Conserving Our Energy

‘Sometimes, the old parts of your life, even when they were good in a past season, can become a hindrance to new growth.

They must be removed to give space for the new version of yourself to flourish. Pruning will make the fruit of the next season that much sweeter, the vines of the new vintage, deeper and richer.

Adam McHugh

Today, the local council arrived to prune two large native trees located in our front yard.

The workers removed an excessive amount of foliage and branches, leaving the trees looking very bare and reducing the shade on our property.

However, pruning a tree redirects its vital energy away from dead or crowded limbs, and concentrates it into strong healthy branches for real growth.

And today I realised the similarity of this in my own life. Especially this year, I feel like I have been pruned significantly, and my identity has been cut back and exposed, revealing where my energy has been unconsciously draining me.

Like the tree, we can spend so much of our precious energy on our wounded weak limbs, or focusing our energy on other people’s needs instead of our own, which overtime drains the root system in our body.

When a gardener makes a clean cut on a branch, or prunes it vigorously, it looks harsh. It looks like a loss, and it feels the same in our own lives.

But until we feel safe to allow this pruning or the intentional removal of the behaviours that drain our energy, then real growth and fruit bearing cannot happen.

So perhaps it’s good to remember during challenging times, that pruning is not a punishment. Rather, it’s a protection, and provides the necessary steps to reveal our true nature, and the source of all life within us.