SEEING THROUGH OUR STORIES
The Flower is a template. The Flower can be laid over everything in your life to see the bigger picture and gain clarity and transparency. You can lay The Flower over what is beautiful and good, over the knots you've become entangled in, and over traumas you've experienced.
When you're confused (…) use The Flower as a template. This way, you can distinguish your thoughts, emotions, and their effects on your body as the three petals of the flower, and thus bring order to them. That alone brings peace and clarity. And above all: the heart of the Flower becomes visible. Through this, you can find yourself again in a simple way, and from there, regain control over your life, which had slipped away from you.[1]
The Flower can be laid over all the stories that you believe and that other people believe. Stories about life, death, the world. I think of religions, paradigms, worldviews, belief systems, meditation practices, and therapeutic and coaching methods. The Flower is none of that. It's also not a form of self-help. The Flower is a simple organizational principle that allows you to see reality – what-was-is – clearly again.
There are incredibly many stories with which our thinking tries to make sense of the events in our lives, the situations we find ourselves in, and ultimately life and death themselves, for our personality.
The origin of our stories
Every time something happens in our lives, we find ourselves, before we know it, in our thinking, which seeks an explanation. And it does so by interpreting that event using beliefs it already holds.
The events in the lives of the individuals who stood at the origin of major religions, such as Buddha, Jesus, and the Prophet Muhammad, were not yet stories. They were profound personal experiences. Siddhartha Gautama was sitting under the Bodhi tree when he had his enlightenment experience; Jesus of Nazareth was baptized in the Jordan by the prophet Elijah and the heavens opened; and Muhammad ibn Abdullah saw the archangel Gabriel and heard the voice of God in the cave of Hira. Anyone who has ever had an intense experience[2]will know that no one can tell you that you did not experience it. You 'know' that it is 'true' (where 'knowing' and 'true' are not to be understood cognitively but intuitively).[3] In a way that is incomprehensible to the thinking, one is then deeply connected with oneself, with the other, with the great mystery of being and non-being. The characteristics of these experiences are always: love, connection, unity, and peace.
And only then do the stories arise. They arise because the thinking of people (followers), who have not experienced these events themselves, takes over, despite their good intentions. Their personalities interpret the events and attach explanatory stories to them. Thus, 'beliefs' in 'truths', in principles, in dogmas arise – things you should believe with your mind, instead of trusting the loving 'knowing' of your heart. The consequences of such beliefs are always fear, conflict, separation, and war.
It also happens on a smaller scale. You experience something bad. Your partner leaves. And your story about it is: 'I am being abandoned'. Every story starts with such a first-generation sentence. The moment you believe that first sentence, you are already gone. Literally: you are away from your heart. And then you inevitably expand your story. You bring up memories from the past – your father who left you when you were little, your best friend who suddenly disappeared from your life. And the story becomes: 'I am always being abandoned'. And so it continues, the drama gets bigger and bigger: 'what is wrong with me? – why do I never do things right? - apparently, I am not worthy of someone's love – ultimately, I am always alone again – what is life worth anymore? – nobody will miss me...'.
Or you have a disagreement with someone. In itself, there is nothing wrong with that. You just see things differently. But then comes the story: 'she is not really listening to me, otherwise she would understand' (our own point of view always seems the most logical, the most 'true' to ourselves). And then you notice that the more you try to convince her, the less it works. So, the follow-up stories are born: 'she does not want to understand me, she only thinks of herself, so selfish – how could I ever believe she was my friend? – I am so disappointed in her, she deeply hurt me'. And the final conclusion of this drama is: 'it is better to end the friendship because imagine if it happens again...I never want to be hurt like that again'.
The Flower = seeing through our stories
Now lay The Flower over one of these examples or over an example of your own. Choose one where you want to look at it this way. Lean back, exhale, come home to yourself, to your heart. Take your time for this. It's worth it. And if you feel a certain peace in yourself, a certain silence and clarity, then look again. Look again from the observer's position of your heart at this story that your personality fervently believes. Can you already see it as a story? Can you see how it grew and grew? Can you see how your thinking connected with your emotions, causing the drama to escalate?
Look again carefully. Can you also see the space around your story? Imagine that you are observing the whole area around your story from a considerable distance or from a great height, including the viewpoint of the other person or other people. Imagine you have a helicopter view. Can you oversee everything? Slow down, look again. Just see. Seeing-what-is. You don't have to agree with it. You don't even have to wonder about it because that's not what it's about here. This is not about your personality or that of the other, this is about the whole picture that encompasses everything and everyone. Can you now also perceive the relativity of the 'rightness' of your personality? If so, you may notice that with it, your disappointment and hurt automatically become a bit softer and maybe even melt away a little.
Seeing-what-is is healing. Continuously believing your story is suffering. Just keep observing, don't give up too soon. And if it's not working yet, do it again, and again, and again. Be patient.
Can you wait until the mud settles,
and the water becomes clear?
Can you linger in silence,
until the right action arises
spontaneously from within?[4]
[1] Eva Wolf, The Flower (2022), page 61.
[2] For instance, Byron Katie (www.thework.com), one of my teachers, experienced her life-changing realization when she was in deep despair and a cockroach crawled over her leg. See my own experiences in The Flower page 31, 43 and 79.
[3] Take, for example, being deeply in love.
[4] Quote from the Tao Te Ching.