The Secret Garden: The Sufi Science of Inner Cultivation

Emotional composting

The other day, while discussing relationships with my colleague Carlos del Campo from Reforestación Interior, he recommended this YouTube video. Additionally he posed me the following questions and recommendations:

-What am I doing to impede my relationship?

-“I need you”

-Pray for help from the stones (sweatlodge)

“You task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers that you have built against it.” -Rumi

Gardening

Planting in faith in the process of the subconscious.

The soil in the garden of our heart can be:

-Stagnant/hardened (attachment of materiality, habits of behavior)

-Scattered/distracted (self-centerdness)

-Contaminated (resentment, hidden agenda, fears

-Receptive

Tending to our garden

  • Softening thru love and beauty. Sikr: rhythmic remembrance
  • Structure thru the practice of discipline. Boundaries thru meditation and focus
  • Purification thru the practice of honesty and self examination.
  • Planting virtue (patience, grattitude, compassion generosity, truthfulness). Compassion is ensured by exposure to both struggle and beauty.
  • Weeding vice. Accepting necessary struggles. (Pride, envy, resentment).
    • Transmutation: what does your heart really need? (Link to Tarot Card of Templance)
    • Removal: repentance
    • Displacement w/ virtues.

“Fill you heart so full with remembrance of the Divine that forgetfulness can find no place to root.” -Rumi

Elements

  • Water: divine grace. Be receptive, release expectation. Embrace wonder.
  • Sunlight: sustains awarenness/focus.

What you pay attention to will grow like a plant seeking out the sun.” -Rumi

  • Air: space, freedom, trust, spontaneity. Time w/out an agenda.
  • Nutrients- virtues. Courage- challenges; generosity- giving beyond comfort; humility- self perception.

Cycles

  • Spring: planting seeds when soil is fertile – natural enthusiasm and energy to establish practice.
  • Summer: review what grew roots, and what was superficial enthusiasm.
  • Autumn: letting go and maturing.
  • Winter: waiting, faith in process.

Foregiveness and surrender sometimes are like seeds that require a fire to germinate.

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