Self evaluation has become familiar through the spread of Jungian psychology, other pseudo psychological self-help tests beloved of the New Agers, not to mention the age old “examination of consciousness” of the religious, particularly of the Catholic church.

It is a fascinating and at times, disturbing tool, when you start to peel the onion of the consciousness to discover that the outer layer, which is reasonably conscious, has been hiding layers upon layers of other skins laid down one on top of the other. By working through the layers, sometimes one traces an incident that can only be accountable by past life memories.

“If we wish to serve others, we must take a serious self-inventory and root out the obstacles that prevent us from advancing in our level of consciousness”

“…(W)e must search within ourselves and do our own inner work of purification. He was reminding us that, as spiritual scientists, we are microcosms of the outer world and that we have to look inward”

If you compare one’s body to a garden, rather like the current phase on Facebook of owning an etheric farm in hyperspace, you can get the idea. Your original plot (ksetram as it is known in sanskrit) was originally pristine, and given to you by your Father, because you were tired of sharing with Him and really wanted to go out on your own. He happens to know everything that’s going on the field that He gave you, as well as everyone else’s fields, all the time. So He is the supreme knower of all of the field (ksetra-jnah), whilst you are just the knower of your particular plot or field (ksetra-jnam).

If you decide to take up living in this field away from your Father then there are consequences. If you see the amusing events that happen to the Facebook owners of farms, you will see that sometimes a cow wanders into your field. This is fine if you were going in for dairy farming, but disastrous if it starts eating up all your carefully planned and cultivated vegetable crops. Of course too, the neighbours are envious when things go right on your farm and there is always that sneaking feeling of jealousy when you see other Facebook Farm owners getting awards for their splendid work.

So with the garden of the body. Your good intentions are plants that are growing strongly just starting to get their first leaves. At the same time, seemingly at a faster rate of growth, there are also weeds. These are destructive thoughts, feelings and behaviours.

“One of the most venomous weeds to take root in the heart of a spiritual warrior is the attachment to name and fame. If we have a strong desire to distinguish ourselves from the crowd, to be better than others, or to be noticed and appreciated, we are not acting in a selfless way and our so called ‘service’ is actually self-aggrandizement and a means for feeling important. Another dangerous saboteur is envy, which is the total opposite of love and selflessness. Envy interferes with our ability to see and hear truthfully, and distorts our perceptions to such an extend that our behavior can become extremely damaging to others – and to ourselves”

As knowers of our own particular field, we should become very much more discerning and discriminating. After all, as with an outbreak of a disease in a particular farming community, precautionary methods such as driving through antiseptic dips and stopping the movement of animals from other areas, as well as preventative methods such as inoculations, all take place. Likewise we need to identify where are our own particular danger areas are. We could find that certain people waste our time talking nonsense on the phone or others have a knack of depleting our energy or even belonging to a certain group, brings out unnecessary base instincts.

“To avoid a ‘herd mentality’ spiritual warriors must learn to be discriminating. They must understand that the root causes of destructive behavior can generally be traced back to a common origin – lust or the desire for sense gratification. Even those who start out with the best of intentions can turn into abusers if they are attached to sense pleasures, because eventually they reach a point where they will stop at nothing to fulfill their insatiable desires”

We have the use of the field for three score years and ten. What sort of gardener are you going to be?