Our Trash waits for Us

I hope you all had a great week. Last week I was catching up with one of my friends who was my old neighbor. We used to walk our dogs together several times a week in the woods right near our houses. When I got off the phone with her I was reminded of a story I had written several years ago and I shared it with my classes this week.
I live in a small town on a dirt road right next to 250 acres of woods about 15 miles north of NYC. I walk my dogs in those woods several times a week. Often during the week, I walk with a good friend and neighbor who has 2 dogs just like me. Several days ago we were walking on a trail and I looked down and saw a few small pieces of paper laying in a pile of leaves. I remember thinking “Wow; that’s a bummer– it looks like those may have fallen out of someone’s pocket”. Just at that moment, we encountered another person with their dog. All the dogs began to excitedly play and that distracted me from my task of picking up the trash.
A few days later I was again walking my dogs on the same trail, by myself this time. It was quiet in the woods with no other dogs or people to distract me. When I got to that same spot on the trail I noticed the few pieces of paper were still lying in the leaves. I felt disappointed that in the several days that had passed, no one had picked them up. I decided to pick them up myself and as I leaned over to grab them I began to look a little bit more closely. I realized that I recognized the handwriting on the partial grocery list. It was my handwriting. And as if I needed more confirmation that this was my trash, lying right next to the grocery list was a crumbled up name tag with my name on it. These pieces of paper had actually fallen out of my own pocket and they were waiting for me to pick them up. The message from the universe was not subtle, it was clear as day; We cannot run from our baggage, we cannot hide from our proverbial “trash”. It waits for us until we are ready to clean it up. We may be blind to it but it will not go away until we see.
This message still very much applies and the chance to practice stepping out of the blindness towards what we are holding onto in our bodies and in our minds is a practice worth revisiting time and again. I shared this beautiful quote by Jack Kornfield as yet another reminder of the power we have to transform when we cultivate compassion. ” Buddhism teaches that we suffer not because we have sinned but because we are blind. Compassion is the natural response to this blindness; it arises whenever we see our human situation clearly. We need compassion, not anger, to help us be tender with our difficulties and not close off to them in fear. This is how healing takes place. When the mind is quiet the heart can open and we can tap into this compassion.”Whether on the mat or off the same opportunity exists. Instead of avoiding or hiding from our difficulties we have the chance to be tender with them and from there we heal. We do that by using our mindfulness practice to quiet our mind enough so our heart can open. For fun, here are the pictures I shared when I originally told this story.