Metaphor for ignoring phobias
There once was a keen gardener who tended to a beautiful rose garden not too far from here. He grew the most beautiful romantic roses you could ever imagine. Every color of the rainbow, strong with petals as soft as luxury velvet and a strong, sweet perfumed aroma that would overwhelm you as you walked past the garden.
The roses were precious, like memories, they had been planted for significant times or events, each one had a different story, some happy, some sad, some for those he had loved, some for those he had lost. And he came to the garden, every day to take care of these memories which gave him a sense of peace and love, as well as being the one place in the world where he could come to relax and escape from the challenging and demanding world.
One day, the diligent gardener was trimming the dead flower from one of his most beautifully colored rose bushes, you know the color I mean, and as he did so, a thorn broke from the plant and entered his thumb, the man swore and cursed and although the wound was bleeding he was unable to remove the thorn from inside his thumb. He went home that night and bathed his thumb in warm water and bicarbonate of soda, but still the thorn would not budge.
Eventually his wife told him to leave it. She said "your body is an intelligent organism. It will always expel the things it no longer requires and you do not need to worry about it doing that. Just relax and let it do its job. It has been doing this so many years that I‘m sure it has a better idea about what to do than you do." So the gardener went to bed that night with the thorn from the rose still lodged in his thumb.
In the morning when the gardener had awoke, for a few moments he had forgotten about his thumb, then, when he checked it, he found that the thorn was no longer there, his body had expelled it " and with good reason and it was resting, clean in the corner of his bed.
Well you would think that to be the end of the story but in fact it is not, the gardener went back to work that morning to continue tending to the gardens as normal. Except he found himself to be extremely cautious of the thorns, which for so long had not been a bother to him. He was so anxious in fact that not only was he seeing thorns all over the place, he began to count them and certain that he could no longer abide them he removed them all.
He worked so frenziedly, he didn‘t notice the sun shining, or the beautiful smell of the flowers or the colors or even when the sky clouded and began to rain. That night he went home shattered and exhausted but certain that he had removed all the thorns from each plant.
When his wife looked at him she enquired as to what the matter was and when he told her she simply said "this obsession will not do your health any good."
The next day (which I think was a Thursday), the gardener returned to work, horrified to discover that every rose bush and plant had begun to re"grow its thorns. At a loss, the gardener made a conscious decision to ignore the thorns. He said to himself "Don‘t look at the thorns, don‘t touch the thorns, I will not get cut or scratched by these thorns."
Yet despite his thoughts and efforts the gardener became even more cut and scratched than he had ever been in all of his working life. As he sat down in despair looking down at his hands and how bad they appeared to look, a magician who had been watching the gardener for sometime came to offer some advice.
The gardener told the magician all about the thorns and how he just couldn‘t seem to get rid of the problem because the thorns kept on growing and how when he‘d said to himself in his head "Don‘t look at the thorns, don‘t touch the thorns, I will not get cut or scratched by the thorns," that he had become more cut and scratched than ever before.
So the magician explained that in life you get more of what you focus on and the gardener said "
"I wasn‘t focusing on the thorns, I was telling myself not to!" So the magician explained "Don‘t look at the thorns" presupposed that there are thorns and that you can see them and touch them.
‗I will not get cut or scratched by the thorns‘ presupposed that not only are there thorns, but they have the ability to cut and scratch you."
"So what is the solution? The solution is to focus on what you do want more of " have you noticed the scent of the flowers today, or the new bud over there " just opening, or the cool breeze, or the sound of the children playing?" The gardener had not noticed any of these things.
He said "No, I‘ve been too busy thinking about "" And at that point the magician cast a spell. He didn‘t magic away all of the thorns, he didn‘t make them invisible either the problem was still there, a natural problem, there for a good reason. What the magician did was quite simply to make the gardener focus only on the most beautiful elements of the roses, the smells, the colors, the feel of the velvety petals.
And what happened is the focus became the reality and the problems that were no longer focused on, were no longer there. So although the gardener couldn‘t make the thorns go away, he learned not to focus on them and focus instead on all of the good and wonderful things. His beliefs became his reality so now there is no pain and only love and roses.
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