I love this newly bloomed iris flower because it is fresh and breathtaking. It is so much more than it first appears. Translucent lavender petals streaming outward and dripping down like water flowing over a fountain ledge. A ridge of stiff yellow hairs are waiting to tickle the belly of any bumble bee who is drawn to the pale powdery lines that lead to sweet nectar in ultraviolet colors and patterns not visible to the human eye. That alone refreshes me from my anthropocentric influences and makes me fell awe for the great mysterious complexities of life which I will never understand but feel so filled with gratitude for having experienced them.
Like the flower, I am part of nature. I love myself because I am fresh and breathtaking.
Saying this, reading this, feeling this makes me feel very alive and very special and very loved. Not simply loved by my self, but loved by the world. I feel like a unique gift, a special offering, for the time I have here, to revel in this world and also honor the world by reveling in it!
Lately, I have been thinking a lot about going through life always as a beginner, despite how much I learn, see and do. There is an attitude and an ego that accompanies being the “go-to” person, the “know-it-all.” There is something heavy and protective about conceiving of oneself as the person who knows best, who knows more. I find that remembering to be a beginner and letting go of the ego attachment to being the “one who knows” makes me feel fresh each and every day.
Often, to our cost, we emotionally attach, addict to or depend on persons or substances that fulfill our wanting, nature-disconnected senses. Addictions are so commonplace, a part of everyone‚s experiences whether it is firsthand or via a loved one, and I believe it has much to do with our disconnect from nature and our lack of self-worth and sense of connection.
If I did not have conscious nature connections, I would feel less alive. The activity was wonderful. It was powerful to transpose my impression for an iris to my own self and see myself through such loving, wondrous eyes. I was re-educated by feeling an absolute absence of holding back about my own glory. Every day is a new day. Fresh morning. Fresh me. I want to try to see myself in the way that a bumble bee sees an iris petal dripping down like flowing water, eternal spring of sweet nectar. I’ve put into my protected psyche-space the fresh, glorious iris.
A REACTION: The comments through out the sessions were validating but none more than after the nature-connecting session where one man disclosed that he had almost died from Congestive Heart Failure several years ago and this was the first time he had been pain free in years, coming up to me later and joyously proclaiming "I can't believe how much energy I have!"
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