During our recent event in Anglesey, we were all given a candle and sunflower seeds; physical symbols of the inner work upon which we had been engaged The symbolism is, at first glance, self-explanatory… light and growth…and the instruction was to carry the seeds of light into the world.

A flower is a beautiful and apt symbol for the human journey. While they are incredibly different in their outer form, they function in an essentially similar way. From the outside…bright, brash, delicate or pale…  the petals could be likened to the personality; what makes a flower, or an individual, easily identifiable. You need no special knowledge or complex tests to decide if what you see is a rose or a thistle.

From the inside, you might compare the petals to our fears, emotions, expectations and desires. Allowed to grow unharmed, they may produce beauty and become attractive, which is after all, what a petal should do. But petals serve no other purpose and will, inevitably, wither and die.

Although a flower delights us with its beauty, its purpose is not just to look beautiful but to attract the pollinators and ensure the growth of seeds. The purpose of the personality is not to be the best or the ‘fairest of them all’, but to attract the experiences we need for our own growth.

Sometimes a petal with wither and fall, long before the flower is blown, just as we must shed those aspects of ourselves that no longer serve us. You can pull every petal from a flower, one by one, yet still, in its heart, the seeds will grow as long as it remains connected to the earth from which it draws sustenance and as long as its leaves drink in the light.

That too is an apt analogy for own journey. Expectations, desires, even beauty, may be cast away or taken from us, little by little, as the years pass. Yet, unlike a flower, it is in how we face such apparent losses that true beauty can be seen. Even so, we too need to be rooted in earth and drink in the Light in order to grow.

In the heart of a flower, the seeds of renewal lie hidden, growing to maturity only after the petals have been shed. In allowing our own petals to fall, permitting our grasp on them…and their hold on us… to loosen, our energies turn inwards, to the heart of being, nourishing the seeds of light we each bear and bringing them to spiritual maturity.

From a single flower, a thousand seeds may be borne upon the breeze, by the beauty born in a single soul a thousand lives can be touched. Within each one of us, the seeds of Light grow unseen.