The garden doesn’t care what you plant. It does not make a difference to the soil whether you plant flowers or weeds, food or poison. Once planted the seeds grow.

Nature will take care of the growth if you don’t tend to the garden. Left alone it will grow. Wild weeds will arise that can take hold and overwhelm the flowers and food. The garden left alone and wild may not produce the garden you hoped for.

When one tends to the garden the weeds are removed and the garden is manicured both for health and beauty. This garden can become what you intend it to be, what you imagined it to be.

Some people  just throw seeds on the soil, hoping they come up and that nature will do the rest. Sometimes, that is how it works. Some people throw seeds around without much thought as to how it will turn out. They let whatever will be, be. You can do this too, perhaps you have.

Some people make plans. They imagine the garden they want to have. They know where it will be, what size it will be, how it will look. They know what will grow in the garden. You can do this too, perhaps you have done.

If you have no plan or no idea, if you give no thought to what the garden will look and be like, it will be whatever it is. You will end up with whatever you end up with. You may be surprised or disappointed because it is not up to you.

There is another way.

Since it is your garden you can decide how you want it to look and what kind of garden you want it to be. You decide where you want the plants and what kind. You may landscape it any number of ways. Perhaps, you include a bench or a pond. What kind of garden do you see?

It is in your mind the garden first originates. Once you see it in your mind you might draw it on paper. Some people do this. Architects and engineers work this way. They see a room or a building or highway in their mind, they envision it and then draw it out according to the specifications. You can do this too.

You plan and design the garden. You prepare the soil,  sow the seeds and you take care of it. You cultivate the garden and help it grow so that it will become what you intend it to be. You take care of it. You do not leave it to chance. You do not leave it alone.

Remember, everything begins as a thought. Everything in the human world, created by humans, first originated in the mind before it  became became physical reality. There is a translation process from the head to the hand. The thought reality IS transformed into a physical reality. You first think it and then ultimately you craft it or you carry it out.

What is interesting to note is that the mind, just like soil, does not care what is planted!

Let’s back step slightly. In my previous post I likened attention to a flashlight. Your conscious mind IS the mind with volition. You direct your attention consciously, with purpose. You choose where to aim the flashlight with you conscious mind.

Your unconscious mind or your subconscious mind (some people like the phrase ‘other than conscious mind’ is the garden. It is the like the soil. It doesn’t matter what is planted in the subconscious mind. It doesn’t care what seeds are sown.

The subconscious is as a ‘servo mechanism’ which is just like it sounds – a servant mechanism that carries out functions regardless of what you consciously choose. It beats your heart, fills your lungs, digests your food, circulates your blood, regulates your body functions with none OR very little participation from you consciously. Imagine what life would be like if we had to remember to beat our heart or breath?

The unconscious mind carries out functions and habits with no regard as to whether they are positive or negative, good or bad. If you learned to smoke you will smoke it doesn’t matter to the unconscious mind although consciously you may decide you wish to quit. It doesn’t matter if the habit is over eating, drinking, chewing your nails, picking your nose in public; any habit good or bad this servo mechanism carries it out reliably.

It is claimed that we mostly function at the unconscious level all of the time in everything plus we have a portion of awareness for conscious thought and determination. We are creatures of habit, have an order for how we shower, what we wash first, we get dressed the same way each day, we eat food the same way, we take the same route to work, unless otherwise necessary, we  get angry the same way, get happy predictably in the same way, most of everything we do we can do without much conscious thought.

Try to change a habit and you know how difficult that may be. That is because the servant mechanism works reliably not haphazardly. It is completely 100% dependable no matter what, except it the rarest of circumstance. It works 24 hours a day 7 days a week non-stop, And it does not care. Frankly, it doesn’t care about you. All it cares about is keeping on keeping on. Survival. It functions to keep you alive and it will carry out whatever it has learned to carry out.

We tend to personify our unconscious processes, we tend to think of these as another human within ourself, or as an ‘it’, or an ego or an id. We try to imagine it many different ways and all of our analogies may be partly accurate and partly wrong.

I am using the notion of the soil and of the servant mechanism because they are useful to demonstrate the principles being discussed. Your unconscious mind is like a computer (another poor analogy but useful) in that it will run whatever  programs you put into it just as your computer will.

Whatever they programs are designed to do ‘it’ (the computer) will do.

If the programs were designed to destroy the world or build a ferris wheel or design a garden that is what it would do without conscience. It’s only function is to carry out the programs. It has no choice.

In the very same way this aspect of you will return to you negative or positive thoughts, feelings and behaviors with no regard for you whatsoever. It will do so reliably over and over again just as it beats your heart.

If you program it with less than glorious material that is what it will give back to you.  So this is why I have used the analogy of a garden and the seeds.

It does not care whether you plant good or bad thoughts, positive or negative. Whatever is planted IS what will grow.

Negative thoughts will produce negative thoughts, feelings, actions and negative results. It will not magically result in positive thoughts. You would not expect to get acorns if you planted peas, would you? You wouldn’t harvest corn if you planted wheat. You get back whatever you plant. You plant rice you get rice You plant poison you get poison. You will not get something else.

Don’t you find it odd that people do one thing yet expect different results?

Actually, it is a bit sad. People hope for something different yet they continue to do the very thing that insures they will remain the same. You get what you plant.

The popular definition of insanity IS doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. It would indeed seem to be insane if you said ‘I planted acorns and I am going to get celery when I harvest’.

This next point is critical to keep in mind.

Typically, the seed will become a plant that can produce many other plants and countless numbers of seeds. Rex, you speak the obvious you may be thinking and yes that is true. Still, it is important to understand.

One apple tree may produce hundreds of apples. One tree could produce thousands of apples during its life time and hundreds of thousands of seeds.  Some of these seeds  become other apple trees. These trees, in turn, produce more offspring that produce more seeds and other offspring. The potential return is enormous off of just one single seed that grows.

Talk about a Return On Investment (ROI). One seed can produce a tree that can create a potential forest of apple trees.

Thinking and thoughts work in the very same manner.

Thoughts return more of the same kind of thoughts which continue ad infinitum. One of the ways our memories and minds works is by associations. For example,  I say the word ‘dog’ what comes to mind. Stop, think about it.

DOG.

From that one word  you can generate an image of many different types of dogs or many different images of different dogs or even the same dog.

You may have a number of experiences with dogs that you remember as you consider ‘dog’.  Experiences from your recent past or from long ago.

Watch now how this will change.

What happens when I say ‘ BAD DOG!!!’ Examine what happens in your mind.

Are you aware of your image changing? Did it bring up different images of dogs, or maybe a specific dog? Or specific instances. Again memories from long ago or recently could be recalled? What happened for you in considering this?

Alright how about you consider ‘wet dog’.

Again, same or different dog, same or different memories, same or different times?

How many dogs, different dogs and different memories and different times and places and people and situations might you have recalled just thinking about what I asked you to think about?

All I gave you were three different words yet these words trigger associations or memories of many other examples.

I gave them to you in a particular order too. Maybe it depends on however I give them to you. Perhaps order has relevance. I gave you dog, bad, and wet. I could add COLD, or HOT or FUN.  What happens?

If you thought about any of the memories or associations or thoughts you came up with perhaps you ended up of thinking about other pets, or people or places or times too. Anything is possible.

The point is nothing exists in isolation. Thoughts return other similar thoughts. These in turn may lead to other similar thoughts. The possible connections could be endless. From one thought many more may follow. Like thoughts produce or attract like thoughts.

Negative thoughts return more negative thoughts!

Your enjoyment of the garden is determined by what kind of garden you create. How you think about it and feel depends on what you planted.

It all boils down to what you are planting.

What kind of garden do you want to have? What is it you want to harvest?  What do you want more of? What do you want your life and your experience of life to be like? WHAT DO YOU WANT?

Positive thoughts return more positive thoughts. The potential return is enormous. Like thoughts produce or attract like thoughts.

The soil of our mind is already returning whatever it is we have planted.

If what you have planted in the past resulted in weeds or poison it is time to decide to change what you are planting. Unless of course, that is what you want for yourself. But, most of us have much better taste than that, we just aren’t sure how to make it different.

So we do the same things over and over (we do the things we know to do or think we are supposed to do) thinking we will get different results. We won’t, but we keep trying. It as if we keep banging our head against the wall trying to get out of the room because the door is locked. IT  doesn’t work.

The results you are presently getting getting are a result of what you thought and felt in your past. The results you get in days to come will be the result of what you thought in your past and in your present.

If you do not change something in your thinking nothing will change. If you want your life to change you have to change things in your life.

IF you have negative results it is because you were planting negative seeds.

So what does it mean to plant seeds. How do you plant a thought? We will continue this discussion as we move into other posts. For now, if you don’t like the results you are getting you need to decide to change that. You will have to do things differently to get different results. Some people just don’t know how to change, or what to change but they still want to.

We will continue to examine what you can do to get what you want. You will learn how to plant positive thoughts to get positive results.

I have shared with you a small portion of how the subconscious mind works. It is the servant that carries out orders. You might wonder where these orders come from or how you ended up doing (or thinking and feeling) whatever it is you do, in the way you do it, whether you want to or not. Carrying out orders IS the domain of the subconscious mind.

CHOICE is the domain of the conscious mind.

We will discuss these further and how you can make positive powerful changes in posts to come.

In the meantime look to the positive, find what is good and new, what delights you and what you have in your life that you appreciate. Count your blessings. Enjoy your day!” Rex Sikes

Make this day a wonderful day of newness for yourself? Discover if you can open up to positive new ideas and ways of being? Look for how much fun you can have today.

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