The Garden Knows: Let Go to Grow

Photo from my own rose garden (love how the spider’s stripes took on the pink of the rose)

This morning, I was out in my garden deadheading the roses. It is a very calming practice, as you must trim them at just the right place, before the next 5 leaf branch, so they will bloom once again. Deadheading is one of my favorite gardening tasks. It is so important to let go of the old, so you can make space for the new.

This is such a great metaphor for life. We tend to hold onto things that no longer serve us, for various reasons. Guilt perhaps, perhaps the fear of having nothing. On a rose bush, holding on like that eventually creates chaotic growth, and makes it less likely that beautiful blooms will emerge again.

We too must make space for new growth, and often the only way to do that, is to let go of the old. We want beautiful effortless manifestations to flow into our life, yet if we are holding on to anything out of fear, we are resisting what may come.

Think about it this way. When we hold onto anything ‘just in case’ we ever decide to use it, we do so with the energy of fear. Fear that we won’t be able to replace it. Fear that we may want to use it at some point. Fear that we won’t have enough. We are constricted and closed off energetically when we are fearful, instead of being open and expansive.

Holding onto things that no longer serve us also creates chaos. I know someone right now who has been collecting and holding onto things for years. They are trying at this moment, to find storage facilities and space for all their stuff. They are worried someone may take their stuff. They are going to have to pay a lot of money to house all their stuff. Most of this stuff, 75% of it at least, has gone untouched for years, but they can’t let it go.

All the holding on, is creating more problems than letting go of it ever could, but they’re too afraid to let go.

If you’ve ever seen a garden go unattended to, you know the messiness it can bring. And how after many years left unattended, it is just so overwhelming that you don’t even know where to start. It’s exhausting to even look at. When you do finally get around to it, the work is much more laborious, the plants are way less healthy, and it can take years to recover.

This is just like when someone fails to take inventory of their life. Things can accumulate to such an extent that they don’t even know what is there anymore. It causes so much work that they don’t even want to deal with it. So, they let it pile up, as do the feelings of overwhelm every time they look at it. This creates an underlying low level of stress in the body, as the stuff just piles up all around. Soon there are aches and pains mysteriously showing up in the body from all the stress, which makes them even less likely to be able to tend to the origin of the problem. All the stuff.

Maybe it isn’t “stuff” you cling to. Maybe it is old ideas. Maybe it’s an old routine or habit that isn’t benefitting you anymore. Take inventory of your life. What might you be able to let go of? What space can you free up, so that you can breathe a little deeper and grow healthier? What chaos can you transform into peace?

People with less stuff, have more space. More space to breathe. More space to move. Less energetic density in the body and a healthier flow of revitalizing and nourishing energy. More space to allow new growth and new opportunities to flow into their life that will help to improve it, rather than creating more of a burden. With more space to move and breathe, we welcome the ability to thrive. Just like the rose bush does after a good deadheading.

Tend to your life regularly, so you may continue to grow and flourish. We aren’t just here to bloom once and die off. Blooming may be continuous throughout the entire course of our lives, if we make space for it.