Focusing forward
will have to mean making hard choices to face down a lot of pain and properly
heal wounds that have been left to fester. In a moment of inspiration many
years ago I came up with the explanation for my future children about why you
shouldn’t hold on to anger and ugly feelings: The Soul is a Garden. It’s not
complicated, but it is a little wordy. Here goes what I remember of it.
The Soul's Garden©
By Katie Cottingham
Each of us has an
inner garden to tend and nurture. This garden is our soul, and it is a gift.
There are a multitude of plants that can grow in this garden, but they all
begin as one of two seeds: love or hate.
Love, when
planted and cared for brings forth kindness, compassion, light, friendship,
warmth, joy, and many other beautiful things. It requires a large amount of
care and attention early in a garden’s life. If cared for properly it can paint
a life filled with everything stunning colors and shapes that will astound on a
daily basis as new hues are revealed with time. Love can set deep, strong roots
that will last well beyond the life of a single garden because it will offer
seeds to other gardens so that its beauty will not be contained to one
lifetime.
Hate is the seed
of destruction. It can kill a garden if given the chance. Hate brings
bitterness, pain, cruelty, rage, resentment, suffering, and everything that is
dark and ugly in the universe. Hate cannot be removed by aggressive attacks
because the deeper you try to dig down to the roots the stronger they become.
Hate can suck all life from the soil, leaving nothing left for Love to live off
of. How it survives is unknown as our understanding is limited to measures of
love or the absence of in any one thing or person.
Hate can be
removed though! Careful devotion to the regular harvesting of Love and sharing
its bounty with others somehow loosens the grip Hate has on the root system.
It’s possible that this phenomenon occurs because of how many nutrients that
Love can put back into the soil, nutrients that are poisonous to Hate, or
perhaps it’s merely a matter of Love being stronger at its core.
Now, every
gardener knows that storms and bad weather happen. There is only so much that
we can do to protect our garden in times of greatest trouble, but there are
precautions to take before and rebuilding that can be done to damage after the
storms pass. Sharing your garden’s unique beauty is a great way to protect it;
when you are ill others can step forward to remind you that you have this
amazing gift that brings light to the world and has value in its existence and
their words can help keep your garden healthy when your body struggles.
Regular removal
of evidence of Hate is necessary. To prune away the invader take stock of all
the beauty Love has brought you and how much good you have done by nurturing it
when you could have taken the easy road and allowed Hate to take over.
Take care to keep
away all outside gardeners who secretly plant Hate in as many other gardens as
possible. They’re not always easy to discern, and sometimes you may find that
someone you thought was helping you is in fact doing the opposite. Don’t give
their seeds any roots! Instead, search out those who need the Love you still
have and share it and you will find that your garden is healthy again!
Should
substantial damage be done to your garden, you should take care to not mourn
for a great length of time because each tear you shed will water seeds of
greater sadness. The best route to restoring and promoting new growth is
focusing on what remains of Love and looking for examples of its flourishing in
other gardens, taking care not to allow the weeds of jealousy to begin creeping
along your path; they will trip you and leave deep scars.
Love in all its
forms is what you need to focus on. You will make mistakes. People will try to
destroy the beauty inside your garden because they lost the battle to maintain
their own. Do not let this hold you down.
Keep tending to
your garden with love in mind, and love is what you will find more and more.
There will always be darkness beyond the reach of light. There will always be
those that welcome it into their garden. That is a lonely place to exist. Hold
on to love, and you will always find laughter to fill your days and hope when
storms try to beat you down.
Admittedly, that is
a more grown up explanation now that I read it over. I did have a more
simplified idea, and it was no more than three paragraphs(!), but unless I find
that particular notebook sometimes soon I will leave this as is.
I’m sharing that
to get to this point: I have done some serious damage to my soul garden, and
possibly to others, and I am trying with all that is inside me to repair and
rebuild all that I tore down or allowed to be taken.
With love and all
the beauty it brings in mind I am working towards laying down new pathways;
pathways that I hope to share with anyone and everyone in need of a source of
light to remind them that love is stronger if you give it the means to grow.
Today, because I
love the process of creation, because I have a chance of a lifetime and a
lifetime of chances ahead of me, I will endeavor to complete as many projects
as I can with a positive view on the day and all the opportunities it brings.
Any project completed will be a success. Any project that has substantial work
done will be a success. More importantly, any negative, self-injuring thought
that crosses my mind will be excised with the precision of a neurosurgeon working
on an infant by remembering that while I am flawed, I still have the gift of
Love in my life. Love is the many people who have stood by me through my life
storms. To cherish those people, to show them how much I love them in return, I
will not allow darkness to cast shadows of doubt on my fields. I will be
the good steward of my own soul as much as I try to be of mother earth. Today
is a great day to be alive! ♥
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