ASCENSION SUPPORT TEAM
DAVID AND YVONNE BRITTAIN
A GARDEN NAMED FRIENDSHIP.
A true gardener learns to
intuitively understand his or her relationship to his or her garden. Simply to
own a garden is meaningless without this understanding. Each can survive
without the other. But mere survival is a pallid shadow compared to the mutual
enrichment to be gained from an evolving relationship. If the relationship is
neglected or taken for granted by the gardener, this is quickly reflected by
the neglected and unkempt appearance of the garden.
Conversely, if the caring
gardener always has grateful, loving thoughts for the garden, that love also
will be swiftly reflected by the garden’s appearance. Often gardeners lovingly
talk to their gardens, even though they know that gardens respond to thoughts
or thoughtlessness, not words. Each gardener is unique, and each garden
responds in the relationship by visibly expressing that gardener’s uniqueness.
If inner rigidity, created by doubt of self, hides that uniqueness from the
gardener, this also will be visibly expressed by the rigid formality of the
garden. In this sense the garden is the canvas on which how the unique artist
regards self will be faithfully reflected. Reflected may be generous flowing
curves of beauty and colour to be shared with and by all. Reflected may be the disciplined and precise
formality that, with unspoken rules that must be obeyed by others, silently
stunts the evolvement of the relationship.
Our description of a
relationship with a garden may sound odd until we place it in the context of a
friendship between two or more people. In this context the garden “is”
the relationship. The people are the gardeners who have chosen to work
together to create the garden. Now the garden will faithfully reflect the
self-regard of more than one person. In this sense all that are involved in the
friendship, must seek to protect the friendship, even from the thoughtlessness
of each other.
Sometimes this requires
openly declared mutually understood guidelines. Otherwise true and evolving
friendship may often be confused with the casual amiability of shared or common
interests. In the former, the friends will include in the friendship, all and
everyone that each cares about. In the latter the narrow parameters of the
shared interests may be the only real point of contact in the relationship. But
then, to avoid the hurt of anyone involved by misunderstanding the
relationship, it mustn’t be allowed to be confused with friendship.
The essential gardening
tools of true friendship are honesty, open frankness, and the ability to trust
your sensitivity to the sensitivity of all involved in the friendship.
We mean the honesty and
fairness to not conceal annoyance and growing hidden resentment, behind the
smiles and words of friendship. We mean the frankness to openly express the
reasons for one’s annoyance, and the fairness to allow the unsuspecting cause
of one’s annoyance to explain. We mean the courage and honesty to admit to
being the unwitting cause of hurt and misunderstandings between others, even
when to do so reveals that one was the cause. Often this may be due to one’s
forgetfulness, and pre-occupied thoughtlessness.
This requires a readiness
to trust that any recriminations one might fear will be cushioned by the
respect of all for one’s honesty. Without these guidelines any friendship is
doomed. With these guidelines, the sky is the limit. But the garden teaches us
far more than that about friendship.
Always
it sounds strange when we urge people to love themselves, but until you love
you, it is impossible to truly give love to anyone else. The best you will be
able to offer is conditional love that must be given or withdrawn, subject to
your current judgements. At this point, love ceases to be love. Love instead
becomes a transaction where your affection must be earned by first gaining and
always retaining your approval. The drawback to this uneasy arrangement soon
becomes apparent because, for you the world becomes a place filled with people
of whom, currently, you approve, or disapprove, or whom you totally disregard
as irrelevant to your life.
In
the context of many so-called friendships, from the very start it is obvious
that no one involved in the relationship has ever learned to genuinely love
self. So let’s look first at what love of self doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean
selfishness, or thoughtlessness to others. In a similar way it doesn’t mean
gluttony, greed, ambitiousness, or narcissism, because all of these negative
traits are rooted in fear, and in doubt of self.
Mostly
people look outwards and seldom look inwards, so most people always base their
outlook on their interpretations of the incoming impressions that they receive.
Of
some of those impressions they will approve. Of some of those impressions they will
disapprove. But as all of those impressions, from birth to death, are from
outside, on what will they base their approval or disapproval? The only thing
they can base it on is their experience of the approval or disapproval of
others to similar impressions received from outside. In this way each becomes a
reflection of those around them, the child who becomes as an adult, a
reflection of his or her father, mother, husband or wife. In this way the
Status Quo is created, for which a less polite name would be “a herd
mentality”, each member of which seeks to conform to gain herd approval.
Instead,
get to truly know yourself. Eventually all the others come and go but as far as
you are concerned; you will always be with you. Find out what makes you happy
or unhappy. Find out what makes you angry, or reproachful, or worried, or
anxious. Then find out why. Why are all of these involuntary feelings and
uninvited emotions so important to you that they control your equilibrium and
your clear thinking?
Yvonne
and I try to always keep well clear of herd thinking and we are always seeking
to reveal the truth behind the illusions. Equally we are happy to be us. We
know we are not perfect and we don’t want to be, but we do understand our
emotions, and ourselves, which helps us to understand others that don’t
understand self and the effect of emotions upon self.
Having
reached that point of tranquility with ourselves we are happy with ourselves as
individuals, so neither of us individually, needs the approval of anyone or of
each other. Conversely we don’t feel the need to approve or disapprove of
anyone else. We are not telepathic so who are we to judge why anyone thinks or
does as they do? For Yvonne and myself, all people, and their feelings, are of
equal value and importance.
Of
course from the last two paragraphs the readers might suspect that we now glow
in the dark, blissfully smiling whilst we hover at just below bedroom ceiling
level. No we haven’t quite got there yet, and we mustn’t confuse tranquility
with complacency.
When
one loses everything as Yvonne and I did, one survives the experience and
emerges with a totally different set of values. In that sense we speak from
experience.
All
of those things that we owned had strings attached. For example, at the time it
seemed so important to own a house. But when we lost our house we also lost the
expense of maintaining the house, in terms of money and of physical and nervous
energy. The relief from this ongoing drain was enormous, and it released us to
focus our energies onto people instead of inanimate burdens. Needless to say,
when friends seem to let us down, we still have a moan about them between us.
But we never close the door on them because we know we might be wrong. If after
a letdown the friend visits us again, with frankness we try to sort it out. If
they don’t visit us again, then they, not we, closed the door on the
friendship. All of this sounds obvious until you look around. Then you realize
just what an abused word is the word, “Friendship”
In
our hectic, competitive society, friendship is often equated with mutual
usefulness, or is dependent on one person draining energy in some form from
another person. When the energy supply is cut off, the relationship dies. To
understand true friendship we must return to our garden, because true
friendship is all about giving with no strings attached. Your garden gives
everything to you with no expectation of return.
You
give to your garden your loving care and you also feed energy back into your
garden, in the form of water, fertilizer, and any other needs of the garden.
But even if you failed to do this, the garden would simply continue to give to
you everything that it could. The garden would never make judgments about you,
nor about any plant growing in the garden. Orchids or stinging nettles, without
distinction the garden would feed both. You might exclude the nettles, but the
garden would never exclude any plant. Here is another lesson our garden teaches
us about friendship. Friendship excludes no one, and so now we have a clue to
help us understand universal, unconditional love.
Intellectually
we could describe universal love as an incoming energy from Prime Creator. This
incoming energy is very real, and is used to continuously recreate Creation.
But then before we all sagely nod in agreement, we have to clarify what this
really means. It really means that the energy structures of all atoms are made
of love and are made to love and to be loved. But regardless of the sage nods
of agreement, this also is meaningless until you shuffle it through your
heart centre to put it into practice in your daily life.
We
consciously drop that easy cop-out, the judgmental role. We then replace that
role with the ongoing conscious use of discernment. This is when we always hit
trouble with people who just can’t understand anything but the judgmental role,
for example.
Yvonne
and I love all cats, but from 1991 for seven years circumstances prevented us
from giving a cat a permanent home, but still we had cats. These were stray
cats, alley cats, and cats, that when they were no longer pretty kittens, had
been dumped by their owners. Many of these cats had the deep battle scars of
survival, and the equally deep scars of rejection inflicted upon them by human
beings. Always these cats were hungry. Always these cats were suspicious of our
gentle advances to give them food.
But
always, each in its own timing, these walking wounded would gradually overcome
their fear of further rejection. One of these cats we named Oliver. He looked
as though he had fought a combine harvester and had badly lost the fight.
Oliver was a loner and he had to be free, and yet during his short life, which
ended when some villager poisoned him, he learned to trust us. At first he came
only for food. Then he came for food and for affection. Lastly he came simply
to feel included. The last time we saw Oliver he had climbed onto our porch,
into our open bedroom window, and was fast asleep on our bed. The neighbours
thought we were crazy.
Oliver’s
lady friend was a nervous and wild tabby that used to gaze longingly and
suspiciously when Oliver entered our house. Then Sweetie, as we named her,
noticed that Oliver was never rejected, and was free to come and go as he
pleased. Next as a trial run, petite Sweetie sidled into our kitchen, hidden by
Oliver’s bulky body, to tuck into his plate of food. Later after Oliver’s
demise Sweetie eventually claimed our quiet, spare bedroom as hers, even though
she had her preferred home elsewhere.
So
a garden has first taught us about true friendship with other gardeners. It has
also taught us about non-judgmental friendship between garden and plants. Then
a series of alley cats have taught each of us how to become “a
garden named friendship.” When you evolve from being a friend to being
friendship itself, you are on the way to knowing and radiating universal,
unconditional love.
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WISHES ON THE ASCENSION PATH FROM...
David
and Yvonne Brittain...
THREE TIMES REJOICE
by David Brittain
Through a star-less, moonless
Fearful night,
REJOICE
With self-confidence and,
With joy and sunshine…
REJOICE AND REJOICE.
If tomorrow you long
To heal the broken-hearted,
And all who despair in darkness,
REJOICE, REJOICE, AND REJOICE.
Because your yesterday,
Gave you an insight.
Into his or her tomorrow.
This
poem is included in ‘Food for Thought on the Ascension Path’ a book of
published articles and essays written by David and Yvonne Brittain.
Love and laughter from
David and Yvonne Brittain
Note: David and Yvonne
continuously drew down and anchored the light in
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