The Garden Within

Moral, Mind and Mealth. Forget the Happiness, we're full on striving for fulfilment. Let's recover from what the phone and the social complex has done to us, regain consciousness through mindfulness and meditation. Experience peace in all its aspects, living and sharing it as the flame of the world. This is about us. How can we feel good to do good. What makes a good Life?

Well, big words for someone a little over 20, but let's hear what this crooked mind has come up with to justify this kind of introduction.

For this, we have to take a deep breath and deep dive into our imagination where we will find ourselves in darkness. This is what it looks like behind closed lids... try it out! - This void of nothingness, a bit scary at first, will serve with time as our inner temple, our realm of thoughts, images of our inner eye and memories. Here we can create almost anything from fictional worlds, over conversations that have or will never have happened, to remembering how we sat on a tree as a kid and watched something. It's all still there but it's buried beneath all the things that non stop occupy our head. If it's stress through work, children or your personal interests, we all have excuses to say that we wouldn't have 10 or 30 minutes spare a day to sit still and do nothing. Until we don't have excuses anymore. That moment will then open up a world, a world inside our heads, where we can think and discuss what currently makes us go mad, we can find solutions and more questions by looking into this little world of ours, our headspace. Often thinking about something for a while, can make an apparently big problem turn into something rather small or uninteresting. Often we find the answers we've been looking through all our lives and all over the world just sitting there in our head. Those answers have placed themselves on a little cosy wooden bench, just right in the middle of this temple, our Garden Within.

This place of harmony, peace and natural beauty isn't even that different from a normal garden. It has the same needs. Visit it from time to time, your garden and yourself will thank you for it. Take care and water your plants and look after them until your work pays off and you get the fruits of your labor. Worship it because this is the unique place that only belongs to you. You're therefore the only person who can actually improve it and as a matter of fact, not many besides you could ruin this garden. SO, all this is totally up to you and how much effort you are willing to spend. If you're striving for inner peace, if you're trying to learn how to develop a headspace that helps you being creative and imagine worlds, that lets you remember all the things for school, a head that is so calm that a thing like stress simply doesn't exist or a mindset which is healthy and that lets you live healthy, then you're onto something. Because Health starts up there, in your head. If you are interested in one or more of these facets you can be sure that it will pay off. You won't even be able to come up with all the extra benefits that will join in through time and meditation practice.

Hold on! Meditation?? I heard of that! I can't do that! Isn't that this blank mind thing with zero thoughts and all and super hard to do and I don't want to be a monk and maybe this isn't for me. Maybe...

Yeah, people say that all the time. Ask a random person on the street what they think what meditation is and they will tell you something like that. By the way, better don't ask a random person on a street, this world is weird enough! Let the poor people get through their day without a distraction like that. They might just end up thinking and reflecting about it and then their day is ruined... but you know what they did with that? When they were sitting in their car driving home, wondering what dinner will look like. Or after that in the shower when they got a little annoyed about something at work but then warm water flushed this anger away. Or what was it that they did, laying in bed closing and opening their eyes in the dark, watching the dark corners of the room and asking themselves: 'What did that weird person on the street mean? What do I think meditation is? Well, probably nothing. Good night!' What just happened there? Did this person speak out loud? Maybe, maybe not. Let's consider that this was an inner voice producing a monologue wondering about things, planning stuff, commenting and imagining. Now this consciousness went to bed and made a few last moves before giving over the power of the mind to what we call sleep. So what does this individual know about meditation? What do we know? Ready for a short opinion of my own? Make your own beforehand and compare.

Meditation blossoms in silence. Whether this silence is around you or in your head. It brings your head to peace and slows it down. This is what happens before falling asleep but still this isn't what meditation is perfectly about. The intention is missing or at least the intention when going to bed isn't supporting what we call intentional mindfulness. This is what we need. Intention. We place ourselves on the ground, maybe cross legged if we're very much into it, and then we close our eyes, this will make things easier. The intention is not falling asleep but laying the focus that our brain possesses from the world that surrounds and distracts us, onto the inner realm, our own head, it's thoughts and feelings. That's it! You're meditating! Are you wondering what this annoying voice is about and why the hell there isn't much of that silence you were longing for? Well, this voice is you! Listen to it. It's yours, your thoughts, your inner voice. You're directly confronted with what you consider to be yourself. Want to try something? Ask yourself a question and see if you get an answer. Or take the inactive part and do what I love most: watch your head as if you're sitting in a cinema. Just be there for a while as the neutral spectator and listen with mild interest what this person that you think to be, is thinking about. What occupies your mind? What are your worries, what are your hopes? You most certainly will get an idea at some point, something super important like 'Oh darn it, I wanted to do the laundry.', and then your automatic response will tell you to get up, leave the nothingness and do something. If this happens you haven't failed. Just realise that you could've done it later, too. The next time you take a pen and paper and if it's really important, you just note it down and do it after the 10 minutes of practice. You will improve but you might wonder how and in what aspects. Well, I would spoil you most of the fun if I'm telling it all now, so for now you can decide whether you want to explore and find out for yourself, something I've enjoyed doing for the last one and a half years, or you keep reading this Page of mine and learn a few methods, get some inspiration what to strive for and reload on motivation by having a clear goal in front of your inner eye. But I can tell you, that by practicing enough you will encounter the art of 'letting go' at some point. You will also settle at a point of relaxation beyond anything you've felt before and when you practice long enough, we'll be back at the beginning and then we can talk about silence in your head. People I honour refer to this silence between thoughts as 'Jinkan'! Until you get there enjoy the content of your brain, it's free and it tells you all you need to know about yourself. Everything after that is simply control and power over our own minds. To not let it wander, but to direct its way by literally letting go of your will and your Self.

I will meet you at some point in the future as the wise being you will be, sitting there in the setting sun, cross legged and with a straight back. And as I place myself next to you and return to my home, my inner home, my garden and its bench, I will see you there, just waiting on that bench of yours, in total peace with yourself and the world. I will enjoy the talk as we share all the wisdom we have gained through this magical place of ours and as we tell stories of the world and where She has taken us.

Until then, feel free to practice. You won't even want to touch your phone anymore, if you find this to be your alternative. Splendid!