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Chapter 1: What is the purpose of meditating on a flower?
Welcome back. Today we're going to allow ourselves a moment to enter into communion with creation. In our meditative tradition, creation is seen as one of the divine ways in which love, beauty, peace, and grace enter our awareness. In the meditation today, we will be meditating upon a flower.
We can do this in everyday existence by choosing a particular plant or flower that we have in front of us.
Chapter 2: How can we visualize a flower in our meditation?
But for now, we can simply visualize one. So let's begin. As usual, we enter our time of meditation with awareness, with deliberate intention. We make our ritual gesture, sit into our meditation position. We come into contact once again consciously with the ground beneath us, allowing the chair, the cushion to support us, opening the spine.
Chapter 3: What lessons can we learn from observing a flower's beauty?
Allowing the breath to be present to us in a stable and gentle way. Not adjusting or changing the rhythm of the breath, but simply noticing the breath. Allowing the shoulders to drop, the facial muscles to be smooth and calm. A gentle air of relaxed awareness in the whole being. Allowing our hands to rest upon our lap.
Chapter 4: Why is it important to recognize our own roots?
Aware of the ebb and flow of the breath. Breathing out all tension, stress or anxiety. Breathing in peace and one. As we become even more aware of the breath, we allow at the same time the visualization of a small flower in the palm of our hand. We can choose something very simple, perhaps a small daisy.
Chapter 5: How does the flower teach us about fulfilling our purpose?
Looking at the flower, we're aware that it is a being separate to us, but that also, like us, it has come into this world. It is nourished by the sun, by water, by the nutrients it draws in through its roots. As a living being, we have much in common with it. And at the same time, it is different from us.
Chapter 6: What insights can creation offer us in our daily lives?
Imagine that you are lifting the flower slowly up until it rests in front of your face. Look closely at the flower. Notice its beauty. Notice if it has a fragrance or perfume. Look closely at its petals. Notice the shades of color. Even on a flower as simple as a daisy, each petal is unique, different, shaped marvelously. Even the shades of color on each individual petal are different.
Look closely. Look deeply. Look at the way the petals are arranged. The way the center of the flower is protected by them. but also how they act as a way of directing pollinating insects to the center. Their color is a signal in hues we cannot even see. A signal to the rest of life to come, to receive nourishment and drink. See how the flower offers itself.
so that its purpose may be fulfilled completely. Notice its stem, its leaves. And because you are visualizing the flower at the moment, you can see even its roots. You are holding life in your hands, in your awareness. Each flower unique even if its species is the same as the other flowers around it.
Be aware of the humility of the flower as it offers itself in its own being to fulfill the purpose laid out for it. It doesn't try to be anything else other than what it is. It doesn't desire to be any other kind of flower. What lesson does the flower have for us today? Can it remind us that we are at our best when we are fulfilling our own being, our own purpose?
Does it remind us that our beauty is seen best when we are simply fully ourselves, not trying to be anything else, not comparing ourselves with anyone else? What does the flower remind us that we need? How do we nourish our roots? How do we nourish our being? Does the flower allow us to recognize the perspective of being? Who we are? When we are? How we are in this world?
How we relate to one another as human beings? How we relate to every other being on the face of the earth? The flower, by being the flower, is fulfilling divine will and living according to divine grace. Are we being who we are? Who we are meant to be? Instruments of love and peace in the world. If one little flower can teach us all of this, What can creation itself teach us?
Make the resolution now in your meditation to notice more deeply the flowers, the plants, the whole kingdom of creation, to be as present to it as possible. to recognize that in it is written a letter of love to us, to you, to me, to every human being. Gently allow the image of the flower to begin to fade. Come into the awareness of your breath as you breathe in and breathe out.
Take a moment to make a resolution to allow yourself to be nourished today, nourished by beauty, nourished by good, healthy food and drink, nourished by putting down your roots into a stable foundation of peace. And gently begin to move your fingers, your toes,
Allow yourself to stretch a little, to smile deeply, and to allow the sound of the bell to draw you back to the activity of the day.
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