no surprise that we feel compelled to act on the feelings such thoughts create in us because the 'reality of the circumstances' we see looks more and more annoying. But is this 'reality' really real????

Our thinking could take many different routes started from any one thought leading to a whole bundle of rubbish. Until we wake up and realize that what we see comes 100% from inside of ourselves, started off by one rubbish thought. We could have identified it as low quality thinking if we had spent attention to the feeling it comes with. It does not feel peaceful and calm, does it? When our wisdom speaks, it comes with one clear and certain voice and with a good feeling. As long as this is not the case we can let any other thoughts pass. We don't have to add more rubbish. Then we can make choices from the flow of life itself.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you had to go through the content of the bin, to find something you'd lost?
Did you enjoy it?! Do you remember the smell?! Do you think it makes sense to go through the rubbish for any other reason?!
Would we empty the bin and go through all the rubbish again and again, get sticky fingers and breathe in the horrible smell out of choice if we don't have to?? Am sure you agree, we won't. 

But we do this all the time with our rubbish past. We even rub our nose in it and then wonder why life stinks. The other day we went for a beautiful meal. As the pudding was served we suddenly found ourselves arguing about something that had happened a few months ago. It totally ruined our evening and only in the morning we woke up to the fact what we had done!! We had emptied a bag of rotten rubbish onto the table (where a moment before we had enjoyed this fantastic meal) and were rubbing each others faces in the stinking past. Why do we do this? During starter and main course the world was all peaceful, loving and we had fun. Here comes the rubbish for dessert, something we had moved on from a long time ago. And it ruined our time NOW.

The good thing is: it is our choice. We don't have to grab hold of the past rubbish to experience it again in our lives now. We can, if we enjoy the smell, like we would do with pleasant memories. With nice thoughts on our minds we have a nice experience now; with rubbish thoughts on our minds we end up having a rubbish experience of life now. It's so simple. Thoughts come into our consciousness and create our reality now. But the past is over and it can only ever come back to us via the power of Thought. It does not really exist any more except in our memories and it is up to us whether we chose to keep experiencing it now.

The best thing is though: there is nothing to do!! We don't need to try to change our thinking to more positive!! We simply become aware that we don't have to go back to the bin! If we can see that our rubbish experience comes from rubbish which has innocently been presented by our own creative power of Thought and then brought to life by the power of Consciousness, we simply allow the bin men to come and get the rubbish...... we let it go....... once the bin is empty there is room for fresh thinking to appear which will shift our experience to more positive naturally. And as the whole system is powered up by the intelligence behind life, it can only get better! 

P.S. Thanks to the very special Scotsman in my life who came up with this visual analogy