(This is Part 11 of a continuing series. Go back to Pt 10.)
5. The Principle of Nurturing
Every farmer knows that if he wants to get an apple tree he must plant an apple seed. He knows that he cannot get an apple tree by planting a lemon seed or a pear seed. He knows that the kind of seed he plants determines the kind of tree he will get.
The same is true in our inner world, our consciousness. The seeds we plant there determine the general direction of our state of mind.
Watering also plays a part. Those plants that we water are the ones that will grow. If we water our violets but not our roses, the violets will grow and the roses will not.
Again, the same is true in our consciousness. Those thoughts and feelings that we "water" each day with our attention are the thoughts that grow stronger and more prevalent in our state of mind.
If we are wishing and hoping and praying for an apple tree but habitually thinking about a lemon tree, a lemon tree is what we will get. If we are wishing and hoping and praying for roses but habitually thinking about violets, the world of violets is the one that we will inhabit.
Our habitual state of mind is our life.
How we feel about our life is not dependent upon our external circumstances. It is completely dependent upon our habitual state of mind.
If we spend the day complaining about this and that, condemning this and that, finding fault with this and that, it's certain that we'll be in a state of unhappiness. It is quite possible to live in a palace and be in hell; it all depends upon our state of mind.
An example: Recently my dear cat Nicky died after being with me for almost 13 years. And I realised I had a choice:
I could dwell on his passing, dwell on his last couple of weeks that were hard on him, dwell on missing him...and I would be sad and depressed. Or I could focus on the fact that we were together for 13 years and what a privilege it was to have him in my life and what a beautiful life he had...and I would be happy.
I chose the latter. The result is that whenever I think of Nicky a feeling of gratitude is there as I recollect the privilege of our time together. And in a way I can't quite explain, I think his memory is more honored by my being happy about him than sad about him.
All of the notions below, which can be found in various teachings, express variations of this same principle, the Principle of Nurturing:
What we sow, we reap.
What we focus on, expands.
What we appreciate, flourishes.
What we reward, gets done.
Feed the opportunity, starve the problem.
The last one is a famous business aphorism by Peter Drucker. In a more general sense it means to starve the negative and feed the positive. In our contex here, it means to plant and water those mental seeds that we would like to see grow and flourish.
And we don't need to "fight" the thoughts and feelings that we don't want. This would just be more condemning energy, the very thing that makes us unhappy.
The thoughts and feelings that we don't desire will wither from lack of nourishment if we don't water them; we don't need to oppose them, reject them or try to change them, but rather, simply and consistently put our attention on those thoughts and feelings we do want.
Why this emphasis upon our thoughts and feelings, upon our habitual state of mind? Because, as mentioned previously, the inner is senior to the outer.
This means that the real locus of our happiness lies within. If we're feeling joyful and grateful inside, we're already in heaven regardless of our circumstances. We can be dying in a ditch, cold and wet and hungry, but if we're in love with reality we'll be in heaven while we're lying there dying in a ditch.
And as a kind of bonus, external reality then has a strong tendency to become more and more positive, even though, as we fall more and more in love, we insist less and less about where external reality should go.
We make "decisions," but underneath that we've fallen down in an endless surrender and trust: We just want it to go wherever it wants to go. Wherever It is going.
In planting and watering the seeds of our consciousness, it's good to remember that this process is an organic one, and so like all natural processes will move and evolve at its own speed.
When we plant a seed in the ground we don't dig it up every day to see if it's growing. We know that the seed has to do some work "underground," where results aren't yet apparent.
Neither do we break open a rose bud to obtain the rose; we know that such forcing measures won't work. Neither do we pull on the grass to make it grow faster; we know that it must grow at its own pace in its own natural way.
Just so, when we plant seeds in our consciousness of faith or gratitude or compassion, we don't need to judge the results we're getting. We know that our new seeds must work "underground" for awhile.
We know that our part of things is just to patiently do what we can do each day in cultivating our inner garden—and then leave the outcome to reality itself.
This is where trust comes in. At first our new state of mind is wobbly, uncertain, subject to swan dives back into fear and negativity. But we just keep on, in faith, nurturing our seeds each day and trusting the process just as we trust the flowers of nature to bloom in the spring.
(This is the end of Part 11. Go to Part 12.)
—jim sloman, 12.26.03 for Jun 3
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