In a recent post about caring for the desire to awaken, we used the image of a garden, and spoke of selecting the plants we wish to raise.  At least one reader found this  to be rather confronting: if we pursue the image to its logical conclusion, we ought to leave home, job and family, give up all comforts and interests, and sit as naked dervishes in the jungle.

But metaphors, devices often used to explain something that is inexplicable, are limited, like all constructions, and they are not always reliable roadmaps.  To say that the impulse to awaken spiritually is one among many plants is not really a good description.  In fact, the impulse is present in ALL the plants, and in the earth and the sky and the rain.  It is life itself.  But what we can learn from the image is this: generally, we use some behaviours or disciplines to help our spiritual life to grow.   Perhaps we go to a Sufi meeting once a week,  or meditate for a few minutes on the train every morning, or repeat a sacred phrase before we sleep (if we have the energy).  Those may be helpful, but if they are only one among our many commitments, then we will have put the impulse to grow in a very small container, and its influence on our life will be limited.

It is not necessary to abandon all our activities in order to ‘be spiritual.’  We have been given the gift of life on earth to experience all the heights and depths.  But the greatest satisfaction comes when we begin to recognise the spiritual current in all that we do.  When our weekend bicycle ride or our daily work becomes our prayer, when we can appreciate the life in a momentary flash of sunshine and in the shock of a child’s dropped ice cream cone, when we can glimpse the infinite behind both the agreeable and the disagreeable, we can be sure that the garden is not only flourishing, but beginning to bear fruit.