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PeterParticipantHi Anita
I posted without seeing your last comment. I appreciated your SOCJ as a opportunity to observe your path of healing while also concerned that it may be misunderstood.
PeterParticipantHi Everyone
I hesitate to comment, but I feel moved to share a perspective on Stream of Consciousness Journaling (SOCJ).
To me, SOCJ resembles dream interpretation where every figure, object, and event is a reflection of the dreamer’s inner world. Just as only the dreamer can truly understand the meaning of their dream symbols, so too is SOCJ a deeply personal process. Commenting on someone else’s SOCJ can be like waking a sleepwalker well-intentioned, but disorienting or even painful.
It also occurred to me that our waking life may not be so different. We often seek others to mirror us, to help us see ourselves more clearly. But in doing so, we sometimes forget that there is a person behind that mirror, someone with their own depth, sensitivity, and story.
I’ve written about mirroring before, and how moments of tension, when we feel offended, hurt, or our boundaries are tested can be powerful opportunities for growth. These are moments of revelation. Just as dream figures reveal aspects of the self, so too do real-life encounters, especially those that challenge or move us deeply.
Tinny Buddha is a space that encourages vulnerability. That means boundaries will be tested, and yes, sometimes we will feel hurt and misunderstood. But I believe that if we can sit with that discomfort and not rush to fix it or assign blame, we find healing. That tension, that pause, is where transformation begins. It’s part of what makes life rich and worth living.
I hope I have not oversteped
PeterParticipantLayla’s Last Season
Layla’s days were growing quiet.
The garden she had planted, part wild, part tended had grown into a place of peace. Children still played beneath the branches, the wind still carried stories, and the soil still held secrets.
She sat beneath the tree she had once planted with trembling hands. Now its roots ran deep, its shade wide. She looked out over her garden and smiled.
Though it was small, it was big enough.
Though it was simple, it had enough for everyone.She remembered the faces of those who had come Sami, the restless student; Mira, who planted in spirals; the old woman who wept beside the thorns. And she remembered Zahir, her teacher, who had once walked between two gardens: one walled, one open.
In the stillness, Layla heard a voice beneath the silence.
It laughed.
And in the laugh, she heard Zahir’s warm chuckle… gentle, knowing, amused by the way of life, how a garden teaches.
In that moment, something shifted. Not a thought, not a conclusion, but a realization deeper than knowing.
Zahir had never tended two gardens. It was always one.
The wall and the wind, the order and the wildness, the questions and the silence… they were not separate. They were threads in the same tapestry. Her garden, too, was part of it. Not apart, but a part.
The web of life shimmered before her, not as an idea, but as a presence. Everything connected. Everything belonging.
Tears welled in her eyes, not from sorrow, but from the sheer beauty of it. She laughed, and her laugh was not hers alone. It joined the voice beneath the silence, the eternal chuckle of her teacher, the wind in the jasmine, the song of the soil.
Layla’s cry and laugh became one.
The wind stirred the leaves. A vine reached toward the sun. A bird sang from the wall. And Layla, the gardener who had once asked what compassion and freedom was, now rested in it.
Epilogue:
Long after Layla’s footsteps faded from the soil, her garden remained. It did not grow larger, but it grew deeper. The roots of her tree reached into the memory of the valley, and the wind carried her laughter like a song remembered.
Travelers still came to feel what she had felt. They sat beneath the branches, touched the soil, and listened for the voice beneath the silence.
Some planted seeds.
Some wept beside the thorns.
Some built fences, then gently took them down.And all who came left changed, not by answers, but by presence. They learned, as Layla had, that freedom is not found in choosing between wildness and order, but in the courage to create something that holds both. That wisdom is not taught but grown. That the garden is not a place, it is a way.
And if you listen closely, in the hush between wind and leaf, you may hear a laugh… gentle, knowing….
And it welcomes you.
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. -
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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.