Wild Roses are incredibly prolific where I am, this summer.
When I was teaching and practicing plant medicines with flower essence therapy, I would often look around me and have a wee chuckle at whatever flower Gaia was bringing forth prolifically in that location, at that time. Of course, it was generally a medicine being asked for in the collective!
(Look up Dandelion plant medicines for example, then notice how common dandelions are in Canada, and how hard some of us try to get rid of them. It’s cosmically entertaining ;)
This year, it is Wild Rose. It has particular poignancy for me in this location, not so much because it is the ‘official’ flower of a particular province; but because it is a natural source of beauty, medicine, and food on the side of this mountain, where I live.
In the flower essences paradigm I worked in, the Wild Rose brings qualities of love for the earth and human life, and the ability to catalyze the will through the heart: to ‘do,’ and to serve.***
I hear a lot of talk, in these troubled times, about the need to find one’s passion, or to know one’s purpose, or to find the thing that is needed in your community at this time that you can uniquely offer, and do it. To *change the world* or to *change myself so I change the world.*
If we are truly to be in service to ourselves and others, it is vital to activate ‘the will.’ i.e. that mental faculty of conscious and intentional action, and the physical capacity to follow through.
But in the western (or ‘weird’) world, ‘willpower’ is often mistaken for ‘will.’
They are not the same thing, in my experience. ‘Willpower’ has more to do with mentally pushing to ‘accomplish’ something. It often draws heavily on energy we don’t actually have, which means we get adrenalized, run through our stress hormones, and burn out or otherwise damage our health. Or worse: willpower can be the mechanism by which we act out our good intentions through the filter of our traumas, and thus perpetuate a certain kind of damage in the world.
*The Will,* on the other hand, is meant to be the natural outpouring of our heart energy, through our limbs. A useful image to visualize is Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Vetruvian Man,’ with the limbs spread out and in motion.
(Or for some of my voice friends, the mudra for the ‘Pa’ sound of the scale: legs spread on wide triangular stance, arms held straight out from the shoulders, head erect and eyes forward expressing ourselves in the world, sounding the 5th interval of the scale.)
My *Will* to do, and to serve, is the energy that comes naturally to me when i have an outpouring of love for myself, my fellow human beings, my world—for Life itself.
It is not so much about what i do: i might make music, or build houses, or care for children. It is more about the essence of where that arises within me, and the process it follows. It is about the wholesomeness and sustainability of my fuel.
Wild Rose teaches me that the only sustainable way to activate and engage my work is by channelling the energy of Source or All That Is, as a Love that flows, with heart’s ease, into the world.
In physical terms, i can imagine that Source filling me up from the abundant sun and sky and earth, being filtered through my heart, and channelled out into the world through my limbs (and voice, and eyes, and ears, and hands, and feet—any way of offering).
How is your love flowing into offering? How do you know Heart’s Ease, as you do your work?
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***Source:
http://www.flowersociety.org/calif-wild-rose.html
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