Decisions, decisions

"And that’s the thing about asking for advice, Red, sometimes you don’t get the answer you want.”  ~ Marian Keyes 

Are you stuck trying to make a decision? At the point where you’re asking others for their opinion yet feeling dissatisfied with the advice?  Cerato is the botanical essence to help with that.

In this foggy state of uncertainty we can’t see that the answer is right in front of us.   Just as flood waters swamp our car engine and prevent us from moving forward, we have no idea what to do for the best. Then, instead of looking inwards – and asking more questions of our heart – we exteriorise the questions and ask other people instead. But our energy has become diffused and dissipated to the extent that we cannot properly evaluate the assorted and contradictory suggestions.

Cerato restores our focus and sense of direction, removes the fuzziness of our thinking, and allows us to see with clarity the solution or option – the one that is right for us.

“These afflictive emotions and thoughts are factors that create unhappiness and turmoil within us [and] destroy one of our most precious qualities, our capacity for discriminate awareness.” 

Dalai Lama

Drifting? Seize those oars with Wild Rose

 “A man must stand erect not be kept erect by others.”  Marcus Aurelius

Wild Rose is one of the quiet remedies, the need for which can be so subtle it may be hard to spot when it would help. To those around us it may appear as though we’re drifting along through life without much difficulty, when in fact ‘drifting’ is the operative word. We aren’t steering or rowing our boat but just letting the current (circumstances, people in our lives) decide our direction.  When we need Wild Rose we let others shape our wishes, our lives, our routines.  There is no personal development in that!  We need to seize the oars of our life.

There may be understandable reasons why sufferers of this inertia have become the way they are: bullying parents, for example, or a partner who is possessive or manipulative.  So it’s perfectly possible that faced with such a passive individual we might start by thinking, ‘Is it Larch they need, for more confidence? Are they plain indecisive (Cerato or Scleranthus)? Are they held stuck by past guilt (Pine)?’ without initially perceiving that this person is ‘dead’ to life and what it can offer.  They are out of touch with themselves, their reality and their true feelings, merely functioning on a vegetative level, almost like someone in a state of shock or concussion. 

As practitioners we may come to learn some of their history but we’re only interested in their current emotions. At this moment all we know is that they are apathetic, resigned to everything ‘because that’s just the way it is – I can’t do anything about that.’ They have given up their agency and power to change things.  They have ground to a halt in their lives, and stagnation always leads to decay.

But when the Wild Rose remedy works its magic we become – like the plant scrambling up through the hedge to bloom in the sun – enthusiastic for life, for action, fulfilment and upward growth.

Photo: Jeff Isaack on Unsplash

Rock Water - letting joy well up in our lives

Dr Bach first made the Rock Water remedy from a well with healing powers. A well is not necessarily a stone or brick-built structure for garnering water, but a place where a natural spring ‘wells up’ through the ground.  It bubbles up, nothing can hold it back, for as the Taoists say, water is the strongest element, it will find its way round any obstacle.

This joyous, unregulated gushing of water! Springs and wells are unstoppable whereas those in need of the remedy have ‘stop’ written large in their daily lives. ‘I must stop thinking about taking a break and get this work done instead.  I must stop watching this film as it’s bedtime and I always go to bed at 10 pm.’  The person who needs Rock Water has a regime, a set of rules by which they live their life.  They are rigid about it – like a rock they are immovable and unable to see any reason to alter, forgetting that there is no growth without change. This fixity of purpose, this regulated existence, means they push themselves too hard and that’s when taking the Bach remedy can help.

“Under heaven, nothing is more soft and yielding than water.
Yet for attacking the solid and strong, nothing is better.” Lao Tse 78

The spring water potentised by Dr Bach exerts its influence on the rock-like intransigence of those who need a little more fluidity in their mind-set, a little more kindness to themselves. 

When water springs up from the depths of the earth, its tendency – on the flat – is to spread itself out in all directions, with freely-given abundance.  It’s only if rocks impede its progress (or the confining hand of man) that it is directed into a fixed channel.  If we need Rock Water it’s because we are too harsh on ourselves, channelling our energies in the ‘correct’ manner as we see it.  There’s a spontaneity about a natural well which is missing from those who need this remedy. Taking it (when we recognise we have become inflexible in our self-discipline) helps us to flow like water, celebrating change and relaxation, enjoying life's bubbles. As John O’Donohue writes, “When a well awakens in the mind, new possibilities begin to flow; you find within your self a depth and excitement which you never knew you had.” 

Photo; Ally Matson

“Wells were revered as special apertures through which divinity flowed forth…. "          John O'Donohue, Anam Cara 

Crab Apple for self-love

If we think of ourselves as unattractive or unlovable in ways we cannot overlook, the flower essence to take is Crab Apple, known as the cleansing remedy. If there is something we find unclean or horrible about ourselves, or when we are ‘anxious to be free from the one particular thing which is greatest in [our] mind,’[1] this is the essence which will help.

Julia Cameron in The Artist’s Way,[2] suggests a mantra for this kind of mental block: ‘Treating myself as a precious object will make me strong.’ It sounds counter-intuitive but she knows that we are all inclined to regard ourselves harshly.  If we tend to be nit-picking about our perceived flaws, and indulge in (mental) self-flagellation, we have probably never stopped to consider ourselves as a precious object. This raised in my mind the image of Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken ceramics such as bowls, and embellishing them with gold along the cemented cracks.  When the piece has been restored it glories in its new looks, and is even more beautiful, with the gold enhancing its worth. 

The lacquer used in Kintsugi is made from a tree sap. It has qualities of stability and durability, like the trees in the Bach remedy system.  Crab Apple is one of the seven trees in the Group for Despondency and Despair and gives us resilience and new heart when we take it as a flower remedy.

When we admire a piece of Kintsugi we see a once-beautiful thing made beautiful again in a new way.  When we take flower remedies they restore us, in a way which may be new to us, but is not a re-build, it’s a revival:  we recreate our love – for ourselves and subsequently for others – nearer to how our soul always wanted it to be.

Flower photo by Nicola Hanefeld

 

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[1] Dr Bach

[2] The Artist’s Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Incandescence: Vervain encourages more light than heat

There is so much happening in the world right now to make us angry that we regularly hear people say, ‘It makes my blood boil.’  The Koreans' word for that, Hwambyung, means fire disease since one of its symptoms is a feeling of flames in the body.  In English, when outrage burns and demands action, we call it fervour – and the origin of that word comes from Latin, to boil …

Fervour can be a useful instigator of action. ‘If you’re angry that’s a sign of hope – it means you believe change should happen and that others should care about you enough to help,’ writes Soraya Chamaly in Rage Becomes Her.  It’s zealous fury which fuels activism and protests of all kinds and this is characteristic of Vervain types, standing up for what they are sure is right, while attempting to persuade others to join in.

Anger, zeal, activism, passion, of themselves do not spell a need for the Vervain flower remedy.  But when fervour is running high, the pressure we place on ourselves and others becomes overbearing.  Just as milk boiling over swamps its surroundings, so will our feverish mind-set boil over, swamping others and leaving us emptied out.

Of course Vervain isn’t solely about being incensed at injustice.  Many of us will find we need Vervain when we are tense and restless, with too many balls in the air and unable to relax.  Anyone who finds they’re always on the go, their engines constantly revving away, frantic to get on with the next commitment, will benefit from a dose or two of Vervain.  All those who say they haven’t got time to sit down, or ‘switch off’, because they’re too busy, they’re needed elsewhere … they are in the overwrought frame of mind where Vervain will help.

The high-octane enthusiasm and busyness of this emotional state is very tiring for those in their circle.  Vervain types are perfectionists and expect a high standard from everybody else too. And because they are so sure they are right they, like Rock Water, can’t understand why anyone would want them to be any different. Taking Vervain helps them to accept the need for rest, and relax enough to find it can be restorative.  To understand that their incandescence overheats everyone it touches – and would be more effective as a bright star, guiding others forward.

 

Photo: PublicDomanPictures on Pixabay (as I allude to the Post Office Scandal) 

Boundaries for personal autonomy

When we think of Centaury we usually consider the issue of boundaries, since those who need it are unable to say No to requests for help or attention.

There’s a Meatloaf song called, ‘I would do anything for love but I won’t do that’, currently the theme song for a UK TV advert. It attempts to convey the message that however much we want to please people at Christmas, we shouldn’t let it go against our own values, wishes, or need for self-care.

However, maintaining or erecting boundaries does not mean trying to control other people’s behaviour; it means preserving our autonomy by not allowing them to exploit our willingness to help, usurp our needs or time, invade our space or decide our commitments. 

People who need Centaury are generous in spirit.  Service to others may even be their life mission, but it needs to be undertaken with discernment and self-awareness. Their ‘weakness’ is one of the kindest and gentlest in the range as they so much want to help, and their good hearts will not let them say no.  Centaury gives and gives, well beyond the need for rest and respite.

And they loathe conflict and often agree to help, or get involved, rather than risk hurting or offending others.  By taking Centaury they learn the authenticity of maintaining their own values, their own priorities, and need for relaxation and space. Dr Bach expressed so sweetly the mind-set of Centaury types: “… I have learnt to hate strength and power and dominion … just for the moment I would rather that I suffered than that I caused one moment’s pain to my brother.”[1]

The positive emotions of all the flower remedies have sterling qualities and, once back in balance, a Centaury person is ‘One who serves wisely and quietly. One who knows when to give or when to withhold.’[2]

Photo: by 822640 on Pixabay

“The boundary to what we accept is the boundary to our freedom.” Tara Brach

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[1] Quoted in The Bach Flower Remedies Step by Step by Judy Howard

[2] Dictionary of Bach Flower Remedies by TW Hyne-Jones

Walnut - for the future version of you

If there’s a key image which I associate with the Walnut flower remedy, it’s thresholds and open doors. A doorway is always an opening to somewhere new or somewhere different. A step forward from here to there.

But we must beware of short-circuiting the reasoning by thinking great change or new openings automatically require a dose of Walnut. People may not need it if they are pleased and in the throes of readily making the transition.  Yes, they may be slightly nervous, daunted, wondering if they’ll cope, but they only need Walnut if the change is proving difficult to process.

Walnut is not for change, per se, it is for the emotional state when our resilience, our purpose or stability, is being undermined by other people or even our outgrown thought patterns.

Walnut is in the Group: Oversensitive to Ideas and Influences. And just as Centaury (in the same group) cannot say No to others asking for help, so those in need of Walnut are overly influenced by other people or the pressures of old habits. And this happens just at the point where they need to step through the door into a larger future.  So if someone is on the cusp of changing career or lifestyle but is being persuaded against the move by someone, or an outside factor, then Walnut would help the individual to resist, and follow their heart.

In a state where we need Walnut we are hovering between two worlds, the world of the past, the familiar, where others want us to remain, and the unknown, uncertain world of our future. This transitional state can be – psychically – intensely unstable as a new life struggles to be born, rendering us particularly susceptible to interference from other energies.

Walnut will protect us from the influences holding us in the past. It also strengthens our decision and our determination to step up and out into a new future.

Photo: Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

"Don’t be so attached to who you are in the present that you don’t give the future version of yourself a chance."  Vinh Giang

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