Tending to my dreams

Where flowers bloom so does hope. Lady Bird Johnson

I love The Secret. I love that it reminds us of our unlimited potential as powerful creators of our reality. What hasn't worked for me, however, is the idea that in order to attract what I want, I have to live my life in a great mood, thinking only positive thoughts.

What I don't like about that is that it doesn't leave room for the bad days. There are spiritual masters on this planet who rarely, if ever, experience an "off" day, but we all know very well that I am not there yet.

In learning to love what is, I am finding that I don't resist the ick so much nowadays. It knocks on the door, I let it in, we sit together for a while, it leaves. No drama. I get pissed off and frustrated and pessimistic and crazy and sad and anxious, and that's that. I am working on simply letting those feelings come and go without judging them. Working on it, I said.

My pattern in the past was to put on a happy face, ignore the "bad" feelings, and think positive thoughts. However, something would inevitably happen, and all my good intentions would go to shit. What was frustrating was the thought that being in a negative place meant that whatever I wanted to attract was repelled and outta here, forever. "Yep, failed again."

Yesterday, I was in a really good place emotionally. I was content, happy, fulfilled, grateful, allowing. I focused on the things that I want to attract, and I felt confident they were headed my way.

This morning, on the drive to work, I realized that I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was waiting for something to come along and knock me out of my good mood (doesn't really take much, some days), and therefore cause whatever good things were coming my way to do a 180 and head for the hills.

In that moment, the Universe sent me an image of a flower. I started thinking about how a gardener gets a flower to grow. It isn't much work on the gardener's part, really. It's a little labor and a lot of magic. The gardener plants the seed, waters it, and goes on her way. She stops in periodically to water the soil, but she spends the rest of the day just going about her life. She might have good days, she might have bad days. She might get irritated at traffic, or she might have an argument with her boss. She might miss a day of watering.

That stuff doesn't matter to the flower. Under the surface, it just keeps growing. The gardener doesn't see the progress right away, but she doesn't worry. She doesn't question whether or not she deserves to see her seed come to life. She has faith that the flower will arrive, and in time, it does.

I think this is how it's meant to be with our dreams. We plant the seed when we visualize what we want to bring about. We water the seed when we come back to our center, get quiet, and give thanks. And then we walk away. We live our lives, accepting whatever comes our way, resisting nothing. We have blissful days and pissy days and everything in between, stopping back in once in while to water the seeds we've planted. And all the while we know that just under the surface, something magic is happening.