Flowering Fridays: The Perfect Unfolding
Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 11:32PM 
Cylamens outside my hotel, Atlanta, GA, taken with iPhone
Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world. Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before. Let your soul take you where you long to be.…Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar and you'll live as you've never lived before. — Erich Fromm
I took about 20 photos today of the lovely flowers outside the hotel here in Atlanta. And every one was blurry.
Immediately, I went into this place of irritation at my "failing" to capture a decent a picture.
Of course, this pattern of being irritated and noticing my faults (and then "beating myself up" about them) is an old habit. One that's been around for a very long time.
But then I decided to look closer at this picture.
Yeah, it's blurry, I thought.
But then I looked with different eyes and saw:
There are these lovely pink cylamens so eager in their upward striving, seeming to reach up to connect and kiss the sun.
There is their willingness to open to receive and accept.
There are few cylamens that are wilted and now rest into their next cycle of life.
There are these beautiful green leaves that skirt around them with beauty and protection.
And in my noticing I begin to shift and see that reflect what I captured was a perfect unfolding…the perfection of the blooming cylamens and the wilted ones. The perfection of the shape of the foilage grounded their stalks to the earth. The perfection of every part of it, just as it is.
Even the perfection of the blurry picture.
I can now see the perfection of how I was given the opportunity to notice how I began disappointed in the picture and how shifted to be aware of the beauty that is offered.
I'm learning that so much of how I see the world is caused by what I'm looking for. Am I looking for the imperfection and the flaws? Or am I looking for the perfection of what is?
Four times I year I travel to Atlanta to participate in a three-day conference with the Future Thinking Community I'm a part of. It's facilitated by the brilliant Jan Smith and attended by a wonderful group of people from around the country and the globe who are committed to contributing their gifts in a big way to the world. (I've written about it before here.)
I'm so grateful for the learning community I have found in Future Thinking. For being a place where I can practice, make mistakes and expand. For the journey of self-discovery I am on — and will continue to be on. For the chance to have greater awareness around my repetitive (and limiting) ways of seeing the world.
And for the gift of seeing my world new eyes so I can witness the beauty and perfect unfolding that is present all the time, if only I allow myself the opportunity to see it.
Tell me, what area of your life can you look at with new eyes and see the beauty and perfect unfolding of it?
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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.
Reader Comments (3)
I'm so grateful I found your website today ~
I love your energy and what you do! :)
Radiant Goddess Leonie,
Thank you for taking the time to comment!
I love your energy and what you do, too — thank you for sharing your sparkly goodness and generous heart with the world.
Love and light,
Shannon
What a great and useful insight, Shannon. I, too, am a recovering perfectionist and am often disappointed at my photos. Now I will take a second and third look before hitting the DELETE key. I will look for different value in what I have, not just what I thought I wanted. I am less obsessive about most areas of my life, but when it comes to my "work" I have a challenge to put forth anything below my harsh standards--even when it would be in my best interests to do so. We are often our own worst critics, I think. I enjoyed your cyclamen, BTW--they grow wild here, as I imagine they do in warm Atlanta.