In this episode, we discuss flower essences to help uncover, define, and pursue your life purpose.

Flower Essences discussed during the show:

• Buttercup – FES
• Wild Oat – Healing Herbs
• Saint John’s Wort – FES, Flora of Asia
• Lotus – FES
• Kobushi Magnolia – Flora of Asia
• Fireweed Combination Formula – Alaskan Essences
• Hound’s Tongue – FES
• Pomegranate – FES
• Dandelion – FES
• Blackberry – FES
• Cosmos – FES
• Borage – FES
• Star of Bethlehem – Healing Herbs
• Herkimer Diamond – Alaskan Essences
• Optical Calcite
• Sapphire – Alaskan Essences

Suggestions:

Additional ways to connect to the energies of the plants: carry a bit of the dried herb or flower in a personal medicine bag or in a pocket, engage with the flower through images, check out the cards available from a variety of essence producers

Show Transcript

Rochana [00:00:01] Welcome to the flower essence podcast with flower essence practitioners Kathleen Aspenns and Rochana Felde. Join us in the garden of plant wisdom as we deeply explore the vibrational healing modality known as flower essence therapy. 

Rochana [00:00:22] Today on the flower essence podcast Kathleen and I are going to dive into the subject of life purpose. Now, life purpose can mean all sorts of things to all sorts of people, stemming from right vocation to the soul calling that’s on a more spiritual level for an individual. And Kathleen, what are some thoughts that you have on this topic of life purpose that can get quite deep and juicy?

Kathleen [00:00:56] Yeah it is a really big topic, and it’s certainly one I know that I work with a lot of my clients to hone in on. You know, so many of us are struggling with finding life purpose. And there’s a notion as if the life purpose is a static item, and not that it is something that evolves over time. So a lot of people are kind of waiting for “the thing” and what they really need to be doing is going out and working and then they find “the thing” by working on that. Are you finding that too? 

Rochana [00:01:28] Yes. That’s a big one. I think there’s dreaming and laying in bed or on the couch and thinking “what should I be doing with my life?” Which kind of comes from more of a depressed unhappy state of mind, maybe not depressed but definitely not satisfied with with what’s happening in someone’s life. And the thing I see is  in order to get there, You have to be out there doing it. Life purpose is sort of an energy that comes from the sun, from action and finding what is making you happy on all your levels: on your spiritual level, your physical, mental, emotional level all at the same time. And then if you’re lucky it’s also your vocation as well, which may or may not be part of somebody’s reason to get out of bed in the morning. That’s, I think the definition or translation of the Japanese Ikigai. Have you heard of that? I don’t know a lot about it but it it’s one of the Japanese trendy spiritual topics that have become popular in the United States. There are a few books written about it that have become bestsellers. I don’t know enough about it to know if their translations are truly accurate or not.  But it has to do with the reason for getting out of bed in the morning, and then the intersection of your values, your passions, what society needs, your calling, fulfillment, purpose, etc. and there are fun diagrams on Google – Venn style diagrams where these things all intersect – and your Ikigai is in the middle. 

Kathleen [00:03:55] Oh what a cool idea.  That’s really interesting. I think that a lot of times we can do that analysis-paralysis thing where you’re waiting for that one perfect thing, and instead, like you’re talking about that, you are needing that solar energy. It needs you to start taking some action and then you can define it along the way. I like that image of it. For me I think a little bit like the seed isn’t fulfilling its life purpose until it starts to germinate and grow. You could be waiting in the dark forever and never germinate and never do your thing. You need to take the leap and start germinating. 

Rochana [00:04:38] And isn’t that the great thing about all the flowers because they have that. When you look at any of them you can see a flower is fulfilling its own purpose by blossoming, by going through the whole cycle from the seed. And really, the way I see the exercise of finding one’s life purpose as finding out your true self – who you are. It doesn’t come from somewhere else. It’s in you already, what your life purpose is, and it’s just a matter of letting it blossom. 

Kathleen [00:05:25] Letting the pattern express itself as it will in this time and space. In another time and space it might express a little differently. But it’s that notion of, you are growing in your environment and things can change in your environment, but  your blueprint, what you’re destined to be, is an expression of both your internal destiny and your external environment as well. Well it brings to mind what we’re talking about these flowers. You know the little tiny guys out in the field are not going “I need to be a Lotus!” No. They’re doing their own little thing. Which brings to mind the Buttercup. FES makes the most beautiful Buttercup essence and it’s blooming right now. The little tiny yellow flowers that just grow in profusion. They really speak to that issue. You know “I’m not doing enough, I’m not going to be a big enough star, I’m not going to be making a world impact.” It’s like “No. What you’re doing is important. You just need to keep doing it.” 

Rochana [00:06:31] Yeah. I love that and I love that that energy of the Buttercup I’m seeing it all over my yard and around the forest here as well. So the yellow flowers are a big part of this. And there’s a couple that come to mind for me. One is St. John’s Wort which interestingly, we know is used in herbalism allopathically for depression. But it’s such a wonderful flower essence for much more than that as a bringer of light. And a way to kind of harness, just filling your conscious awareness with light and helping to harness that as it is integrated into the physical form. And so again coming from that. What a solar plant. I mean it’s all about the sun, and bringing the work of… I don’t know, you’re putting your consciousness into the sun and just letting yourself come out of the dark, and blossom. I think it can help an individual see what’s within themselves. Without going into an existential crisis, it’s supportive, not shocking in its revelation, is how I would see it. 

Kathleen [00:08:26] It’s that whole Solar premise. I remember harvesting some to create an oil. It’s always blooming right around the summer solstice so it has that quality of that when it’s at its peak. It’s when that solar principle is the strongest. I’ve worked with a Chinese species that I’m calling the Great St. John’s Wort. The flowers or are about an inch and a half around, they’re really big and that quality comes through from species to species. In this particular one it has a lot more to do with letting go of the fear of becoming who you are just recognizing that paper tiger of that fear of being seen or that fear of just showing up as yourself, and just letting that just flow right through you and saying “no matter what happens I’m going to keep doing this”. 

Rochana [00:09:30] Yeah I’ve I think I’ve worked with that species or something similar. Is it used ornamentally in places? 

Kathleen [00:09:40] There are a lot of different types and species, so they kind of all could be given the common name St. John’s Wort. The one that I worked with is not a common one. I know the one that you’re talking about that’s used a lot of times as a landscaping like a ground cover. 

Kathleen [00:09:55]  But I expect they all have different versions of the medicine.

Rochana [00:10:03] They don’t all make the red healing oil but they all have the energetic activity for sure. 

Kathleen [00:10:17] I think that one of the essences that I’d love to talk about a little bit is Wild Oat. Just because Dr Bach’s Wild Oat is just so applicable to this whole topic of purpose. It’s classically thought about as being the one for the one where you can’t choose. You know, when you try all sorts of different things and you never really land on anything. You just keep trying something new, hoping that that new thing will be “the thing”. So I think that Wild Oat is really useful in this in this context, in that we’re talking about in helping you let go of the shiny object syndrome and really start focusing on what really is feeding me instead of just hoping that something else will come along that’s gonna be “the thing”. 

Rochana [00:11:00] Yeah I know we couldn’t have a conversation about life purpose without Wild Oat. It’s sort of the essential or quintessential essence to use, like you say, for finding that and especially anytime you don’t know what essence is right.