Your Soul Is: A Garden.
How are your energy levels at the moment?
Do you feel overwhelmed? Distracted? Low?
There can be many reasons for why this is. The world around us will give us a million and one reasons why.
But getting to the root this feeling means going within. How? By trusting your Imagination, you can be directed into the areas of your inner life that need more attention.
Doing this simple practise can really help. It can bring intuitive wisdom, direction, and higher energy levels. But the key is gentleness and patience.
Give yourself 10 minutes to try this and see what happens:
Imaginal Practise: Tending To The Garden Of The Soul.
Imagine for a moment that your Soul is a garden.
Imagine you could walk through a door, and enter into it.
Does your garden have a boundary? How do you enter into it? What state is the boundary in?
As you enter what do you see?
Would your inner garden be wild and overrun with weeds? Would it be ordered and intricate? Would there be flower beds? Trees? A River? What wildlife and animals would there be? Something real? Something Mythological?
Close your eyes and really consider this for a moment. (There is a guided imaginal practise at the end of this article to help you.)
What did you see? Feel? Experience?
Take a few minutes to write down these experiences and imagery in your journal.
All of these images and feelings, regardless of how subtle or “made up” they feel, provide indicators to the state of your inner life.
The boundary can represent your sense of openness, or sense of self esteem.
What you are growing in the garden can represent what’s important, and meaningful for you. Trees and flower beds can represent new creative projects that you are working on. What condition are these inner trees? The more you tend to these things inside you, the more likely they are to flourish externally.
The presence of water can indicate what brings you life and nourishment. If you see a river, this can provide fresh sources of energy. It can be a flowing source of creativity that can clean out obstacles.
Dark and untended areas are places that need your specific care and attention.
These are just guidelines. Your Imagination and intuition will fill in the details
Your attention can help you tend to the fragile and fresh beginnings of new hope, new dreams and expectations.
Whatever you pay attention to flourishes. Whatever you don’t pay attention to it’s, withers and dies. The same is true for aspects of our inner life.
You can use the power of your attention, like a river, to flourish into being aspects of yourself that currently lie dormant. Your Imagination can help excavate the desiccated areas, and breakthrough the hard and tough layers of life that lays down its hard crust inside you.
Handling Overwhelm
Beware of trying to do too much at once. Overwhelming yourself brings anxiousness, and that inhibits your growth. Instead, diligently tend to that which requires specific care and attention. Worries, doubts and fears creep in like weeds. And yet, by casting the light of your attention on them, you can see them for what they are. Deal with them one at a time. Dont avoid the dark feelings. Ask them “why are you here?” Listen to the answer. Maybe the shape of a weed or area of darkness will give you some insight into why you feel the way you do.
Your attention is light.
Your inspiration is water.
You can establish a boundary for your garden. That way you become aware of what you let in, what you keep in, and, and what you let out.
Your boundary can also represent what you are willing to take a stand for.
What are you willing to take a stand for?
This is ACTIVE imagination:
Whatever comes up for you, be gracious and compassionate with your own inner findings. And remember.. This is a practice of ACTIVE imagination. It's NOT a passive fantasy. There is a delicate balance between watching imagery course by.. and you delicately engaging with the flow of experience.
This means you consciously engage with what you observe.. gently. It can be coaxed, talked with, flourished, directed. Indeed, it wants to be brought to the light and created with this way.
Your Soul is a Garden. So listen to it, and make it a beautiful one. Wild and free, or manicured and perfect.. as long as it makes your hearts sing. Tend to it, care for it.
Your Soul will thank you for it in a million ways.
An extended post and guided video can be found in The SoulScaping Collective.
Or, you may like to join the next sessions of The Soul Of The World.
Tending To the Garden of Your Soul: Imaginal Practise
Close your eyes (after reading this):
Imagine you are in the centre of your soul. Your soul is a garden. It may be large. It may be small. It may be overgrown. Every blade of grass may be perfectly manicured.
What do you see?
Does it have a wall or a boundary of some kind? If there is a boundary what's it made of? How do you get in or out of this garden? Is there water? What form does it take? Is it flowing? Is it still? Is it underground? Is there anything overhead? Would you say the garden is light or dark?
What grows in it? Flowers? Vegetables? Is it a sculpture garden?
What other life and animals are there?
Now go to any of the areas that feel dark and un-tended to. It may be at the centre or at the edges. Go and take a look. What do you see now? What have you found?
(If there is an entrance of some kind, for the moment, don’t enter. Well return to this another time)
Now, journal what your experiences were.
If you feel moved to do so, use the SoulScape Creative Practise to capture any particularly potent images, or aspects of your garden, and put them in your journal.
Guidelines on Self Analysis of Journaled Imagery and Artwork.
- Place the artwork/in front of you
- Take a few deep abdominal breaths and observe what you painted/wrote
- How did you feel when you were writing/creating it?
- What stands out for you?
- Did any fragments of memory or life experience come to mind?
- Release that we are not drawing conclusions here, all we want to do become aware of and label emotions and feelings that come up
- What could all this mean for your personal good? Your expression, your authenticity and confidence in the world?
- If anything particularly troubling or overwhelming comes up, seek the professional help of a psychotherapist or art psychotherapist.
An extended post and guided video can be found in The SoulScaping Collective.
Or, you may like to join the next sessions of The Soul Of The World.