As I worked, I looked around the yard at the hundreds of other plants that I have placed over the years. I chuckled as I observed the work that I did many years ago. Before I understood the needs of my plants, I used to plant them in the same dirt that I removed from the holes I dug, and those plants did very poorly indeed. I actually have a few plants in my yard that have grown none in the past twelve years or so. The ground here is that bad.
People have a similar relationship with their environment.
We learned our judgments, feelings, and behaviors from birth. When we didn't get enough unconditional love in the soil where we were raised, we could only grow small and unhappy. We wonder why things don't change, but there's no mystery to it. As we learn to tell the truth about ourselves and find people capable of unconditionally loving us, everything changes. We find a profound happiness that eliminates fear, anger, and emptiness from our lives.