Did You Remember To Take Out The Trash?

It's been a long day, and you've handled numerous annoying people and situations. Your mind swims in its thoughts and judgments over them. And by nightfall, you can feel the tension mounting from the overgrowth of those thoughts.

You think, "A good night's sleep will help me deal with all this crap in the morning." But, as you lay your head down to your soft pillow, your mind takes over. The thoughts of the day, instead of going to bed themselves, are growing like mushrooms after spring rains, the Fungus Amungus in your head. And when you go to sleep with negative thoughts you unintentionally manifest them in your dreams and carry them over to the next morning. So while you may consciously wake up believing "Today's a new day!", in fact, you often times end up creating a day much like the one before.

Your chores began the previous night, but you forgot to complete them. To effectively move forward and truly make each new morning a new day, you must take out the trash the night before.

My own first attempts were feeble and a form of denial, but creative and colorful. I brought up words completely unassociated with my negative thoughts. I'd think "pink", and then I'd see the color fill my mind. I'd think "purple" and again watch the color come to mind. I realized quickly, after several nights of this, the power of my mind to create the color I said. And then I realized the power my mind has to create and change my thoughts.

I soon learned that, without bringing my negative thoughts to my conscious, and saying their name, they had a tendency to hide in their dark corners hoping I wouldn't see them. But there they remained, sneaking out once I went to sleep only to wreak havoc in my dreams, hiding again by daybreak, surreptitiously reaching from those corners to snatch more of my negative thoughts as food to grow stronger.

This trash heap of accumulated negativity - people, places, areas where you're stuck, circumstances, complaints and especially beliefs - must be rummaged through, sorted, and labeled "judgment", "misbelief", "ego driven" and so on, and then purposefully discarded into a mental receptacle which you empty each night.

In practice, spend 10 to 15 minutes before bed, unwinding, and attempt to think about ... nothing. To "think about nothing" is a paradox, an oxymoron. And yet it's also a necessity. As you begin this exercise each night, you'll find it easier and easier to do. It will become a sleep inducing calm.

Now, each night, I take only 5 minutes (it's becoming an easy ritual) to sort through the distresses of my day, what I found to be upset about, and whom I chose to complain about. After I honestly see these thoughts for what they are, I crumble them up like pieces of paper, and toss them into the trash. I then take this trash and dump it into the great abyss I've labeled "Of No Use To Me", and I drift quietly and contentedly into my slumber. On a few nights I've literally giggled from the peace and lightness I've felt.