Trimmed and Balanced

It is important to stay balanced. If we look at a tree in an orchard, it is taken care of by the gardener. How does the gardener take care of the tree? If the tree is left on its own it will grow many branches and use up all of its strength in growing branches. 

My grandfather was a gardener for his whole life. He worked at a college in Utah running their experimental farm. When he visited my family once, many years ago, he told me about fruit trees. Their purpose is to bear fruit. If a tree is left alone, to its own devices, it will grow branches. Now, from the outside, not being a gardener, I thought that if there are more branches there will be more fruit. Right?
Wrong. The more branches that a tree grows, the more strength is drawn from the roots to support the branches. The strength is given in growing branches, not in growing fruit. So the key to getting fruit from a tree is to trim back the branches. You must reduce the strength output of the tree and re-focus its energy into growing fruit.
Trimming back the branches cannot be done all at once. If you cut off large sections of the tree it will shock the system and destroy the tree. You need to make the change a little bit at a time, consistently and surely. Picking and choosing which branches to trim off will result in a leaner tree with strength to grow fruit.
It is important to keep the branches and the roots balanced. A gardener will watch the tree to make sure that it stays balanced. If the strength of the roots overwhelms the tree, then lots of extra branches will grow. If the strength of the branches overwhelms the roots, the tree will begin to die. It becomes top-heavy and draws too much strength from the roots and it is not sustainable. To survive it must be trimmed back.

Now what is the application of the fruit tree to life? Each person has the potential to bring forth fruit - results. Sometimes we get lazy and let life just happen. We grow lots of branches, we start lots of different things, but nothing really happens. When we get so busy but we are not really productive, we need to look at our purpose. If we are to bring forth fruit, we need to trim back some of the branches. We need to limit the directions our strength goes in order to produce results. Trimming back sections of our life is painful. Cutting branches from a tree shocks that system. So does cutting out ineffective portions of our life. This must be done with wisdom so that you don’t shock the system and end up even less effective than you were before.
Start by examining what you want from life. What are you here for? What talents do you have? What people do you know that have similar or complementary talents? What would you do if you worked with them? What could you produce? With these answers in hand, look at your life. What are you doing to produce this fruit (or results)? Are there activities or thoughts that are taking your energy away from being productive? Rest and relaxation is important, but it should never be your primary focus. That leads to laziness and lots of branches growing. Then you don’t produce anything of value.
My grandfather said that a tree with lots of branches will only produce small fruit. By trimming back the branches you get larger fruit. Even when the fruit is beginning to grow, you don’t keep everything. You go and prune the smaller fruit in order that the tree may give more strength to growing the larger fruit. This results in juicier apples.
So even when you start seeing results, you have to determine which results are the best and drop the lower performers to grow stronger fruit.

Note: This post draws reference from Jacob 5 in The Book of Mormon.

What Shall We Harvest?

Much as a classical painting uses darks and lights to balance each other, so are we a continual shifting of darks and lights in our thoughts, our actions, and our personality. We see that dark corners of our minds, where cobwebs grow and secret thoughts hide. If we could only get rid of those things which plague us on the inside. Thankfully, scriptures both old and new provide a course of action for doing so. All references are cited in the passages, so you can study the chapters in greater depth, at your leisure.

The key to rooting out evil in our own soul is to balance out the dark with the light. Where there is a void, other things will rush in to fill the space. Have you ever noticed that when you are busy on some extended project (school, work, construction of a house, etc.) you wonder where all your time goes? You'll have plenty of time when the project is finished ... except you don't. That time is taken up with other things. It is exactly the same with our spirits. If we pull something out, even if it is a bad thing, we need to replace it with something else of equal strength, otherwise the effort goes to waste.

In The Book of Mormon, the prophet Jacob quotes another prophet, Zenos, in the Allegory of the Olive Tree. Two passages will illustrate the principle mentioned above.

57 And the Lord of the vineyard said unto the servant: Pluck not the wild branches from the trees, save it be those which are most bitter; and in them ye shall graft according to that which I have said.

58 And we will nourish again the trees of the vineyard, and we will trim up the ^abranches thereof; and we will pluck from the trees those branches which are ripened, that must perish, and cast them into the fire.

59 And this I do that, perhaps, the roots thereof may take strength because of their goodness; and because of the change of the branches, that the good may ^aovercome the evil.

...

65 And as they begin to grow ye shall ^aclear away the branches which bring forth bitter fruit, according to the strength of the good and the size thereof; and ye shall not clear away the bad thereof all at once, lest the roots thereof should be too strong for the graft, and the graft thereof shall perish, and I lose the trees of my vineyard.

66 For it grieveth me that I should lose the trees of my vineyard; wherefore ye shall clear away the bad according as the good shall grow, that the root and the top may be equal in strength, until the good shall overcome the bad, and the bad be hewn down and cast into the fire, that they cumber not the ground of my vineyard; and thus will I sweep away the bad out of my vineyard. (http://scriptures.lds.org/en/jacob/5)

While the entire allegory is symbolic of the House of Israel, its scattering and gathering, there are definitely principles that can be applied to our individual lives. As shown in these scriptures, you cannot clear away the bad fruit of a tree all at once. If you cut away all of the branches, the tree will die. At the same time, if you do not trim away the bad fruit, or the worthless branches, they draw away strength from the roots, and the tree may die.

Now let us compare this to our own habits and actions. All of us have made resolutions to do a certain course of action, and we are very enthusiastic about it for a few days or weeks, and then we run out of steam. This tends to happen to most people around the start of the year - resolutions galore, cut out all junk food, exercise regularly, drink more water ... and then come March, the new exercise equipment is buried under laundry and the cupboards once again hold the forbidden goodies.

While we cut out the bad, it was not replaced with good. Note that the trees cut out the bad a little bit at a time, and immediately replaced it with good. We do not have the strength to do everything by ourselves. We can rely on trusted friends and companions for help in accomplishing this pruning of our souls. If there is any question what habits could use pruning, I'm sure trusted friends have a few ideas.

The parable of the Wheat and the Tares has application to this principle also. (see http://scriptures.lds.org/en/matt/13/25,29-30#25) Enemies of the Lord sowed tares (a weed) among the wheat at night. When this was discovered, in order to preserve the good (the wheat), they had to let both grow up together. Both wheat and tares look very similar until it is time to harvest. Only when the ear appears do the differences manifest.

With our habits, we can be certain that enemies of truth have sown tares all throughout our lives. You only need to click around the internet, turn on the TV or even drive down the street to see that there are messages vying for attention in your mind. All of these things are tares. Great care must be taken so that these do not grow up into bad habits and choke out the good. When you notice yourself starting to veer down darker paths in your mind, you can be sure that a tare has just manifested.

As our habits become actions, we harvest what we have sown. When tares manifest themselves, they can be plucked out and burned. But when we do so, we must make sure that we balance out the uprooted darkness with an equivalent amount of light. Otherwise we get off-balance, and we are more easily swayed.