It was with shock that I opened up my blog this morning and realized that the last blog I wrote was last year. "How is that even possible?" I wondered. I've been meaning to get back to a regular blogging schedule, thinking about it often, and coming up with ideas of what to write about. It has been very alive in my head, but moving our business, moving our house, and writing a proposal for a book all took precedence, and the blog writing remained a distant fantasy.
There are many times in our life that we have the thought of something we want to do, from washing the dog to getting a new job, from eating more consciously to meditating in the mornings. Taking our desires and dreams and making them into tangible realities means we need to move from thinking into acting. The thinking part may set the stage for planting the seed, but the growth comes from watering and nourishing and tending your seeds of intent over time.
If you don't tend to your inner or outer gardens what often grows is a plethora of weeds that crowd out what you've planted. Those weeds are the untamed thoughts, distractions, fears, and places of struggle within you. Or sometimes lack of attention to your dreams and goals leads to no growth at all.
The solution? Embrace the weeds or tell yourself the truth when things aren't flourishing. When you turn around and discover that an area you planted long ago is wild with unintended growth or is barren, smile. Take a breathe in this moment and time. Judging, deflecting, or moaning about the past will not clear the field. Go back and clarify what your original intent was when you planted the seed, and what your actions have been since then. What do you need to shift or realign?
One seed I planted last year was to regularly write in my blog and share my thoughts, experiences, and explorations. The reality is that the garden of my blog has been barren from lack of attention.
Happily, if when you plant a seed of intent, that seed will wait for the right conditions to grow. Sometimes the right conditions happen by grace; space and motivation suddenly arrive like the sunshine following a rainy day. And sometimes we are invited to cultivate the right conditions through our actions.
A sudden, strong inspiration to write in my blog appeared last week out of the blue, and to continue to foster right conditions I kept my blogger page open so I could tap in and write during breaks from working on my book. And so grace (the inspiration) and cultivating the right conditions (creating the space to write over time) came together to produce a new flower in my garden, that I now share with you.
What supportive conditions can you cultivate in your life today to help you step back towards fostering a forgotten or buried intent?
There is always space and time to return to an intent, no matter how neglected or forgotten.
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn't matter,
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times,
Come, come again, come. ~ Rumi
