Flowering Fridays: Opening Up

From the tulip bouquet on our table last week

"The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure." — Joseph Campbell

I've been in a weird place of late. Feeling like I'm in a holding pattern. Or maybe frozen in place by fear and self-doubt.

I know that part of my gift in this world is around expression in all its forms and around inspiring others to do the same. I also know that I'm being called to expand myself into new directions, but I'm not yet clear exactly what those new things look like.

And so I question: Should I be doing poetry? Making art with my hands? Working with people who are starting their businesses? Re-branding myself and choosing a new business name? Writing more on this blog? Not writing at all?

In this swirl of questioning, I hold myself back, out of confusion and fear and into intertia.

Last week, I enjoyed my first vase of tulips this year. They seem so optimistic and hopeful for the last legs of a Wisconsin winter. I watched them go from tightly closed buds into flowers so open their petals eventually fell off.

I think of how the flowers blooms, and how they open so naturally. How they flow with the cycle of nature. How they turn themselves to the sun, open themselves to the work of the bees, and breath in and out as the tulips do so well.

I think of these lines from a poem I've loved since I was a teen, the Sylvia Path poem, Tulips:

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

The closed off place I have been in is not natural.

Our nature is to open. To receive and to offer. To bloom.

Yesterday, I received a clear message from my guides: Start something. Look for ways to be of service. 

And, thanks to a divinely timed phone call from a dear friend who is a radiantly blooming artist, I have my first service opportunity.

In a meditation last fall, I received a similar message: Start small. Put yourself out there.

(Okay, universe, I get it. Really I do.)

As much as it scares me to keep stepping forward with so much fear, uncertainty and self-doubt. I am going to trust my heart to take the steps toward something. 

I walk forward knowing that I am surrounded by the love and support of the universe every step of the way.

Tell me, what part of your life and your dreams are you closed off to? Where could you "start something" and open up a little more to fully blooming in your life?

I'd love to hear your comments and how your journey to blooming big in your life is unfolding. 

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Flowering Fridays is a weekly look at flowers through the lens of what they might teach us about flowering fully in our life. Past editions are here.

Comments

[Oriana Green]

Hi Shannon, I found you on Twitter (I'm NatureSpirits)...& I love your Flowering Friday idea...we are kindred spirits for sure! I can really identify with this post--this is where I was a year ago, trying to sort out what to do next when I had too many good options. Then a teacher of a course I was taking said simply: What can you write about every day for the rest of your life? Do that and ignore all the rest.

In an instant I had my answer. Finding the structure for it and my way into the genre took some deep thought, but I got there. Every time after that when I was tempted by what I call BSOs (Bright Shiny Objects) I asked myself if it was connected to my larger life dream/vision/mission, & if not, I let it go.

And here's another key: If it WAS connected, but as a viable tangent to pursue LATER, I wrote my notes about it and FILED them away. I didn't stop what I was doing and run after the new tangent. That was a new way of taking/not taking action for me, and it has really helped me stay focused on nature and meditation. Hope that helps!
~Oriana