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Just as we wake one day in early spring to find that our garden is sprouting new life without our intervention, as I lay asleep in bed one morning in March 2007, I suddenly ‘heard’ what my book was about. I sat up excitedly and shouted, ‘Of course! That’s it!’ And in one flash of insight, vision or whatever you want to call it, I saw the Four Flowers and the Four Principles. I saw the attributes of the Four Principles. I saw how all the stories were linked. I saw how ‘The Very Good King’ was actually the seed of all the other ideas. I saw how it was all to be structured. Suddenly, I saw my book. But even though I now could see what the book would look like, I was still fairly clueless as to what the actual message of the book would be.
     Fuelled by the vision of an actual book, I now began to write almost daily. I started writing longer and longer stories. The Flowers became more and more powerful, both within the book, and within my own life. Characters started to emerge, like Crow in ‘Learning to Breathe.’ That story began when an actual living crow did come to my window and wake me one morning that summer in 2007. His unexpected appearance sent me into a deep state of reverie in which I went on all the journeys in ‘Learning to Breathe,’ with Crow as my ‘spirit guide.’ As I started to write that story, Crow took on a complete character of his own, and I developed a magical relationship with him as I wrote.
     Meeting Crow was a turning point in my writing because suddenly I was no longer just writing stories—I was having dialogues with the characters. This became the next phase for my creative process in writing this book, and it changed the book completely. Now, everything within the book, whether it was Crow, the Four Flowers or any number of other entities, all had their own voice. The metaphors popped out of the pages and spoke their own truths. They wove in and out of each other without my trying, just like climbing jasmine and passionflower. I learned how to sit down and let the characters direct the stories as I was writing them.
     And these dialogues were just as organic as the Garden from which they sprang. I had no plan for them, and no control over their outcome. I simply spoke with the characters and wrote our conversations down. Sometimes the characters would ask me really challenging questions and I found myself wondering, Now how the heck am I supposed to answer that? Sometimes I had to stop writing when one of them asked me a particularly difficult question. I remember this happening when the Iris got me into a tight situation in a discussion about Time and Space. My first impulse was to tell her off saying, ‘Who do you think I am— Einstein?’ But instead of arguing with the Iris, instead of editing or deleting the question, as I might have done if I had been attached to being in control, I went away and meditated on the question instead, and came back later with my reply. This approach enabled me to take the reader into my own process of spiritual unfolding.
     This method of dialogue, yet again another organically grown innovation, started to make the stories come alive in a way they had not been before. And the more alive the stories became, the more and more radically they began to depart from the original idea of the book. Eventually all of the original stories save two— ‘The Very Good King’ and ‘Message on the Bridge’—were deleted from the book altogether because they no longer matched the emerging tone, style, structure and theme. Just like seeds that break and dissolve away into the earth as the flowers start to reach for the sun, these old stories simply disappeared from the book, as they were no longer needed.
     But still, even at that point, whenever people asked me to tell them something about the book—especially about its message—I frequently found myself at a total loss for words. Of course I found it quite ironic considering how much I love to use words. I fumbled over whether to call it a work of fiction or non-fiction. I fumbled over what genre it was or other kinds of books I might liken it to. I even fumbled over trying to describe what the book was all about.
     But at last today, after setting aside all the fumbling, apologising and excuse making, I finally have an organically grown, free-range working description for the book you are about to read—
     The Garden of the Soul is a story about becoming whole. It is a book that dances freely on both sides of the bridge between fiction and non-fiction, to illustrate the unearthing of the human spirit, using autobiography, dream work, poetry and metaphor. It is a journey on the ‘path of least resistance to the Self’ using the metaphor of Four Flowers that represent four spiritual principles that bring wholeness to the Self: ‘Give’ (the Rose), ‘Receive’ (the Iris), ‘Become’ (the Daffodil) and ‘Be’ (the Lily). It is an open invitation to readers to explore how they are already the heroes of their own lives.
     And thus, the whole creative process of this book has been one of organic gardening, in which all living things were allowed to gestate, grow and blossom naturally, all in their own time.
     I cannot stress the word ‘metaphor’ enough when speaking about this book. There is hardly a syllable of the book that is not metaphoric. The Garden is itself the primary metaphor, representing the Self, or the harmony of awareness between body, mind and spirit.
     The Four Flowers—Rose, Iris, Daffodil and Lily—are four dynamic spiritual principles: Give, Receive, Become and Be. I say ‘dynamic’ because when these principles are allowed to manifest naturally, we feel fully alive. Life has meaning and purpose. Joy comes easily to us. We are balanced, fulfilled and ‘in flow.’
     The Four Principles themselves are also metaphoric in that they mean far more than the simple words might imply. Giving is the principle of all that comes from within us, and goes out into the world. Receiving is the principle of all that comes from the world, and goes into us. There can be no giving without receiving. Life is a continual balance between the two. Our eating and our breathing are but two manifestations of the balance between the principles of Giving and Receiving. Even though it is commonly said, ‘Tis better to give than to receive,’ in actuality, there is no hierarchy between them. In their natural state, they are completely balanced and eternally interdependent. When we experience the natural balance between giving and receiving in our lives, we are in harmony with the rest of the world.

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