4 Ways to Tend Your Soul Garden
Every day, you have a choice whether or not to tend your soul garden.
Yes, you can neglect it.
When you neglect your soul garden, the beauty and radiance of who you really are can become overgrown with weeds of despair, busyness, ego importance or confusion.
You lose sight of who you really are.
When you attend to your soul garden in all the small and quiet ways that are necessary, you get to enjoy it.
Yes, it may take you a little while to drag out your garden hoses to water your inner flowers, to pick through the weeds of your thoughts, to put fresh seed in the bird feeder to share with your community, to tend to your inner fountain of wisdom, but when you do, the results are oh so worth it.
If you pay attention, you can discover how your soul likes to be tended.
Here are a few things I’ve discovered that allow my soul garden to flourish:
- Meditating. When I meditate, the pain and suffering of my life tends to wash away and all that’s left is happiness. What I notice about myself is that through my practice of meditating twice a day, I have become a very happy person. I can be happy completely by myself for hours and hours or in a crowd of people. I don’t need much from anybody else because inside myself I’m so happy. I usually start my meditations with prayer and then I pray until the words fall away and I am left simply to listen.
- Moving. In a way I’m lucky because I have learned through years of experience that I feel my best when I do some sort of movement every day for at least an hour. Just as most of us look forward to eating breakfast, I look forward to being able to walk, practice yoga or qi gong, lift weights, garden, clean my house or engage in some other form of vigorous activity. It doesn’t matter how, where or when. I may start my day with core work and stretching, hike up a mountain, bike through a cool forest or work out with weights for half an hour. For me movement is not just physical — it’s a way of moving my emotions, balancing my energy and restoring my soul.
- Creating. My ideal day begins with some form of meditation followed by any amount of writing. I would rather write than read. I like to write first thing in the morning because my mind is most clear. The phone doesn’t ring, nobody’s texting me, my only priority is just to allow my soul wisdom to channel through. Sometimes other forms of creation present themselves. For example, at the moment, I’m creating a new business,www.whatissocialmediatoday.com with my good friend Ramajon Cogan. What I notice is that these major creations — whether they be new books or a new business — inevitably follow periods where I have been building my personal chi through the daily practice of tending my soul garden.
- Connecting. Whether I call a friend for a chat, go over to my best friend’s house for a glass of water and a walk, nothing fills me up like connecting with my friends. Rarely a day goes by when I do not connect with my friends. My mother once gave me great insight on this subject. “You’ve got to hold on to your girlfriends as much as you do the man in your life,” she said. As a result, I have wonderful friends. Whether I’m supporting my friends or they are helping me through a rough patch, these connections leave me deeply fulfilled. One of my definitions of a good friend is that they can tell me the worst thing about me and I will listen. As a result, I have very open, honest relationships. My friends know they can tell me the truth. In this way, I remain humble before my friends. My soul grows every time they gently point out the weaknesses that would otherwise be hidden to me.
What do you need to tend your own soul garden?
If you listen, I’m quite sure your soul will let you know.
What is healing? Healing happens when we tend the garden of our souls and become so deeply fulfilled that we become a source of love and light to everyone.
Like this article? Please visit my websites at www.catherinecarrigan.com, www.unlimitedenergynow.com, and www.whatissocialmediatoday.com. For a FREE 15-minute consult, please email catherine@catherinecarrigan.com or call 678–612–8816.
