The Inner Garden

Aaron: At times you become so lost in the fear, anger and pain of your lives that you forget that these emotions are not who you are. We've spent much time exploring skillful ways to work with the heavy emotions. Today I want to approach it from a new perspective.

Regard your journey as if it were a river. Your energy is the waterflow. The heavy emotions are logs caught in a logjam. We've been learning how to unjam those logs so the water may flow unimpeded. To open the channel, one may concentrate on the logs or the water itself. When we raise the water level, the logs are freed. When you allow in more love and joy, the heaviness of anger and fear diminish. They become seen for what they are, artifacts of a mind that has solidified itself into fear by losing its connection with the Eternal.

How do we raise this water level? My dear ones, you pay so much attention to your fear, so little to the love, patience, generosity and caring that are a part of you. Each of these are fragile seeds within your being. They cannot grow without your nurturing attention. Those attributes such as generosity are natural to you but are also not you. They move through you when you allow it. They are manifestations of the natural movement of the open heart.

Let us look at joy. We're not talking here about the momentary happiness which comes with getting something you want or doing something well. You receive a pleasing gift and feel happiness. Perhaps it's a new pair of gloves and you leave them on the bus. A day later you're without your gloves and feeling sadness of their loss.

This joy is not the happiness that comes from resolving issues in a relationship because even that is fleeting and dependent on things outside yourselves. You feel happiness and that's fine; I'm not negating that. But perhaps the next day there is another argument.

I am talking of a much deeper kind of happiness which I prefer to call "joy" to differentiate it from impermanent happiness.

You have heard me say that all things are impermanent. Certainly this sense of joy is such, in that it is not fixed and unchanging. But when your joy is not dependent on that which constantly changes, then while it may ebb and flow, a sense of it is always present.

It's a bit like a perennial plant. It emerges when the sun shines on it in the spring and the days lengthen. When the weather cools, it fades, closes and disappears. There's no sign of it above the surface through the long winter. Then it blossoms again.

I have heard a lovely song. One verse's words are: "Just remember in the winter, far beneath the bitter snows, lies the seed that with the sun's love, in the spring, becomes the Rose."

That seed is within each of you, and the potential blossom within the seed. You can choose to be the sun with its light and warmth that enable the seed to grow. Even in winter, when joy and connection are hidden beneath the snow, you can be aware that they are there and seek ways to nurture them. So while the blossom is changing and impermanent, the seed is always there. It is eternal because it is part of the eternal light and energy of Love in its everchanging manifestations.

What is that kind of joy? Where does it come from? It doesn't depend on material things. It doesn't depend on relationships. Rather, it emerges from a clear seeing of things the way they are, a dawning of deep understanding about yourself and your interconnection with all else, an understanding of the nature of that which we call the soul, and of God.

It is a joy that does not diminish even in sorrow, loss and pain. It is the movement of the open heart that knows its most fundamental connection with all that is, and is no longer trapped in the delusion of separate self and ego.

I would ask you to discover this seed of joy in yourselves and to nurture it.

Fear grows out of your small ego self and its sense of separation. As long as the self is viewed as separate, there is need to achieve, to attain. There is all that outside of you, which you seem to lack.

When you begin to know your connection with all else, that fear may still arise but is seen clearly for the delusion it is, and the deeper self can offer the reminder to trust.

You may wish to practice working with such fear with the practice of generosity, whether material or of energy. When you follow the promptings of the open heart despite the fearful voices of conditioned mind that arise and say, "I can't," you begin to observe how those voices arise. They are the patterns and conditions of old mind with its core of "self." While they must be acknowledged-"feeling fear"-they need not be obeyed. You begin to establish a new and more skillful pattern of listening to the voice of love.

This is what it comes to, over and over again-fear, or love. Which voice will you heed? Can you have the love for yourselves to acknowledge your fear uncritically and say to it, "No, not this time"?

When you look back at experiences of generosity, and of fear of giving, you find a common thread. You come to feel the connection that allows joyful giving of your energy or resources. "Not separate!" That is the heart of it. You are a part of everything. Nothing belongs only to you and nothing can be taken from you. There is no beginning or end, no depletion or satiation. When you know that, fear dissolves.

As you practice generosity, and offer nonjudgmental awareness of fear as it arises, touching the fear with acceptance, that compassion allows you to move past your prior limits and know your infiniteness. It is this knowledge of your connection, of the interdependence of all that is, that leads to real joy, and to peace.

There are two different directions that mindfulness needs to take. One is the clear seeing of the arising and fading of everything, of all thoughts, feelings, sensations, of all situations, people, relationships, and material objects. "This is because that is. This is not, because that is not." Thus, one comes to understand impermanence and the absence of a self in all things.

But impermanence is not nihilism. The second direction for mindfulness is continuity and interdependence. "This is because that is …" Everything ends, and yet it finds its continuance in something else. The garbage becomes the compost that nourishes the plant. The plant creates the food that nourishes the person. There is a constant flow-through of energy. There is such joy in the experience of knowing oneself to be part of that energy, my dear ones. So much peace. This is the understanding through which one transcends birth and death.

You may nurture all of the seeds within you with the same process used to nurture generosity. Each time fear arises, it is like a wall around the garden. In endeavoring to protect the fragile seed, it blocks the light. The wall is the armor around your heart, called to defend that soft center that so fears being wounded.

The wall and the plant are not two, but parts of the garden. There is no need to get rid of the one with hatred in order to nourish the other, only to touch it with awareness and gently move it aside.

It is not a wall of steel but a living wall, grown from the organic substance of the fearful heart. As you investigate its nature, you will find that it is NOT solid, but very workable. Trim it a bit if necessary, and gently turn the cut ends into the soil to nurture the new plants.

Allow your fear to be a reminder to deeper compassion for the human feeling such fear, such pain, rather than a gateway to anger, greed or shame.

In this way, nurture your generosity, patience, lovingkindness, truthfulness, joy, wisdom, compassion, energy, and so many more, by constant awareness of their arising and of the walls which would block light. Remember, there is no "getting rid of." As the plant grows strong, the walls will no longer need you to maintain them. They will fall away, dying back into the soil.

Are there weeds in your garden? Remember that your impatience or greed grew out of the need to protect the self. You allowed them into your garden for a reason and they have offered that protection to the frightened heart. As you know your limitlessness, you will have no more need to defend. When energy is given to the new growth of love and connection, the weeds will fall away as disuse weakens their fiber.

This is the garden of your opening heart. Treat it with love and cherish it as it grows into the light.

A note from Barbara

When Aaron spoke of this garden to our weekly class, he asked us to do an exercise which many found of value. He suggested we each draw a garden. In it, he asked us to put those plants we most wanted to nurture in the coming months, those which we felt to be weakest in us and most in need of loving attention.

He suggested we draw the walls, the weeds, the entire landscape. Just how big or small was patience in us, or energy? What blocked it from the light?

He emphasized that our drawing skills weren't being measured. Rather, the exercise served two purposes. It allowed us to see more clearly, when one said "I want to be more generous," just exactly what fears blocked that generosity and made giving so painful. The fears lost their solidity as we got to know them intimately.

The second purpose was that he asked us to put these drawings where we could see them as a gentle reminder of our work, and even to update them as flowers grew, weeds withered and walls tumbled.

You might like to try it for yourselves.