Introspective Meditations
Inner Gardening and Howard Thurman
Keep watering what you desire to grow in your life. Give it love. Give it grace. Give it faith. Give it time. Watch and honor the incremental process of its growth. Tend to it well. Keep vibrating higher daily, from wherever you find yourself, as the gardener and cultivator of 'it'.
While on the go this week ahead, keep in mind what you're seeking to grow, develop, and become. Before we know it, the speed and force of the winds of life can take us in directions that feel far away from where we're headed; it can feel so out of the way, even disorienting.
When life hits hard, it's time to hit harder: it's time to take your power back and respond with it.
When life hits hard, it's time to hit harder: it's time to take your power back and respond with it. Taking your power back is about returning to your inner garden and journey: your purpose, your 'why' your aspirations, and the things that make you feel like you–again. Essential life skills, mindfulness tools, a supportive ear, and meditation will get you through. Stay in the flow with what nurtures and nourishes you. Keep vibrating in the direction that supports your life. Keep re-centering yourself and taking your power back as necessary.
Meditation
Return to the garden. Come back home to yourself.
Take a few moments each day to recenter your mind and world. Bring what it is you're after and working towards [back] into the forefront of your mind. Give it energy. Garden it well. Visualize, imagine, and feel it, already being so for you. Start and return here each day. This is inner gardening.
And on days when all you can do is love yourself through it, do that. Self-love is a cleansing energy.
The Prolific Howard Thurman
A Spiritual Anchor
Howard Thurman’s mind, teachings, and offerings of works to the world are just as necessary and nourishing today as they were in his lifetime. Howard Thurman was a prolific author, philosopher, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. He was a friend, spiritual anchor, and mentor to the world, including to Martin Luther King and Gandhi. In Star Wars terms, he was Martin Luther King’s and the civil rights movement’s Yoda. Near and far, he impacted lives and inspired people to journey within in order to fulfill higher purpose and potential.
While I could share each of his beautiful books here, there’s one in particular that I’m sharing in this blog post with regard to our topic of inner gardening. The Inward Journey is a book of meditations that address the deepest needs and aspirations of the human spirit. Themes include The Quest for Meaning, The Quest for Understanding, The Quest for Fulfillment, The Quest for Love, The Quest for Peace, and The Quest for God.
Below is a video of Howard speaking and encouraging us on the inner journey. The inner journey is where your inner garden is.
May we be inspired to come all the more alive and thrive. These words and others of Howard Thurman have been a balm to my earth-journeying soul throughout the years.
Howard Thurman's Meditative Questions
In the video below, Howard prompts us to ask ourselves the following questions and to contemplate the following insights:
What do I want?
What do I want, really?
What it is that is the fundamental thing that I'm after with my life?
What is the meaning of all of the activities and the strivings and the struggles?
What, after all, is my point?
Am I really concerned ultimately in providing some windbreak to the world around me?
What is it that I really want?
What is it that is capable of making me bring to bear upon a single end or focus, or purpose, all of the resources of my life: my thinking, my dreaming, my struggling so that in the fulfillment of myself, this thing will follow.
Life is not fixed, is not frozen, is not finished. Life, in its essence, is fluid, is creative...
If the conditions for growth and development are met, then growth and development flow automatically. This is the kind of responsive, dynamic, living, throbbing universe that honors the mind and the spirit.
What is it that you want: really?
Before you go
Thank you for being here. Tend to your inner garden well.
Peace and blessings!!
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