Pluck a Thistle and Plant a Flower

Pluck a Thistle and Plant a Flower

What inspires you or me to greet each new day with the readiness to study and put energy into experiences that have the possibility of evoking higher states of consciousness? How to manage making the necessary choices and efforts to attain my highest potential and how to sustain these efforts?

Avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker. —Leonardo da Vinci

I have heard about people studying nutrition and exercise and envisioning medical miracles that would increase the length of human life which could – in their view – eventually even make it possible to live forever, a modern twist on the fountain of youth. But what if that same focus and diligence was put into a pursuit of a fountain of sustained efforts – a focus on process, quality and depth of experience brought to each moment of my life rather than an end result measured by time?

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. —Henry David Thoreau

I was trying to think of a simple activity that could illustrate the idea of choices that require perpetual efforts. The activity would be one that releases what is unnecessary and collects what is useful based upon the initial aim of the activity. What came to mind was the simple external act of gardening as a parallel to life.

Our inner world is a garden which needs preparation. The process of gardening has both the need to actively prepare the soil and to plant the seeds as well as the consistent effort of watering, fertilizing, and weeding to sustain healthy growth. The same is true of spiritual growth.

Allowing nature to nurture, my internal planting begins with the knowledge of how to prepare the soil for the seeds of consciousness to grow. I start to read about the conditions that can encourage growth and how to feed those parts of me? I begin to observe what elevates and destroys the growth of higher states and establish criteria for making wiser choices.

Putting that knowledge into action through “doing what the machine does not wish to do,” – efforts against my normal habits and mechanics – I am able to see myself more clearly, then plant the seed of self-remembering which begins to grow. At the same time, I continue observing, weeding, and removing what is harmful to pursuing higher states, such as identification, negative emotions, imagination (uncontrolled mind activity), unnecessary talk, lying, and the detrimental habits that keep me asleep.

The movie, “Being There” comes to mind as I write this post – an old movie well worth watching. It is about an uneducated gardener who finds himself giving advice to the President based upon his knowledge and being of gardening practices. The character, aptly named Chancy Gardiner, gives advice about good governance to the President by describing with simplicity how the soil needs to be carefully prepared, the seeds need to be planted in due season, and the weeds need to be removed for the garden to grow. We might all benefit from Chancy’s simple advice.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow. —Abraham Lincoln

Consistent effort to see and encourage the highest in oneself and in others is like being a sun for each other. A light towards which our higher potential can grow.

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do. —Galileo Galilei

In contrast to being a light for each other, the weeding can be done through self-observation, without the need of others pointing out imperfections and reducing interactions to highlighting the weaknesses inherent in the human condition. Valuing the process and the growth of other students on the path to awakening and trusting in the guidance they receive from higher influence – Celestial Influence – helps to weed out what is unnecessary. Being present is all.

One can always make more efforts when one is making them for the benefit of others. More effort means more presence. —The Teacher

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Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle, Albrecht Dürer