Insight into Red Hibiscus from the Temple, a new Taiwan Flower Essence

Your questions to us frequently illuminate the purpose of Flower Essences in whole new ways.

For example, this week one of you was looking for a Flower Essence for a very specific situation. Because of your question and the Angels’ answer, we learned a whole lot more about one of the new Taiwan Flower Essences.

The specific request was for a Flower Essence for when someone had difficulty processing feedback from others. This person wanted an Essence to help her stay open to feedback, especially when this feedback indicated that she had hurt someone’s feelings. She felt she shut down when confronted by feedback of this kind.

More specifically she said when she heard someone else was hurt by what she had said or done, her own reaction was a complete shut down of listening and empathy towards that person. This shutting down had painful consequences for her. She wanted an Essence to support her to stay open during any sharing of feelings and thoughts of all kinds in hopes this would lead to greater intimacy and a deeper connection to self and others. She thought her reaction might tie into early life experiences of verbal abuse, but she was not sure. She just knew her reactions set her adrift from hearing or sharing in other peoples’ realities.

The Angels zeroed in on an Essence from Taiwan, the Red Hibiscus from the Temple. This new Essence was their suggestion for this concern.

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This Red Hibiscus had bell shaped blossoms. These blossoms and the fact that Sarah Porter found them at a temple had called to mind 17th century poet Matsuo Basho’s poetic line, “The temple bell stops, but I still hear the sound coming from the flowers.”

Linking this line of poetry with the Essence was as far as we had gotten in examining this new Flower Essence.

When the Angels suggested this Flower Essence for this person, they explained and illuminated the Flower Essence for us in this way:

“This is a complex and nuanced Flower Essence with many deep strengths. Like its sisters in the Hibiscus family, it helps ease and release the damage done by early life experiences of verbal shaming and abuse.

Furthermore, it moves you towards the sacred territory of true communication by tenderly holding the damaged parts within you so you feel safe to open your hearts to genuine communication and feedback even when it is not easy to hear. This experience of being both safe as well as openhearted opens the way for deep healing within yourself as well as with whomever you are communicating.

The closed nature of the Flower petals indicates the tender containment of your suffering. The fact that the pistils and stamens hang below the Flower petals reflects the way the vibration of this Flower encourages you to be vulnerable and use both the inner wisdom and receptivity of the dangling female pistils and the accompanying cluster of ebullient expressive male stamens to actively listen with an open heart.

The Basho line speaks true of this Flower Essence as it helps you experience that when the sound of the exchange is over, what can continue to speak in your heart is the love shared.”

We have sent a bottle off to the woman who asked for a Flower Essence suggestion for her concern. We look forward to learning her experience with this Essence. It is this wonderful back and forth with you all that make this such a profound community of learning for all of us at the farm. We thank you!

April Notes

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Eleven degrees this morning with more snow on the ground than at any point all last winter. April Fool’s Day lingers for all of us in the northeast!

What else does April have in store for us?

One thing I hope will be on the docket for us is the launch of our online ordering system. Our delay boiled down to a search for one piece of paper. To implement the online payment system we had to find the ORIGINAL document in which we were assigned our employer identification number. Since we got this number three decades ago, finding this original document proved more complex than one might imagine. However we now have the document.

Speaking of ordering, we got a call from someone in our small town who gets a lot of our calls when people misdial Green Hope Farm’s phone number. Apparently folks calling us leave messages on her family’s answering machine frequently. She does NOT pass these messages on to us nor does she plan to. In addition, her family’s answering machine does NOT indicate who you have reached, and she does NOT plan to change her message to redirect people. If the machine message does not say THANK YOU FOR CALLING GREEN HOPE FARM right away, you have not reached Green Hope Farm! Please try again and dial 603-469-3662 My apologies about this state of affairs!

On a sweeter note, our greenhouse is full of plant babies. All these young friends gives us hope that this streak of cold and snow will pass and soon we will be back in the gardens preparing the beds and visiting with all our beloved Flower friends, old and new.