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Cannonball Flower elixir was collected in Singapore, where the fruits hang from the trees like huge cannonballs. One of the most beautiful and exotic-looking tropical tree flowers, it has a unique ability to boost our capacity for a visceral experience of compassion. It magnifies our ability to invite others into a state of expansion. It enhances our ability to ‘be with’ and embrace our own intense and complex emotional states, as well as those of another. It dissolves uneasiness around vulnerability, intimacy and empathy. It eases emotional blockages and tension, magnifying acceptance, unabashed vulnerability and authenticity.
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:
Go one step further: as you take your elixir and set your intention, visualize everyone else in this program, all around the world, expanding our capacity to be vulnerable. By connecting with others in our group, we exponentially multiply the benefit + ripple effect!
Are there any parts of my life or relationships in which I disallow vulnerability? Where?
What emotions do I avoid embracing? Are there ones I fear letting move through me?
Am I more comfortable being with intense emotions in myself or in others? How can I channel the (comparative) ease I feel in one situation and apply it to the other?
How do I close myself off from the present moment + the vulnerability inherent there? What habits do I engage in that keep me from being open to myself and others?
Prefer to have a printed sheet with questions, practices + a calendar to track your month?
Download the Cannonball Flower Support Guide here
When you are in the presence of another’s vulnerability or suffering, notice how your physical body responds. Do you lean in, lean back, or stay neutral? Are you shoulders rounded + closed off or back and strong? No judgment here, just observation. Play with different postures and notice if it’s easier for you to hold space for others in certain ones.
Take your Cannonball flower card or elixir bottle. With relaxed eyes, gaze at the ‘teeth’ of the flower; notice what arises. It may be uncomfortable or non-engaging at first but see if you can sit with it + what you notice. Are there other parts of the flower that are easier or more difficult to look at?
Next time you’re having a ‘heart to heart’ with someone, visualize that it is actually your heart speaking to their heart.Observe how this affects the flow and content of your conversation.
One thing I notice when I work with Cannonball flower essence really regularly and intensively, is that my relationship to space, meaning not necessarily spaciousness around me physically - although that could play into it - my relationship with, let's call it pause, with the pause, pretty radically changes. I find myself almost craving a pause. And not only, noticing when I need time to assimilate something, integrate something, cleanse something out of my body, settle the energies of whatever is going from the day.
For example, I was traveling in New York, and the girls left to go back to Phoenix and I needed to go to Upstate New York, north of the city. Instead of just grabbing an Uber right away, I saw this bench and I sat down and I just sat. I just closed my eyes and just took a pause for myself. And it was really important for me to have that time for myself and also to create enough space or to create a pause long enough to allow whatever it was that was either bubbling up or moving through me to move through, and for me to gain insights from that.
And - it is not a pause that I would think about things, so it's literally a pause and then practicing the wakefulness, the awareness practice, similar to the instructions given this month for practicing with another person. It's very, very simple, mindfulness practices that we can do by ourselves as well. So rather than take a break and sit there and think about something, it's about making space, taking a pause to relax your body, to get in touch with how your body feels, to notice your inner landscape, to notice how you feel, to notice the breeze, to listen to the birds, to see the shimmering leaves, or to notice the now-ness and to feel whatever it is that's moving through you.
So those moments, when I'm using or working with Cannonball, become really crucial and much more magnified as well as something which is even more interesting, which is that there is an incredible magic when we allow ourselves a pause in all other parts of our lives, whether it is in a conversation with someone, whether it's while we're giving a presentation.
I was being interviewed for a podcast in Brooklyn, and the woman interviewing me, Ksenia, she asked me, "Do you have any last little bits of wisdom that you want to offer us?" Sort of like the last question of this hour-long interview, and so I gave up whatever was on my mind. Then she said, "And do you have any last, last, last, last little bits of wisdom that you want to share? Is there anything else that you want to share?" At first I just sort of freaked out mentally like – ah! - mind went blank. "I don't know what to say. Oh gosh. She's recording. Oh my gosh. Silence. Ah!" And then I just relaxed into that pause.
As Cannonball is such a great magnifier, it helps us recognize our ability to sink into a pause and become aware of our surroundings, and instantly it felt like suddenly I could hear the birds. You know, we're in Brooklyn and the birds are probably 20 feet away outside of her apartment window. I can hear the birds singing. It's like I can sense the buildings around her apartment building.
In that pause you can allow your awareness to expand. And it's in that pause that all kinds of magic can occur, whether it's a sensation, something that passes through. The two of us, words that came out of my mouth after that pause, I mean, literally the conversation just sort of did a 180 and I brought up something that I hadn't even expected to. So more and more I realize that ... I mean, the less thinking we do is absolutely the best for us, is the most powerful tool that we have. In our bodies and our minds we have the absolute capacity to realize all our full potential. There's nothing else that we need outside of ourselves to realize our full potential.
But it cannot be done through intellect. It cannot be done through the mind in terms of mental thinking about things. There's no like, "I'm going to raise my vibration" type thoughts that will lead us into an effortless awakening state. It's in the pause. It's in the spaciousness of taking that pause. It's in the pause that we have access to something that is so vast and so great. It's like a sky of wisdom or an ocean of insight. It's like instead of being a part of the universe, we become the universe and we suddenly have access to a timing and the perfect words to say, and a wisdom that's unique and fresh when we allow ourselves to be able to comfortable and rest in that pause.
So as you're working with the Cannonball Flower Elixir, if you get the desire to stop and take a pause - whether you're with other people or you're alone, you are in conversation - make silence your friend. And see what it feels like to play with the pause, sort of like a suspension in time, getting comfortable with that pause. And utilizing in those pauses the mindful or the wakeful instructions of how to really sink into that pause, without engaging in the mental thinking mind. If this seems pretty obscure and doesn't really make sense, feel free to email me {flowerevolution@lotuswei.com} and ask questions, and I can address those in further recordings. I hope this makes sense.
For this week I would say, see what it feels like to rest in the pause, a pause. See if you notice with your interactions with others or throughout the daily occurrences of life what it feels like to occasionally rest or sink into a pause.
I think on the last recording about the Cannonball Flower Elixir, I talked about an experience where I was being interviewed for a podcast and I paused for a really long time, allowing something completely, like radically transformative, sort of shifting to come into the conversation, and it surprised me. So I've been paying attention and just taking note when I'm in that sort of pause, spacious moment.
I had another experience, or a kind of similar insight last week, when a friend of mine was in the hospital and he went in for a surgery. It was a really important surgery - it had to be done. There was no other alternative, and there was a significant percentage of him not making it through the surgery, so it was a pretty big deal. And it was interesting, through the experience of just being present during the whole time leading up to his surgery, having conversations with him, and just being. Like, reminding myself, "There isn't anything you can say. There's nothing you have to say. There's nothing really that you can add to this conversation, verbally. That you add so much more with just your being-ness and your presence and just your listening state."
So I was really aware of that when I would go into the hospital to meet with him and sit with him. And especially - I was the person who went in the night before his surgery and spent two hours there. He had tons of energy. I think he was a little bit anxious, thinking about the possibilities and what could happen and how it was going to play out, so he was sort of flooded with energy. It strikes me as ... it's really hard to articulate this, but really just the power of just being for someone, being with, being there, being present, listening, and just like holding open a big spacious space, really, you know? For somebody to just be where they're at and feel what they're feeling. Also, it's like a space that's big enough that can allow for possibilities, and for vast amounts of love and compassion. That kind of space is just very transformative.
Then the actual day and time of the surgery, it was so interesting because I realized that ... Well, first of all, that morning I knew that at a certain point - as I had meetings at the office that were really important - I knew that at a certain point I would leave the office, and go to the hospital in hopes that I'd run into the surgeon and figure out what happened then. My teacher had said to me, "You'll just know. You'll just know when you need to leave the office and go to the hospital." What a nice feeling, if we could just trust that all of the time, that sense of like, you'll just know. You're so in tune that you'll just know.
I noticed that – you know when you get texts, you get this ‘ping’? - I had this sort of mental or energetic ping right as I was getting out the shower, like, "ping." So I went to check my phone and it was 8:00 a.m., on the dot, like right on the dot, and that was the time of his surgery. So I thought, "Man, we certainly are in tune, when we're aware, when we're making space for things." When we're being quiet, we can be very aware.
And I sat and did my meditation practice, and a few of other family members were also, I noticed they were also kind of being quiet. I realized that like, these types of situations, the last thing that you need is more thoughts, like more generation of thoughts. We don't even need positive thoughts. We don't need wishes and prayers and good things, you know?
It's more powerful if we can just be. And just be in a space of love and compassion and possibility and potential.All of that is inherent in the spaciousness of just being. Yeah, I mean, it certainly did flash through my mind - this flash through my mind like the surgery room and the surgeon who would be working on him, and his energetic resilience and capacity to withstand the operation and go into a mode of self-healing. So I dedicated the stillness that I was feeling, the stillness and the spaciousness, I dedicated that to the surgeon and to the situation and to my friend, but it was so nice not to feel like I had to do anything.
Even in a situation where there's really nothing I can do, as human beings we feel like we should wish something into or somehow energetically manipulate some sort of situation, and … I don't know. I just realized in that moment that none of that is more powerful than just resting in the nature of our own minds. The spaciousness of just being in the moment is far more powerful than any positive thinking we can engage in. Because there's like a deep sense of peace that comes with that, and since we are inseparable and since we can dedicate it to other people, those effects can be felt.
Later on, I was at the office. This was a really long surgery, it was hours, and so after I showered I went down to the office, and after I did my practice, and we were sitting in a meeting, and a certain point, "Ping." I just felt the ping, and just got up and left. I thought, "Wow. How amazing life is if we just were aware enough, even with things going on, even during meetings, even during conversations, even things where we have responsibilities, that we can still have this sort of background awareness level that can catch the balls as they're thrown to us," right?
So I got up and I left and I went to the hospital. It was interesting. I sat in the waiting room for a while, and watched the surgeons come out and give the good news to families. That was an unexpected experience - I hadn't known what that was like, here in this waiting room with lots of people, and the surgeons come out and talk to the families very openly. Everyone can hear, you know? "We got all the cancer removed." Or the next one was like, "Her bone fractured was already healing by the time we went in there." You know? So it's just really interesting to hear all the good news.
Then when I finally got shuffled in to see my friend for the few minutes that I could see him in intensive care, it was just this sense of incredible joy, obviously. He woke up. He realized he'd made it through and it was a very successful surgery, and so there was just like this blast of joy, and again, it's like there's nothing to say. There's nothing to do. You know, it's just being in that moment that is so incredibly powerful, and it allows for such a deep sense of intimacy, to be able to look someone in the eyes and you both know like, "You made it through. You survived. You are alive." All this stuff like, "Are you ready to live the rest of your life?" There is just such a power and energy. I don't really know how to describe it, when you can just be fully in the moment with someone.
As I continue the Cannonball Elixir and pay attention to these pauses and spaces of time, it's just really integrating so nicely into all the different experiences that are happening in my life. I'm more and more blown away by the fact that there really is so little that we have to do in life, that we have to orchestrate. The most profound moments of our lives, the most profound gifts that we can offer really, truly, just it comes down to our presence and being with someone and really listening deeply.
The question for you this week is:
What are the spaces like for you, what are the pause moments like for you?
How are you practicing in your conversations with other people that sinking into awareness of the moment and really deeply listening, allowing that space, not feeling like you have to say anything or do anything? And what does that feel like?
What does that state feel like to you, that powerful being-ness?
Coming soon!
