Trash tells all

“I don’t believe in dream interpretation. Dreams are just the brain filtering through daily stuff, sorting out the trash. That’s why you get bits of work, bits of television, bits of things you’re worried about. You wouldn’t want to analyse mine! Let the trash go, I say. Wake up fresh.”

I love it when people tell me that dreams are the result of the brain processing the day, clearing out the garbage. I love the look on their faces when I agree.

“If someone went through your garbage,” I jump in between the lines of their jaw-dropped bewilderment, “how much could they tell about you?”

Big business takes trash seriously, shredding papers and wiping hard drives to prevent secrets being exposed while many a prospective high security employee has unwittingly had her home garbage bin trawled by company detectives while she slept.

Stop for a moment and think about what you throw out with your trash and what it says about you.

Over a period of time a good garbage detective could produce a personal profile of your eating habits, what medicines you take (what conditions you suffer), your interests and political persuasions (newspapers, letters), your financial situation, what you spend your money on (shopping dockets), where you’ve been and when (train tickets, theatre tickets) and much more. And then there’s your electronic trash, the recycle bin on your computer and the decipherable ghost of every email you’ve received or sent and every website you’ve visited still etched on your hard drive way after you’ve pressed the delete key.

Trash tells all. Well, a great deal, anyway. To put it simply, everything you put in the trash represents a decision about what you decide to keep and what you decide not to keep. Sometimes you make mistakes and throw out the baby with the bathwater, or hang on to stuff that is more of a hindrance than a help to you. Sometimes you cleverly recycle your trash, finding new ways to make use of things you no longer need. Or you foolishly recycle garbage, perhaps rescuing a rain-soaked item only to introduce mould or vermin into the house, or reusing an envelope bearing revealing sender ID, for example.

When you sleep, your brain filters through your experiences of the last day or two. It filters not only the experiences you were aware of, but also the ones your unconscious mind registered.

Dreams do the job of sorting out your recent experiences in an effort to make sense of the world and your place in it. From babyhood your dreams have helped you to form your unique view of the world updating it nightly to accommodate your new experiences.

So, on the surface, dreams “are just the brain filtering through daily stuff, sorting out the trash”, but on a deeper level they paint a picture of the dreamer.

Your dreams are a work in progress, an ongoing, ever-changing sculpture of your personal worldview. Take time to stand aside and contemplate your sculpture, to decide which lines to enhance, which to erase, and which to change. Whether you see elements of your sculpture as trash or treasure is … well, revealing of your worldview, really, isn’t it?

Contemplations

Where and when, in your life, have you thrown out the baby with the bathwater? Have you had dreams of losing things or being lost?Where and when, in your life, have you held onto stuff (physical or emotional) that has hindered your progress? Have you had dreams of obstacle courses, or carrying heavy baggage?

What, in your life, has been the result of clever recycling: getting gold from physical or emotional dross? Have you had recurring dreams with successful outcomes (where they had previously been unsuccessful)?

Where or when, in your life, have you recycled old attitudes or patterns of behaviour to your disadvantage instead of changing them? Do you have recurring dreams with unresolved or unsatisfying endings?

 

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