How Does My Garden Grow?

It seems to be increasingly harder for men and women to meet and stay in relationship. Oil and water, some say. There just aren’t any good men out there. Women are witches, you can’t ever satisfy them. Forget about it! We might forget about it for awhile but sooner or later the need for companionship, union, sex, affection, or whatever else it is that drives us dispels our disinterest and we find ourselves back in the saddle again. We start a new relationship that feels completely new and different this time but at some point discord over differences inevitably arises. Alas, the honeymoon is over and we find ourselves singing our old complaints all over again. How could this be?

If we start to blame the other at this point or go into hopelessness and futility, we are doomed. We may create a strong case for how much we tried and how much they didn’t, indulging ourselves in all our old answers – Using our new experiences to justify and reinforce our old beliefs and be driven by the consequences of our past conditioning. Or we can use what is not working in our experiences to help us identify and dispel our old beliefs and begin to be driven by cause.

Beliefs are like seeds. When planted and nurtured the inevitable consequence is that they grow. If we don’t like the garden we are living in we might want to be causally interested in the seeds that were planted there.

Beliefs grow into landscapes of orientation, perspective, expectation and attitudes that influence the very meaning we give to our experience, thus shaping our experience to match and sustain our beliefs. We are consciously and unconsciously cultivating the gardens of our discontent, victorious only in how very right or futile we get to be. Would we rather be right about what we think is wrong or would we rather be happy?

But even when we get to the place where we are willing to give up being right and the blame that goes along with it and we try to do it differently, it may not turn out all that different. At least not right away.

You see it is one thing to think the thoughts that will enable us to grow. It is another thing entirely to live them. The status quo does not like to be changed. The unknown frightens us and we will often cling to what pains us in order to hold onto that which we think that we know. I call this Psychic Survival Instinct, the intra-psychic component of the more familiar physical survival instinct.

We have the need to attach meaning to our experience and then Psychic Survival Instinct commands us to cling to that meaning. Once we have identified who we think we are or what we think we can expect it is as if our liquid consciousness gets poured into a very defined and confining jello mold. In order to survive we have to keep ourselves squeezed into that shape. To do this we wear a pair of psychic glasses prescribed to the specifications of our perceived identity and expectations. Our perception is forced into our prescribed worldview and so our personal history can’t help but repeat itself.

So for example: Let’s say you are someone who felt unimportant when your Dad and Mom never came to your sport events at school and then moved the family to another city even though you pleaded with them to not make you leave your friends. And all these years later your mate says he will get the garage cleaned out by next Saturday and it doesn’t get done (again). You may be likely to feel that he just doesn’t think of you or what you want as important. You might get angry and hostile. You might be resentful and withdrawn. He won’t understand why you are making such a big deal about it. Especially if you tell him he doesn’t value you or think you are important. Maybe he agreed with you to avoid an argument. Maybe he’s just too tired. Whatever the reason you can rest assured that your importance has nothing to do with his inaction. Still, your belief will tell you otherwise.

We need to recognize when we are wearing these psychic glasses from our past and we need to begin to be interested in what really is true rather than what we think or feel is true when we have been wearing them.

It takes time for one’s evolving sense of self to catch up with the new garden that has begun to grow! Especially when the old psychic survival defenders of the original garden are still working overtime.

What a circus! All the same the new seedlings we are planting with our present awareness and willingness to change do get stronger. They grow in spite of our old ways stubbornly and unconsciously returning, their roots reaching deeper as we choose to live from cause rather than be enslaved to consequence.

An important trick is redirecting the shame and guilt associated with not being right or how we wish we could be different toward a willingness to perceive, choose, and act differently. To be willing to rototill the old garden, plant the new seeds, nurture their growth and wait with trust for nature to take her course.

If we wish to have a garden where we can live in co-creative, conscious, ecstatic relationship we need to make sure that those are the seeds that we scatter and tend to.

We live in the consequences of our choices. If we are not consciously choosing then by default our unconscious, guided by the psychic glasses of our old beliefs and expectations, will choose for us.

If we don’t like what is happening to us, around us, or inside us we have not been choosing well. No blame, no shame. We can root out the old beliefs and expectations that no longer serve us and replant. We can liquify our sense of self and allow ourselves to grow anew. Rightness of being and skillful, satisfying and beneficial circumstances will inevitably follow.