"Everything that you're ever really looking for, is already located right inside of you, in the garden of your heart."
I had a very interesting conversation with a student of mine, and when I ask how her day was, she said it was not going too good because she just had her English test back, and she got a 52 out of a 54. "I lost those 2 points for some silly things. It makes me sad." Then I said, "Have you ever thought of looking at this another way? You have 52 points out of 54, that's a big deal!". Instead of focusing on what she had achieved, she focused on those 2 points that she lost. This is how a lot of us are in life. We tend to focus on that little bit of lack and blow it out of proportion, while we forget about the good we did or have.
How we determine our happiness is solely in the way we perceive things. The art of seeing is to understand what we seek for the most in life: do we want recognition at all times, or do we want to celebrate what we already have? This all sums up to having a grateful heart. But to have a grateful heart we need to do a lot of work, as our heart is like a garden. And within every heart is a hidden garden. No matter how young or old you think you are, the garden is there.
When we are young, we appreciate the little things. We play in our garden, spend time tending it, listening to the birds sing, watering our plants, digging in the soil, and plant seeds while watch patiently as they grow. There is so much joy in gardening, for it is truly a labor of love. But as we grow older, and experience the darkness and trials of life, we may get hurt and build up anger, pain, resentment, trauma etc. This is when we start to look outward for pleasure and solutions. We start to look relentlessly for outside stimulants to help us cope and deal with our bitterness and pain. Instead of going back inside our garden and tend to it, we lock the door of our garden and venture outwards.
Our garden is now withering as the weeds of our hate and suffering builds up, taking over the sunlight and nutrients of the soil and killing all the beautiful flowers. We start to neglect things that are important, and we start to forget the simplest things. And the worst of it all is when we loose our sense of perception, as we blame others for our pain or sufferings, not realizing that everyone of us can actually heal ourselves if we travel back into the garden of our heart.
It took me years to travel back and arrive to the foot of the door. And it took me a while to locate the key that I have misplaced to open the door to my garden. When I first open the cracked door, the sight of how my garden looked devastated me. I could hardly see through the weeds. No light could penetrate that deep, thick layers of weed! But I was determined to clear them all up and revive my garden!
Yet my impatience took a hold of me, and at first, I hurried and wanted to weed out as much as I could in a day or two. However, by trying to eliminate as much as I could in such a short period of time exhausted me to the point where I wanted to give up. I learned that taking one day at a time is the key. If I force myself to take care of my garden immediately, it will just discourage me even more. And most of all, gardening is suppose to be an enjoyable and therapeutic process. I am not suppose to rush it. That is when I start to allow myself to sit with my weeds, learn from it, and thank them. Because without them, I will not have the chance to work on reviving my garden.
As I thank the weeds in my heart, the pain that someone else had seemingly induced, or the hurt and resentment I once felt....I realized none of them is another person(s) fault. It is the way I perceive it that matters. It comes back to: do I want to focus on the 2 points I lost, or do I want to focus on the 52 points I gained? With lost there is gain, and with gain there is lost. Nothing is ever truly lost unless we want them to be. And to hold on to that lost is frankly a waste of time. And boy do I hold on to things....and those things are all from the past.
Weeding and tending to our garden allows me to let go, bit by bit, everything that I have held on to since childhood. The more I weed the more I realize how much junk I have accumulated. Yet even though gardening is HARD WORK, I still enjoy it. Because I long for the sight of my flowers growing, and the butterflies and bees visiting, or the little birds that comes to sing in it. And I love playing in it and soak in the wonders of what nature can bring into my heart: complete and utter Joy.
I hope today will be the day you decide to travel back to the garden of your heart. And I pray you will have the courage to tend to it and revive it as it once was~
Much love and peace,
AMA