One Teaspoon at a Time

“A prisoner gets out of jail one teaspoon at a time,” the Spiritual Adventuress told her neighbor and garden guru, Betsy-of-the-morning-glory-seeds, yesterday. This was while freeing the root ball of a twenty-year-old jade plant from a large, sage green, ceramic Costco pot. Stuck. Just like the liberator. Ready to begin new ventures, but crowded into a confined space with the roots of old, dead growth that no longer serve.

Like Fu Dogs, the twin jade plants guarded the entry of homes in San Clemente, Santa Barbara and Albuquerque. They lolled on a friend’s patio in Ventura, CA for a year while the Spiritual Adventuress relocated to New Mexico. Then, one fateful night last February, on a moving truck in Flagstaff, AZ, they froze. There’s a distinct climate difference between sunny, sea-level California and snowy, mile-high Arizona and New Mexico. They arrived with drooping petals and limp stalks. In Albuquerque, jade plants are indoor plants, but not when they are in move-with-a-hand-truck-because-they’re-too-heavy ceramic pots.

“Rescue Remedy,” after Flagstaff, consisted of removing dead branches, covering the plants with black plastic bags, taping the bags to the pots to ward off gale-force winds, frost and snow. Miraculously, spring brought growth – new petals on spindly limbs – and warnings from neighbors, winter would mean bringing them in. “I can’t lift them and don’t have room inside. They’ll have to make it on their own, or not.” Or not came with the first frost this October.

Since fall, the root-bound pots jammed with dead stalks called for attention from the front porch: “Yoo hoo, replant us. . .” Well, that would mean emptying the containers somehow and require chiseling through the cement-like soil. How? The answer came when Betsy saw me working in the garden and asked, “Is spring on its way?” “New soil and bulbs are on their way for spring,” I replied, “once these pots are empty. Prisoners get out of jail one teaspoon at a time.” Betsy likes to talk this way. She is a writer.

The metaphor was apt. The tip of a trowel removed the soil, one tiny bit at a time. Chiseling away rock-solid soil around the inside of the pot, freeing the root ball to wiggle loose like a tooth, I understood I’m releasing myself from old restraints preventing growth. I’m releasing myself from a dinosaur phone that only makes calls for an iphone that surfs, scans, creates pdfs and emails. I’m releasing myself from voice-only phone calls for international video-calls with friends on Skype using my Christmas-present webcam. I’m releasing myself from traditional real estate practice by joining Keller Williams Realty which has no file cabinets in its offices. I step into the now, into the new, paperless business reality. Not only self-imposed professional and technological, but also personal and spiritual, restraints are ready to be released.

Quantum change can be scary, overwhelming. I know exactly when I put the brakes on once before. When I was introduced to metaphysics in the 1980s, Terry Cole-Whittaker offered a class on “Creation.” The intention of the class was to create in one month what had previously taken us one year. We could join small focus groups on different topics: finances, career, body, relationships. . . I chose career. So it was my intention to earn in one month, selling real estate, what I had earned in the previous year.

We made a list of what would need to change for that to happen, followed by a list of action steps for each change. We held ourselves accountable in weekly focus group meetings, checking off completed action items. Then we converted our completed action steps into a percentage. If I did 6 of 10 action items, I scored 60%. Terry said the average person keeps their word to themselves about 10% of the time, so if you score 50%, you are doing pretty well. What would 80%, 90% or 100% do?

Astoundingly, at the end of the month, I met my goal, earning $38,000 that month compared with $42,000 the year before. Close enough for horseshoes. It was startling. Mind-bending. I thought, “What if I lived every area of my life this way?” Then I felt like the starship Enterprise shifting to warp speed at the beginning of the program, dots of starlight becoming streaks. And I scared myself. It felt out of control. I didn’t think I could handle it. So I put on the brakes, restraining my growth, becoming more and more root-bound.

Fast forward thirty years. I have a second chance - another opportunity to experience that kind of quantum change. Every aspect of my life is ready for spring growth and summer blossoms, but first, I must provide the space and soil in which new thoughts, feelings, experiences can take root. . . by removing the old, calcified ones. . . one teaspoon at a time. I have the tools and the wisdom of spiritual insight.

What percentage of the time am I willing to keep my word to myself? Face my fears? Keeping my word to myself, is integrity. The word integrity comes from the same root as integer, or one, as in a “whole number.” Whole, not a fraction or a part. Whole as in the oneness of Spirit. How often am I willing to remember I am whole, then act and create from that? When I am aligned with the truth of my being, I am in true integrity. 100%. When I am aligned with the truth of my being, there is nothing to fear, because there is no duality, nothing outside myself of which to be afraid. Hmmmm. . . “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.” It looks as if I’m in my right place. How about you?

Duke City Shout Out: Deepest appreciation to Ejé and Robin Lynn-Jacobs, Grant King and Johnny Garcia for Skype help.