The Daffodil Principle

I apologise for the length of this piece and I thank Merlin' Diary for sending it to me. It is worth a read if you have five minutes.

The Daffodil Principle

If you don't know this story, then please enjoy it. It seems like an appropriate time of the year to be reminding ourselves of the wisdom it contains.
Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, "Mother, you must come to see the daffodils before they are over." I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead.
"I will come next Tuesday", I promised a little reluctantly on her third call.
Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and reluctantly I drove there.

When I finally walked into Carolyn's house I was welcomed by the joyful sounds of happy children.
I delightedly hugged and greeted my grandchildren. "Forget the daffodils, Carolyn!
The road is invisible in these clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and these children that I want to see badly enough to drive another inch!"
My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this all the time, Mother."
"Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears, and then I'm heading for home!"
I assured her.
"But first we're going to see the daffodils. It's just a few blocks," Carolyn said. "I'll drive.
I'm used to this." "Carolyn," I said sternly,
"Please turn around."
"It's all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a small church.
On the far side of the church, I saw a hand lettered sign with an arrow that read,
" Daffodil Garden ."
We got out of the car, each took a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path.
Then, as we turned a corner, I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight.
It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it over the mountain and its surrounding slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling patterns, great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, creamy white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, and saffron and butter yellow. Each different coloured variety was planted in large groups so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers.

"Who did this?" I asked Carolyn.
"Just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That's her home."
Carolyn pointed to a well-kept small A-frame house, modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory.
We walked up to the house. On the patio, we saw a poster.
"Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking", was the headline.
The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read.
The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain."
The third answer was, "Began in 1958."
For me, that moment was a life-changing experience.
I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, almost fifty years before, had begun, one bulb at a time, to bring her vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountaintop.
Planting one bulb at a time, year after year, this unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived.

One day at a time, she had created something of extraordinary magnificence, beauty, and inspiration. The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles of celebration.
That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires one step at a time, often just one baby step at a time and learning to love the doing, learning to use the accumulation of time.
When we multiply tiny pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish magnificent things.
We can change almost anything.
"It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn.
"What might I have accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years?
Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"
My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way.
"Start tomorrow," she said.
She was right.
It's so pointless to think of the lost hours of yesterdays.
The way to make learning, a lesson of celebration instead of a cause for regret is only to ask,
"How can I put this to use today?"

Use the Daffodil Principle.
Stop waiting..... Until your car or home is paid off Until you get a new car or home Until your kids leave the house Until you go back to school Until you finish school Until you clean the house Until you organize the garage Until you clean off your desk Until you lose 10 lbs. Until you gain 10 lbs. Until you get married Until you get a divorce Until you have kids Until the kids go to school Until you retire Until summer Until spring Until winter Until fall Until you die...

Why would you be afraid to look within, fearful of what you think is in there? Does not the love of The Universe overcome all that we would choose to perceive as flawed? Fear associated with sin the ego would see as entirely appropriate and smiles upon you in approval. The ego is not alone. Its rule is tempered by its unknown enemy, which it cannot see. What it cannot see, it fears. The ego tells you not to look within, it tells you if you do you will see the “sins” for which you must answer to the Universe, to your God, and be struck blind. This you choose to believe! Your faith in a fear that you can neither see nor understand is the true source of fear for you. This presents to those who are willing to "see", a double negative! What if you looked within and saw no negatives? What if you looked within and saw nothing upon which the ego has cast its control? What if you saw only the love over which there is no control, because love “Is”? What if you looked upon the illusion you have created of a life controlled by fear and choose in that instant to awaken from the dream you have been living and see yourself as beyond the control of fear and of the ego? Is this not the moment of your own resurrection? This week my friend, I wish for you a life beyond control by fear of the unknown, instead to be replaced by life filled with the love of the known.

Frantic, loud and strong those without light appear and yet they neither know nor understand their enemy, uniting only in their hatred of something they do not know. If their unity were true then hatred would have no place in their heart for where love is, hatred hath no place and without unity there can be no strength. The army of the powerless would be set aside by the strength of unity. The strength of unity is bound only by the bands of love. May I wish you a week of love and of the joy of unity my friend.

Would you not see that your human misery comes only from the strange belief that you are powerless? Being helpless is the price to be paid to the ego, it's one demand is that you believe in it. Enormity has no appeal except to those who see themselves as small and only those who see themselves as insignificant and powerless see attraction there. No one believes the Universe is powerless so it must be that those who see themselves as powerless see not that they are part of the Universe and replace their oneness with fear and hatred. Fear feeds upon hatred and hatred feeds upon fear yet often the powerless have no understanding of what they hate, understanding only that they hate. Surely there can be no faith in the ego if you can understand that there is no enemy and it is but the ego which makes you powerless? The Universe is one, without compare it can neither be great nor small, only one. You are one with your brother, and with your brother's brother and in that oneness only love can exist. Where there is only love, fear, hatred and the ego have no place. For you my brother I feel only love, and this week may you feel only the oneness of the Universe to the core of your existence.

Atonement is there for us all as it is the easiest way to see past the belief that any experience in this life is for you alone as each experience is shared with your brother. To forgive another is to overlook their perceived transgression. Then look beyond that transgression and do not let it form part of your perception. You will only believe what you perceive as being real. Look only upon what your brother truly is and thereby you may truly come to know yourself. See what he is not and you cannot perceive what you are because you seem him falsely. Remember always that if your reality is based upon a shared experience then your perception of your brother creates your reality too. May I wish you a week of peace and true self love my friend.

We live our lives proclaiming our intentions to bring truth over illusion, reality over fantasy, but in so doing in our efforts to find that truth, have we not reverted from waking to dreaming and on and on into a deeper sleep? Has not each dream we have experienced led to make the darkness deeper. We started our journey in innocence but in that innocence we shared the greatest of truths, love, unencumbered by the fear of experience. No belief or doctrine had yet clouded that truth. There is love and there is fear, fear is the absence of love and as we had yet to experience an absence of love, we knew no fear. We came in search of knowledge, not fear and yet we spend our life using that knowledge to create fear and live the paradox we have striven to avoid. Our world is light and yet we apparently chose to seek darkness in the journey we make. Our true knowledge, our truth, is love, we came with that hard-wired in to our soul, make it our life mission to never lose sight of the truth we came with. I wish for you that 2013 be a year filled with a truthful love for the world we live in.

Look upon all the things that are made for you to hang upon your body, or to cover it or for your body to use. Look at all the useless things which we make for the eyes to observe. Think of all the many things made for the pleasure of the physical and understand that they are largely used to hide or make seem lovely only what you see as inadequate. Would you really use that which you see as inadequate to draw toward you those you love, or would like to understand an unspoken and as yet unexperienced love? Understand that you offer to the world a crown of thorns, not recognising you for what you really are and trying to justify your perception of your own worth by the acceptance of yourself by others. Value yourself not by what you would daily ask the world to believe is you, but by what you would come to know if you would but see past that illusion and see the miracle which is you. Remember my friend, you are beautiful. I wish for you, this week and every week, that you can see that miracle for yourself.