Watering seeds

Thich Nhat Hahn once shared that in Buddhist psychology

there are two kinds of consciousness

Store consciousness, which we might call the unconscious, or perhaps subconscious

And Mind consciousness, which is our normal, awake mind

The store consciousness is like the soil

And it is full of seeds

All kinds of seeds

Good seeds, such as love and joy

Bad seeds, such as anger and fear

And the seeds that get watered, nourished

(we might say triggered)

Blossom and grow

and then becomes our mental formation

and then becomes our way of being

if we water a seed of joy

it makes the living room of our mind beautiful

if we water a seed of hate

it makes the living room of our mind a kind of hell

and our mental formations become

expressed in the way we walk the earth

the way we relate

So the question becomes

Which seeds do we water?

It is hard to avoid watering the negative seeds

The world around us is full of hate and enmity

Full of fear

And thus full of anger and violence

But we are not helpless

We have choices about who we spend time with

Who we listen to

What TV shows we watch

How much time we spend on Facebook and Twitter

And it is possible to avoid nurturing the bad seeds

It is possible to nurture the good seeds!

We can listen to music

Read a good book

Practice walking meditation

Notice the beauty around us

Spend time with good people

Talk about uplifting things

And it is possible to focus on Sacred Presence

That inner dwelling Love

Paul once suggested that though outwardly we are wasting away

Inwardly we are being renewed day by day

As we constantly return to that Love within us

We can water the good seeds

All of this is not to say we deal with the negative by hiding or suppressing it

The darkness of the world must be faced and dispelled

We don’t suppress the negative, we just don’t give it a chance

We overwhelm the negative with good (Paul again)

This all takes the ongoing, persistent, nurturing of good

This takes practicing the Presence of God

This takes actively inviting the goodness to flourish

Today I hope to nurture the good

I will notice the bad, how can I not?

But I will change the channel

Change my thinking

Touch those seeds that are wholesome

And let them bloom

Watered by Sacred Love