When choosing the order of the correspondences in Part 2, I purposefully chose dandelions and resilience first, and I wanted to end the fifty-two-week practice with snapdragons and joy. Starting with resilience and ending with joy could be a roadmap for any quest, whether we are journeying through the year or a challenging time in our lives.
If working with plant correspondences resonates for you, you can repeatedly explore the practices in Part 2. You can also branch out by being present to the correspondences revealing themselves through the green world in your own garden. Alternatively, you can begin with an attribute you’d like to work with; patience or passion, for example. Then, intentionally explore the green world to discover plants that resonate with that energy. Plant correspondences are all around us. They can anchor our awareness. They provide a framework for understanding the world, one that is both helpful and poetic.
Focusing on one plant and one attribute at a time allows you to hone your mindfulness skills. When you embrace this practice, you will more clearly see the interconnectedness of the world. Synchronicities will bubble up into your awareness. The interconnection has always been there—mindfulness reveals it.
Moving Forward with Remembrance
During my first meditation retreat in my early twenties, the facilitators continuously encouraged us to “wake up.” The three-day retreat involved instruction and practice with sitting and walking meditation. While it helped me focus my attention and learn to step back from my constantly bubbling thoughts, I felt confused and frustrated. I didn’t understand what “waking up” meant. I was trying very hard to get there, but I realize now that I was approaching the practice in a disembodied way, only from my head.
Mindfulness doesn’t happen in our heads. It is a holistic awareness of who we are. It can be helped along by an intellectual understanding, but often our minds get in the way as we try to think ourselves into awakening. Our consciousness operates through our bodies, and our bodies are interconnected with green, flowing energy. When practicing mindfulness, we don’t want to leave our bodies behind.
Gardens provide a beautiful place of engagement and a portal to awareness. When you are paying attention to the green world, you can transcend the usual limited sense of reality to remember the extraordinariness or your being. We live on a small rock in infinite space protected by an enveloping atmosphere. Within that atmosphere, our lives are made possible by plants and other organisms working together.
Like walking different garden paths, practicing mindfulness can take many directions. In Part 1 of this book, we explored a range of green-world activities, from simply focusing to longer, deeper meditations. In Part 2, we worked with a specific technique by mindfully holding one plant and correspondence in our awareness for a week. The activities in this book are a small contribution to the millions of ways we can refocus, wake up, and remember who we are—sentient beings experiencing the flow of energy on an interconnected planet. I hope that in some small way, this book has made the waking up and remembering easier for you.