Working With Soil, Attending To Soul
A garden tends to get inside us. If we go there to accomplish something or to get something, the garden soon becomes a burden. With expectations that it must look good or that it has to produce no matter what, we will soon grow tired. The garden is really a place in which we can give ourselves away. This is true of any serious contemplation, too. We are transformed by it. We are reduced and revealed by it. In it we may experience a lived sense of our connection to the earth, to our inner freedom, and to the Sacred, the ground of our existence.
"For me gardening is a process that invites me to be fully engaged. It is also a constant exercise in letting go since so much happens that is not in my control. Strangely this duality seems to cultivate a joy that embraces impermanence and finds refuge in the invisible.
"Gardening brings food and flowers to the table and sustenance to the soul. I am not talking about having a perfect garden. Ours certainly isn't! Weeds are as happy here as are flowers. Bushes get bushier and need trimming. What may start out as an elegant garden plan becomes more haphazard over time. With the years our garden has turned out to be a bit of this and that and always too big to really tend properly.
"From the start this is not the garden I designed. Someone else did, and before that there was a yard of sorts. Coming here to live I have inherited what already was, just as I inherited my parents, my siblings, and my particular time in history. We work with what we are given. That's the real garden. I can't claim anything here. I can only 'be' in the garden, tend it, and further it. Isn't that what we all do, what life asks us to do? [...]
"In my garden while I am digging I am also tilling inner soil. My garden is a place of commitment and of neglect, of arrogance and humility. It is a place of taking stock and of deep silence — a place of contemplation. And so for me over time it has become a place of grace.
"I experience as the particular human being I am. I have no choice about that, but I trust that I am more like other people than not, and that what I find working the soil might also be what others find working theirs. I want to trust that with reverence for the place and awareness of my foibles, I can grow to be more present and a better steward of my small corner of the earth.
Gunilla Norris lives in Mystic, Connecticut, where she works as a writer, meditation teacher, and psychotherapist in private practice. This piece is excerpted from her book A Mystic Garden: Working With Soil, Attending To Soul.
SEED QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: What do you understand by the garden being a place of commitment and neglect, of arrogance and humility? Can you share a personal story of a time when you felt aware of your gardener role? What spaces serve as your garden where you till your inner soil?
Add Your Reflection
22 Past Reflections
On May 28, 2021 Bigg Boss 15 Live wrote :
format - As for 'Bigg Boss 14', Rubina Dilaik, who had participated
Post Your Reply
On Mar 6, 2021 womens jackets wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Jul 10, 2020 munene wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Jul 10, 2020 ujig wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Jul 10, 2020 jonre wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Jul 10, 2020 money wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Jul 2, 2020 money wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Jul 2, 2020 money wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Jul 2, 2020 money wrote :
1 reply: Rkm | Post Your Reply
On Oct 25, 2019 Neha wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Aug 16, 2019 Mzansi Magic Full Episodes wrote :
Mzansi Magic is M-Net's local offering to the South Africa market.
Mzansi Magic brings you the best in local stories
and
Post Your Reply
On Jun 29, 2019 coreanderson23 wrote :
If you are a first time blogger, finding the site that will best suit your needs can take a bit of research, but once you find your gem, you will be happy that all of your hard work paid off. When you begin your search, there are some things you want to look for to help...
Granite rock pan
Post Your Reply
On Jan 20, 2015 Mish wrote :
I think of my mind as my garden & like all gardens, we need to remove the overgrowth of weeds to allow our blooms.
Post Your Reply
On Jan 19, 2015 Paashi wrote :
Parenting is equivalent to gardening. Nurturing and guiding my offspring through childhood to adolescent brought experiences of arrogance in the sense that I was capable of raising well adjusted and capable and caring adults. Humility set in as they faced the challenges of adulthood--- careers , relationships, health and their own parenting roles.
Working with the soil provides the therapeutic benefit equivalent to contemplating the personal experiences and the larger collective global paradigm shifts.
The silence of the dark moist soil with its life giving nutrients, invisible to the human eye is quite enough to feel the spiritual in the density of the earth.
Post Your Reply
On Jan 19, 2015 Kristin Pedemonti wrote :
A Garden just like Life goes through growth and dormancy. In life at times we may fully commit to a person, a job, a task, meditation, exercise, a certain place and then many of us enter an ebb times in one or more of those areas. We vaccilate between arrogance & humility in our thoughts or actions. I am deeply aware of my gardener role both in professional life as a Cause Focused Storyteller and personal life as someone seeking to always be mindful of being compassionate and sharing love and kindness. What we plant, we sow. And the seeds we plant may seem so small, but who knows what my sprout and grow, so long as we take the time to plant the seeds and nurture their growth. Story, sharing conversation, listening deeply, being open to everyone, sharing understanding serve as the garden of inner soul. Thank you for a great post! Hugs from my heart to yours.
Post Your Reply
On Jan 18, 2015 david doane wrote :
Post Your Reply
On Jan 18, 2015 Abhishek wrote :
Extending this beautiful metaphor, the edge for me is in dealing with weeds and with the trimming of bushes....who am I to decide what is weed and what is not? Who am I to decide when does a bush need trimming and when it does not?
And if I suspend that decision and enter into inertia, my garden will become wilderness, or it may degenerate....
So what does mindful, natural and yet active 'intervention' look like in this garden space? Is it just watching what grows? Is it spontaneously trimming, trying to listen to what the plant really calls for?
What do I do with the weeds? That one gets to me! Do I welcome the weeds or fight them away? Or do I just sit with them, engage with them and understand why they are here? Why do I choose to label them as 'weeds' and privilege the plants?
Can I just let the garden be? Totally and completely just BE?
Post Your Reply