Everything's Trash

In last month’s article “It’s A Movie”, I shared a point of view my late sweetheart Tom introduced me to one day: that everything that happens in our lives can be viewed through the light-hearted lens with which we view a film that we’re watching – being the emotionally unburdened observer, helping to get us through the more difficult parts of our lives.

Here is another similar experience I had with Tom which closely matched that concept: Everything’s Trash.

It happened the first Christmas I spent with Tom. We were living together and headed out one morning to buy holiday decorations and gift-wrapping supplies.

It was a cold and brightly sunny morning and we were both feeling very festive and cheery.

When we arrived at the store and were going through the wrapping paper, I said, “Why are we buying wrapping paper? Why don’t we just use the Sunday comics? I’ve always enjoyed doing that; it’s colorful, it’s free, and it’ll just be recycled in the end, instead of trashed like giftwrap paper. It saves money and the environment, instead of buying something that will just end up as trash.”

He said, “Well, everything’s trash.”

Tom had this way of saying things to me that were brief, short sentences, but that I understood on many layers immediately when he said them. He was so deep in that way and I loved it, and him for it!

When he said, “Everything’s trash,” I understood him to mean that in the end, everything around us becomes trash. With the exception of love, that is. Pretty gift wrapping paper becomes trash, but so does comic strip paper. Expensive things as well as free things become trash. All of our belongings, in the end, become trash. Money and material wealth and possessions become trash. Everything physical becoming trash. The only thing that is not ever trash and will never be trash is love energy.

Love will never be trash, because it is the only thing that is true, as A Course In Miracles teaches us. Another reason love will never be trash is because it is never a possession. It is always given away, at least when it’s best used. And that is when we “have” it – after we’ve given it away.

I am so grateful to my beloved Tom for that lesson. It helps me to not fear losing money or other material possessions, and to not hurt as much when I do lose a possession, even if that possession is a friend or relationship.

This lesson also helps me relax about money and be more generous with my spending – to not be afraid to spend more for something pretty that will make a better impression or please a loved one more. Giving the prettier-wrapped gift makes someone feel better and possibly happier. I don’t have to worry about it being trash, because everything’s trash!

“Everything’s trash” helps me focus on what is really true and forever, and of value: Love energy, and giving all our love away – expressing of course a healthy love and regard for ourselves first. When we know how to love in this healthy way, and to give our love away as the only true “possession” we can “have” that won’t ever be trash, then, and only then, do we really have something.

Happy New Year, everyone! May this new year bring you your fondest heart’s desires, surpassing all your expectations. This, or something better, and may it be for the good of all.

A lifelong student of spirituality, Cassendre Xavier (aka Amethyste Rah, aka Amrita Waterfalls) has been ministering through the creative had healing arts, spirituality, and sexuality since 1991, received a $15,000 Leeway Transformation for her "work in art and social change" in December 2005, and was ordained as an interfaith minister of the Universal Life Church of Modesto, California on September 19, 2010. Cassendre has new music downloads and ebooks coming out soon, which you can learn more about at her official website http://cassEndrExavier.com.