One of the things I love about living in the mountains of Western North Carolina is that as soon as the weather warms up, nature explodes everywhere, turning things colorful and expansive, and awakening the drive to get out, to release the stagnation of the winter months. As I work in my backyard, tending to the flowers and removing dry leaves, dead branches, and overgrown plants and weeds, I ponder a few things.
Nature provides the perfect environment to quiet the mind, because it is in itself quiet. I don’t mean there are no sounds; I can hear birds singing, crows cawing, bees and other flying creatures buzzing; I can also hear the wind, the water flowing into the pond, the leaves, the squirrels, and the cars driving by. But in spite of all this motion, there’s a stillness that feels more predominant—the energy from the Earth keeping my mind grounded and silent.
As in life, I am focused and determined to remove what’s no longer meant to be there, either because it has died or it has invaded the space belonging to plants and flowers I have consciously chosen. While I do this, however, what I’m clearing piles up around the yard, making it look really messy. After a few hours, I can see the contrasting result of my work: on one hand, cleaner flower beds; on the other, the clutter of stuff I’ve removed. I’m a mess too, because it’s hard work, it’s hot, and I’m sweating. :-)
The ego-mind is no different. You have creative ideas and the drive to fulfill your purpose, but they’re constantly invaded by a bunch of mental weeds and outdated beliefs making your path and your decisions unclear or impulsive, to keep you spinning in old habits of thought and perception. On the outside, things change, people change, your circumstances change, but if your perception doesn’t, you stagnate in the ego-based (wounded) emotions and patterns of childhood.
This emotional terrain—your inner garden, if you will—is what you’re here to tend to. It’s your sole spiritual responsibility to remove what clutters your mental field, either because it’s outdated or it has served its purpose, and to plant good seeds for the future. But to clear the path of your own destiny, you have to be focused and determined, unafraid to look at the active weeds and the overgrown, imbalanced aspects of your ego-mind. You have to be willing to own and accept that the process is messy, too, because nothing is going to magically disappear.
Self-Awareness = Self-Love
You can’t find the love and beauty within you unless you remove the ugly parts blocking them. And just like I have to clear my yard every year through the warmer months, you have to continue your self-exploration on an ongoing basis through all the different cycles and fluctuations of life. It’s really a never-ending process, although the ego-mind wants you to give it up if there’s no instant gratification. Things may appear different on the outside, but the roots of your own tendencies remain the same—until you become fully aware of them and choose to put them to sleep every time they get triggered.
The paradox of Divine Consciousness here is that nothing changes and yet nothing is ever the same. You are an infinite spark of light and love discovering your true nature as you experience life in a human body, but you expand through cycles within cycles that turn things repetitive. In truth, life is expansive like nature, but the mind has a revolving quality that makes your awareness spin in place. It creates the illusion of movement (new experiences, circumstances, and people) while trapping you in an outdated, distorted perception of yourself.
Without self-awareness and your continuous transformation, you’ll stagnate there emotionally while believing the mental illusion of forward motion. Because you cannot see what you cannot see, no matter what happens on the outside, you’ll experience life through the same coloring as in the past, with the same wounded perception. Your spiritual responsibility is to seek guidance to clear this outdated perception, to be able to have a direct, conscious experience of your own life-movie in the present moment. So contact me today to start weeding out what no longer serves you and discover your true potential for transformation!
© 2019 Yol Swan. All rights reserved.
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