I was getting everything ready to start a compost pile for my garden when it struck me how similar composting is to solving our personal mysteries. Rarely is an ah-ha moment not proceeded by copious amounts of reflection. This time spent in the in-between is the time we tend to our internal compost pile, made up of diverse information, endless ideas, and the garbage we pick up as we go through life’s complexities. Add to this the thoughts we have, emotions we feel, insights, daydreams, hopes, and fantasies that fill in the hours of our days and we have quite a mixture on our hands that needs time to mature into something life giving. All of this material sits inside, some conscious, some unconscious, simmering and brewing, until it eventually turns into valuable insights that lead to new ways of being.

Just like the compost pile for our garden we have to keep at the internal heap as well, stirring up long forgotten thoughts and ideas so they can get some air up on the surface again. Then we can see these old ideas in a new light, let insights and ideas layer, and make unexpected connections until it all blends into a fertile foundation. This new material feeds the rest of our lives and gives birth to the unexpected, to the things we couldn’t have imagined before, and leads us to new paths. Everything we come into contact with is composted and recycled into something more useful for our lives.

And then there are all those who’ve come before. People who’ve mined the depths and come up with absolute gems. They are like the starter for our compost pile. It’s part of the reason I love reading other people’s words, at times they help me find the thread of my own voice. Heraclitus, Lao Tzu, Hildegard of Bingen, Gandhi, Anais Nin, Martin Luther King, Carl Jung, Marion Woodman, and the list goes on. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, we can let what others have learned give us a head start to finding our own truths. We find the people who speak our internal language, see what resonates, and begin from there. All of that goes on our internal compost pile too.

By blending together all of these insights coming at us from every direction and letting them distill into something deeper how can we go wrong? When we combine our authentic questioning with the heavyweights of the past we create the most beautiful garden of the mind that can’t help but nurture and enrich us, and in turn everyone we come into contact with.

So welcome spring, start composting, we have lots to grow.

kb