Lifeletter #115: Plant Again

Last spring it rained a lot, as it did in many parts of the world. Here in BC it was a cold rain, that went on and on. I met a friend at our local co-op after many weeks of that rain, who is a farmer, not just a hobby gardener like me.

“We planted seeds this year,” I told him, “and they didn’t come up.”

“Too cold and wet for a lot of the seeds,” he said. “Was it beans, and sunflowers–plants like that?”

“Yes,” I said, “no sunflowers for me this year.”

“Those seeds need more heat than we had this year,” he said. “Plant again!”  I looked at him, standing tall and alive there by the deli– this beautiful man, not young, but strong, and deeply in love with the earth.

“Plant again,” he said, “I planted three times this year.”

His words were full of trust and ease. I realized in that moment that somewhere inside me I had decided that something was wrong, when my seeds did not come up. I forgot that I could plant again.

I walked around for weeks after that, whispering the message deep into my heart: When something doesn’t grow, plant again. Don’t give up.

I meet people in my coaching life who have given up on themselves. There were people in my family who gave up on themselves. Maybe we all pass through times like this, when it feels like we have tried everything, and it’s taking too long and it’s just too hard. That’s a very tough place to be. There is a brittleness, a hard shell that encloses the heart when we give up on ourselves. We lay our hopes and dreams down and forget that we can breathe fresh life into them, we can plant them again, in the living ground that is our life.

This hard dark place is a time for grounding, for bringing our life energy down into the belly, the legs, the feet, and feeling, in a real way, our connection to the ground that holds us. That’s what happened to the Buddha, when he woke up. He pointed to the earth, and gave thanks for the basic sanity of the simple ground that held him.

We can’t come back down into this body alone. We need help in learning this. It doesn’t happen overnight.

From inside our body we can begin to open to the whole field of life that we are never separate from. It’s very difficult to feel this connection when we are floating above our body. We cannot really open and receive the support that is always here, when we are still protecting ourselves with this hardness. To soften is to feel, to face things we may feel are impossible to face.

But they’re not. It’s never too late to soften. It’s never to late to plant again. Everything can be faced, when we are not alone, when we can receive the gifts of a real conversation, of running water, of big trees. Of friends who may have just been waiting for us to reach out, and other people we may not know yet, who can help us take our very next step.

Just a little bit of softness goes such a long way. A willingness to bend down into the earth and plant another seed. To reach out and say, “I’ve tried to work with this for so long, and it doesn’t seem to be resolving. Something is not moving here, not flowing. But I’m not going to give up on myself. Can you help me out here? Can you point me in a good direction?” This is the small miracle of the soft way, that we are willing to take a deep breath and plant another seed.

We give up on ourselves when we are trying too hard in the wrong way. Pushing, forcing, struggling, trying to be brave and strong. From there we collapse into helplessness and despair. The soft way doesn’t ask us to be strong like that. It’s a completely different kind of power that we have to cultivate, if we want to pass through into the place of bright aliveness, if we really want to be ourselves.

This is the power that allows us to loosen our grip, to turn towards what we have been running from, to find a yes, instead of our constant refusal.

It’s not easy to soften after fighting with life, with ourselves, for so long. We can’t make it happen. The soft way has nothing to do with willpower.

But we can recognize how we really want to be. And we can ask life, ask the universe for help. We were not made to be hard, and separate and alone. We were born for something else, all of us. For the humility that allows us to bend right down into the earth, and plant a small seed.  That’s all we need to do-co-operate with the great force of life in planting a new moment. Every new moment has a chance of becoming a moment of love, of renewal, of courage, of clarity.

 

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.

 

~Mary Oliver

 

with love,

Shayla