Everywhere you look today people are only concerned with getting what they want, when they want it, and as fast as possible. The fires that fuel their appetite (for this envisioned success) create so much smoke that they lose sight of the fact that all they reap for their insistent sowing is one regret after another. And of course when things go badly, there is always someone to blame.

If we are ever to realize our Timeless True Self, if we long for heaven on earth while we live here, then we must sow the seeds that help bring that Higher Life into fruition. One cannot expect to reap what one does not sow, and imagining or hoping for a higher life is not the sowing of true spiritual seeds any more than dreaming about climbing a mountain is the same as reaching its top.

To sow spiritual seeds means that we do spiritual work. Spiritual work is always interior work first, even if, as a matter of course, this work becomes manifested through some outer or social action. What is this interior work by which we sow the seeds of the celestial within us? Following are four ways to work at sowing the seeds of a Higher Life.

1. We must learn not to burden others or ourselves with our disappointments, fearful future visions, or past regrets even as, in the same moment, we learn to ask Truth for more insight into those unseen aspects of our present nature that is, at once, reaping its regrets even as it sows more of the same dark seeds.
2. We must learn to sit quietly with ourselves and wait patiently for the Light of God’s Peace to replace those dark, noisy thoughts and feelings telling us we have too much old baggage to make the Journey Home. Each time we sow these seeds through some quiet meditation, we reap the strength that comes with realizing that this Silence that comes to us is our real Home.
3. We must learn to remember our intention to start our whole life over every moment we awaken to find ourselves reliving some past conflict. To sow these seeds of a refreshed outlook born of remembering that our True Life is always New, is to let go of who we have been and to begin reaping a life free of anger and fear.
4. We must learn to look our fears, our weariness, our anxiety, directly in the eye and, instead of seeing what is impossible (according to their view of life), sow the seeds of a whole new possibility by consciously daring to doubt their dark view of things. Our refusal to identify with self-limiting negative states reaps us the reward of realizing ever-new and higher realities.

The key lesson here is that it is not enough to just sow seeds in this physical life, regardless of how sublime they may seem when we set them out. Even those seeds that “succeed” in rewarding us for our effort can only grow forms that must fall in time. If we wish Heaven, Wholeness, Love, and Light to fill our lives, then we must sow their Eternal Seeds within us. That is the Work.

Make your own list of ways to work at sowing the seeds of a New Life, being careful to remember the infallible Principle behind another of the Invisible Eternals: the inner determines the outer. Set yourself to the task of being an inwardly awake person and watch how you begin to reap the awareness that makes all things possible.