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.
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.
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.
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