Flowers: Little Lessons in Love, Healing and Kindness

 Flowers are one of the most beautiful expressions of Mother Earth, representing love, joy and happiness. No wonder beautiful flowers bring smiles to almost everybody, ranging from little kids to the oldest people, from a beggar to a king, across all classes and categories.

Now, a flower is an expression of a plant or a tree to propagate its species, to increase the members of its species. And it is done through such a beautiful, petalled, fragrant medium that it invites honeybees, insects and butterflies, who get nectar in return for the pollination work that they do. It is a wonderful give-and-take phenomenon. And humans of all types also have their takeaways, ranging from perfumes to poetry and building aesthetics.

Now, as I see it, a flower is a beautiful compilation of energy in beauty and fragrance. In my opinion, it carries a very positive, pure, holy and pious form of energy. That is why we offer flowers to gods and deities in temples, churches, mosques and gurudwaras. Go anywhere in the world and take the example of any type of faith, religion, belief system or sect, and you will find that flowers occupy a foremost position as far as offerings to the higher forces are concerned.

It means there is an absolutely loving-kindness type of symbolism that a flower carries.

Just like mud has a stench, which means there is something chaotic, something disorderly about it which repels us. It symbolizes some chaos. It symbolizes some mismanagement. It symbolizes some trouble. It symbolizes some lack of something. And on the opposite end, we have beautiful, fragrant flowers with their beautiful colours, patterns, lovely smiles and smells. They convey something very, very positive, something beautifully ordered, something lovingly managed, something denoting love, something which symbolizes the procreation spirit of Mother Nature—of evolving into more beautiful patterns of life, sustenance and soul.

That is why they say that where you have flowers, fairies come to rest and dance upon them at night. It is a beautiful story. It is a kind of myth, but if we analyze it deeply, we will find that there is substance behind this myth. Because when you have such positive little petalled abodes of positivity, love, beautiful smell and smiles, obviously the equivalent energies will find a kind of restful space there.

So flowers must be attracting something very positive and healing for us humans. That is why we have flower gardens and potted plants, and it gives so much aesthetic strength to us just to have flowers around us.

I have done my own experiment in this regard.

One day, I was not feeling well at all—slight fever and fatigue—and I was thinking of taking some general over-the-counter medication like aspirin. But then I thought of doing an experiment.

I have this beautiful plant of champa in my garden, and I found a champa flower on the ground. It had come down on its own. I did not break it. That means the plant had happily allowed it to come down, beautifully landing on the ground.

I picked it up.

Now, the champa flower is a beautiful white flower having five petals, and in the centre you have yellow colour at the lower end of the petals. This yellow generally dissolves into the white on the surface. The petals are on the sturdier side, and that makes it a bit of a durable flower. You can keep it in your room for two or three days, and it will continue to give you its smile and smell.

The champa flower has a very delicate fragrance. It doesn't throw big packets of lovely smell at you from a distance. For that, you have to approach it. You have to pick it up and take it to your nostrils, and then, as you inhale gently, there is this beautiful wafting fragrance. It is very gentle. It doesn't strike too much, but it is a very deep kind of smell.

So I picked up this champa flower—a fresh, beautiful blossom—and started walking in the garden from one end to the other while taking deep inhalations. I would inhale deeply, keeping the flower just against my nose, and I kept doing it for a few minutes.

So much gentility, so much fragrance, so much positive energy—I was surprised that within five minutes I felt absolutely normal. The next day, I woke up quite fresh without taking any medication.

Flowers have so much beautiful energy, carried on a very high frequency—a frequency of love and healing—that if you plug into that source of energy, it is almost a natural law that you will have positive results. It will uplift your mood. It will elevate your spirits. It may even do away with symptoms of fatigue and mild fever, like I felt.

So, as far as I am concerned, I take flowers to be something very sacrosanct in nature. They symbolize something which is purer than our existence. They are an expression of something bigger than what we perceive here on Earth in our game of survival, competing against fellow human beings.

So whenever I see flowers, I always try my best not to step over a flower. That comes very naturally to me. When I pass under a tree or a plant, I ensure that I don't step over a flower. Wherever there are flowers lying on the ground in my little garden, I try to pick them up and put them in the flower bed, as if that is a secluded place for their rest, for completing their journey.

It also enhances and strengthens my aesthetic sense. It boosts my sensitivity to the small, small things of life.

Now just imagine: if somebody has become conscious and aware enough that he will avoid trampling, walking over or stepping upon a flower, he will gradually be conditioned in a certain way. His heart will be reshaped and opened. His emotions will be rechannelized in a similarly positive direction, so that he will think twice before hurting somebody. He will become caring. He will become considerate. He will become kind.

So it is a very small experiment which we can do on a daily basis—a kind of exercise to strengthen the small elements of kindness, love, gentility, art and poetry in our heart.

It is just like going to the gym and doing exercises to strengthen our muscles and body. This is an exercise for the soul—for making one's heart more sensitive, more open to the plight of others.

Because if you are caring for flowers, of course you will gravitate along the same path and become caring, sensitive and kind enough towards fellow human beings as well.

That's how I do it.

We can also extend the same thing to little insects and other crawlers, other small, crawling expressions of Mother Nature in the form of little creatures. Suppose I am just walking in a garden. I try to avoid stepping upon little insects because if you become aware of not harming other forms of life on Mother Earth, possibly you are getting attuned to an attitude of not harming others on the broader platform as well, including human society.

So these little, little things—not trampling over flowers, not stepping upon little insects—are small exercises, tiny experiments in kindness, consideration and awareness.

And gradually, they can give us a very nice, humane personality—one that is loving, kind and caring.