Weed The Garden

When I was a kid, my stepfather was a landscaper/gardener. He did both, and from the time I could push a lawnmower around a lawn for 25 cents an hour, I worked for him.

This was not gardening in the sense of Martha Stewart in a cute visor, delicately trimming the rose bushes. This was digging in hard dirt, moving heavy plants and clearing foot high weeds. I pretty much hate yard work.

It’s a funny thing because at the beginning of the year I was trying to think of a new year’s resolution to make. One that I always make is to meditate more because I believe that is the most important thing you can do.

Sometimes the meditation is going well, and it’s good, and sometimes it is a struggle. But hopefully, it’s at a place where it doesn’t need a resolution to keep it going.

I got to thinking about what I could do for a different new year’s resolution, and I don’t know why, but it just popped into my head “Weed the garden.” I was thinking it strange that of all the random things that could occur to me, “weed the garden?”

Then I figured it out. Weed the physical, mental, and spiritual garden.

In this case, I am going to start with the mental and spiritual because they are so connected.

The commitment every yogi must make is to vigilance in regards to introspection and self-reflection, and it is not enough to just do the introspection. Acting on and improving what we find is, of course, fundamental to the practice. This begins as a mental process.

We should reflect on “How did I do today? Was I impatient and agitated when I should have been calm? Was I unkind or indifferent when I could have shown compassion? Did I get angry at something I should have just let go?

This is a mental process, and we need to “pull the weeds” of our undesirable behavior through conscious affirmation, or focused meditation. By exercising vigilance and resolve, we can modify negative reactive responses. We can pull the weeds of our unbecoming behavior and replace them with fruit and flowers of a good heart and thoughts.

Through this routine of discipline and dedication to our path, and keeping the mental garden free of weeds, the spiritual garden will grow and thrive.

The next area is a crossover of mental and physical. It is our mouth. Not the chewing and eating mouth. The talking mouth.

When our mental behavior becomes verbal, now we have infused the mental energy into the material world. Anyone who does not understand and respect the power of the spoken word, might as well stop reading right here, and go do something else.

The power of words has been extolled and warned about in the religious, spiritual, and psychological practices, as well as neuroscience, and physics.

And one of the very worst talking you can do? Gossip. The great yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda was pretty easygoing and cool regarding general human behavior in his followers. But he absolutely did not tolerate gossip. You’ve got to get that weed out of your garden. That one’s even warned about in the friggin’ Bible! so get that one out of there.

Watch your mouth. The consequences of your speech, both positive and negative, should not be taken lightly.

Next, we will get into the physical weeds. What are the weeds? There are a couple of kinds of physical weeds. There are those things that you do that you wish you didn’t do as far as your physical aspects go. The food, whether it is too much, or the wrong kind. Too much drinking, or drugging or not enough exercise. All the usual suspects.

Many of these physical weeds get their direction from mental activity, so again there is a connection. But the best thing you can do is just say no! Say no to the tendency to do the wrong thing and replace that moment with something beneficial. That moment when you are bailing on yoga or the gym, or whatever, a least go for a walk or get on the treadmill for 20 minutes, but do something other than succumbing to your usual default “bad weed” behavior. Break that cycle.

The other physical weeds are the ones in our environment. These are some of the toughest to pull. The people, places, and things that drag us down. We can be very attached to some of these weeds.

Some people look at their garden and think I know it’s a lot of dirt and rocks, but at least the weeds are kind of green. So, I’ll just leave it like it is. For whatever reason, they don’t aspire to anything better. Maybe they think they don’t deserve anything better or can’t get anything better, so they settle for weeds.

But the sad thing is that ultimately even those weeds will let them down because they haven’t been active in the maintenance of the garden. They just settled for what it was. And what it was, was never good to start with.

And I think you can pull a lot of weeds. People say, “Oh, don’t overdo it. Don’t commit to too much. But I think you can pull as many weeds as you want. However, you must give priority to the biggest, baddest, weeds, and commit to pulling those big time. Then if you fall off the wagon on the other smaller weeds, you say, “Okay, I forgive myself for whatever, but I’ve got these big ones.”

Prioritize, and do the work, and all will be well. Meditation, affirmation, vigilance, and devotion.  It’s on us: we are the only ones who can tend our garden. Meditation, affirmation, and devotion – the classics.

Peace out.