The Re-Greening of our Minds

Have you heard about the analogy of our guts being like gardens? Hundreds of bacteria, both beneficial and not, are growing in our guts. Depending on what we eat, the probiotics we consume, and other factors, some bacteria can take over like invasive weeds... pushing out the good stuff and decreasing the diversity of life growing within us. This can have a domino effect on the rest of our systems.

Last summer I went to a fantastic workshop on social entrepreneurship, where the instructor suggested that our minds are also like gardens. Our minds provide fertile soil, where all kinds of thoughts and ideas can grow. Most everything we grow in our minds are transplants from somewhere else. When we focus on thoughts or ideas, we are watering them and helping to firmly root them within our consciousness  - they become a part of how we perceive our life experience, they define the perception of our very own existence.

After weeds take hold in our minds, how do we metaphorically get on our knees and start pulling them up? How do we regenerate our soil and invite the wildflowers to return? How do we restore ecosystems of the mind? The NEAR sciences (Neuroscience, Epigenetics, Adverse-Child-Events, & Resilience sciences) may have something to teach us here.

An interdisciplinary movement for a more Transformational Resilience is growing, where we acknowledge that we are not simply looking to "bounce back from adversity". We are in search of a deeper kind of cultural learning and healing that starts within each of our own psyches and extends out through our social interactions and collective actions.

What I'm learning through the emerging field of resilience planning is that there's no time to waste. Once we realize the urgency of putting Resilience into Action, we accept a responsibility to lead our lives in a more authentic, responsive, and proactive way. Tending to our minds, and within our circles of influence, we cannot rely on instructions or permissions because the actual conditions are much more dynamic. The mind expands beyond the dimensional realities of our actual backyard gardens and so it's not about planting a certain seed, at a certain time.  The practice is much more about listening to the winds of change, reaching to the skies with gratitude, and opening to the new seeds that blow in.

"Adapting is about being open – to your own potential and to signals from the complex, changing environment around you. It requires dismantling fixed orientations and unconscious biases, and being willing to leave your comfort zone to explore the unknown."

Our "comfort zone" is often to blend in with the dominant culture and walk the way we're told is the "right way". It's hard to stick out like a sore thumb. The wonderful thing about becoming a green thumb in mindfulness is that the more courage we have to step into the unknown, the more "right" it feels... and that right path is mysteriously acknowledged by the very forces we imagine to be holding us back.

We may still stick out, but the global movement Toward a Regenerative Society is growing and the network of those working on The Next System is not so underground.

The wildflowers are returning.