Orion On Being As A Desert Flower In Challenging Times
Client: 'The first thing I want to ask about is flourishing, which I am not feeling. I am instead feeling a lack of control of being able to effect things, especially in the world.'
Orion: The world, our culture, is now giving us many stopping places; presenting many situations that feel limited; places where you feel unable as an individual to impact or modify. Opportunities do not feel present. Understanding others actions and motivations are confusing and you find you actually cannot understand. And our sense of being the change-agent, the action-taker, feels diminished.
All of this brings us to the idea that we being asked to be a bit of a desert plant. The desert plants do not have it easy and the environment they are in is harsh; they have to wait for certain conditions for movement in their lives. They cannot make these conditions themselves and as they often lived alone n a vastness, they can't have help. Yet they are all, every one, a seed-bearer and within, they know that they can endure the conditions that are thrust upon them and that there will come a natural time where they bloom.
It is hard for us to think of our nature, our lives as a desert plant. We have thought of our nature as cultivated and the world will pay attention and support us. Light, water, fertilizer. We do not see ourselves as a rooted being No. We have great autonomy. We can always move ourselves and at times of our life, we can do that. When those times arise, the metaphor changes and we are the tumbleweed or the seedling that flies through the air far into another place. Motion is given to us. And we are indeed many elements.
But what you and others are finding now, somewhat disconcertingly, is the metaphor of the desert plant. The plant who has to trust, as it were, in its deepest nature; who has to endure and trust and discover 'I hold seed and there will be blooming.' It can be helpful when culture is rigid or we are different stages of life to remember the old axiom of 'do what is given.' Opportunity opens and then you take action. The emotional challenge is that in the grand scope, not all of us will be the change-agent in the over-arching way.
You yourself have consistently been a change-agent for others, particularly in your exquisite skill of re-framing. You have helped so many individuals by re-articulating, re-framing for them by saying, 'Have you thought of it this way? Have you thought of it that way?' You have done this quiet work your whole life. You felt able to contribute to life, felt 'purpose'. Now it is sometimes overwhelming how challenges in the outer world are actually too big for your own actions to impact and you feel at loss.
And it is actually frightening, as the fear people seemingly are becoming louder and louder. It's frightening to even understand how their fears cannot be quelled by information or logic or actuality. It really is like dealing with 'other' minds. It is not a meeting of the minds and that is what feels most distressing. Their consciousness or the cognizances are not communicating. You don't actually get them. And that stress is why you have to retreat, to anchor in some way to the core - 'I hold the seed as a desert plant.'
And further, sometimes what we are given to do is not as satisfying as changing everything. In this time, you are being asked to find your way to live through changes and perhaps to not make the changes you see as beneficial. In history, there have been very difficult times, extremes, that people have lived through. We see this time as a climate that feels threatening to principles you hold dear, but more so, it is a climate of paradox. And paradox - seeming opposites occurring at the same time - adds another level of discomfort and confusion.
In this paradox, we see images throughout the world of all kinds of acceptance. Television and film now show every kind of blended family. There are constant messages of being yourself, celebrating uniqueness, expressing your deep nature; all of which feels like progression; like the flourishing you began with.
Yet at the very same time, there are people not just opposing progression, hindering progression, but actually trying to make the law of the land decimate progression. And to us, that is how loud their fear is. They, though, do not say it is fear, they say it is anger. They would rather claim the power of anger than recognize 'I'm afraid of a world I don't understand. I am afraid of a world that does not mirror me in all ways.'
As we've said a long time ago, and it still is so, those who recognize Unity consciousness simply have to remember it's totally a seed. It is in no way activated or present in a true full consciousness shift. It's more like the science fiction concept where one 'grocks' something; meaning they understand it, but not necessarily in the mind. They understand the whole sensing-awareness of it. It's like the way people 'get' quantum physics. Do we really know what quantum physics is specifically or do they comprehend the idea that energy cannot be destroyed; the idea that there are all moving fields of being. People get it in the sensing-awareness gestalt, in wholeness.
Understanding Unity as a foundation can then support you in finding ways to be action takers, even if in small ways. Unity does not mean only peace and ease. It encompasses all things. Many progressive people equate anger or bold, forceful action only with negativity. Their ideals lead them to be understanding and compassionate, but this is not the only approach to bringing balance and re-balancing. There are times when your understanding is not received or accepted. Sometimes you have to stop the action of the angry person. You can still try to understand it, to see its roots, but in the moment of their harmful actions, you have to grab their hands and say, 'You cannot do this.' You stop them. And when we are afraid to stand in 'loud' energy, we must remember again, that Life itself is in its very nature, paradoxical. And this requires us to allow all the facets of Being, which sometimes show up as saying loudly, 'You are not allowed to do this.' This is the old adage of 'fighting the good fight'. Of taking a stand, of saying 'this is wrong'.
And in this sensing-awareness of the possibility of Unity consciousness, truly comprehending the interconnection of all things, we have to remember seed-carriers are enduring. Like the desert plant, your job is to be ready; to hold the seed and then allow it to germinate and grow when conditions shows up. Every time aligned conditions show up, it can flower.
Desert flowers can live with a short period of rain. They can bloom with minimum 'right' conditions. In this, you walk around carrying your seed and when that one person stands next to you at the produce section and says something, you turn and you blossom and you share the fruit with the other person. You shared your experience of seeing Light and it is lovely.
We can think of you as each day seeing de-light. And in the midst of whatever is challenging or sad, there will still be, right over there or behind that or at the very same time, paradoxically, the capacity to walk in Beauty. The capacity to find Light - the beauty and light of interconnection - which exists no matter how unrecognized, denied or not perceived. Carry your seeds, blossom when you can, renew and start again
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Featured in Expansion - the Orion Wisdom newsletter September 2022
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