I don’t proclaim myself to be a great gardener but I certainly enjoy working in one. Over the years, I’ve come to learn that it’s important to prune many flowers, plants, and trees so that they can grow healthier, stronger, and a lot more lush. I’ve also come to learn more recently that this same principle holds true within the spiritual me as well.
As a gardener, pruning something normally requires some form of shears to get rid of the unwanted parts of vegetation being grown. But pruning oneself can be a little more complicated than that. To better understand what it involves, picture yourself as one of those flowers, plants or trees that has been growing for as long as you’ve been alive. For all those times that you have done kind and loving acts for not only yourself, but others too, and kept yourself in a healthy state of mind, body, and soul, those were the times where you were regularly pruning yourself. Now for all those moments in your life where you might have fallen into various addictions, or brought toxic people into your lives, or earned money in ways that produced mostly stress for yourself, or eaten totally unhealthy, those were the times where you weren’t pruning yourself.
So what happens for a gardener when they don’t prune their flowers, plants, or trees? I’ll take the petunias that have been growing all summer in my garden as an example. Having originally planted them in the late Spring, I left my petunias unattended for several months, except for making sure they stayed watered. The result was that they began to grow in various directions, looking oddly shaped, where parts of them even started to die off. This made all of them appear rather unattractive and unhealthy. So with each one of them, I took a pair of shears and cut them 3/4’s of the way back. To a passer by, this might have seemed drastic because I got rid of so much of the plants producing these flowers. But within a week or so, they had all grown mush bushier and more vibrant, and created many more flowers than what had even been there before I had done the pruning.
In my own life, to prune means to cut back the unwanted growth that came during all those periods where I wasn’t living in that good state of mind, body, and soul. Over the past few years, what that has entailed has been letting go and saying goodbye to those toxic people I brought into my life. It’s meant staying away from all the things that I got addicted to. It’s meant finding a job or work that brings me peace, happiness, and joy in doing it. And it’s meant eating a lot more healthier on a daily basis. All of these actions have pruned back that spiritual tree within me and as a result, spurred a lot of spiritual growth since.
Because of the regular pruning I continue to do in my spiritual life, I find I am becoming a lot more peaceful and content, and that my mind remains more clear than clogged up. I believe the writing I’ve been doing in this blog is the sole result of this spiritual pruning that I’ve been doing throughout my life. Prior to doing any pruning at all on myself, I couldn’t even spend a few moments writing anything at all. It was as if my mind was off in too many directions to get any type of focus and clarity. That is no different than taking a flowering plant and letting it grow unattended for years.
For a gardener, pruning is often a crucial step to maintaining beautiful flowers, plants, or trees. For a person that desires to become spiritual, pruning oneself is just as crucial to maintaing one’s brightness, beauty, and love. I encourage everyone today to take a moment, breathe, and look at the ares in your life that could use some pruning. Don’t be afraid to use those shears to prune out parts of your life. You might be surprised to see the spiritual growth you spur within yourself by doing so.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
