
I promised I would back with information about our essence Divine Compassion - a beautiful divine messenger from nature.
Divine Compassion (Purple Broom or Polygala)
a flower originally from South Africa, was the last essence we made on the Tuesday after Easter. I honestly thought that we had completed our range, but early one morning when stirring from sleep, I received a message from my spiritual guides that there was a flower waiting for our attention. I was told that it was the key to opening our heart and increasing our willingness to embrace the essential process of emotional healing. I immediately knew which one it was. Almost a year had past since I had connected with this flower and believing our range was complete, I had wondered what this connection was all about.
Around the time of its birth, I was learning/experiencing more about compassion, forgiveness and humility, the most poignant source being from a book study session of "Through The Mists" with Mary Magdalene. I have always found each essence comes at the time its needed the most.
As humans we have a predisposed tendency to punish ourselves and others. We create lines in the sand, and once crossed, all hell breaks loose. It's a pattern that has been encoded as a first level response to mistakes. We punish with varying degrees of harshness. This is usually accompanied by un-forgiveness, grudges, bitterness, rage and feelings of un-justness. These toxic emotions eat away at us and our relationships, while at the same time we have passionate desires to live in a world of love and happiness. Feels irreconcilable or incompatible doesn't it?
We have mostly two responses when we make errors/mistakes; we either punish and berate ourselves, in order to prevent others punishing us, or we push back in rebellion, blaming others to prevent us feeling the shame of our errors and accepting responsibility for the consequences. When an error occurs we immediately expect punishment in some form. The shame causes us not to act immediately to make amends. That's what we experienced through our childhood and schooling was it not? We didn't have any one showing us compassion or explaining that mistakes are an essential way for us to learn and grow. We certainly have compassion though for a little child learning to walk and we don't yell at them when they fall down many times through their experimentation...or do we???
Judgement and punishment come from our heart made of stone with a severe demand and expectation for constant perfection. The act of compassion, kindness, patience and love softens our heart, melting it into flesh. I spent a lot of time with this flower, both emotionally and physically. Observing the flower's structure, it goes through many stages and changes, continually transforming into another shape, colour and presentation. There is no time limit to the stages. Each stage unfolds in its perfect time and cannot be forced or demanded. I have found these these different stages represented in a series of photos (see below). Of course the process of compassion and forgiveness is a series of stages. If we attempt to skip an emotional stage of forgiveness it becomes false. Complete forgiveness can never be obtained by a mental decision of "let it go, its in the past" or "get over it" or "she'll be right mate". An injury of judgement and punishment makes a mark and claims space upon the soul. It stays there until it is emotionally processed and released although its scar will remain forever.
Forgiveness comes naturally when the pain of the injury is fully felt and complete. In other words, when all the pain of un-justness is felt, the expression of forgiveness is automatic. If you look carefully at the flower, you can see this final point when the flower releases the seed from its heart, showing the symbol of transformation in the shape of a butterfly.
Because compassion is an act that requires humility, forgiveness, kindness and most of all it's an act of love, I was guided to place the heart shaped stone we used when making Divine Humility and the seed ball we also used for making Divine Redemption (it just happened to be among the flowers of compassion) with flowers of Divine Compassion.
An act of love, of compassion, does not mean that the consequences of error can be avoided. I remember Carolyn Myss saying in her dvd, "sometimes the most compassionate thing to do is to stand back and let someone feel the full measure of their actions". We also learn and grow through the impact of consequences. The main aspect of this is having love and compassion present in the act of standing back.
My experience with this essence is the encouraging feeling of softness, gentleness and willingness to respond to the situation with soft eyes and voice of love. A feeling of loving arms holding me through the process of feeling my shame and hurt. A gentle form of courage to address the situation with love and action. These qualities are already living with us yet are overshadowed by demand and harshness, usually the wounded voice of a parent or teacher. Of course, this flower shows us there are many faces, aspects and layers to errors and forgiveness, far beyond what I am able to share right now. For this blog is meant to be a short overview.
Overall, what I have found from the message of this flower is that humility, compassion, kindness, patience and love certainly help us change a wound into an act of love. Learning through the process of love rather than punishment and judgement. This essence stirs the qualities of love from the bottom of my soul and brings them into action. For me this is profoundly beautiful and offers a new way to respond to my errors and the errors of others.
With all the war and expressions of rage around our globe, it looks like everyone could use a generous dose of compassion. Self punishment and hard hearted-ness has been the primary barrier between me, the world and happiness. I love this gift of Divine Compassion, for I can feel myself softening...finally. How about you, how is your world, hard or soft?
In my next blog I will talk about the stages of forgiveness, a process of transformation through the act of love.
Much love
Christiana