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Welcome
Feature from West Hollywood, California
Dreams of Flowering
Why the Thymus?
Book Recommendations
Flowering in the News?
Who’s Who in Flowering
The Child's Garden
Poetry

From the Editors

This month we are featuring Flowering, number 11 of the Containing Principles (numbered 10-19).  Flowering is also called “Unfolding” or “Evolving,” for it is the principle of evolution, particularly of life forms on this planet. However, it is not so much about evolution in the causative sense (factors acting upon an organism to change it) as about emerging potential.  This is evolution in the spiritual sense: the potential of the future is constantly felt, pulling organic forms toward greater richness and complexity of experience.  Richness is indeed the characteristic of the “flowering” kindom, with its ever-awesome colors, shapes, and sizes. If you are contracted with Flowering, you are sensitive to the potential just waiting to burst forth in any circumstance. --Ed.

Thanks to Cammie Doty, Carol Bucklew, Peggy Hays, and Connie Kaplan for their help on this issue of our newsletter!

Report from West Hollywood, California

This month's principle is Flowering. Here is a teaching from one of our dream sisters:

One of our dreamers shared this in a recent communication:
“I read your email mentioning Flowering on Monday morning, and that very afternoon one of the dreamers in my circle had the following dream snippet:

In the center I saw a potted plant/flower, and I had the sense I was to stay focused on the growing plant in the center.

The next day, Tuesday, on the front page of the Conway newspaper was a picture of a hanging basket of flowers with little flowers growing up through cracks in the sidewalk, along with a brief article entitled ‘New Life’ describing how these flowers in the center of town were branching out into new life.  It all said something to me about how the principle of Flowering is impelling all of us to experience higher states of consciousness and evolving us into new life. We're reminded in so many different ways.”

Yes, we are re-minded. The principle of Flowering brings us back to true memory and mindfulness.

For the past several years, my family and I have watched artichokes flower in our front yard in the late spring.  Most people never see an artichoke plant at the flowering stage, because we cook and eat the buds.  Even if you wanted to see the flowers, you might decide not to plant it because they’re not the most attractive plants.  (The reason we still have one is that they’re very difficult to root out; I’ve tried!)  But if you can put up with the gangly plant, the flowers are truly amazing. You probably know the feathery white fibers in the heart of the artichoke (which feel “choking” if you accidentally get them in your mouth). When the artichoke-bud blooms, those fibers widen and open, and the innermost ones turn a brilliant purple, bursting forth into a large flower, often 4-6 inches across. 

People walk by and shake their head in amazement during the couple of weeks the plant is flowering.  This is a metaphor for the principle of Flowering, a call to pay attention, to wake up.  Like the flowers growing through sidewalk cracks, it’s saying, “Remember! New life! New potential!”

Personally, my Ascendant is in Flowering, so for me the principle usually means waking up to something in my social interface with the world.  While temperamentally I tend to be thoughtful and reserved, I experience the 'wakeup' when I sense a person’s emerging curiosity about, or struggle with, their own potential. That’s probably why I love teaching. And that’s probably one reason I love the Soul Contract work. Our soul contracts, as understood by Connie Kaplan in The Invisible Garment, are themselves a call to the flowering of potential.  The soul is calling us to move forward, to develop our inherent hidden qualities and bring them to consciousness. 

This is what it means to “flower,” to unfold the hidden in ourselves, just as a spectacular blossom emerges from its bud.


--Tamar Frankiel

Dreams of Flowering

We can learn about the principles by examining our dreams. Here are three dreams of Service:

I’m approaching my car, parked on the street – it’s facing the wrong way relative to street traffic. A paunchy man sits on a bench next to the car. I have to change clothes so I go in front of the car, crouch down & take off my clothes completely. Then I put on a loose flowery dress. I feel he’s watching but I don’t have a choice.  Then I wonder, “Was he able to get into my car?”  As I stand up, he hands me the keys. It seems I left the window open a few inches and he reached in and took them.  Well, at least he gave them back—thanks for that!  The car is stuffed with belongings and I still have to fit my bike in the trunk. I go around the back and open it, try to fit it in.

At this point the dreamer seems to be carrying a load of personal possessions in her karmic journey. She also has a lightweight vehicle in the trunk (which often represents past lives).  She receives the key to the car only after she has put on her Flowering garment, a garment of ease (a loose dress). Flowering here seems to be pointing to a way of being in the midst of memories and attachments, perhaps a signal they are about to be loosened, or a light and easy way to manage the difficulties of human incarnation.

I was walking my dog, Ginger. She was off leash, and bouncing along happily in her Ginger way. I noticed we were passing Grannie's house. I decided to go in. I couldn't get Ginger's attention, so I just decided to go in anyway and trust that she'd follow me. 

The front yard was filled with beautiful native plants. The front room was filled with interesting furniture and art. The kitchen was completely modern and beautiful. The back yard was flooded with beautiful flowers - all her roses in full bloom, surrounded with tons of other flowers. It was like a wonderland. I was amazed at how her garden continued to bloom, even though she's been dead thirty-seven years. I knew that the flowers and beautiful plants were for me. The beauty of the living room and kitchen were also for me, but they were a refuge for me to come to whenever I wanted, like a spiritual spa. The flowers, however, I could take with me.  

I picked some of the flowers, and when my arms were full, I started toward my car. I went out the back gate. Ginger was lying in the road beside the house. She was devastated - she thought I'd abandoned her. I put down the flowers and called her name and held out my arms. She picked up her head, and when she saw me she burst into joy. She ran toward me, leaped into my arms, and as I hugged her I could hear her sobbing.

The dreamer walked into a world full of gifts from the “other side”:  on the one hand, a refuge or home for the soul; on the other, something “I could take with me” back into the ordinary world.  That’s what Flowering is: a gift of effusive beauty and growth that really is otherworldly, but you can actually enjoy it in this world.  A person who can live in that opening toward all potential is truly in the world but not of it.  At the same time, the dreamer is reminded of what does hold us in the world, in this case her beloved Ginger.

It is the first day of school in a place of higher education.. I’m trying to locate room #11A in a large, open building, daylight and bright. I’m late and the numbers aren’t in order. Finally I find it downstairs, packed with students and part of a 4-room set. A central support post divides the rooms. The teacher is freshly out of college herself while the students are of various ages. The subject is English 1-A. The teacher draws symbols over certain letters in words, using a caret ( ^) and a convex crescent. I look around the room at all the students and marvel at the teacher’s ability to go with the flow and handle this large a class. In spite of its size, and small room, there is a feeling of calmness, and chaos is absent. 

Then I’m in a dark place, perhaps underground, lit only with candles or torches, like a ceremonial chamber. A younger man in his late 20s is the focal point on a stage. I get a sense of others around me but see no one. The man opens a ceremonial robe made of a highly decorated fabric with vertical lines in red, orange and yellow on a dark background. He is in the process of removing the vertical “strings” in the robe, like removing wax from batik fabric. He teaches the importance of this process because it is about removing the attachments of others. I walk up to him as I’m curious and want to get a better look. The robe has become a common short-sleeve shirt of a burnt orange color, and there are no longer any “strings” attached.

The number 11 clues us into the presence of Flowering in this dream sequence. Above ground, in the light, the flow seems easy, even though the class is large. One only needs to learn to place the symbols, perhaps to understand the code. This is like understanding evolution from a scientific perspective like unraveling DNA. Underground, however, a different process was necessary. One's garment needs to be purified from attachments. This is the removal of the strings that lie like wax on fabric - apparently decorative, but perhaps used for egotistical purposes because the garment has to be reduced to a "common" shirt.

The principle of Flowering reveals two aspects in this dream, working with waking consciousness on a collective level - part of the human social enterprise - and working with deeper levels more privately, to learn how to remove one's own attachments.

To find Flowering in your dreams, look for flowers or flowery decor, references to the area of the thymus, the colors blue or tanzanite, or the number 11.

Why the Thymus?

The thymus gland sits behind the sternum approximately where it meets the clavicle. It regulates the production of T-cells, crucial to the development of the immune system. It grows with the child until adolescence, then, for reasons unknown to medical science, it begins to atrophy and is eventually replaced with fat.. The cause seems to be the multiplying of sex hormones, since in cases of castration the thymus does not atrophy.

The metaphor of the thymus, which helps us understand Flowering, is that different things emerge at different stages of life.  Some times are for building boundaries; other times are for high energy; still others for relationships and openness.  Moreover, flowering or evolving requires generating a stable, self-protected organism, as with the natural defenses of the immune system. But, with maturity, we welcome openness and change.

Book Recommendations

Anatomy of a Rose: The Secret Life of Flowers by Sharman Apt Russell
“The earliest fossil flowers date to some 120 million years ago, long after the arrival of other forms of plant life (and, for that matter, insects). Their arrival heralded a new way for plants to go forth and multiply that was so successful that countless animal and insect species now depend on flowers for food, and flowering plants have spread across the face of the earth.” This book introduces us to the great history of flowers and shows us how essential they are to life as we know it. Russell distills current thinking about flowers, including the “7th great extinction” in which we are participating.

The Hundredth Monkey by Ken Keyes, Jr.
If you don't know the story of the 100th monkey, this book is a must-read, about scientific experiments that became legendary:  A troop of monkeys, on an island near Japan, were observed to wash their potatoes in the ocean before they ate them.  The habit had started with one monkey, Imo, a female adolescent, who aggressively taught her friends, who taught their mothers and sons.  (Adult males were highly resistant to learning something new.)  Over about 10 years it became a cultural norm.  Even more interesting is that when the behavior "crystallized" in the one troop, it appeared to jump the ocean and monkeys on nearby islands began washing their potatoes.

This story has become popular in the New Age as an explanation of how Rupert Sheldrake's morphic fields of influence work.  While Ken Keyes's story is 'fable-ized,' it inspires some deeper thinking about how critical mass does influence evolution.  An important conclusion is this:  When only a few people have "control" of an idea, it remains in their purview.  However, when enough people are exposed to the idea, it becomes a part of the cultural reservoir of information.  It requires not just "thinking good thoughts" but aggressive action (teaching) to embed an idea into the larger community.  Perhaps this is how flowering/unfolding/evolution takes place in the human realm.

----Connie Kaplan

Flowering in the News

Flowering brings us to the subjects of evolution on the one hand, and the immune system on the other.  The immune system actually allows the richness of evolution to occur, because it protects individuation, by guarding the unique patterns of any organism from unwanted biological invasion. Without defenses, every cell would eventually be dissolved back into a huge cosmic soup.

• Headline: The World’s Fastest Evolving Animal
  Times of India, March 25, 2008:  “The tuatara is an ecological oddity. While it resembles a lizard, it's equally related to both lizards and snakes....at a DNA level, (it is) evolving faster than any other animal yet studied."  This is contrary to expectations for a slow-moving, slow-growing animal, supporting a hypothesis that the rate of molecular evolution, was uncoupled from the rate of morphological evolution.
  http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/sciencetech/the-worlds-fastest-evolving-animal/962

• Headline: Therapy Stimulates Recovery of the Thymus Gland
  Medical News Today, February 22, 2008.  “Although it has been long assumed that the thymus cannot be reactivated in humans, research published in the March issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, shows that the thymus can be stimulated to produce more T-cells. This study is the first to show that pharmacologic therapies can be used to enhance human thymic function.” Reactivating the thymus, which produces T-cells, may help people with HIV recover some of their immune system functioning.

6. Who's Who in Flowering

Famous people whose Sun principle is Flowering are listed below. From what you have learned about the principle, can you see it at work in the accomplishments of their lives?

• Laura Bush, 1946-
  First Lady as wife of George W. Bush, she was known in her own right for her campaigns promoting books, reading, and the education of children.

• Martha Stewart, 1941-
  An outstanding businesswoman of the late 20th century, named the third most powerful woman in America by Ladies Home Journal in 2001. After spending time in prison due to conviction for lying about a stock trade, she made a comeback beginning in 2005.

• Mikhail Gorbachev, 1931-
  Prime minister of the former USSR from 1885 to , he presided over reforms known as glasnost (opening up) and perestroika (restructuring) which led to the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990.
  
  
• Allen Ginsberg, 1926-1997
  American poet whose famous poem, Howl, celebrated the “Beat Generation.” He represented iconoclasm, helped Americans to face discussion of taboo subjects, and was a popularizer of Buddhism and Hinduism.
  
  
• Leon Uris, 1924-2003
  Author of  well researched historical fiction, best known for the worldwide best-seller Exodus (1958), as well as for Mila 18, Trinity, and The Haj.
  
  
• Desi Arnaz, 1917-1986
  Cuban-American producer and star of I Love Lucy, he innovated in methods of filming television shows, and broke through taboos of his time – for example, insisting that Lucy be filmed while pregnant.
  
  
• Bing Crosby, 1903-1977
  One of the first multi-media stars, in 1948 acclaimed as “the most admired man alive,” he was not only a truly talented singer, known for making singing look easy, but also one of the most popular actors of all time.
  
  
• Franz Kafka, 1883-1924
  Czech Jewish writer of unique fiction in the German language; his famous stories The Trial, The Metamorphosis, and The Castle portray tormented people in a nightmarish, bureaucratic world. One of the 20th century’s most influential writers, he rarely finished a novel.
  
  
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1881-1955
  Jesuit priest, paleontologist and geologist, author of The Phenomenon of Man which describes an unfolding cosmos.  He conceived the idea of the Omega Point. Opposed by the church hierarchy during his lifetime, Pope John XXIII rehabilitated his status and his work has become important in the Catholic Church’s teachings on evolution.
  
  
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1882-1945
  As the 32nd President and the only one elected 4 times, “FDR” is famous for the New Deal programs which helped the unemployed poor and aided the nation to recover from the Depression.  Many of his banking and economic reforms are still in place today.
  
  
• Louis Sullivan, 1856-1924
  "Father of modernism" in architecture, known for coining the phrase “form ever follows function”; but his work often included decorative motifs and colors. Considered by many to be the creator of the skyscraper, he was also mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright.
  
  
• Alois Alzheimer, 1864-1915
  German psychiatrist who first identified “presenile dementia” in a 51-year-old patient, a condition later termed “Alzheimer’s disease.”
  
  
• Hans Christian Andersen, 1805-1875
  Danish author of children’s stories and famous fairy tales, such as “The Emperor’s New Clothes” and “The Ugly Duckling,” and “The Little Mermaid.”
  

7. The Child's Garden

The spiritual parenting of our children – through studying their principles – teaches us as well as them.  We at Generosity Incorporated believe that bringing this work to the next generation can be one of the most powerful forces to heal humanity.  Here’s an example of learning from our children:

My daughter recently graduated from high school.  Her Neptune principle is in Flowering, which means that her connection to the principle of Flowering comes from an energy running through the collective consciousness of her time.  Periodically throughout 1989 and 1990, when she and her cohorts were born, Neptune was moving back and forth through the principle of Flowering, as well as Intelligence and Creativity, all of which have to do with establishing new forms and information in the human realms. The young people born in those years are particularly sensitive to the possibility of bringing forth novelty and organizing it in order to enrich human experience.

I hadn’t given this any thought when I showed up at the graduation, expecting the usual run of predictable speeches.  Much to my surprise, the school had decided to let the girls (it’s an all-girls school) volunteer to speak, rather than being required to speak because they had won the ‘right’ to do so.  They were, of course, speaking words of thanks and appreciation to their teachers and fellow students. But in addition to the standard thank-yous, almost all the speeches mentioned the word “potential.”  Maybe that’s a regular graduation theme too, but in this group the emphasis was on potential that had developed in their lives from having worked together, rather than honoring individualistic achievements. I remembered, as I listened, that many teachers had commented on an unusual sense of togetherness in this class. They were less competitive, more harmonious, not so attached to their cliques.  They complained their share, but rarely caused trouble. They seemed surprisingly reasonable for adolescents. As they moved through the grades together, teachers looked forward to when they would get this pleasant group.

I wondered, on reflection, if the Neptune influences of these young people’s soul contracts might be helping them create more integration and balance as a social group. Together, they could allow the energy of Flowering, as well as other Containing principles, to run through their group efforts, enabling them to achieve the satisfaction that comes from manifesting their collective potential. 

--Tamar Frankiel

8. Poetry

From Dome of a Many Colored Glass, :

Behind a Wall
by Amy Lowell

I own a solace shut within my heart,
 A garden full of many a quaint delight
 And warm with drowsy, poppied sunshine; bright,
Flaming with lilies out of whose cups dart
    Shining things
    With powdered wings.

Here terrace sinks to terrace, arbors close
 The ends of dreaming paths; a wanton wind
 Jostles the half-ripe pears, and then, unkind,
Tumbles a-slumber in a pillar rose,
    With content
    Grown indolent.

By night my garden is o'erhung with gems
 Fixed in an onyx setting.  Fireflies
 Flicker their lanterns in my dazzled eyes.
In serried rows I guess the straight, stiff stems
    Of hollyhocks
    Against the rocks.

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