A New Earthly beauty

Eckhart Tolle-- revere him or disregard him, his 2005 publication, A New Earth, circulated around the world as fast as Bush's embarrassing political gaffes. Ok, yes he's one of Oprah's book club favs, a big what-ev there, she's dropped the bomb before with that A Million Little Pieces fiasco. But on my last visit to my favorite flower wholesaler, a sales rep handed me a copy of something he wrote, and I just stopped in my tracks-- I had to re-read because it was just that lovely. And now I share my little neglected beauty find with you.


The following is an excerpt from a chapter about the role flowers play in our lives and spirits. While I have not read this book in entirety, I found this passage to be not only profoundly beautiful, but incredibly relevant, offering an accurate depiction of our own collective awakening.

Long live the believers of the floral universe.


A New Earth, 58

Those delicate and fragrant beings we call flowers would come to play an essential part in the evolution of consciousness of another species.

Humans would increasingly be drawn to and fascinated by them. As the consciousness of human beings developed, the flowers were most likely the first thing they came to value which had no utilitarian purpose for them, that is to say, was not linked in some way to survival. They provided inspiration to countless artists, poets, and mystics. Jesus tells us to contemplate the flowers and learn from them how to live. The Buddha is said to have given a 'silent sermon' once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

Seeing beauty in a flower could awaken humans, however briefly, to the beauty that is an essential part of their own innermost being, their true nature. The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition. Without fully realizing it, flowers would become for us an expression in form that which is most high, most sacred, and ultimately formless within ourselves. Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerged, would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless. They not only had a scent that was delicate and pleasing to humans, but also brought a fragrance from the realm of spirit. Using the word 'enlightenment' in a wider sense than the conventionally accepted one, we could look upon flowers as the enlightenment of plants.



Photos provided by Le Web