This past year I moved from the big smoke to the country and am living in a house with a garden for the first time in my adult life. I’ve discovered I quite enjoy gardening. It’s heart warming and grounding to be amongst nature, using your hands and getting dirty. 

I find I’m incredibly inspired afterwards and my writing has come alive. I’ve had a couple of Sunday’s dedicated to gardening and I couldn’t help but notice how similar us humans are to nature. If we pay attention, nature can teach us the secrets to life. 

We had an unusually wet winter and spring. And with the spring sunshine beaming down, nature is doing its thing and blooming at a rapid pace. The flowers are blooming, the leaves are springing out of the branches, the grass needs to be mown on a weekly basis and the butterflies are out. 

The weeds are also out! My goodness they seam to appear from nowhere and do not hesitate in taking over the place.  As I inspected the yard, the sight of the extent of the weeds was overwhelming. It was a big job, and a bit like cleaning the house, the type of job you procrastinate starting because it seems like it will just be a horrible experience.

In a period where I’ve been drawn to pull back, take some space and time to tend to my own inner world to help counteract the heavy energy from the outer world, along comes a sunny Sunday and the perfect day to tackle the weeding. 

I focused my attention on the immediate space around me and started pulling out the weeds I could see within my reach. And then bit by bit I moved across the yard, slowly but surely covering some ground. 

At one point I looked up and could see a whole space of the yard was now clear of weeds. There was still a lot of ground to cover, but spurred on by what I had achieved so far, I kept going, less daunted by the entire job. 

As I was pulling out the weeds, I noticed how satisfying it was to loop my hand around the weed, get a good grip and pull it out roots and all. I could sense the whole of the weed had come out and knew that it wouldn’t grow back. Sometimes the weed was so dug in with its root system, it would snap off as I pulled, leaving the roots in the ground. I  knew that these weeds would grow back in no time, and I would be back out in the garden needing to do the weeding again.

I noticed how similar the process of tending to your garden was to healing and tending to your own inner world. I saw the weeds as your life experiences and traumas that have taken hold of your inner garden. They have been growing for some time with roots systems hidden beneath the surface.

At surface level you see a plant that has thorns, thick stalks and ugly leaves. They do not carry the same beauty as flowers and plants. At the surface level for humans you see anger, frustration, judgement and shame, energies which do not carry the same beauty as love, peace and joy.

As I looked out across the yard and felt overwhelmed with the extent of the weeds, humans can also feel overwhelmed with the extent of their heavy emotions, resulting in feeling stuck, directionless, out of control and hopeless.

The easy path is to ignore the weeds, and try to carry on as normal. But like weeds, emotions can’t be ignored. You can try, but soon your inner garden will be overwhelmed by them. If you instead focus your attention on just one emotion that has been triggered inside of you at a time, you can slowly and surely work your way through and clear the path of your inner garden. 

As you start to witness the shifts and transformations as you tend to your inner weeds, you will be inspired to keep going. If you take the time to wrap your hand around the whole of your life experience and uncover the depth of your trauma, you can heal it at the root level.

Like pulling out the weeds, if you pull too quickly, or only superficially get a hold of the trauma, when you pull, the roots will stay in the ground. The root cause of your trauma will not be healed. The weeds, repeat experiences and heavy emotions will soon return, until you heal the root cause.

After some time of weeding your inner garden, you will look up and see a clear path and appreciate how far you have come. You will be filled with inspiration and light, as the process of gardening, whether your inner or outer one, brings you closer to nature and closer to Oneness. Gardening really can be therapeutic.

“As above, so below, as within, so without, as the universe, so the soul.”

– Hermes Trismegistus

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