Sowing a seed in the soil, giving the sapling requisite shelter & sunlight and feeding it adequate water daily to see it grow healthily into a plant in its own wake, has so many parallels to bringing up a baby with the right Parenting approach, eventually enabling it's maturity into an individual of its own thinking in the future!
Whats the most synonymous though at a certain time & stage is to prune away the weeds that come along in the garden - those that share the same shelter, benefit as well from the sunlight and partake of the common water for the plant you intend to grow. Left to grow, the weeds too mature into bigger, more stronger beings by taking away what's originally intended for the plant. Left to itself, may be the plant would have grown bigger & stronger without the weeds, but alas!
Thankfully, a master gardener knows the right time to prune away the weeds, keeping them around only so long that he knows he's not mistakenly plucking away at new saplings of the original plant.
In the case of Parenting too, at times, incorrect thought patterns & resultant negative actions do get picked up by kids on the journey to becoming individuals. Left to grow, these could become stronger habits that take away from their growth into inspired & positively influenced individuals - destiny may have a role to play eventually, but the self-effort of each parent on the field of their child's life garden, would have an impact to show & a mark to leave behind.
Just like the master gardener, a conscious parent prunes away the negatives, analyzing and deciphering them clearly from the key virtues & values that impact positively, enabling the transition as the bedrock of individual growth for the child!
Conscious Parents are the Master Gardeners of Nature's most precious creation!
Pic: Our home basil/ tulsi plant grown from seeds sown
Another 'gardening' analogy sourced from the book 'Karma' by Sadhguru
Those who are meditative will experience deep levels of joy. But this also opens them up to deep levels of pain. This pain is only for a short duration, however, because their higher level of awareness allows them to work it out more quickly. When you go into deeper levels of meditation, if you take a single wrong step, the effect manifests itself immediately and you will have to correct it. But for a person who lives in relative unawareness, the process may be slow but much deeper. What takes a lifetime could be over on this very day for the spiritually aware person because they immediately take corrective measures.
If you become meditative and still carry negativity, your negative karmas become a thousand times more powerful because you have become that much more sensitive & receptive. Suppose you cultivate the soil and enrich it with manure. The crops will grow well, but the same manure will also enable weeds to grow. Similarly, when you cultivate a meditative state and allow negative emotions to flourish, inner suffering increases dramatically. It is important to be extra cautious about weeding when you are in such a state. Otherwise you will be left with a forest of weeds and no crop!
The reason those on the spiritual path have a daily practice is just this: to ensure that karmic stagnation does not happen. You may already have noticed that if you have a daily practice and you stop it for 6 months, many recurrent issues - physical, psychological & social - that have not bothered you for a while start returning. This is how the karmic cycle works. You may have believed you were transformed, but you will suddenly find all kinds of compulsive behaviors returning with a vengeance. Only practice, or sadhana, helps break the cyclical movement of life.
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