Higher Chakra's and Behold the Silence

It almost goes without saying, that orchids are full of surprises. Behold the Silence was certainly one such instance.

I had bought 5 little pots of Comparetia macroplectron sometime in the year before Behold the Silence was made. This is a small genus from South America, living fairly high up in the cloud forests. I am pretty sure that I bought the plants from a superb commercial grower near Chichester. (He mostly supplied Phalaenopsis in large quantities to big customers, in order to pay the bills. But he was one of Britains leading orchid experts, and he could always be counted on to have some interesting genera on hand. I was told by other orchid growers that by rights he should have been in charge of the orchid collection at Kew Gardens.) I loved my occasional visits to his large commercial greenhouses. I recall that he mentioned that very few growers seemed to be able to keep Comparetia plants alive. He was right: they are difficult to keep happy. I think I have only ever succeeded in keeping any comparetia alive for 3 or 4 years. Some orchids are more forgiving. Others like comparetia are pretty narrow in terms of what conditions they will tolerate. If you can mimic the temperatures and humidity of their native cloud forests, then you can do well with them, I should imagine. 

Heather and I had been keeping an eye out for another orchid that was in the greenhouse, with a bud that had been slowly developing. Finally the day arrived when we knew the bloom would be open, so we went to the greenhouse expecting to bring that orchid back to the essence-making room. At that time, we had a second greenhouse about one mile away from the Living Tree, at our sawmill property. We drove up there, and when we entered the greenhouse and approached the orchid, we were both struck by its lack of any “voice”. It was like it was asleep, and we were very surprised to find that we felt no impulse to make an essence with it. Instead, the 5 wee pots of Comparetia macroplectron which had just come into bloom seemed to call us. And one specimen in particular seemed just right and ripe for essence-making. And so we brought that wee plant with its gorgeous blooms down to the Living Tree.

I should mention, I had noticed the comparetia plants developing their buds, and then their blooms beginning to open. At the not-quite open stage the blooms were not very attractive. It is a bit like the story of the Ugly Duckling which is really a swan and not a duck. That is to say, the sheer beauty of the comparetia in full bloom seemed quite a contrast with it when its blooms were just beginning to unfold from the buds. Suddenly we were in the presence of real, potent beauty.

Beyond that, there was nothing remarkable in the actual making of the essence. But Peter Tadd came by on one of his periodic visits in the week that followed, and the comparetia was still in bloom, and we had kept it down at the Living Tree after the essence-making. He remarked that this orchid had a devic entity, a little being, sitting on one of the blooms in the middle of the bloom spike. He said that very likely this was why we had selected that one out of the 5 plants, that the other 4 very likely did not have a devic entity attached to them. 

Peter then provided us with one of his informal lessons on the topic of the “higher chakras”. 

"This essence provides a pathway to enter into the profound silence of universal being and invites us into a new relationship with the future. As the future becomes more and more present in the depth of our inner silence, the past goes back into itself so that we no longer hold the past in the present.” Ok, so this is what Peter described, but I found it rather confusing. I had to discuss this with him at some length. It was like he gave us poetry, and I needed prose to understand what the poetry meant.

In prose terms, Peter explained that this essence brings one’s awareness / consciousness up into the 12th chakra. In that space, it is like one is looking down on a landscape of a meandering river. If you are actually in the river, then the water all flows downstream. It is all going in one direction. But from high above one can see the path of the river, going here and there. One’s perspective is not in the one direction. And that river is a metaphor for Time.

From the perspective of the 12th chakra, Time is not rigidly moving only in one direction. It is more ‘plastic’, or fluid. He said that this essence can help us to invite the future to heal our past. 

I expect that you must know of some Buddhist teaching of a similar nature..?

So the beauty and silence of this orchid and its essence is profound. To invite its music to heal our soul at a very deep level, we simply need to meditate with it. A half hour is a good length of time for such a meditation. Try this each day for a week if possible, or else once a week over a month or so. This is not a dramatic essence. It is subtle. But your students will understand that the most profound energies are subtle, and like water, can reshape our inner landscape.

All the very best,

Don