“Guard the mind and protect the soul, expose the mind and the soul will be soiled with the trashes from people’s bins.”  ~  Ikechukwu Izuakor

I’ve made an agreement with myself – if I can see it and if I can reach it – I will pick it up the trash while out on my daily walks.  Oddly, I’ve been asked, “What are you,  good Samaritan or something?! ” I’ve received sentiments of God bless you too.  People have offered me their trash bin so I might empty my bag.  There are some crazy things that get thrown from car windows, that blow out of garbage trucks, and get dropped carelessly.  A home pregnancy test – I couldn’t help but wonder if it was good news.  An untold number of cigarette butts.  A “Found Pig” sign scribbled on cardboard with a number to call – one of a few things that I’ve kept, adding to the curious and eccentric collection of things around my house.  Hector the Collector right?  One mans trash is another woman’s  treasure.  All out garbage.  Fast food packaging.  Beer cans.  Single serve Sutter Home wine bottles, cap twisted neatly back on – every day.  There’s no end to the variety.  No end to the trash.  I’m often scolded to wear gloves.  I don’t.

The trash is always a meditation.

There is a lot of garbage visible deep into the roadside, thrown a dozen feet or more from the road itself.  The blackberry bushes, devoid of foliage invite me to retrieve it.  The winter rains have plastered last years leaf litter down flat to the earth, blanketing decay, protecting new growth.  And trash remains exposed, taunting me.   It wouldn’t be impossible to climb into the prickly stems to wangle the garbage out.  It would be difficult.  It would mean protecting myself from the many thorns.  Too many thorns.  The trash is teaching me surrender.  There is only so much I can do.  I must surrender to the fact that I can see it and I can do little about what is out of my reach.  What else must I surrender to?  Where can I go deeper, cleaning up my internal trash?  What external trash do I want to free myself from?

Low vibrations.  Acts and language that are not love.

I’ve had many teachers in my life (all y’all in fact).  The integrity of language is often times taught; be careful what you say, speak with a soft heart, be kind, seek to understand rather than be understood.  Negative speech and action have low vibration.  Positive speech and action raise the vibration.  Pretty simple.

Yet getting caught in the traps, having buttons pushed, being a pitiful human catches us all.  It happens probably every minute of every day to someone, perhaps some tens of thousands of us in the same instant, moment after moment day in and day out.  The collective is being triggered at this time.  Density rubs up against my own density.  What must I learn when this is presented in my life directly?  How do I rise up and move from a density into a frequency of that is more God-like?  What is my soul asking me to learn in this human body that will make me the best possible version of myself?  How do I evolve to serve the highest good?

“Darkness is the only path to light, it is not our wonderful gifts that make us closer to God; its using our garbage to transform ourselves. This is the key that unlocks the door that opens to God.”  ~  Yehuda Berg

I do the very best I can with the tools I have to work with.  Admittedly there are times, too many times possibly, when my own acts and language lend to the lowering of the vibration in the Universe.  And still, I give myself permission to stand up for myself.  To take a stand for what is important and has meaning to me.  I allow myself to speak up.  And this is doing something new, something different – there is no holding in the hurt of my heart any longer – that no longer works.  It never did.  If it perpetuates the density for the moment and perhaps I am not the most peaceful warrior, I forgive myself for that.  I am always willing to do my work, to understand the many layers of myself, to realign with peace.  To raise the vibration within me thereby raising the Vibration.  I hold myself in love.  What more must I do?  There is always more to do.

“So close your eyes and dream of all the wonderful Trash that’s yet to come. There’ll be more Trash tomorrow.”  ~  Oscar the Grouch

Mitakuye Oyasin  ~  All My Relations