Bloom Where You're Planted

Spiritual Story by Alan Dolit

The flowers that bloom in the spring tra la. Indeed. Who would think that flowers have a life of their own. I mean really. Flowers are supposed to just stay put and look pretty and give off wonderful fragrances. They are not supposed to have feelings and thoughts. They are supposed to just stay where I plant them and be grateful for what I bestow on them.

They�re not supposed to get uppity.

That�s not their job. What a nightmare I had. Wow. I felt I was lost in an Alice in Wonderland dream and every thing had a mind of its own. That occasionally the flowers would come along and water me and plant me in the ground and that I was just to look pretty and not say any thing.

Sometimes when I have a really unusual dream I try to get in touch with activities I had recently been experiencing that may have precipitated the dream. I often get some insight into something in my psyche that needs healing or at least needs to be expressed. Later on that day after the flower dream, I was sitting on the couch trying to recall what it is or was about flowers I needed to recall, when before long I found myself back into the dream. This is really weird. I know I�m definitely awake, sitting on the couch, and yet I am experiencing this dream full blown. Wow. Double wow. I�m aware of having multiple thoughts, simultaneously. I�m aware that I have a choice to go back into the dream completely, or just continue to lightly observe and not be in it. And I�m also aware that I can observe myself observing myself observing the dream.

I also have the imagery of looking into a mirror which is facing another mirror in which I can see myself reflected over and over and over and over, ad infinitum, like The Hallelujah Chorus of Handel�s Messiah: FOR EVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER... I can even hear that glorious Heaven sent music as I�m visualizing this scene, or dream. I�m also thinking this would make a wonderful esoteric movie. If only there were some way to translate what I am experiencing to a huge movie screen with surround around sound. And then the scene shifts, and suddenly I am in a field surrounded by flowers. And I feel I�ve been thrust into one of my favorite movies called �Brother Sun, Sister Moon� about St. Francis. I remember how healing it feels to be surrounded by a sea of flowers. I am really experiencing it. It is like being in a Hot tub with the perfect water temperature and being cradled in the arms of God at the same time.

Then suddenly I�m shifted into a new dream. I am about four years old and had a bad dream and my mother is holding me in her lap and rocking in a rocking chair and some how this is happening simultaneously with being in the field of healing flowers. One of my favorite expressions is flower related. �Bloom where you are planted�. And a few lines from A Course in Miracles: also include flowers as part of analogy: �There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head. Who could feel fear in such a world as this? It welcomes you, rejoices that you came, and sings your praises as it keeps you safe from every form of danger and of pain. It offers you a warm and gentle home in which to stay a while. It blesses you throughout the day, and watches through the night as silent guardian of your holy sleep. It sees salvation in you, and protects the light in you, in which it sees its own. It offers you its flowers and its snow, in thankfulness for your benevolence. In you is all of Heaven. Every leaf that falls is given life in you. Each bird that ever sang will sing again in you. And every flower that ever bloomed has saved its perfume and its loveliness for you.�

And then I hear a whiney ego voice say: �These flowers are not healing for hay fever sufferers.� And now my peace feels shattered and it feels I�m playing tennis against myself and I have to decide which player to root for. Then I remember an expression �these flowers are rooting for you�, and �this bud�s for you.� Then I wake up from the dream and I realize that I was again dreaming. I dream and then I dream I am dreaming and now I wonder am I awake now? I recall a statement made by the Chinese sage Chung Tsu. He had a dream he was a butterfly. When he awoke he stated: �Am I Chung Tsu dreaming I�m a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I�m Chung Tsu.�

Or is this whole thing a dream. One of the most spiritual songs there is and you won�t find in too many hymnals goes like this: Row, row , row your boat gently DOWN the stream Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily Life is but a dream." Notice the emphasis is going gently down stream with the current. And notice also there are four �merrilys� for three �rows�. And finally �Life is but a dream�. So there you have it. Call it Alan�s Sermon mounted on a row boat.