Weeding the Garden of the Soul

Over 30 years ago, my dad asked me to go outside and help with weeding. 

"If you just break off the part above ground," he said, "the weed will grow right back up."

As long as the root of the weed (our “problem”) is still in place, the weed will continue to pop up and choke out the intentional garden.

What most of us try to do is grow a beautiful garden of Being in our lives without handling the weeds within us, some of which have been growing there for decades. 

It's not enough to judge those weeds, to feel ashamed of them, or to stomp on top of them. That's dealing with the surface of the weed. 

No, real weeding removes the weed at its root and makes room for new growth. 

In a conversation last week, a client of mine did some weeding at a deep level of her Being. She cleared out some room and unleashed hidden joy from her childhood. 

It was powerful. She was given new life in the process. A Resurrection. 

By clearing weeds out at their root, we make room for a more authentic expression of who we are. 

The week before, another client had a transformational experience when weeding a feeling he’s had about himself for as long as he can remember - over 30 years.

This feeling? That he's missing something inside. That there's more to life and he's not getting it because he's missing something.

As it always seems to be, this feeling had been the Truth for him. It's the kind of story that he didn't himself have… Instead, this story had him!

It had him by the collar. It had him by the tongue. 

It held him back. It kept his mouth closed. 

It "stopped me from living my dreams."

This man has new access to courage and freedom out of this conversation, and I'm excited to see what he intentionally grows in the garden of his life.

This kind of soul gardening takes a little work, but oh boy is it worth it.

Here's a pro-tip as you get to gardening: even the weeds are beautiful, so remove them with gentleness and compassion - don't damage the soil when you do your weeding.

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

P.S. There are three ways you can support yourself by working with me: one-on-one coaching, the Mind Mastery Experience happening on April 7, 2024, and hiring me to work with your team, group, or organization. Contact me when you're ready. 💌

Life Isn’t Exhausting. Fighting With It Is.

A client was sharing with me her frustration with a family member. This family member was not showing up the way my client thought he should be showing up.

Frustration. Anger. Disappointment. Anxiousness. Sadness.

There are factors outside us and factors inside us that can cause these emotions to arise. These factors cause the primary ripples in our experience. 

It’s like we’re sitting calmly on a placid lake and a big branch falls into the water from an overhanging tree. That branch causes ripples that shake our little boat.

The falling branch is "the facts" of our experience. The things people say and do. The weather. The latest news. Emotions that seemingly pop out of nowhere.

Like the fallen branch, these facts often cause ripples within us - the initial impact upon us of these facts. Perhaps a feeling of sadness, surprise, vulnerability, or fear. That fallen branch, it could be a problem for us.

We often don’t leave it at that, though, simply being with the primary ripples, the stuff of our experience. 

No, we try to stop those ripples! So we swat at them with an oar. Stop it, ripples!! I don’t like this movement!

And by swatting our oars around and moving around in our boat, we create new ripples, secondary ripples, and more bobbing and tilting.

What started out as something simply showing up in our experience has now become much more complex within us. Story and reaction and judgment and the history of old wounds generate a reactive heat of more emotion and more thinking.

We layer on top of our primary experience all sorts of secondary reactions. We get angry. We get frustrated. We feel ashamed. Then, we get caught up, turned around, and exhausted by our reactions.

Life isn’t exhausting. Reacting to life the way we do, however, is exhausting. 

For my client, her family member is the branch that fell into the lake of her awareness. The primary ripples were the result of her judgments of her family member, sourced in her own insecure thinking and feeling as a mom. The secondary ripples - her frustration and anger - she made instead of being with the facts and her insecure thinking.

We do NOT like feeling insecure and vulnerable, do we?

What better way to protect against our own vulnerabilities and insecurities than to get frustrated! This is how we add secondary ripples to complicate our experience - we end up grappling with frustration because we don't think we can handle insecurity and vulnerability.

Spiritual growth is both a science and an art. It’s a science because there are clear distinctions we can make between the primary ripples (the facts; what’s happened) and the secondary ripples (our reactions to the facts, usually based on stories and interpretations from a place of insecurity and vulnerability). It’s an art because it takes an internal dance as we learn to navigate those ripples.

The outcome of mastering this beautiful science/art?

Freedom. 

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

P.S. There are three ways you can support yourself by working with me: one-on-one coaching, the Mind Mastery Experience happening on April 7, and hiring me to work with your team, group, or organization. Contact me when you’re ready. 💌

Our Thoughts Aren't Innocent

I've felt sad and worried about a friend.

I'd been seeing his diagnosis and healing path as a problem. I'd been seeing it as something that's wrong and shouldn't be. 

Sitting with him recently, I realized that those thoughts have an energy. I had been creating the energy of problem, sad, horrible, unfair.

That energy likely isn't conducive to healing! So I shifted the energy by shifting my thinking. 

Changing our thinking isn’t necessarily easy. We first have to really to distinguish what’s happening from our thinking about what’s happening. This is a critical first step, and one that opens the door to possibility. 

When we’ve collapsed what’s happening with our thinking about what’s happening, we’re certain that the way we see things is “the way things are,” and we leave no room for possibility.

I mean, how arrogant is it for me to feed with energy the idea that "This shouldn't be"?!?! As if I can possibly understand the infinite workings of the body, the mind, the universe, and the Divine.

So I intentionally created a new interpretation:

"My friend is healing. This is his path, and it's perfect. He has what it takes to move through this. He’s strong. We are strong. The human body is a miraculous vessel and it serves its role beautifully and powerfully." 

I'm choosing to intentionally feed with energy the idea that, "This is perfect, and my friend and the rest of us can handle this."

Our internal and external language is powerful and impactful. 

Mostly we’re blind to our language and its impacts. Even when we’re intentional about our language, the full breadth of our impact likely stretches beyond what we even think or see.

Our default judgments and opinions aren’t innocent - they have a real impact because they have a real energy to them. They’re also not original or creative. They’re inherited from our past or inspired by fear.

In many ways, we don’t have thoughts - our thoughts have us. Break this habit and master your mind. 

Thanks so much for reading. ❤️

P.S. There are three ways you can support yourself by working with me: one-on-one coaching, the Mind Mastery Experience happening on April 7, and hiring me to work with your team, group, or organization. Connect with me when you’re ready. 💌