Letting Go – A Desert Wisdom Card

Letting Go - Desert Wisdom Card

Coral Aloe © 2013 Bo Mackison

Simply trust;
Do not the petals flutter down,
just like this?
~ Issa

The coral aloe is a common desert garden plant.

Its eye-catching blooms are striking in their bright orange radiance, with tips that glow iridescent blues, greens, and whites. But after the blossom is spent, the tubular flowers drop, often getting caught in the curvature of the succulent leaves.

In the letting go of petals, there is the promise of seeds and new life.

The letting go is necessary: the flowers are pollinated, they drop from the plant, the fruits grow, the seeds of the fruit are dispersed by animal, wind, or other means. New plants emerge from some of the seeds. The cycle of life continues.

We also face situations when “letting go” is a necessity.

We have no more control over situations which involve other people’s choices than flowers have control over their ability to continue clinging to the stem. But we do have control of our own choices to let go.

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation,
unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.”
~ Steve Maraboli in Life, the Truth, and Being Free

This is not about letting go of dreams, goals, practices that serve you well, and are life affirming.

This is about the release of those things which are life-depleting. Letting go of the past, of emotions or beliefs which no longer serve a positive purpose, makes room for living in the present and anticipating the future.

LETTING GO offers questions/reflections for journaling, art prompts, and calls to action:

  • What are you ready to let go of that no longer serves you? What can be released to serve your higher purpose in life? Consider your daily living activities — your sleep or eating habits, too much clutter (material clutter or clutter on your to do list), choices of leisure time activities. If you choose to make a change, celebrate the change. View it from the strength of positive thinking, not from the victim-hood of habit or self put down.
  • Do you need to let go of excuses that cripple your intentions for change? Excuses steal your power. Taking responsibility for your day-to-day choices breaks the excuse machine. Write a dialogue between a habit that no longer serves you —  the size 8 dress hanging in the closet, the chocolate cake at the bakery department, a dysfunctional relationship — and your desires to let go. Write out all of your excuses and answer them with new resolve. Write a good-bye letter. Tear the letter in pieces and throw it away or burn it in a fireplace, letting the message drift far away.
  • Distraction can prove a helpful diversion. Get out of your head and into your body. Dance, sing, garden. Ride a bike or swim. Physical exertion demands your full attention and leaves little room for obsessive worry.
  • Create a mandala. Mandala is a Sanskrit word meaning circle or completion. Mandalas are all around us — in our cells, nature, the earth, the Universe. Carl Jung, the founder of psychoanalysis, said of mandalas, “In the products of the unconscious we discover mandala symbols …and whenever we wish to express wholeness, we employ just such figures.”
    • Create a mandala by tracing a circle and then use art media of your choice — colored pencils, pens, markers, paints — to fill in the space as you focus on “letting go.”  The colors, shapes and representations used in the mandala’s creation express emotions and feelings.
    • When the mandala is complete, journal any reactions you experienced during its creation or your reactions to the mandala’s colors, lines, and figures.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for self-exploration and discovery, using her photography and the Sonoran Desert as a theme – its myths and stories, cultures and heritage, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

A Walk in a Desert Garden

Desert Garden Path

Desert Garden Path © 2013 Bo Mackison

The desert, when the sun comes up…I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the Earth began.”
~ Tom Hanks

A walk at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum was the place to see a profusion of desert flowers. The museum isn’t a “desert in a building” – it’s a botanical garden, zoo, and natural history museum. I visit several times a week and there is always something new to see or explore.

A few days ago I spent the day in the desert – I hiked in the Sonoran Desert at Saguaro National Park in the early morning, then came to the Desert Museum for several glasses of prickly pear tea and a walk through the blossoming gardens.

Penstemon

Penstemon © 2013 Bo Mackison

Penstomen is the snapdragon family’s desert representative. Its bright pink blossoms on four foot tall stems are easy to find — in gardens and along roadsides, too.

Orange Blossoms on Hedgehog Cactus

Orange Blossoms on Hedgehog Cactus © 2013 Bo Mackison

This is one of the first cactus to bloom in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson. This was the first cactus I saw bloom when I first visited the desert four years ago. Then, I was thrilled to see a showy orange flower at the end of each stubby cactus arm. The thrill has never diminished. I smile every time I see one of these beauties.

Aloe in Bloom

Aloe in Bloom © 2013 Bo Mackison

The aloe always put on a colorful show. I love how the colors blend from brilliant orange to the cooler greens, blues, and whites.

Evening Primrose

Evening Primrose © 2013 Bo Mackison

The fragrant tufted evening primrose has soft white blossoms that turn a light magenta as they age. The blossoms don’t last long, so it is typical to see buds, white blossoms and aged flowers on the same plant.

Spring Flowers

Desert Spring Flowers © 2013 Bo Mackison

Yellow desert marigolds, a yucca with a flower shoot just starting to grow, and a patch of pink penstemon combine for textures and color in the desert garden.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  She continues to discover beauty and inspiration while exploring the Sonoran Desert

Blooming Desert

Sonoran Desert, Saguaro National Park

Sonoran Desert, Saguaro National Park © 2013 Bo Mackison

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on the desert air. ~ Paul Hoffman

Beauty – A Desert Wisdom Card

Two Poppies

Mexican Poppies © 2013 Bo Mackison

 “Beauty nurtures the soul by serving the spirit.
Beauty takes you out of your cramped,
merely personal worries and sets you down in a field of eternity.”
~ Thomas Moore in Dark Nights of the Soul

In the desert, the appearance of the ephemeral wildflowers in a time of joyous observation.

These rugged flowers only bloom following a unique set of conditions — enough rain throughout early winter, warm enough temperatures to allow for germination and growth, no cold spells that might kill delicate seedlings. There are so many factors that lead to a brilliant display of desert wildflowers that a peak bloom happens only once or twice a decade.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. ~ Confucius

Nonetheless, a few wildflowers can always be found – in a rocky, dry wash, in the cooler higher elevations, near bushes and trees which afford the flowers enough protection. While a mountain slope clothed in swaying poppies is spectacular, so are a half-dozen plucky blossoms that found growing space in a rocky crevice. And perhaps a ragged flower clinging to the side of a cliff, tenacious and reaching towards the sunlight, is the most beautiful flower of them all.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

BEAUTY offers questions/reflections for journal, art prompts, and calls to action:

  • Desert wildflowers require specific conditions in order to come into blossoms of beauty. What are some of the conditions that might be necessary for your inner beauty to burst into blossom?
  • Although it is not necessary to search for a special place to find beauty, there are spaces and sites designed by man or formed by nature, which evoke deep feelings of appreciation. Spend some time strolling through a sculpture garden, viewing a scenic overlook on a stretch of familiar highway, or enjoying a backyard flower bed.
  • Take a few minutes to notice your response to beauty. Does it offer you calm, encouragement, comfort, inspiration, rejuvenation, grounding? Can you replicate those emotions by observing beauty in your world?
  • Georgia O’Keeffe was a prolific painter and most people are aware of her larger than life floral and still life paintings. Many of her most popular painting were of flowers, but she created many other paintings – skulls, desert landscapes, missions. She painted abstracts, used bright colors, focused on a small part of the whole. Her paintings are infused with her spirit, they are not a duplicate of what she saw. She broke many rules of the art world she lived in, but had the fearlessness and independence to paint in her unique style. Examine a website or book of O’Keeffe’s paintings. Then apply her painting philosophy to any art medium you wish to explore. Dare. Be different. Make up your own rules. How does this freedom affect your attitude towards art in general, your process, your end product?
  • Make  space in your life for the appreciation of beauty. Does a cluttered environment obstruct a basket of flowers or the gleaming hardwood floors in your home? Does a cluttered schedule take precedence over an impromptu stop to listen to the early morning cacophony of birdsong or watch clouds float across the sky?

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Bo is creating a deck of Desert Wisdom Cards for self-exploration and discovery using her photography and the Sonoran Desert theme – its myths and stories, cultures and history, and the desert’s remarkable natural beauty and resources.

Blooming Poppies

Mexican Poppies

Mexican Poppies © 2013 Bo Mackison

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understandings and our hearts. ~ William Hazlett

In the seed.

Creation explosion,
Mystery  and heritage.

Sacred place; festive space.

Sensory sanctuary.
Rejuvenation.

In the garden.

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Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC.  Season of joy – poppies blooming in the Sonoran Desert.