Not only your House needs cleaning - throw away your mental garbage, too!

I told you yesterday that we recently cleared out the stores and cupboards of the Ashram, throwing away, selling or giving away everything that was not needed anymore. While there is an obvious benefit of getting rid of everything unused and old in a physical, material way, it is even better to do the same thing mentally!

With the things that you have in your house, it is often the case that you collect and collect, thinking the items could be useful, that they are part of your history, that they should be kept well and taken care of, just to have them to look at or maybe so that your future generations can use them. The reality mostly is however that the ones who come after us won’t care. They won’t read your age-old books, watch those videotapes or listen to your audio cassettes and they also won’t use half of the stuff that you have kept. Neither will you. Instead, it takes space and you have to clean it all again and again while it is just lying around.

The same is true for the mental baggage that you accumulate over the course of time! You collect a whole lot of garbage in your mind and I would like to invite you to not only clear up your house but your mind as well!

Once a person asked me how he could better remember important things. I replied that you needed to forget unimportant things first! Only then there would be space for what you really wanted to remember. It is true – you occupy your memory with a whole lot of unimportant things and I dare say that most of these are bitter memories.

It somehow is a human habit to cling to those bitter, sad, angry memories and not let them go. You meet a person whom you have not seen for a while and although you had a whole lot of good moments with him or her, you immediately think of a fight you had. Thinking back of a certain period of your time, you may not remember the peace of it but instead cringe when thinking of one embarrassing moment. Your mind is brought back again and again to that moment of shame and you think everyone will still be laughing about you today – although they probably all just forgot by now!

Leave this mental burden behind! Refresh yourself, your mind and your feelings and forget all those things. I tell you, you may also reconnect with old friends if you can just leave some old problems behind that you have carried along on your mind over years!

How exactly can you forget those things, especially when they appear again and again, unasked for?

Whenever you notice that your mind goes in the direction of such an issue which is solved, in the past and cannot be changed, don’t let it. Stop your thoughts, stop yourself, don’t ponder on old events and don’t repeat them unnecessarily! Focus on positive events instead. Repeat nice memories and don’t stick with the unpleasant ones. You will notice that over time, you will forget those that you don’t repeat – and you will feel much better with it!