Flowers and scent comfort me.
Flowers are offered, gifted and used as decor in ritual, ceremony, celebrations and congratulations, which we reflect in our personal lives on the days we decide to gift ourselves or our living spaces with flowers. When we want to welcome brightness and comfort into the home, and in a subtle way, into our own hearts.
These days, when I seek some comfort for myself, I crave scent. To smell something intense, but non-synthetic. Perhaps it is a craving or a lifeline of sorts that I seek, an offering from nature that exhales its aliveness, so that I can breathe it in. I look for something in the immediate surroundings of my home sanctuary. I rub the leaves of the lavender picked from my dad’s garden. I light a Myrrh and Moksha rose and frankincense scented candle. As though being closer to the beauty of a floral miracle can remind me to stay close to the miraculous nature of my own life.
It’s a bit less the idea of flowers to lighten and brighten and more of the practical magic that I seek out. In realising this about flowers through my evolving relationship with them, I think about the way I wear perfume these days and note that it too has become something I crave in the moment. I don’t simply habitually apply scent, especially because most days I must be scent-free to truthfully perceive the materials I’m working with. I have noticed that I tend to reach for perfume not only to enhance a mood but as a kind of companion too. I continue to explore the nuances of this companionship.
Further along now in my natural perfume and botanical journey, I welcome the intimacies, insights and connections that arrive with the selecting, foraging, sensing, and handling of these fine specimens. Whether they are growing in the wild, bought from the florist or in raw material form ready to blend into a perfume. Maybe, when these botanical companions seem more accessible than the human kind we could be missing in our comfort seeking, they offer us a way to re-connect with the external world. Through scent, sight and touch we can access ancient wisdom that has always been here for us, along with beauty - deep beauty characterised by reverence. Nature softens us into the sometimes more challenging idea of connecting with other humans. It’s as though they say, we are here for your breathing and reminding, always, but there is a language we cannot speak, please do not forget why that is the one you are here to speak.
To nurture and grow plants brings us healing. In Vedic psychology (of which Ayurveda is a discipline), when a person has lost their way or is experiencing depression, it is recommended that the patient grow and tend to a vegetable garden.
When we learn to appreciate plant life through interacting with it, when we begin to acknowledge that the life energies making plants green and purple and mustard and ruby red, come from the same ‘place’ as the energies that keep the breath moving inside of our human bodies, only then can we begin to revere the life in other human beings with true compassion.
Levels.
Fresh flowers are now part of my grocery list. Growing sprouts, shrooms for salads bring joy as well.
echoing this, dear Kerry. thank you.