We create everything we experience in our minds. So, if the mind is like a garden, what are you growing? Is that why people don’t produce what they want? Learn how to fix the soil and plant seeds that yield the harvest you desire.
Our thoughts are the seeds we are planting in our garden. Therefore, you can’t just plant random seeds and expect a specific harvest. You’ll need to sow the seeds to grow the plants you want.
If you plant seeds for flowers in soil that isn’t fertile and never water them, you may not get any flowers at all. So, if you want to grow beautiful flowers, you need to plan, prepare the ground, and take care of it.
What Are You Growing in Your Garden?
The mind is like a garden that needs daily tending. You’ve got to water and weed to get the harvest you want. Get the picture. Our intention is the soil of the mind. It is a living part of our psyche. It needs daily cultivation if we want it to grow the things we want.
Another critical point is the ground. You can’t plant good seeds in poor soil and expect them to grow. The subconscious is where our intention lives. You will need the right tools to get out the rocks and weeds contaminating the soil of your mind.
Your self-talk is a good barometer of the trajectory of your thought life. Hence, your thought life reflects the quality of your intention. We are always thinking, so this means your self-talk already has direction and momentum. Treat your mind like a garden and ensure your creative thought energy reinforces the fruit you want it to produce.
Learn to monitor your self-talk. You can’t fix harmful self-talk unless you can locate these negative scripts. If you don’t tend to the programming of your self-talk, you will not grow the things you want. It takes time and patience to tend to the garden of your creative thinking.
To be an excellent gardener, you need patience and self-awareness. You must learn to expand your awareness to grow the power of your intention. Positive emotions can ramp up the intensity and velocity of our intention. Think positive!
The Mind Is Like A Garden
If you search the web, you’ll find an emphasis on using affirmations to get what you want. There is no doubt about it, but if you don’t use affirmations properly, they can cause more harm than good. For the most part, people are on board up to this point. Here’s where it gets more complicated. All words and affirmations are the seeds in our garden analogy. If your affirmations aren’t manifesting what you want them to, then it is time to assess things. Look at the seeds you are planting and the ground where you grow them. What are you growing?
However, nothing good will grow if the soil is full of weeds. You can just pour on affirmations and expect results, positive affirmations alone won’t change the trajectory of your thoughts and intention. You cannot plant bad and good seeds and expect a positive result. Your negative beliefs are like weeds in the garden, and they will overtake the good seeds. We don’t want any weeds. Remember, the mind is like a garden; you must take care of it.
If this is true, you can use affirmations but fail to get a good harvest. Negative self-talk is like rocks and weeds. So, if you have a history of negative self-talk, you’ll need to fix it first. Get rid of the weeds before planting the seeds of affirmations.
Most people have a history of negative self-talk, emotions, automatic judgments, and behaviors. When you keep putting these thoughts out into the Universe, it returns more of the same. You can’t overcome this issue by throwing seeds of affirmation on top of contaminated soil.
So, what do you grow when you focus on negative emotions like hate? You get more hate. Negativity’s growing influence affects your body, mind, and soul. Your body listens to your mind. Our emotions are another barometer.
To solve this problem, you need to repair the soil. So, you’ll need to dig down below the conscious level of thought. Sounds like fun? Only if you enjoy digging. This is serious inner work. Continuing with our garden analogy, you must get to the root causes. You must repair the source of your negative self-talk, emotions, and behaviors.
The events surrounding your negative self-talk are the weeds and rocks in your garden. It’s the stuff buried in the ground that’s preventing your ability to grow good plants. This inner work isn’t rainbows and unicorns territory. It’s hard stuff, but you can do it. Your life is worth it. Since the mind is like a garden, you must tend to it properly if you want to have a harvest. Start with repairing the soil.
Repairing the Soil of Self-talk
Are you ready to do some mental and spiritual gardening? There are several tools helpful for this purpose. We highly recommend that you don’t go it alone. You may walk your own path, but you don’t have to tackle the obstacles alone. It’s a brave adventure, and it takes serious inner work. You aren’t alone in this quest. Joseph Campbell calls this the Hero’s Journey. (1) There are two basic approaches:
- analytical tools leverage the power of the logical mind
- spiritual tools leverage the power of the intuitive and spiritual side
Analytical Tools
Below are the two recommended analytical approaches. This path often appeals to those who like structure. The Enneagram Personality Profile and the Study of Logic are perfect for you. These tools will help you find and remove the rocks and weeds in your garden.
The Enneagram Personality Profile
Analytical thinking is the first approach to this problem, and one of the first analytical tools we recommend is the Enneagram. This tool of cognitive science will identify the components of your self-talk. It will show you the emotional links that are a part of your default personality settings.
Our personality and instincts are the elements of our ego, but we are not our ego. Some people think they are their personality because they identify with it to such a great extent. However, we are not our personality; it’s a necessary tool connecting our bodies with consciousness. Studying how these tools work will help you understand yourself. You will learn how to access the positive aspects of other personality traits. This process will also shed light on the programming of our cultural narrative. Our past can be a trap.
Our programming can inhibit our ability to progress, but we can learn to use this experience to help us shape a positive future. The Enneagram is also a gateway to the virtues of the spirit. These are the higher values of human awareness. When we understand our minds, we can learn to channel these virtues.
The Enneagram Personality Profile uses a questionnaire to identify personality types and instincts. The Enneagram helps us see how our default settings affect thinking and values. Everyone can benefit from this tool. It exposes the mechanisms of the mind that are otherwise outside of our ordinary awareness. This tool will help you gain control of your self-talk. You’ll be able to live out of intent instead of out of habit.
Study of Logic
Our educational systems have become institutions that measure material memorization. They do not teach us how to think or use logic. Business uses statistical tools like Six Sigma for problem-solving processes. This process does not address the more significant issues. It does not address the premises of arguments based on our paradigms’ values and beliefs.
Studying the way we use logic can be another inner work adventure. We take a shovel and dig up the earth, the foundation of our judgments, values, and beliefs. Enhancing your critical thinking will have a positive impact on your intention. The mind is a garden of intention. Critical thinking is necessary to understand our intuitive ideas. Intense inner work is hard, but the results are worth the effort.
Let go of your fear and embrace the study of logic. You don’t need an understanding of advanced mathematics or statistics. Studying logic helps us to see how people use arguments to sell us things. It helps us spot logical fallacies and keeps us from falling prey to the incorrect use of inductive (2) and deductive (3) arguments. They sell us more than material things. They sell us ideas, ideologies, and other scary stuff like religion. Religion has an entire set of unique tools to manipulate us using fear, greed, and anger. You can learn how to identify these arguments with a tool we call spiritual axioms.
Spiritual Tools for Intention
Several spiritual tools can help you uncover the rocks in your garden. The fact is, inner work is all about refining our garden. If you engage in inner work, you will identify the harmful programming you need to delete. You can then remove it and replace it with positive thought scripts. All spiritual technologies will help you access your gifts. Some tools are excellent at improving your spiritual soil. The Shamanic Journey and Lucid Dreaming are two of these tools.
Shamanic Journey
The shamanic journey is at the heart of shamanism. This spiritual technology opens a doorway to a unique state of consciousness, which Michael Harner (4) calls The Shamanic State of Consciousness (SSC). In this state, the brainwaves are around 4 to 7 Hz in the theta wave. SCC is probably the first spiritual process of ancient man.
SCC can heal the mind, body, and spirit or explore consciousness. It is one of humankind’s primary spiritual technologies and transcends all cultures. It’s another one of our default states of awareness: waking, sleeping, and dreaming.
Today, many people rebrand it so that it’s more marketable. It is taught under the labels spiritual meditation, guided meditation, and creative visualization. Consciousness is like a rainbow with many colors that fade and overlap.
The heart of the process involves the use of rhythmic sound. Drums, rattles, or singing bowls produce a specified tone/beat. Using vibration (music) allows you to open the doorway to SCC. Music is a doorway. It affords control over the process in both depth and duration.
We recommend this substance-free approach to SCC. Many traditions use this method. With sound, you can completely control the session’s depth and duration. When you use chemicals to assist in the journey, you cannot control the session’s depth or time. Even qualified shamans recognize there are uncontrollable variables. The potency of substances and mixtures can vary greatly. Everyone has a different reaction, even with similar dosages and batches.
Lucid Dreaming
Lucid dreaming is a technique for gaining awareness and control over one’s dreams. When you practice lucid dreaming, you know you are dreaming and can exert some degree of control over your dream.
There are several easy techniques you can use to achieve lucid dreaming. They all involve the development of intention and awareness. Some techniques use a combination of mantras. You can expand your attention and awareness with a simple silent mantra: keep repeating, “Remember my dreams,” as you drift off to sleep. This expansion of awareness is also exercising your intention. As it becomes more powerful, you’ll remember more dreams. Then, you will have more success reaching the lucid dreaming state.
The dream state is the most accessible place to expand awareness. You’ll see the additional level of awareness almost immediately. Another best practice is the use of a spiritual journal. Another tool to help set your intention and remember your dreams is by using a dream journal. Record your dreams first thing when you awake. Soon, you will remember more of your dreams. The dream fragments will also be like pieces of a puzzle that will come together to form a pattern or message.
Some believe the Universe is always talking to us through our dreams. It is one of the best ways to connect with this intuitive knowledge. This essential exercise directly enhances your awareness. The mind is like a garden, and lucid dreaming is planting nutrients in the soil.
What About Emotion?
Our emotions are like a river running through everything we think. Our feelings are the water, the fuel that can give you emotional energy. You’ll need positive vibes to help you face the obstacles to your gardening.
Even though you walk your path, you’ll benefit from a friend or, better yet, a tribe on your side. Our recommendation is to seek people who accept you where you are. You don’t need critics to judge your path. Find other warriors of light who have overcome similar roadblocks.
In Conclusion
Your mind is a garden. If you learn how to maintain it properly, it will yield a harvest of marvelous things. If you allow weeds to grow in your garden, you will not get what you desire.
References
(1) The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell.
(2) Inductive reasoning, Wikipedia.
(3) Deductive reasoning, Wikipedia.
(4) Michael Harner, Wikipedia