Today's quotation:

Just as you would not neglect seeds that you planted with the hope that they will bear vegetables and fruits and flowers, so you must attend to and nourish the garden of your becoming.

Jean Houston

Today's Meditation:

Not long from now, I will be someone different.  I will have new experiences and new learning behind me, and I will have changed some of my beliefs based on what I will have learned.  I constantly am becoming, constantly am moving on with my life.  But do I just sit back and assume that because I'm breathing, I'm becoming?  Or do I try to nourish myself in the process of becoming, helping myself to grow through reading and listening and watching and taking good care of myself overall?

If I do attend to myself and provide myself with the nourishment I need to grow-- not just to maintain the status quo-- then I'm giving myself the opportunity to become someone very special, indeed.  If I attend to myself then I provide myself with unlimited potential.  If, on the other hand, I neglect myself by providing only my very basic needs and nothing more, then my potential is only to stay the same, and nothing more.

Seeds need watering, but seeds and seedlings also need constant attention.  They need to have the weeds around them pulled, for those weeds will use up all the water and nutrients that could help plants to grow.  Likewise, we need to be constantly vigilant to recognize the things that we do or have that rob us of our vigor, that hold us down or back, that prevent us from growing and becoming the beings that we're meant to be.

Please don't neglect yourself-- you deserve far much more than your own neglect.  Treat yourself as you'd treat a tender seed, or a young seedling, with care and respect and attention.  You are a very special person, and what you can contribute to the world can only grow as you grow yourself.  You can't expect yourself to grow without helping yourself to do so, and you're definitely the most important helper that you'll have in your life.  You deserve the best treatment of all.

For further thought:

Just as gardeners cultivate their plots, keeping them free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which they require, so may a person tend the garden of his or her mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts.  By pursuing this process, a person sooner or later discovers that he or she is the master-gardener of his or her soul, the director of his or her life.

James Allen

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