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PeterParticipantThanks Alessa
I agree, we return home to know it for the first time, and sometimes returning home means knowing when to create space for onselfPeterParticipantLayla’s Garden
Years passed since Layla planted her seed in the land between the gardens. Travelers came and sat beneath it drawn by something they couldn’t name.
Layla had become a teacher, not in title, but by presence. She did not preach, nor did she instruct. She tended her garden, listened to the wind, and welcomed those who came with questions.
One day, a young man named Sami arrived. He was restless, full of ideas and doubts. He had studied many books and followed many paths, but none had brought him peace.
He asked Layla, as Layla once asked, “What is freedom?”
Layla smiled and handed him a seed. “Plant it,” she said.
Sami looked around. “Where?”
Layla pointed to the edge of her garden. “Anywhere you feel it belongs.”
He chose a spot near a crooked stone, cleared some weeds, and planted the seed. He watered it and sat beside it.
Over the weeks, Sami returned. He watched the seed sprout, then struggle. He built a small fence, then removed it. He tried to shape the plant, then let it grow wild. He learned to listen, not just to the plant, but to himself.
One day, he said, “I think I understand. Freedom is not a place or a rule. It’s a relationship.”
Layla eyes shone bright. “Yes. Between care and release. Between knowing and not knowing. Between the seed and the soil.”
Others came. Some planted in rows. Some scattered seeds in the wind. Some built walls, others tore them down. Layla never corrected them. She only asked, “What does your garden teach you?”
And so, the valley changed. It became a place of many gardens, some wild, some ordered, some both. People came not to escape, but to create. Not to be free from, or free to, but to be Free With.
And in the quiet of the evening, Layla would walk among them, her hands in the soil, her heart open to the wind and loved them Free.
PeterParticipantLayla journey continues – a question of Freedom
In the quiet valley nestled between two hills, Teacher Zahir moved between the two gardens with quiet grace. He watered, pruned, and listened. He never spoke of why he kept both, nor did he explain their purpose. Those who passed by often wondered, but few asked.
One morning, Layla, the young seeker, returned to Zahir. She bowed and asked, “Teacher Zahir, what is freedom?”
Zahir smiled and gestured toward the two gardens. “In one,” he said, “freedom is found in form. The plants are guided, protected, and shaped. They flourish because they are held.”
“In the other,” he continued, “freedom is found in wildness. The plants grow as they will, tangled and untamed. They flourish because they are free.”Layla looked from one garden to the other. “But which is true freedom?”
Zahir smiled and said, “Walk with me.”
Together they entered the walled garden where Zahir handed Layla a small spade. “Plant something,” he said.
She knelt and dug a hole. The soil was soft, the space clear. She planted a seed, watered it, and marked the spot with a stone.
“It is peaceful here,” she said.“Yes,” Zahir replied. “The walls protect. The paths guide. But tell me what cannot grow here?”
Layla looked around. “The wild things. The ones that don’t follow rules.”
Zahir nodded. “without this order, the tender things would be choked.”
They walked to the second garden. Zahir said nothing.
Layla wandered. She tripped over roots, scratched her hand on a thorn, and lost her way in a thicket. But then she found a patch of wild strawberries, sweet and unexpected. She lay in the grass and watched clouds drift.
“This place is alive,” she said.
“Yes,” Zahir replied. “It is free. But tell me, what is lost here?”
She thought. “Direction. Safety. Some things grow wild, but others are swallowed.”
That night, Layla slept between the two gardens. In her dream, she stood at a crossroads. One path was paved and lit. The other was dark and winding. She hesitated.
A voice beneath the silence whispered: “Freedom is not the path. It is the one who walks.”
She awoke before dawn and went to Zahir. “I still don’t know what freedom is,” she said.
Zahir handed her a seed and said, “Then plant again. But this time, choose your garden.”
Layla stood between the two. She looked at the seed, then at the land beyond both gardens, a patch of earth untouched.
There, she planted her seed and built a small fence, not too high. She cleared some weeds but left the wildflowers. She watered it, then sat back and waited.Seasons passed. The plant grew part cultivated, part wild. Birds nested in its branches. Bees came and went. It bent in the wind but did not break.
Zahir came to see. “You’ve made a third garden,” he said.
Layla smiled. “Yes. I’ve made my own.”
Freedom, Layla learned, is not found in walls or wildness alone. It is found in the wisdom to choose the courage to create, and the humility to listen to the soil, the wind, and the self.
Freedom is not escape, it is return to what matters.
PeterParticipantHi Alessa
As I’ve gotten older and look back on my quest to understand today I would say it may be enough to plant the seed… perhaps in both gardens.As to Sufi teaching, I am a outsider looking in. My impression is that Sofi teaching is a gentle unveiling to guide the heart reveling truth and a ‘understanding’ through lived experience. Perhaps better seen in contrast to the Zen koan, the metaphorical slap to disrupt habitual thinking and provoke direct insight into reality, “jolting” the mind awake.
Despite their differences, both aim to dissolve illusion and awaken to the truth of unity. “Zen does it by cutting through; Sufism by drawing in. One strikes the mind, the other stirs the soul”. In hindsight I see that I needed the metaphorical slap of Zen to prepare me to be drawn into heart. Zen clearing the ground, Sufism planting the garden… Contemplation letting it grow…
I’ve been thinking about continuing the story of Layla and will see if I can add something to the question of teaching.
PeterParticipantHi Anita – Thanks for engaging with the story. I like the thought of planting a seed in both gardens, when facing difficult life happenings. Weather is it seeds of compassion, grace, forgiveness. One we tend and one we let grow, yet both are acts of intention. Perhaps with the hope that when time comes and the wall between fade, we will know it for home.
Hi Alessa – I was introduced to symbolic language by Jung, Von Franz, Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Campbell. One thing they would all say is that we each have our own ways of relating to language and stories, and or need to find our own ways. I find your voice is like the walled garden in the story, structured, clear, and nurturing, offering a space where ideas can take root, which I find deeply grounding.
I feel we are both circling around a deep truth: that compassion and grace are not static traits, but dynamic movements. As you noted Yin and Yang complementary forces that shape how we relate to ourselves and others. Funny be we don’t have a word for that which is both Yin and Yang, the ‘thing’ that symbol points to. A limitation of Language. (Actually Jung I think calls it the ‘Self’)
I Imagine planting a seed in both gardens, the walled and the wild, is like tending both Yin and Yang. One grows through care and structure, the other through mystery and surrender. Compassion lives in both. Grace, as you noted, the courage to hold them together.
I agree that many genuinely authentic people are unaware of thier unhealthy behaviors, Jung might call thier shadow, as they haven’t been taught. As I explore the works of the Sufi, I’ve come to see that the teacher’s role is not to impart doctrine, but to help the disciple learn how to learn, to see beyond their inherited language, metaphor and the constructs they may not even realize they’re using.
My sense is that the future might be better served if we lean into this kind of teaching as it invites humility, curiosity, and transformation. It doesn’t demand belief, but encourages insight.
From what I’ve observed, this approach naturally leads to the kinds of experiences of compassion we’ve been discussing. Not compassion as a fixed idea, but as a living movement graceful, dynamic, and deeply relational.
PeterParticipantA story I’ve been working on over the last few days
The Boundary and the Boundlessness
In a quiet valley nestled between two mountains, there lived an old gardener named Zahir who tended two gardens.
The first garden was enclosed by a low stone wall. Inside, herbs and vegetables grew in neat rows. Zahir watered them daily, pulled weeds, and spoke to each plant by name. He knew which ones needed shade, which ones needed space, and which ones thrived with a little neglect. Visitors often came to admire the order and health of this garden.The second garden lay beyond the wall, wild and boundless. Flowers bloomed in unexpected places, vines curled around ancient trees, and the wind carried seeds from faraway lands. Zahir never planted here. He only walked, listened, and sometimes sat for hours beneath the sky. Few visited this garden, for it had no path, no gate, and no map.
Sometimes, the mist would settle over the gardens like a veil, softening every edge. And sometimes, when Zahir sat still enough, he could feel the pulse of the earth beneath him like a heartbeat, slow and steady, reminding him that life moved even when nothing seemed to change.
One day, a young traveler named Layla arrived. She had heard of Zahir’s wisdom and asked to learn the secret of compassion.
Zahir smiled and handed her two seeds. “Plant one in the walled garden,” he said, “and one in the wild.”
Layla did as she was told. The seed in the walled garden grew strong and straight, nourished by care and protected from harm. The seed in the wild garden grew crooked and luminous, touched by moonlight and mystery.
After many seasons, Layla returned, confused.
“Master Zahir,” she said, “the first seed grew because I tended it. The second grew without me. One needed boundaries, the other needed freedom. Which is compassion?”
Zahir looked at her gently. “Both,” he said. “Compassion is the gardener, not the garden. It knows when to build walls and when to walk beyond them. It speaks the language of care in many dialects.”
Layla frowned. “But the wild garden has no rules. Doesn’t compassion dissolve boundaries?”
Zahir picked up a fallen leaf and held it to the light. “This leaf,” he said, “was once part of a tree. It fell, not because the tree rejected it, but because the wind called it elsewhere. Boundaries are not prisons. They are invitations to know where you begin, so you may know where you end… and then forget both.”
Layla sat in silence, watching the wind stir both gardens.
And in that silence, she understood: Compassion is not the absence of boundaries, nor the presence of them, this not a contradiction, only different petals of the same flower.
Zahir smiled, “It is the gardener who listens to the seed, not the wind of old words that tries to shape its bloom.”
She pondered this, and three voices rose beneath the Silence.
The first came as a breeze brushing the soil, asking gently, “Which seed will rise, and which will sleep?” And the soil did not answer. It only held.
The second shimmered like mist over the wild garden, whispering, “Do not seek to name the dance. Just feel its rhythm.” And the mist did not explain. It only embraced.
The third pulsed like a heartbeat beneath her ribs, murmuring, “The path is chosen before the mind draws its map.” And the heart did not argue. It only opened.
PeterParticipantAnita – “Insight finally becoming embodiment” – I really like that
Alessa – A definition of grace has having courage, resonates as a truth. In recent conversations, I’ve noticed how compassion is experienced in many ways. For some, it is the gentle firmness of self-care and boundaries. For others as a dissolving of separation and the recognition of unity. Yet I don’t feel that as a contradiction, and that both can be true in the very same movement.
Here I think mind and language struggles as it wants to define, to separate, to measure. But compassion lives in the spaces between words, in the silence that holds both the boundary and the boundlessness. And as you note that takes courage that is also grace. A trust that truth can be felt even when it cannot be fully said.
PeterParticipantThank Anita
The work your doing has been a helpful mirror.
PeterParticipantHi Anita
This is a amazing realization, and if your like me the challenge becomes how to turn insight into being. A question as you know I’ve asked myself, what if we live what we say we believed/know
These words I feel as a Truth: “When people have been harmed by those who were supposed to be safe, gentleness starts to resemble danger: a calm tone might mask manipulation, kindness may turn cruel at any time, vulnerability might lead to punishment. And so, grace—the quiet, unconditional offering of love or presence—can feel suspect. The nervous system doesn’t trust it yet.”
I feel the task here isn’t a perfect answer or solution that settles things once and for all but to be aware and the tension such a realization creates. Maybe when we sit in that tension we might become better able to respond when its triggered and not react. And of course offer ourselves and others grace when we stumble.
And these words resonate: “Pride resists surrender. Fear resists trust. Control resists vulnerability. Grace asks us to lay those down, even momentarily. But even momentarily, laying down these defenses can feel disorienting, like standing unarmored in the middle of a battlefield and hoping not to be struck”.
That feeling of disorientation, especially when feeling unseen and misunderstood, I know it well.
Yet I’ve come to know that disorientation is a window to possibility of learning! For reasons beyond my comprehension, like Paul’s thorn, is it though holding tension that we grow not so much in answered questions. Tension the fertilizer of growth, as every butterfly knows.
Where might grace be waiting to be trusted?
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Exploring the Sufi way this is a attempt to create a story from the above
A seeker came to a Mirror, burdened by the ache of being misunderstood and unseen.
“I have insight,” the seeker said, “but I do not know how to become it.”
The Mirror nodded and handed the seeker two things: a thorn and a cocoon.
“Carry these,” the Mirror said, “and walk.”The seeker walked for many days. The thorn pricked with every step while the cocoon remained silent.
One day, the seeker sat beneath a fig tree and cried out, “Why must I carry pain to grow? Why must I feel disoriented when I try to trust?”The fig tree whispered, “When gentleness has once been danger, even grace feels like a trap.”
The thorn pulsed in the seeker’s hand. The cocoon trembled.
And then, a butterfly emerged, the cocoon breaking open create from the tension between the thorn and the question.A voice beneath the Silence spoke “You asked how to become your insight,”
“You are invited to sit in the tension, not solve it.
You are invited to feel the disorientation, not flee it.
You are invited to offer and receive grace, even when your pride resists, your fear recoils, and your control clings.”“But it hurts,” said the seeker.
“Yes,” said the voice beneath the Silence. “And yet, every butterfly knows: tension is the air of flight.”
PeterParticipantSynchronicity reading this mornings CAC meditation on ‘Torn as a Gift’ I would add a third voice
The CAC Reflection: The Thorn and the Mercy
Paul begged for his thorn to be removed.
God said no.
“My grace is sufficient for you.”
The thorn remained.
So did the mercy.
So did the love.
And Paul learned to give thanks for the thorn.Sitting in the tension of the questions I wonder…
Can we sit with discomfort long enough to see what it reveals?
Can we search in the dark even if it scares us?
Can we stop searching for perfect and start cooperating with grace?PeterParticipantI have been exploring the Sufi way of using story to dissolve illusion with the warmth of metaphor and contrast that with Zen koan to ‘jolt’ the mind into silence.
Ways of Seeing
The Koan: The Two Mirrors (my attempt at a koan)
A student asked the master,
“Two mirrors face each other. What do they see?”
The master replied,
“When the wind moves the curtain, they forget to reflect.”
The student said,
“Then what remains?”
The master smiled,
“The dust dances, and the room breathes.”
________________________________________The Sufi Story: Nasrudin and the Lost Key
Nasrudin was on his hands and knees under a streetlamp.
A passerby asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking for my key,” Nasrudin replied.
“Where did you lose it?”
“Inside the house.”
“Then why are you looking out here?”
“Because the light is better here.”
________________________________________Between paradox and parable, a space opens and illusion of separation fades.
Life not to solve, but to sit with. Not to answer, but to ask again.
Where am I looking?
What am I seeing?
And what might be waiting in the quiet between reflections?PeterParticipantSometimes, in the midst of heartfelt exchange, we become mirrors reflecting not just each other, but our own stories, our own wounds. And when the light shifts, even slightly, we might glimpse something more: the space between us. Not empty, but alive. A place where understanding doesn’t demand agreement, and compassion doesn’t erase boundaries.
In that light I would add to my reflection on conversation.
Two mirrors hung across from one another in a quiet room.
Each reflecting a truth not fully seen, as the light in the room kept shifting.
Each mirror only saw the flicker of its own reflection in the other.One day, a breeze moved the curtain, and for a moment, the light fell just right.
The mirrors no longer saw themselves but the space between them.In that space, they saw not glass or silver backing, but the quiet breath of the room itself.
Dust motes dancing like forgotten memories, the hush of time suspended between them.
They saw the absence of themselves, and in that absence, a presence of possibility… a truth un-reflected.Tension, like the breeze, not disruption, was invitation.
It stirred the stillness, unsettled the dust, and asked the mirrors to see not just what is, but what could be.In discomfort, something shifted. Not always gracefully, not always gently, but necessarily.
For it is in the friction between reflections that clarity is born and the mirror polished.
Not the clarity of agreement, but of understanding.
Not the comfort of sameness, but the courage to witness difference without retreat.Curiosity asked them to listen not just to echoes, but to the quiet between them.
To read not just the image, but the intention behind it.
To remember that across from each mirror was not just another surface, but a presence.
Complex. Flawed. Yearning to be seen.And for that brief moment, they did not reflect.
They witnessed.PeterParticipant“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it. “ – Edith Wharton
Two mirrors hung across from one another in a quiet room.
Each reflecting a truth not fully seen, as the light in the room kept shifting.
Each mirror only saw the flicker of its own reflection in the other.One day, a breeze moved the curtain, and for a moment, the light fell just right.
The mirrors no longer saw themselves but the space between them.In that space, they saw not glass or silver backing, but the quiet breath of the room itself.
Dust motes dancing like forgotten memories, the hush of time suspended between them.They saw the absence of themselves, and in that absence, a presence of possibility, a truth un-reflected.
In this space they did not echo, but witnessed.PeterParticipantHi Everyone
On the question of shame, I’ve found L.B. Smedes book ‘Shame and Grace’ one of the best I read on the subject. He emphasizes that much of our shame is undeserved, arising not from true moral failings but from internalized judgments, social conditioning, and the illusion of separation.
Shame not just a product of society or human nature, but a complex interplay of both. I wonder if a path to healing might begin by dissolving the boundary. Applying the metaphor of the blank canvas, not a Chicken or the egg, but chicken and the egg, both brush strokes on the Canvas.
I’ve been reading up on Sufism and they might speak of shame as something woven into the fabric of being human. ‘The heart must be polished until it reflects only the Beloved’. But the dust on the mirror, that too is part of the path. Even Shame, deserved and undeserved and ancient, can become a polish.
In Buddhism, we are taught that suffering arises from clinging to identity, to judgment, to the illusion of separation. But when we sit with what is, without pushing it away or pulling it close, we begin to see shame is not a flaw in us, but a misunderstanding in the world.
“Let us hold our stories lightly, and each other gently. Not to erase the shame, but to see through it to the light that was never lost.”
PeterParticipantHi Everyone
Have I ever felt Eden, even as a memory? I don’t remember 🙂 I suspect the notion of Eden was too entangled in the language I inherited and have had to untangle. Yet when you brought up Eden, I felt its echo and ran with it.
I like the thought of the feeling of Eden as rhythm of presence we sometimes brush against when we’re open, quiet, and not clinging too tightly to our constructs.
I like to imagine all those now and across time who are or have followed the impulse to see though the illusion of separation, each in their own ways. The feeling of shared longing and resonance on a quiet discovery of connection.
Perhaps that is a kind of feeling of Eden. A moment of deep stillness between people, a breath that feels like it belongs to the whole world. A child’s cry turned to laughter leaving a silence that doesn’t need to be filled.
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Though I run this site, it is not mine. It's ours. It's not about me. It's about us. Your stories and your wisdom are just as meaningful as mine. 