The World Is in My Garden: A Journey of Consciousness - Softcover

Maser, Chris; Maser, Zane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0738858714 ISBN 13: 9780738858715

Publisher: Xlibris Us, 2000

Synopsis

As I worked in my garden, I began to see that all the global problems with which I had for so long been wrestling (ecological, social, personal, and spiritual) were reduced to the size of personal awareness and understanding in ways that I could never have imagined as a younger man. Every conceivable problem was only a matter of scale and essentially the same, regardless of culture or language, and was played out again and again, whether I saw it in the subarctic of Alaska, the deserts of Egypt or the American Southwest, the jungles of Malay, the Alps of Europe, the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, or the coast of Oregon. The problems were not only repeated elsewhere but also occurred in my garden in one way or another. This is not surprising, when I think of it, because culture is a structure that is artificially imposed on people and consequently reflected in their gardens. While the specifics might differ, the principles are identical, and the scale of the problem in my garden is one I can understand, relate to, affect, and expand again to a global view.

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So it is that while working in my garden, I can, for a while, be untouched by the various wars (both those of ideology and those of physical weapons) that are raging in the outer world, or by the disease and hunger that ravage this country or that, or by the corporate greed that is destroying whole ecosystems and cultures, both at home and abroad. It is not that I don t care about what goes on in the outer world, but rather that my garden is at once the field of battle in which I struggle within myself to grow, an isle of solitude in a sea of worldly strife, and an entrance into a realm of reality beyond the material, much like the rabbit s burrow leading to Alice s Wonderland. It is here, in my garden, that I personalize my perception of the world in a scale with which I can cope and to some degree affect. Here, as the French painter Ingres says of art, one arrives at an honorable result only through one s tears. Thus, in some small way, I can affect the world at the scale of my garden by consciously learning to understand and work with those physical, biological, and spiritual principles that govern the intrinsic wholeness of Nature and myself as a quintessential part thereof. As such, it is spiritual succor that I find in my garden when the burdens of the outer world grow too heavy for my shoulders. It is here that I kneel before the Eternal Mystery and find peace in turning the soil and in weeding. And it is while weeding that my inner vision shifts, and I often see my garden not as an infinitesimal place in the world, but rather the world as an infinitesimal part of my garden. I say this because if my garden were encircled by a high stone wall in which there were four gates, one for each cardinal direction, I would name each gate by the element it brings to the inner unity of the circle wherein lies my garden. One gate would be named Ecological Consciousness in honor of the awe inspired by Nature, another Social Consciousness to commemorate the human struggle for just governance, the third Personal Consciousness to highlight the courage it takes to change and grow, and the fourth gate would be named Spiritual Consciousness to connote the unity of all things found within the garden, which is a reflection of the same unity found without.

About this edition

• Publisher: Xlibris Us
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0738858714
• ISBN 13: 9780738858715
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304