Becoming a gardener of the spirit

I'd never been a gardener, never had my hands in the Earth. Years ago as I began my spiritual quest, I dreamed The Garden inside me: an underwater Eden that symbolized my voyage into inner space, to remember my true purpose on Earth and to discover how to live this knowing. A passage from May Sarton's poem, Invocation to Kali, resonated like memory, and I taped the words to my wall long before my actual transition began:

Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.

Most of us fight to remain in the familiar, even when we feel trapped, diminished, suffocated. Usually, it's not until the pain of staying where we are overwhelms our fear of the unknown that we're catalyzed to change. Because society doesn't recognize or honor life's inevitable transitions, we're left without a road map and must seek out our own guides. 

One pathway into the Mystery is through illness. Others include getting married or divorced, changing jobs or professions, altering our eating or sleeping patterns, losing a loved one, receiving a degree — you get the idea. The catalyst is whatever breaks through the veil of daily life to reveal the sacred dimension of existence.

My "time-out" pilgrimage initially took me across the country, from California to rural New York State. When I entered this passage I was physically ill yet in a place of profound awakening, and went intending to apprentice with an herbalist at her farm.  Instead, I plunged into a classic "dark night of the soul" that simultaneously terrified and strengthened me, as I confronted my deepest fears in complete vulnerability, emotionally bereft except for my communion with the Ultimate Gardener. 

I learned during this period of solitary spiritual journeying how to live minus the trappings I'd thought defined my life: my home, my possessions, my business — even my friends and my health — and to pare down to the essentials. What I took with me fit into a suitcase: some clothes, my journal, a couple of books, a special necklace, and an aventurine crystal heart. 

At the first of many people's homes where I stayed while healing physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually, I created an altar on an empty bookshelf, using my necklace, a candle, a leaf, a stone, a sprig of berries, and a stunning seashell I'd found at a local flea market. This was part of my process of learning to live in the present. I discovered that you create your altar wherever you are, with whatever is available.

A friend who is in this seemingly fallow place-between-the-worlds now expressed the feeling well: "Emptiness creates fright, because it's the opposite of belonging." Yet the willingness to be in free-fall, to release one trapeze bar before the next has swung into view, is a pivotal step in re-storying our lives: looking again at the story we've created about how the world is, and seeing how this filter distorts our view of beauty — our own beauty.

After a year of dissolution and discovery, I moved to New Mexico, needing to feel the warm desert sanctuary cradling me in this next phase of my gestation. During two years in Santa Fe, I began to reweave my life into the fabric of community. Yet I knew I couldn't remain, that New Mexico was a crucial port of call on my journey Home, but not the final destination. In order to complete my rebirth, I would have to surrender the Land of Enchantment.

So I returned to northern California, to begin again after my healing hegira. Throughout the first year my entire being felt tender and new, as though I'd truly been reborn. A New Mexico bodyworker sent me a card depicting a naked woman superimposed over rock, entitled, "Petrified/Opening Heart." The artist writes, "Opening the wounded heart requires courage, will and trust. Trust is born in seeing the beauty and perfection in all aspects of life and death."

This is the journey to wholeness, to wildness, to the infinite joy of being "alive and alove," as an old flame once said. As you live the experience from the inside out, you become intimate with its wisdom. The garden I dreamed has bloomed inside me and I am planted wherever I am, rooted in the Love that is who we are. 

This is the gift I brought back from the Otherworld to share in these transformative times. I'm reminded daily to continue to let go and trust, to delight in the perfection of the moment, to be grateful — most of all, to laugh. And my heart remains wide open to the wonder.

For further info:

10 steps to personal transformation

Losing your mind