Found on a magical hillside of wildflowers in Wyoming, the White Columbine flower makes you feel like the world has your back. You are supported and take solace in the recognition of inner and outer support. Also known as 'Silver Queen,' this flower helps you become your own fairy godmother, with the same feeling of relief when you rest your head on her lap. You don't have to bear the weight of the world alone, as there is an army of support behind you and within you. Read more here!
By being intentional when taking our flower essences, we remind ourselves, our guides and the universe what it is we want to embody. Choose one of the phrases below that most resonates, or make up your own! Every time you take your elixir, close your eyes and set your intention:
To take it one step further, as you take your elixir and set your intention, visualize everyone else in this program, all around the world, reuniting with their inner fairy godmother. By connecting with others in our group, we exponentially multiply the benefit + ripple effect!
*The recording gets cut off at the very end ~ eek!
The rest is: "without bringing it out into the verbal realm. That way it dissolves faster.
What am I currently grappling with or unsure about?
What do I want to pour my heart out about to a motherly figure?
When do I feel supported by my own inner guidance/wisdom? What practices do I engage in that activate my inner support?
When do I feel as though 'everything is going to be ok?' Am I with certain people, in a certain place? Have I engaged in certain activities (meditation, walking outside, creative expression)?
Prefer to have a printed sheet with the writing prompts, exquisite practices + a calendar to track your month?
Download the White Columbine Support Guide here.
You are your own Fairy Godmother ~ what wishes do you grant yourself?
Make a list of all the ways you are supported by others (seen + unseen).
Make a list of all the ways you support yourself.
Take yourself out on an exquisite date, the most perfect one you can dream up. Get dressed up + go out to a fancy dinner. Go to the theatre and then for a moonlit walk. Go dancing and then to an all-night diner. Or put on your favorite outfit (the one you feel beautiful + 100% you in) and lay under the trees. Do whatever makes you feel divinely you, and like you are the most perfect, important person in the world.
Pull a card from the Kuan Yin Oracle card deck. Embody the goddess message and put your reading into practice. (This is one of our favorite decks, apart from Flowerevolution, of course ;p)
Watch the fairy godmother scene from Cinderella. Now embody the knowledge that YOU are the one who can hold your tears, discomfort with the unknown, yearning, disbelief, tension, feeling like everything is falling apart. You are the lap of comfort, ease, and unconditional love you are looking for.
(USE FOR 15% OFF YOUR PURCHASE SITE-WIDE ALL THROUGH SEPTEMBER!)
Awaken your inner wisdom:
• Experience flashes of insight
• Embody kindness, generosity + compassion
• Accept things as they are, without wanting to change them
Use when you feel:
• Disconnected from your spiritual nature
• Fearful of change or things not going your way
• Stuck in a particular pattern or remnants
(Explore the whole Boundless Wisdom line here. And remember to use your discount!)
So I remember when I was first starting out in my spiritual path or, rather when I had committed to a specific method, which for me was Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhist practices and teachers. And that path is certainly not for everyone, so not necessarily advocating it. However, just sharing from my experience that I remember in the early years of just starting to do practice and that would be about - a long time ago now already! - like, I don't know, 15 to 18 years ago. But I remember distinctly having a very ingrained habitual pattern that whenever shit really hit the fan for me, I needed someone to talk to.
And it was just like, I just longed for someone to talk to. Like a friend, a mother figure, a best friend, an auntie, you know? Like, someone that would understand me. And I kept getting into situations where I really felt like I couldn't talk to anyone about what was happening. But I just longed for that. And I remember having a conversation once with my main teacher, my main spiritual teacher, you know, about that longing.
And it was so interesting, I remember him saying to me, he said, "The earth and the sky are my best friends." And at the time that just seemed so radical to me because I had such an ingrained habitual pattern of wanting to connect or reach out or have somebody soothe me. Now years, almost decades later, I finally really understand his perspective and in some ways I feel very similarly and have completely eradicated that patterning from my system of needing someone to talk to, to sort of help bear the weight of whatever emotional intensity I go through these days, which is bear it all on my own and find support actually from earth and sky.
But I remember in the beginning and can totally relate to that feeling of “God, I just want someone to talk to.” It reminded me because of this month, the whole fairy godmother theme. And how we can re-pattern ourselves into finding that fairy godmother within us and having this endless, timeless, infinite source of self-support, so that no matter which human being is around us that is fully unreliable; when I say fully unreliable, you may have like the best, best friend in the world or a mother or an auntie or someone that you can always go to and they always unconditionally love you and never judge you and always listen to you. You may have that in your life. Some people don't have that at all. You may have that, but that person also could go away. They could be busy. They could have their own issues that they're dealing with. They might be ... what if they have somebody dying and grieving? Well, then you can't go and dump your problems on them, or they may be traveling out of the country and inaccessible or they may die and pass on.
So in that way, I say that human beings are unreliable just simply by our ever-changing and impermanent nature, and relationships change and so on and so forth. The one thing that is constant, that is always reliable is your own self support and your own sense of spaciousness, acceptance and presence. Overall presence and being willing to be there for yourself, to not abandon yourself, to be willing to see all facets in parts and pieces of yourself and your situations with unconditional acceptance and love.
So I know it's easy to talk about. It's sort of a tall order and it's something that is cultivated over years and decades. And the only reason that I know that flower essences and the particular meditation in Mindful Awareness Training teachings that I share, the only way that I know they work is because I've seen such dramatic results in my own life.
So if you can relate to that feeling of when something really, really, really intense happens in your life, that desire to want that comfort, that is what this White Columbine flower elixir is all about, is re-patterning. And opening up a doorway to getting a taste of what that looks like, if we were to be able to provide all the self-support for ourselves that we would ever need in a way that is totally and completely sustainable, nourishing and fulfilling on every level.
Okay, so you know that feeling when you have sought comfort in the past from your mother or grandmother or best friend or loved one, partner, whatever that may be and you just crumble into tears. And you just put your head in their lap or give them a hug or you just fall apart on the floor, and they hold you with their presence, whatever it is. What's actually happening there is, it's a deep space of allowing, and it isn't ...
When you really, really feel a sense a comfort, or when I feel a sense of comfort, it isn't that the situation has changed. There's nothing about the situation that can change, and there's in any major intense emotional situation that I've been in my life, there really isn't anything that anyone else can fix. It's more my response to it, and the way I work with it over time.
But there are those moments of tremendous relief. And what's actually happening is that we're able to 100% be present with what is. It's like the flood gates open, or we just fall apart or we break down or we break open and we hit the bottom of the well, and we feel right to the core, bullseye, what is the center. We feel the depth of pain all the way to the center, the root cause of the heartache. Then we are completely 100% witnessing that.
It's funny because in meditation practices, I always say ... Our mindful awareness practices, I always say that the observation is the dissolution. Often times I just sound like a broken record, and all of the practices and methods that I teach are really just one big broken record of the same thing over and over. It's really not the method in itself, it's the actual practicing it over and over and over and over and over that leads to such dramatic results.
But if you think of it in terms of even when you're in a really tough spot, the only thing that's really happening with this whole fairy godmother experience is that you're being witnessed, and you're witnessing yourself. You are creating a container, or a space to fully hit bottom, feel what there is to feel, be with every aspect of the story, be with every aspect of the pain or heartache and just witness it, and witness yourself and your response to it. That's all we really want, right?
I mean as if we go to our girlfriend and talk about whatever is bothering us, we don't want her to fix it. We just want her to listen, and understand, and be there with us, and witness the situation. We know we have, ultimately, the capacity to work it out on our own. It's more about just being present to what is moving through us, witnessing that, understanding it, gaining insights from it and having someone else witness that.
But I think underneath it all, it's almost like we seek out that other person to act as a mirror, or a reflection, or an opportunity, or an excuse for us to finally stop all the busy-ness and witness ourselves. Really, even when we are seemingly seeking out a friend to talk to, we're really ultimately just looking for our own selves to witness our own selves, if that makes sense.
And the more that we have the capacity to do that for ourselves, non-judgmentally, in a totally accepting and unconditional way - just witnessing ourselves - the more we can really open to being who we really are, being down to earth, being authentic, being real. Not running, hiding, feeling insecure or having to put on a fake smile. It's like 100% not being afraid of whatever is arising within us.
The next time that you have a really intense emotional situation arise, or even just some minor little thing pop up, and you find that impulse to reach out to someone and talk to them about what's going on, you could experiment with what does it feel like to offer that support to myself. I don't mean in terms of spinning in circles and telling yourself a story a million different ways - we do plenty of that as it is! But carving out a little space for yourself, a little time and space to just sit quietly, and be with whatever is arising. Be that comforting lap that you just want to put your head into someone's lap. Be that for yourself, just simply by stopping, being alone, making time and space to just be 100% present with what's arising. And really giving yourself attention above all.
Try that next time you feel the impulse to talk to someone about something, no matter how big or small, and see what it feels like to offer that support from within.
Okay, so one other reason why ... how to say this ... Here's another good reason why providing support for yourself is, and I'm not going to say best, but in most cases, it's the fastest path to mining the treasures from whatever situation that you're going through.
Imagine that every difficult situation, challenging challenge or intense emotion is like a coin, and there are two sides to the coin. One of the sides is all the intensity of the emotion. The other side is the wisdom that arises from that experience. You may have heard me talk about this before in terms of like, let's say, I feel a tremendous sense of anger just course through me. If I can sit quietly and observe those sensations in my body, observe the speed of thoughts in my mind, observe everything that's arising, if I just keep observing, observing, observing, there will be a point when all of that intensity slows down and I come back to my natural state of being, my natural state of peacefulness. And in that moment, the insight or the wisdom, as a direct result of all of the energy that has been coursing through my energetic system, the wisdom component, or that other side of that coin, in that moment arises.
So it's sort of like you have an inner temper tantrum, you wait it out, you give yourself attention and time and space and presence until it calms down. And in the moment that it calms down, you get this flash of insight or - I think of it like when you're in a lake or an ocean, and this little bubble of air comes up from the sand or the dirt, and it bubbles up to the surface. So once you've reached your natural being state, the inside or the wisdom piece from that experience, it naturally bubbles up into your mind. That can happen rapidly in terms of, let's say you have a really strong emotional reaction to something. It can also be a long-term, like let's say there is a particular challenge you've been working with for several months or several years, and over time, as you're working with this particular situation repeatedly, you have these moments of insight and wisdom arise like an unfolding flower. Like you continuously move closer to the center and discover more aspects and complexity of the situation in a way that that type of understanding gives you an even greater sense of peace.
So here's what happens if we seek out an outer fairy godmother or an outer source of support. And I'm not saying I'm against that. I'm not saying like don't talk to your best friend or don't talk to your confidante when something is not going your way or when you have a really strong situation. I mean I've had times in my life where there's so much intensity of emotion coursing through me that I have to talk to someone, because I'm falling off a cliff or feel like I'm breaking in half. So there are those times, I recognize that.
There are other times that aren't so intense that we can fully handle ourselves, but because of this habitual pattern of reaching out to someone and talking about it, we actually magnify it. So we actually make it worse by talking to other people, because it's one thing if you have an experience, and it's in the mental realm; it's in the thought realm. You amplify that situation by bringing it into the speech or verbal realm. I think we know that inherently. We know that. If you really think about it, we know that. It's like if you have a little secret thought about something, the moment you speak it into existence, it gives it more power.
Well, and then the third is actions are doing. So we talked about body, speech, and mind. Like there's the mind level, then it amplifies it with the speech level, and then if you actually act out of that, it creates an even more powerful response.
So if I am driving on the road and somebody cuts me off or does something totally crazy and makes me angry, and I have like angry thought, that's one level. If I scream at them or like profanities or whatever, that's another expanded level - it's like giving that power. And then if I either do something crazy with my car, or like flip them off, or go somewhere and treat someone else badly because of my bad mood, that brings it even more powerful into a powerful negative ripple effect from mind to speech to bodily actions.
So the next time that you feel like reaching out to someone when you're in a challenging situation, a tense emotionality or something is just really irritating or bugging you, you can experiment with the situation and see if you can reach the other side of the coin more quickly by not bringing it out into the verbal realm and just keep … situation arises, you sit quietly. Notice how it makes you feel, where it feels, how in your body. Notice the speed of your thoughts until you reach your natural being state again, and then the insider wisdom arises after that. Because sometimes when we bring it out into the verbal realm, just in the same way that in the example of road rage, it gives it this whole extra layer or level of power and expands that ripple effect.
Sometimes when we talk to someone, we bring it out to the verbal realm, it prolongs the emotionality and it delays the insight or wisdom piece. Again, not saying that you can't reach out to your friend when you have something really intense, but if you are in situation where you can play with, "Okay, for this situation, I'm just going to see what it's like, like I'm feeling that impulse to go talk to somebody and instead of doing that, I'm just going to sit really quietly and provide that support for myself, and see what that feels like to keep something in the mental realm without bringing it … out into the verbal realm. That way it dissolves faster.