The Inner Self

Image: Jardines del Laberinto de Horta

A friend once told me a simple idea that has stayed with me for years. We are like a garden. Inside our garden we can plant whatever flower or vegetable or tree we like, with or without grass, with or without a rockery, and if you like plastic gnomes, just go ahead feel free. We must discover the conditions of your ground soil, for some plants may struggle while others thrive. Care for our garden with water and light or leave it to grow wild. We can leave it in a complete state if we want to. We can do as we like. But it needs constant work for it to be weed less and lovely.

Let us presume that we have an interior garden that we particularly like, we have done it up just so, just as we like so that we are as comfortable as possible within the conditions that we have been given.

We may allow into our garden who we like. But that person really should respect our garden. We don’t want them to be stamping on our pretty flowers or making mud of our grass lawn. And yet often we forget and allow Tom Dick and Harry to harry around.

And so we must learn to control who is allowed in and who is not, on our own grounds. Those who we feel will not respect what we are growing, we can bar entry if we feel necessary, it is our garden to do as we see fit. We can leave them at the gate. Maybe they’ll move on and leave us in peace or if they have the time and patience they can look through the gate. Maybe they’ll begin to appreciate how delicate our little garden is, how uniquely planted all of the beautiful flowers are. Perhaps with time they will become willing to enter our garden with respect and we can change, if we want to, our original admission policy and let them in.

There are others who see the inherent beauty and can help us to make our garden more us. They see the potential of the plants and help us to fertilize to make them stronger, they see sad plants and can help us to cure them. They bring new seeds. Once fear of change is conquered, we are can glad to allow these people to visit our garden of pleasures.

So who do we attract to our garden? They say energy attracts like energy and if we are positive, for example, we will be able to share our garden with many other wonderful positive people as they pass through and sit in our deck chairs for a while, bringing with them the sun.

Indra’s net is a Hindu idea that we are all diamonds on a net. Each diamond is a garden. Each diamond is a soul. Each diamond reflects all of the other diamonds in the net. So let us make our little garden, our diamond, no matter how insignificant, just to our liking and allow the people who are close to reflect and bathe in the beautiful colours. Like a stained glass window of our petals. We are born with an uniqueness, as each snowflake is different. Think of that and marvel if you may.

We each have a talent for arranging our gardens in different ways, we each can do things easily and effortlessly that others find difficult. How do you want to grow your garden and who do you want to allow in?

Who do you enjoy sitting in your deckchair with sharing each other’s sunlight and doing your bestest to disperse the clouds?