Pruning your landscape

Pruning your landscape.

I am sure you have all at some point in your lives tended a garden, or a flower bed or a bunch of bushes on your property, or at the very least cared for a flower. When part of the shrubbery or the flower or a tree dies, we feel a sense of sorrow.Yet healthier maintenance of the botanical life may have avoided their end result. Caring for these plants is  not easy and takes great patience, love and compassion. It instills a primal nature within us of caring, which can be applied to our lives as well. Take for example a bonsai  tree plant. Years of dedicated trimming, pruning, adjusting branches, careful watering and sunlight exposure all eventually reveal a beautiful miniature tree, with elegant branches and strong leaves. Not an easy undertaking, trust me I have tried. The process of maintenance is rather a spiritual journey for the plant and for you in turn. It survives as you are in the moment, aware, alert and focussed on your task of care, and you in turn are  rewarded by being in the moment and being aware of your task at hand, and so appropriately trim the correct foliage, and preserve the delicate balance needed for survival. 

Apply this little bonsai tree to your life. It knows the elements needed for survival namely sunlight, water, soil nutrition and the nurturing hand of the gardener, you. Now imagine this tree is you. The universe happily will provide in abundance all the elements that you need to "survive". I would argue that everything you need is already present for you in the here and now. What you need to" live" is in your hand. Pruning away the dead or dying foliage is key. If you do not do this simple practice on a regular basis you will end up in overgrown weeds, top heavy branches, and general ill health of your plant ergo your spirit. Trimming back the dying leaves and branches are symbolic for you to trim away your prejudices, your unforgiven encounters, your jealously, your myopic judgments and your unresolved fears. Giving way to the tree leaves to "breathe" is essential as your spirit in kind breathes freer air of compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, and endurance.

As a gardner trims back the branches and shapes the shrubbery, you too must shape your mental and spiritual landscape. Shape your life into one of decency, character, beauty, respect and integrity. You can do this with the same insight that a gardener has as he or she envisions what they would like their garden to look like. So too you can modify your ego and portray what you wish your garden or spiritual Self chooses to reveal. Using your life's experiences to bring about the necessary pruning to your mind is a helpful tool as you know what you can and cannot trim. Do not be afraid of getting on your knees and getting your hands dirtier as you get to the bottom of the dead roots and yank them out. The deeper you  go in meditation, the deeper you will find old fears, troubles, worries that have prevented you from growing outward and upward. Continuously be mindful of your thoughts and aware of the shape your mind, spirit and consciousness takes on as you tend your garden of the soul.

Today is a beautiful day to take out your shears and have fun pruning. 

Updating your software

Updating your software

We ( our spirits ) are born with a freshly installed software package right out of the box. Over the course of time this  software gets corrupted with false ideas, hurtful beliefs and obsolete notions just like  cookies, spam, and miscellaneous out of date versions. In later years your mind gets slower to process and adapt to changing times, and the hardware and the software become incompatible. Newer applications of life situations are unable to run on your archaic version of software of your mind. 

Within your spirit you have been programmed with beliefs of others such as "you are not good enough", " you won't mount to much", "you are too small, too weak, too uneducated, too poor, not good looking enough", or " you cannot do this or you cannot do that". We then forcibly exist in  our lives being confined within our vision of ourselves as seen  by others. Yet one day something glorious happens and we get awakened to realize that our lives are not to be confined but be celebrated. Our spirit is more than the sum of the negative comments that we have brought about, however quite the opposite. We are beings of light confined in physical form and we have the abilities to do anything that we choose to accomplish. We then  have to find a better operating system to help manage the new software that we must reinstall. 

Reprogramming your mind with affirmations of being empowered, being rejuvenated, being all that you choose to be and can be, will usually jump start your spirit and energy to  new high heights, accommodating your true reality. It is all about upgrading your mental and spiritual software. Granted this may take some time as various negative ideas have been deeply hidden inside your "computer" or your Self, so you must be patient with yourself during the reinstallation and reformatting process. Additionally, many a time viruses have been downloaded and taken root hold of your software. I think it is time to use more powerful anti-virus software with more focussed meditative techniques with stronger feelings of acceptances of positive ideals. Put up your "firewalls" with understandings of gratitude, compassion and forgiveness and see your new software programs soar to faster speeds. Higher frequency energies are awaiting to be harnessed as more interesting life experiences are waiting for your new operating system to handle.

Having difficulty updating your software? Call upon your spiritual tech support. 

Troubleshooting your life

Trouble shooting your life

Tough decisions. Resolute ideas. Puzzling questions. Enlightening answers. We go through this seemingly endless list of door stops with the intervening "Aha" moments in our days and our lives. Sometimes these "stop and go" events are presented to us by ourselves or by other people and circumstances beyond our control. My thought on this has been consistently not of the mindset that the questions or even the answers are more important, yet  rather how we compose ourselves during these moments. It is the choices that we take in the heat of the moment that determine our course. Our frame of mind if calm and always in the present will affect the course change that we most desire. If not then the hurried and rushed choices will probably backfire or not take us to the correct destination. 

Life's complexities are challenges to be overcome and not obstacles to be avoided. It is when we have to face our fears and instill the peace within the storm that we have the greatest results. The cumulative experiences of our lives gives us character, yet it is the trouble shooting in our lives that earns us the wisdom and courage. Most of the time challenges are a good thing, as under pressure we are tested to see how we will shape up forthe brighter future that lays ahead. These challenges on some sub conscious level are inserted into our experiential panel by our Selves to see what happens. When you take a piece of carbon and put it under extreme pressure a diamond may come out. So too is the idea that under pressure something spectacular is waiting to come out of all of us.

Yes and no. Take the risk or play it safe. Accept or decline. Move forward or stay where you are. We spend so much of time analyzing each decision before we take it and then invariably are never  satisfied with the plan at hand. This is not troubleshooting. To borrow a term from a friend, this is "monkey minding" your life. Trouble shooting needs a modicum of faith splashed in with a spoon of courage and dosed with a pinch of focus to bring about the clarity of thought that will help make smoother decisions. You can always call upon help from physical sources of friends or family and of course from your Source to assist you in your endeavors. You can chisel  your life into  a beautiful masterpiece or neglect it and let it become a mountain of unhappiness. It depends on your choice and your trouble shooting skills. 

Hard time troubleshooting? Consult your spiritual trouble shooting manual.

Clocks don't bring back tomorrow

Clocks don't bring tomorrow

It is 5pm somewhere. This phrase is a common colloquialism for "hope work time is over" as it is time to party, perhaps have a drink, and relax. Whatever the time it is always the time shown on a clock of the present time. It is will not show you the time that just went past nor the time of the future. By trying to speed up your clock hands you unfortunately do not bring  tomorrow into the present nor can you reverse the clock and bring back a prior time zone. It is the mind that continues to trick us in living in the past or the future except the present where you are most needed.

If there is something that you dread doing the hands on the clock travel with such lethargy that it will feel like an eternity. If you are happy and looking forward to some event or some persons arrival, or engaged in a happy space in your life (like a holiday) usually the hands of the clock will traverse with such expedience that you may feel gipped. In either case what is happening is that time remains constant, and the clock simply is showing you the PRESENT measurement of elapsed intervals from one moment to the next.  It is your mind that bends this measurement with false feelings and gets you to wish that time would stop, slow down, speed up into tomorrow or simply reverse in many cases. 

The illusion is easily dispensed with when one starts to live in the present moment of time, and  not wishes for a past event to return or be erased, or for that matter something that is going on at the moment to be sped up or similarly trying to pre-pone an event tomorrow. Controlling your mind is the key to coming out of this illusionary state. Yet the mind is not easily going to be controlled or dealt with in a haphazard fashion. It refuses to be tossed aside while you "meditate" and feel like you regain control of time. A better way is to simply accept the mind for its nature, fickle or otherwise, and follow an easier method of eventual mental control. This is your breath. If you shift your awareness to your breathing and feel the sensations as you inhale and exhale you become automatically more aware of the moment and politely ask the mind to participate in your new time management endeavor. 

Gently breathing in and out can be used as our portable tool of awareness and once effectively  used, can greatly aide in letting us feel the present moment and the passage of time. Once centered we are not required to change the perception of time to suit any purpose offered by our minds. Clocks do not bring back yesterday and nor do they bring forth tomorrow. Clocks are a reminder to stay in the present moment and have the time of your life.

Excuse me please, do you have the current time?