Beautiful Garden of Soul

"The quality of your relationship with those who are close to you, that is your deepest spiritual practice", a spiritual friend shared one day. Any friends with deep meditation practice know, the quality of our relationship with close people, especially those who cannot be chosen like parents and children, is a very honest reflection of the beauty of the heart inside.

Similar to the reflection that one meets in the clear and clean mirror, the beauty of the close people is the reflection of the beauty of one's soul inside. Sadly, in this day and age there are few people who can see the beauty of themselves in the others. As we can see everywhere, marriage relationships can be a burning relationship, it can also make the soul bloom. It all depends on how smart a person grows there.

"Poison in your left hand, honey in your right hand", that's the lyric of a song in the past. That is also the main characteristic of marriage of restless souls. In the morning they hug each others like a butterfly meeting the honey, in the afternoon they fight each others like dogs throwing out the poison. This happens very often because someone identifies themselves with a strong mind, complete with the walls of wrong-right, false-true, sad-glad.

The harder one's mind, the harder they move from one pendulum to the other pendulum. The end result is predictable, they grow from restless into sleepless. In short, a strong mind makes one have a kind of love which is the opposite of hate. When the spouse does not match the taste, hate appears inside. When the partner appears to be pleasant, love blossoms inside. That's how the marriage pendulum sways from day to day.

Learning from the collapse of so many marriages because of divorce, it is worth meditating on an old message like this: "Once you stop your relationship with your small self, by then all relationships will become loving relationships." The feeling of being better and higher, that is exactly what we call the small self.  The kind of feeling that makes marriage easily break and lead to divorce.

Before you meet dangerous old age - being weak, sick, afraid of death, nobody cares, children run away, spouses run away because of the small self, it is wise to contemplate again and again the danger of the small self. Quoting from a holy book: "No self no problem". Once the small disappears, all the problems also disappear.

As a practical guideline, the following three steps will greatly help the soul's journey later. First of all, when the night is bright and full of stars, meditate deeply that the earth is only one small planet in the midst of a countless number of stars. And how successful a person is, he/she is only a small creature on a small planet.

Secondly, every time you enter the crowd, train yourself to realize that you are not the greatest there. Instead contemplate deeply, flowers in this day will become rubbish the next day. The great people of this day will be forgotten next time. What makes you happy today, will make you unhappy on another day. That is the law of nature. Some call it God as a law.

Thirdly, as has been done by deep souls, sometimes train yourself to "die before death". That is, before death really picks you up, it is worth imagining that you have already died. Every time you leave behind home to work, say to yourself that you die at home but are born in the office. Whenever a close person is very disappointing, remind yourself that a certain part of you is dying.

If you practice diligently in this way, someday you will stop judging yourself then stop judging the others. You will learn to hear others with a much more open mind. At the peak, one will be able to accept what was previously unacceptable. It is this kind of soul who can take good care of the family as a beautiful soul garden. At this level, love no longer has an opposite. Marriage is no longer swaying in the pendulum of dislike and like. In the garden of a soul like this, we often hear a message like this: "The best measurement of love is to love without any measurement. The most beautiful gift of love is love itself ".

Author: Guruji Gede Prama.
Photo: Daily.jstor.
Proofread By: Kirsty Spence.