What Are You Cultivating?

These days it seems that gardening is a standard activity for many people.  Whether it be the half-acre plot or the potted herbs on the deck, everyone seems to have something growing.  What is it about watching something grow that is so attractive, so alluring? Why do we wish to take the wild life of plants and contain them, bring them to us, touch them, see them, often eat them?  But this week's central question is this:  what are you cultivating in you? 

   I mean this in so many ways.  What are you paying attention to? I don’t mean what you intend to pay attention to, but what do you actually pay attention to.  What takes your time, your energy, where do you make an investment?  This question can go so many places.  It can go to “I don’t have time to water the plants” to “ I want to weed the garden all day”.  It can go to “ I notice that I wake up anxious every day” to  “ I love riding my bike so much that I go out every Saturday and Sunday for long rides." Where, when and how do you make an investment?

If you try to grow plants, you know well that certain plants don’t grow in certain climates.  So, there is a factor that must be assessed in addition to your own willingness to cultivate.  What is your environment? What in your environment is a given, something you can’t or don’t wish to change? (Like your children, your partner, the house you love…) What is in the environment that could change to support you, support your vision? Because there is that, your vision, your aspiration and intention for this life.  What do you wish to do before you die?

Before you can embark on a productive process of envisioning a life for yourself, you often have to start with examining what it is you are already cultivating? What have you grown that may or may not match your intentions? What has grown in the places where you weren't paying attention? Where are you putting your energy and attention that you may or may not feel is a conscious choice? 

I love the word cultivating.  What are you choosing to notice, to nurture in yourself and your world? How do you care for the tender shoots that are new iterations of your life as you continue to move through the world? Even as some things are drying and fading, others are sprouting, demanding more water, more food, more light.  What are you bringing into the light of your attention? 

    These days, I have more questions than answers.  I am cultivating the questions, using them to fertilize, aerate the soil of my life.  Questions often seem to get beneath my standard stories, crack open the window of my heart and bring me closer to both myself and my world.  What about you?  Are there ways  you could align your vision of your life more closely with what you are willing and able to cultivate? 

Questions are one of the main tools I use to serve people both in relating with meditation practice and in relating with their health.  If you want to know more about working with me one to one, email me at josephine@josephinespilka.com