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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