Till the Soil of your Psyche

Cultivate yourself, but do not be attached to what you are cultivating. Ever in the making but never made. Once we surrender to this, we harmonize with conditioned existence.

We suffer less when we learn to dance with samsara’s nature and use the reality of its constant metamorphosis to our benefit. Embracing the flux allows us to release our egoic grip on needing to be something stable, fixed, and worthy of love. This offers us greater freedom to actually do something sourced from love —in full conscious embrace of impermanence. We become vibrant examples of creative potential and use all experiences—joyous, neutral, and uncomfortable—as supports for our spiritual practice. We start to get a glimpse of self-mastery as we till the soil of our psyche and cultivate new ways of interrelating.

Tilling the soil of your psyche is another way of saying: consciously establish a renewed, healthier ego. A relatively healthy sense of self is usually required before we can ever hope to transcend it altogether. Make the ego your best friend by teaching it to be humble, to bare the brilliance of unobscured love, and to melt with the constant, flowing pulse of every moment—rising and falling—again and again. Every breath is an opportunity to nurture insight or feed unwholesome narratives.

Use your embodied existence as sacred potential to wake up. Do not get lost in avoiding pain through craving or aversion. Move in closer to your wounds—embrace them, kiss them, and anoint them—only then can you let them go. Let them go with love.

View all your current insights as “in process,” never closing the door to their evolution and malleability. Direct these insights towards developing a greater understanding of the ‘self’ you feel yourself to be. Find the connections and feel the intelligence in your body. Embrace the wisdom whispering from your heart, calling you home. This is spiritual practice.

Cultivate yourself, but do not become attached to what you are cultivating. Ever in the making but never made.

-by Sati Chmelar