Posted by on May 21, 2014 in awareness | 13 comments

This letting go business is tough.

When we let go of something, how do we know something better will come? What happens if it’s gone forever?

Whenever I start to doubt, I turn to Nature for assurance. Nature seems to be a wonderful reflection for us humans.

In Carlsbad, California there is a place called The Flower Fields where they grow acres and acres of ranunculus. From March through May, the fields are full with every color of flower: red, orange, yellow, white, pink, even purple, as far as you can see.

But after the season, the farm workers harvest the seeds from the remaining crop and plow the fields down. They fumigate all the beds to be sure to kill everything. And they let the soil rest.

Through the winter the fields are empty, colorless, waiting.

In early spring, new seeds are planted by hand, row after row, the workers trusting that the coming year’s crop will bloom as colorful and beautiful as the year before.

While previous harvests strongly support the possibility, there is no guarantee.

But the flowers certainly wouldn’t grow if the farmers didn’t first clear the fields.

It’s the same with us.

We have to let go of the old to make space for the new. We need to sit in that space of fallow fields, allowing our own ground to rest before something new can grow.

A woman in my Living Room Ladies coaching circle is redefining what it means to be an artist. While she has let go of her youthful visions and expectations of an artist’s life, she has no idea what that life could look like now. And she is very uncomfortable with this blank slate.

Because if it’s not what she always thought it was, what is it?

She is in the fallow fields. She has plowed the fields and fumigated the beds and now she must sit and lean into that quiet empty space. Maybe it isn’t yet time to plant the new seeds.

So what can she do? (We all want to be DOING something to move our progress along.)

Well, sometimes the best doing is just Be-ing.

Being able to sit with the thoughts that come up, to calm ourselves when we butt up against our own impatience, to dig deeper into our own soil to reconnect with the reason we want to do this thing in the first place.

She will know when it’s time for planting. She will know what seeds to scatter. She will know how she wants to bloom.

 

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