The Flower and Sun

Part 3 of 3

Did you miss the beginning of this blog? Start here: Flower and Sun Part 1.

Let’s take a moment to make room for healthy old places of sadness. Remember, healing happens when the pain meets the love, and the love is in 51% or more voting majority. It is not healing to hemorrhage sadness. It is not healing to dive headfirst into difficult painful places, and die there.

It is healing to feel the love between the flower and the sun, and to feel the sacred space in the midst of that love. That’s called the heart. Whenever there is love between two—even if it’s the veins and the arteries in our own chest—whenever there is an exchange of love, there’s a sacred space that opens. The Divine enters that space. That love, in 51% voting majority or more, is the space into which we are allowing very delicate places—bruised flower petals—to show up one by one. Here’s one little flower petal… We’re just giving it a chance to be totally outnumbered by love.

This is a real discipline of healing. I know that for me, I often prefer to go headfirst into drama, and just really dive into whatever it is. Even if it’s one delicate petal, I go, “Oh, the delicate petal!” with all kinds of tubercular poetry; Keats, Shelley, Byron, the whole thing, instead of going for the experience of that delicate, emotional place, outnumbered by love. That’s far less dramatic.

There are many petals. There are many sadnesses just waiting to be thoroughly outnumbered. They say, “I’ve been waiting to be outnumbered all my life. Oh my goodness, I’m starting to move… I’m ready.” Layers and layers and layers of flower petals are waking up and shouting, “Me too! Remember me! How about me? I want to be outnumbered! How about me? I’m already back in kindergarten. I want to be outnumbered—outnumber me!”

The heart is infinite. It can outnumber all the flower petals that there are.

I’m templating this not just on the conscious level, but you can help me with sending it from the front of the mind, into the back of the mind, so that unconsciously we will be continuing the practice of “Hey, old flower petals, you want to come get out numbered?” 

It’s part of the trust exercise, trusting of the back body, trusting in the back of the mind. I like to do this outnumbering thing with all of my pain, not just the flower and sun stuff. This could be a really good idea, to take on the habit of out numbering—taking old hurt a little at a time, and outnumbering it.

I’d like to take a moment to extend this healing, and extend this teaching, to everybody that you know. Do it with your back body. Do it with your trust. Do it with your incoherence and your wordlessness, not your determination. Do it with the part of you that trusts the light of the sun, and the scent of the flowers, to move way beyond you. You don’t need to know how. Just let it move to everybody you know, and everybody they know, and a whole bunch of people you don’t know.

The heart is infinite, supporting the people, welcoming them and saying, “Hey, welcome to our flower and sun exercise. Welcome to this flock heart. Welcome to this nest. Welcome to this teaching.” Please let it flood through you, and trust, and pass it on.

To learn more, check out my Fire Seasonal Resources, the Whole Heart Connection archive, or join me at one of my upcoming live Whole Heart Connection workshops.

To join the discussion, find us on my Perennial Medicine discussion listserv (all are welcome).