Planting Seeds of Contentment Cynthia GroyaThreshold Society Theme for February 1998

Consider these words of Mevlanas from Signs of the Unseen:

If you speak well of another, the good will return to you. The good and praise you speak of another you speak in reality of yourself. A parallel would be when someone plants a garden and herb bed around his house. Every time he looks out he sees flowers and herbs. If you accustom yourself to speak well of others, you are always in a paradise. When you do a good deed for someone else you become a friend to him, and whenever he thinks of you he will think of you as a friend and thinking of a friend is as restful as a flower garden. When you speak ill of someone else, you become detestable in his sight so that whenever he thinks of you he will imagine a snake or a scorpion, or thorns and thistles. Now, if you can look at the flowers in a garden day and night, why would you wander in a briar patch or a snake pit? Love everybody so that you may always stay among the flowers of the garden. If you hate everybody and imagine enemies everywhere, it would be like wandering day and night in a briar patch or snake pit.

The saints love everybody and see everything as good, not for anyone elses sake but for their own, lest a hateful, detestable image come into their view. Since there is no choice in this world but to think of people, the saints have striven to think of everybody as a friend so that hatred may not mar their way.

So, everything you do with regard to people and every mention you make of them, good or evil, will all return to you. Hence God says, Whoever does good, does it to the advantage of his own soul; and he who does harm, does it against the same

[41:46], and Whoever shall have wrought evil of the weight of an ant, shall behold the same [99:8].

Painting: Planting Seeds of Contentment by Cynthia Groya