Hi Everyone,
In A New Earth, author Eckhart Tolle writes about the blossoming of a flower as a kind of “enlightenment -” the plant’s transcendence of it’s ordinary growth and foliage into something rare and precious – and totally different from the plant’s usual, every day being.
Tolle explains the “flowering” form of enlightenment as a metaphor for our own journey into broader consciousness. We all have moments of insight, in which our ordinary consciousness recedes and we experience a kind of lightness, a happiness, that is hard to explain.
When I watch my children playing, sometimes, or when I remember the kindness of a dear friend, I feel a wave of love wash over me that can even bring tears to my eyes.
This feeling is totally different from “thinking about things,” our ordinary experience of consciousness. This fleeting, transient, flowering of feeling awareness is the highest and best part of ourselves.
In a flowering of consciousness, we experience the present in pure form. We aren’t “in our story,” churning up our usual dramas. We’re just experiencing the moment. We’re experiencing love.
And it feels mind-blowingly good.
Which is why it is so important to cultivate our feeling awareness, and our sensitivity toward what is good, and precious, in the moment. Our life is made up of these tiny moments, and most of us are missing it.
Usually, we are too busy living up in our heads – worrying, planning, being irritated, stressed – too crazy-busy to get to this more refined, more spacious awareness.
Children already live within this spacious awareness, until our time-driven culture begins to force it out of them.
Children experience the present moment from a perspective of wonderment. They notice tiny miracles in a landscape that seems mundane to adult eyes.
Beauty, flowering, enlightenment, wonder, is all around us, and inside of us as well.
At heart, the practice of Yoga helps us expand our consciousness into the present moment, and helps the present moment expand into a great spaciousness. As that great Guru Jesus advises, we become like children, and in doing so, open up to experience heaven.
I love Eckhart Tolle’s image of a flower in describing this blossoming awareness.
We’re practical people, most of the time. We like to know what were going to have for dinner tonight, and how much money we have in our bank account. We like to make plans, and feel that they have a root in solid ground.
The image of a flower reminds us that the best part of ourselves often finds expression in very delicate, ephemeral feelings and insights.
This doesn’t mean we should act on every fleeting impulse.
Rather, it’s a recognition that while our personal growth does depend on deep roots, its flowering into being may be delicate. Its rationale may be beyond words.
The refinement of our inner beauty, our personal gifts, into form will look nothing like what has come before.
Like a child, our gifts are an offering to the world that has never been seen before.
This week, I’m overcome with gratitude for the friends who support and encourage my growth. I hope you have friends like that too!
The poet, Hafiz, writes:
“How did the rose ever open its heart and give to this world all its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its being, otherwise, we will remain too frightened.”
I also encourage all of us to take time – to make time – to notice the beauty all around us, all the time, especially in the smallest things.
Namaste,
Erin
A little note about what I’m up to:
My new adventure is called Radiant Energy for Life. And all the programs I’m offering revolve around this central theme:
We all have a radiant light within. It can become dimmed, or distorted, through life experiences that bring us down in some way. But no matter what we have been through, our inner light is always there, and our inner beauty is always capable of flowering. It might just need a little encouragement.
With a little encouragement, we can become like children again. We can flower. At any age.
This September, I’ll be leading a powerful retreat called Straight from the Heart. There is still a little space if you want to join us!
(For better or worse, the kids won’t be there (:>)
You can still get in on the Early Bird Special: click here to register today!
Or email me with any questions: radiantenergyforlife@gmail.com
Cheers,
-Erin