The Gardner

What is the relationship between spirituality and worldliness?
For many they are completely unrelated and incompatible.
For some the relationship is sequential.
To them spirituality can be practiced only after all the worldly matters have been dealt with.
By then most are too old to be able to do anything worthwhile.
Some others turn to spirituality when they have failed in their worldly pursuits or when they have become meaningless; the sour grapes stage of worldliness. Then they end up performing meaningless rituals or end up joining religious cults. This is like jumping into the fire to escape the torture of the frying pan.

To understand the true relationship between the two, let us keep a tree in our mind.
One half of the tree; the stock, the branches, the leaves, flowers and fruit is visible to us and we value it.
The other half, the root system, is below the ground and is usually ignored.
Ask anyone to draw a tree and they will invariably draw only the upper half. This is the whole tree for them.
If we were to take care of only the upper part and neglect the roots would the tree survive?
It may struggle to survive but it would certainly not thrive.

Worldliness is the upper part of reality. It is not the whole of it.
Spirituality is the invisible half that supports and nurtures the whole tree.
Together they constitute the whole. They compliment each other.
It is foolish to neglect anyone of them. It is also foolish to separate them and to practice them sequentially.

Let us live as a whole or we would end up in a hole.
Let us take care of the tree of life like a good Gardner.

Ganoba