Last night, one of the raccoons that have taken up residence under my shed discovered the cat door. What had previously been a lovable pack of rascals had now become a potentially harmful intruder.
I try to live in harmony with nature’s insistence on introducing chaos into my life, from the relentless growth of pokeweed to the labyrinth of mole tunnels that have collapsed my lawn. It started as one cute raccoon, and one lovely pokeweed plant….
Many years ago, my life seemed as chaotic as the jumble of invasive plants storming my yard. I seemed to have no time, no money and no peace. I dragged myself to a retreat/workshop on learning to work on myself. At a coffee break, I found myself in conversation with a soft spoken, elderly woman. I told her how grateful I was to be there and how I wished my life was less complicated and difficult so that I could do this more often.
She quietly sipped her tea, and said in her soft voice, “It seems to me that it’s not our outer circumstances that affect our inner life. It’s our inner life that creates our outer circumstances.”
The answer is simple, but not easy. How do I pay attention to both the big picture and the details? An idle thought, like “I’m not good enough,” if left unattended, can grow into a tangle of vines in the mind that choke out the seedling of an idea. Allowing “I’ll do it tomorrow,” to take root will spread from not doing the dishes to not writing the novel.
But if I respect these weedy thoughts, acknowledge them and make sure they stay in their territory, they can provide a lifetime of reward: self-knowledge, clarity and discernment.
One thing that has helped me weed my mental garden through the years is Awareness Through Movement®. Simply lying down, moving slowly, helps my brain weed out parasitic thoughts and literally sets me straight. Here is a lesson that is like a trip inside yourself. May you discover your own secret garden!