When I first moved into my apartment with two roof-top terraces facing the luscious mediterranean sun, I zealously embarked upon planting and potting life in all shapes and colours. I was not a novice gardener, having had plenty of success and experience in my previous homes. Yet as my new wealth started to lose colour, sag in shape and wrinkle in defiance, I turned to google for expert advice with as much passion for healing my plants as I would have for researching and healing an illness. After having downloaded a mass of facts, tips and instructions, and having tried all on my poor care-shocked seedlings to no avail, my anxiety turned to misery as I watched them wither and die along with my desire to ever plant life again.
My experience is one that all humans can relate to: gardeners, parents, pet owners, activists for Earth and animals and everyone who ever embarked upon taking responsibility for life. Proceed at your own peril, seems to say the sign above the doorstep to such path. We enter following the most beautiful and noble desire of all: to love. Yet the path, luring with meaning and promises of fulfillment, has as purpose to teach us that we can never ensure the wellbeing and thriving of another unless we also possess the power to avoid, or at least heal, all harm that can affect it.
Lacking such power, the giving away of one’s heart is a risky business as failure and heartbreaks are probable. And with every such experience our desire to engage anew will be diminished, beaten by our inability to make a difference or ensure success, and giving rise to a feeling of impotence. Yet refraining from loving, planting, fighting for animals or protecting the environment cuts into our vitality and leaves the terraces of our lives empty, devoid of abundance, purpose, meaning and life. Squeezed thus between a rock and a hard place, we spend lifetimes vacillating between the two pains of impotence and infertility, powerlessness and meaninglessness, seeking love and shelter in turns and forced to sacrifice one for the other. If only we had power over all that could possibly go wrong we could love without suffering, be sensitive *and* exposed, engaged *and* safe at the same time. Yet such power over life and death, over illness, accidents, pests and the evil will of others seems outside our reach, belonging to the domain of Gods.
In Truth, it is impossible for anyone other than Spirit to ever hold such power, for it necessitates the full awareness of all beings in existence at all times, their evolutionary paths, needs, feelings and intents, and the choosing of the highest good of all at their every encounter and crossroad, for every single human, animal, insect, plant and organism. Only Spirit is capable of taking responsibility for such dynamic system as Earth and all of its inhabitants, and of knowing the impact of anyone and everything on the whole of life. Therefore any action counter to Spirit’s wisdom, as righteous and loving as it might appear on a Soul level, could well be disruptive to the circuit of life in its wholeness. Human history is full of examples where small-minded solutions to a problem, e.g. the removal or introduction of certain predators, proved disastrous for entire eco-systems. And while the human mind could control the intricacies of one small eco-system, no one could possibly fathom the complex web of relationships and dependencies that covers the entire globe.
Barred from holding such power then, what alternative remains for the love-battered and life-deprived Soul? The solution lies in humility, which is the Soul’s ability to connect to Spirit’s wisdom by placing itself within, rather than above, this large global system. In Spirit’s eyes humanity is but a fragment of the whole, a part of the vast family of nature and animals which all have equal rights and responsibilities, and none is more valuable than another: a cat’s life or a tree’s counts as much as a human’s, as they are all expressions of the Soul’s evolution. As animals do not have free will their existence is always according to Spirit’s wisdom and can never endanger life in totality. Yet human, having been gifted with a powerful mind and free will, is the sibling-bully who assumes a position of arrogance over others instead of responsibility for them, and proceeds to enforce his needs at the cost of everyone, including ultimately himself.
Humility enables the Soul to connect to Spirit’s vast power and derive wisdom and protection on its path. The connection is open to all who are subtle and supple enough to yield to, and not force, the evolutionary desire of Spirit. Those who lack either follow their own solutions, sentenced to hitting rocks, branches and everything else that flows downstream, while exhausting themselves pushing in the opposite direction. The Soul’s swimming direction, and thus its life experience, is symbolic for the Soul’s choice, yet not of what the Soul does e.g. planting its terrace vs. refraining from it, but of the reason why it does it, its intent behind the choice. For it is the quality of its intent, rather than its action, that Spirit takes as measure of a Soul’s worthiness of connection.
And herein lies the Soul’s disconnect from wisdom and the root of its suffering, for what the Soul thinks is its intent is always a deception: its true intent is unrelated to, and often directly opposed to, the mind’s conscious desire e.g. an urge for force can hide an intent of healing, while a desire for love an intent of abuse. Thus the desire to plant life, acquire pets, save Earth, enter into partnerships or beget children can have at its roots a need of the Soul not for loving another, but for receiving love from another, be it from Spirit itself in the form of lush gardens, purring house pets or successful endeavours; or from humanity by means of common purposes, relationships and family. Such intent of the Soul is that of a needy child, for it harbours an entitlement to fulfillment behind a facade of righteous purpose or gentle lovingness, the same attitude that the arrogant human holds towards Earth: sooner or later when faced with lack or failure, he will force and murder to get what he deems himself entitled to.
Thus the Soul’s underlying intent, largely unknown to the unexamined mind, is the only determinant of its life experience of suffering vs. safety. It follows then that the discovery of one’s true intent, and the subsequent elimination of all forceful impulses within it, is its only way to connect to Spirit’s wisdom. Only when its intent fully matches that of Spirit will the Soul be fulfilled and protected no matter what it does, whether it chooses to plant its life’s terraces, or refrain from it. And as long as its intent is contrary to Spirit desire it will suffer in everything it does, when engaging and planting it will get defeated and heartbroken, and when refraining it will dry out in loneliness.
These correlations seem incredulous only because the Soul has accepted a cause-and-effect relationship between its mind and matter, expecting outcomes based on rational action, such as knowing and following a set of rules regarding plant care, and not on its intent and consciousness. Yet even though this perception of mind-power appears to uphold most of the time, the injustice, disappointments, wounds and cuts experienced by all Souls are not exceptions to that rule nor a proof of mind defects, but indications that the perception is not Truth-proof but rather like a cracked windshield set to fall apart with pressure.
In Truth, there is no such thing as an exception, not from any rule, value or law of Spirit. If an exception presents itself, it is served by Spirit as a living proof that the mind’s conclusion, assumption and expectation is unsound, and as an invitation to exhume its long buried ability to question the obvious and seek Truth about the laws and power of Spirit. Yet being fully brainwashed into the omnipotence of its mind and the credibility of its sensual perception, the Soul dismisses consciousness as irrelevant for not fitting its belief system and keeps potentiating its mind, rather than its intent, as the determinant of all success. In consequence, it has no choice but to blame itself for any failure, wound or pain, accruing wounds to its self-worth as convinced it is lacking what other, more successful Souls have: the power of mind, matter or ego. And off it will go, seeking more of it instead of seeking wisdom about its intent, and thereby sentencing itself to an infinite seesawing between impotence and infertility.
As long as it is ruled by its perception of supremacy over Spirit, the mind will bear the number six six six, symbolic of the Soul’s sixth chakra and its three mortal sins against Spirit’s wisdom: murder, betrayal, and rejection. In other words, as long as it insists on playing God at the cost of the wholeness of life, the Soul will be denied the love of Spirit, deprived of protection and exposed to suffering.