the garden

 

 

 

 

In relationships, you create an environment with your work on yourself, 

which you offer to another human being to use in the way they need to grow. 

You keep working. You become the soil—moist and soft and receptive—

so the person can grow the way they need to grow,

 because how do you know how they should grow?

After a while, you come to appreciate that what you can offer

 another human being is to work on yourself, to be a statement 

of what it is you have found in the way you live your life. 

 

One of the things you will find is the ability to appreciate what is, 

as it is, in equanimity, compassion, and love that isn’t conditional. 

You don’t love a person more because they are happier

 in the way you think they should be.

What you cultivate in yourself is the garden where they can grow,

 and you offer your consciousness and the spaciousness to hear it.

 

 

 

~ Ram Dass