By Freya Secrest
Moving to the Midwest, as I shared with you last month, has me looking around my garden with fresh eyes. Just identifying the plants in my new Michigan backyard has brought a number of delightful surprises. One recently was a large shrub I could not recognize. It was mature, tall, and lanky – having grown up in the shade of a maple. But I couldn’t quite place it from just its leaves or shape. I watched it slowly come awake in the spring and then walked out one morning this summer and was delighted to see it had started to bloom. I was still unsure of its identity– until I smelled its flowers. The fragrance instantly brought forward its name – Mock Orange! I loved finally recognizing this old friend who I only knew previously as a vigorous, but more managed, princess. Growing in the shade without as many blossoms as the one in my northwest garden, this Mock Orange still clearly and fully brought forth the fullness of its unique signature in the perfection of its shape and fragrance.
When next I picked up Dorothy’s Seeds of Inspiration, it fell open to this message from the Mock Orange:
We are here before you think of us. We are always with our plants. We are attached to each little charge because we love to see it grow, have the keenest delight in being part of its development out of nothing into a perfect example of the pattern we hold. Not one little pore is out of line. Out of the elements we carve and unite, and carve again a living example of one design of the Infinite Designer.
And what fun it is! Holding each little atom in its pattern is a joy. We see you humans going glumly about your designs, doing things without zest because “they have to be done,” and we marvel that your sparkling life could be so filtered down and disguised. Life is abundant joy. Each little bite of a caterpillar into a leaf is done with more zest that we sometimes feel in you humans – and a caterpillar has not much consciousness. We would love to shake this sluggishness out of humans and have you see life as ever brighter, flowing, more creative, blooming, waxing and waning, eternal and one.
While talking to you I am also peacefully promoting growth in the plant. All over the world wherever I grow, I hold the wonderful designs for each plant to confirm. Maintaining life in countless places, I yet remain free, utterly and completely free, because I am the life of the One. How I rejoice to be alive! I soar to highest heaven, I become part of the heart of all. I am here, there and everywhere, without deviation holding my pattern of perfection. I bubble with life. I am life. I am One and I am many.
I have leapt lightly into your consciousness. I bow out, glad to have been with you, glad that you have appreciated what I have said, and still more glad to be back in our world of light. Think well of us, think of us with light.
Such a delightful synchronicity! It makes sense to me that the amazing aroma of a Mock Orange that is so beloved and distinctive could only come from such a spirit of joy and zest for life. For how else could such a fragrance arise? "Nothing comes from nothing", as the song says; the essence of a being reflects through all parts of its expression and what more natural source than joy for such an evocative scent!
Unlocking our sense of smell and all the information it holds for us is a frontier that has been associated mostly with perfume and cooking, not(for me anyway!) with the mystical. It is thought-provoking to consider how fragrance is sourced from the quality of being that underlies its chemical formula. Smell is one of our interfaces of perception with the world, perhaps it could be more seriously considered as one of the voices of the subtle. It is a language which draws together so many layers of information for us as we step to discover those realms.
And it is not just flowery smells that inspire and express those mystical roots. The sweat of hard work and effort is an earthy smell, honest and grounded in itself. The tang of ocean, the freshness of laundry dried in the sun, the bitter hit of some herbs……the Sacred takes shape in a multitude of scented expressions and our noses are placed front and center to interact with them.
As we work more from qualities such as joy and gratitude, hope and courage, we too mix together a unique blend of presence that wafts out as a fragrance. Not all noses are equally tuned to its frequency but it is there as a gift of our sacred self, a gift of uniqueness carried by the wind, adding its note to the harmonies of the world.
I am inspired, humbled and definitely committed to strengthening the fragrance of joy my newly discovered yard-mate has brought into my life. I would love to think I could create similar delight with my own scent.
For an exploration of the sacred at the heart of our incarnation, join us for a free Teleclass on August 28, 2016 – 7:00 pm Eastern / 4:00 pm Pacific. Then, from September 12-October 16, join us for “Journey into Fire” – a five-week online class exploring ways in which we can discover our inherent sacred fire and learn to fully shine our “star” essence into the world. Click here for more information or to register.