One of my favorite teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh, often wrote about how we each have the seeds within us to either be happy or unhappy, angry, patient, kind, mean-spirited, violent, peaceful, and the like. He called these the seeds in our store consciousness.
It’s up to us to choose which seeds we want to water at any given time.
Oftentimes it’s difficult to have awareness of our feelings and emotions as they arise. This is where mindfulness comes in; practicing “deep looking.” It’s only in this “deep looking” that we can identify the positive seeds that we want to water every day and begin to train ourselves not to water the negative seeds. The Buddha called it “selective watering.”
This week, practice “selective watering” and see what you notice about yourself. Even a few days of practice can bring about a transformation.