{"id":1058,"date":"2022-04-03T18:59:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-03T18:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/?p=1058"},"modified":"2023-04-15T20:28:34","modified_gmt":"2023-04-15T20:28:34","slug":"impatiens-impatience-and-the-mystery-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/flower-essences\/impatiens-impatience-and-the-mystery-of-time\/impatiens-impatience-and-the-mystery-of-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Impatiens, Impatience and the Mystery of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been using flower essences since 1985.\u00a0 \u00a0In 2003-2004, I completed the certification process with the Flower Essence Society.\u00a0 Yet I had been feeling the need \u00a0\u2018to drink from the source\u2019 again to receive fresh inspiration,\u00a0 so\u00a0 I decided\u00a0 in 2019\u00a0 to participate in the Professional Course at Terra Flora.\u00a0\"IMG_2541\"<\/p>\n

\"20190701_123033\"<\/p>\n

One day during that course I asked Patricia about a problem I had been experiencing in regards to which\u00a0 I felt that\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t able to get to the root.<\/p>\n

I had always felt and observed a general hastiness in my movements. It seemed to permeate everything I did. The way I experienced it was as if I were unable to direct my movements from\u00a0 a centre that was in charge, and to keep everything in \u00a0perspective and overview. I always felt as if I were drawn, pulled into the particular components of my activities, unable to coordinate from this place of overview that I was searching for but which kept eluding me. It was like I was pulled in haste to the cutting board when preparing a meal, pulled to the pen in the bottom of my purse, pulled to get the item in the drawer, hastily rushing forward into the activity, rather than seeing the complete activity from a centre, and taking care of the the various components from this centre.<\/p>\n

For example when preparing a meal, I would find it hard to think of what I needed (overview!), assemble all the tools and ingredients, and then start working. Instead, rush pulled me to the carrots first, the cutting board\u00a0 later. \u00a0It meant also that I was often going to the next part of the activity, having completed only 80% of the previous one. \u00a0I had tried many essences\u00a0 to remedy this \u2018feature\u2019, which seemed to harbor components of \u00a0hastiness, scatteredness, greediness, lack of will power to bring part of an action to a finish, lack of \u00a0overview and control, plus something else I couldn\u2019t define. There was something that just eluded me. I didn\u2019t know what it was or where it came from.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, I asked Patricia! She spontaneously thought of Impatiens<\/strong>, but wanted to take some time and intuit it more deeply.\u00a0 The next day she confirmed her choice.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Impatiens<\/strong>? That sounded too simple.\u00a0 I had certainly used Impatiens in the years when I first encountered the Bach Flower essences in 1985.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t consider myself impatient<\/em>, I considered myself hasty.<\/em> I have gone through long, drawn-out illnesses in my life, other longstanding difficulties, and while the years seemed long and I dearly wanted things to come to a solution, I didn\u2019t experience impatience as my major problem. Also, while I tend to speak fast (Cosmos\u00a0 essence didn\u2019t really help with that), I do think slowly. When I see clients, \u00a0I take time listening to them, and the big picture emerges.\u00a0 There I am able to reach the much coveted overview.<\/p>\n

When driving, I might get impatient with the drivers in front of me\u00a0 – \u2018Why doesn\u2019t this guy just move!\u2019 –\u00a0 or I \u00a0might not. It was as if I had a choice. \u00a0I could let the impatience take over or just put it to rest.\u00a0Another reason why I didn\u2019t consider impatience to be my problem or Impatiens<\/strong> to be the remedy.<\/p>\n

In any case, after starting to use Canyon Dudleya\u00a0http:\/\/www.fesflowers.com\/canyon-dudleya-balancing-fire-and-water-elements-finding-joy-simplicity<\/a><\/strong> for the first time during that course – as I understood from Patricia\u2019s description during class that it had more to offer to than what I had gleaned from the Repertory – and noticing a clear effect on my excitableness, \u00a0I decided to add Impatiens<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the room at Terra Flora where participants could go and prepare essence combinations, I happened to see the FES Impatiens<\/strong>. It was the last bottle at the bottom of the last box in the lay-out.\u00a0\"20190702_110240\"<\/p>\n

I thought, I will try this one! I am here now in California, I will try California Impatiens<\/strong> rather than the English Impatiens<\/strong> from Healing Herbs.<\/p>\n

Within a few days of using it, I \u00a0felt distinctly how my movements were slowing down. The hastiness seemed to seep out of them, sometimes very noticeably, sometimes less so.<\/p>\n

I kept taking the Californian Impatiens glandulifera<\/strong> for more than four months, from July till about November 2019.<\/p>\n

During that time I observed a variety of effects, in varying degrees of intensity, some of which I will try to \u00a0capture below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I started to move more slowly<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One change I noticed was that I \u00a0would move \u00a0my hands and arms more slowly when I was doing things. \u00a0Also, when I would need to get up from a chair to get something from another room, I wouldn\u2019t zoom up and forward to go get it, but just walk over without extra speed, sometimes downright slowly!<\/p>\n

The feeling of being at the hub of the wheel and steering things from a centred perspective was not necessarily there, but I didn\u2019t rush into things with my motions. I was not sucked towards the objects in the same manner as before.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Time lost its capacity to exert pressure on me<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Then I noticed that time<\/em> seemed to lose its capacity to exert pressure on me. \u00a0For example, there would be multiple things I needed to get done. \u00a0\u00a0I had a list, either in my mind or on paper.\u00a0 Yes, there were these things to do.\u00a0 I somehow \u00a0just went about doing them!\u00a0 The feeling \u2018Oh my god, I have a, b, c, d to do, is there going to be enough time for everything?\u2019 \u00a0was not present.\u00a0 The list of things to do did not exert time pressure on me.<\/em><\/p>\n

For me, this was a key experience.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Time seemed to move at different speeds, expanding\u00a0 and contracting<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another thing I noticed at some point was that I would look at my watch, thinking e.g. it must be 3:30 pm, but \u00a0it was only 2:30 PM. Or I thought: 20 minutes must have passed, but the clock only indicated 10 minutes!<\/p>\n

Things like this kept happening. \u00a0\u00a0I might be expecting a client to arrive in 20 minutes, I still had all kinds of things to get ready beforehand and I would feel, Oh, no problem, I still have 20 minutes!<\/p>\n

I remember another experience \u00a0where one day \u00a0I had to get from a place in Ottawa West to\"InkedOttawa_map_LI\" a place 10-15 minutes even further west to vacuum my car, then go back downtown for a doctor\u2019s appointment, all within one hour. Ottawa is certainly no metropolis, but the timing was \u00a0I really go and vacuum my car or wait and do it another time? I went, and somehow I was at the doctor\u2019s office within 45 minutes! I still don\u2019t understand how that was possible. Often I asked myself, where is all this time coming from?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I became more punctual<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Another thing I noticed that since taking Impatiens<\/strong>\u00a0 that I became\u00a0 punctual. I\u00a0 was not\u00a0 late anymore. I was not someone to be very late habitually, but often just a little late, or I would arrive last minute. \u00a0\u00a0Now I was always\u00a0 few minutes early, and I rarely felt rushed when I have to go somewhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is something enormously profound.\u00a0 People that are habitually late have a very difficult time being on time, no matter how hard they try.<\/strong> There is always something at work that interferes with their time consciousness and intentions. \u00a0I knew that from my own experience too.<\/p>\n

Impatiens<\/strong> was working wonders.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A healing crisis<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Two and a half months into taking\u00a0 the Californian Impatiens, I had the following experience which I noted in my\u00a0\u00a0\u2018Time Diary’ on September 11, 2019:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cYesterday everything felt just like it used to be in the past. I looked at my to-do list and thought, How am I going to finish all this, there is not enough time! I have a transcript to write, my Turkish lesson to do, I still need to go through my financial statements, do some personal \u00a0study, sort out emails, to get ready for client meetings….! I felt everything pressing in on me from all sides and time running away. <\/em>And whenever I looked at my watch, it was later than I had thought. Where was this wonderful calm state where I could look at all the things I had to do, and time could pressure me not? It was gone!\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the total opposite of my previous experience. I experienced an inward tenseness when it came to time which had a hue of panic.<\/p>\n

Time was in control<\/em>, not I, or at least a certain guise of time was in control.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet I knew that the problem wasn\u2019t with the items on my to-do list. It was elsewhere. But where?<\/p>\n

I was not sure what all this meant. Was I, after taking \u00a0Impatiens<\/strong> for 10 weeks, experiencing the R 3 state of the 4 R\u2019s, namely \u2018Reaction, Resistance and Reconciliation\u2019\u00a0<\/strong>(see also Patricia Kaminski’s article\u00a0http:\/\/The four levels of flower essence response, http:\/\/flowersociety.org\/4Rs.htm<\/a>)<\/strong>\u00a0 where it feels that everything is back to square one ? Or had I been reaching another level of my ‘natural’ haste and hurriedness, and really needed a different essence? I had recently read more on Ocotillo and wondered whether it was this essence I now needed. I really did not know.<\/p>\n

I asked a long-term friend to dowse this question for me (the same one who tested the Rock Water as described in my older article on Rock Water<\/em>) and the answer she received was that I was experiencing the 3rd <\/sup>R state of the \u2018Four R\u2019s\u2019.<\/p>\n

So, I continued taking Impatiens<\/strong>, and within a few days I was back to the state where I would look again at all the same to-do items on my list and feel: \u201cYes, I need to do those things. I will get to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

There were even moments when I thought: \u2018There are a number of things I have to do, what were they again? Let me check on my list.\u2019<\/p>\n

This experience was a revelation for me. \u00a0I had experienced the \u2018out of order\u2019 state of my relationship \u00a0to time returning in its crass essence; I could feel time doing something to me, pushing me rushing me, and being \u00a0powerless in the face of it.\u00a0 Then, a few days later, I found myself in exactly the same \u00a0life circumstance,\u00a0 and time couldn\u2019t \u2018do its thing\u2019 on me.<\/p>\n

What an experience of polarity, all within one week!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As the Flower Essence Repertory explains, flower essences don\u2019t work through the Law of Similars<\/em> like \u00a0Homeopathy, nor through the Law of Opposites<\/em> as allopathic drugs. They work through the Principle of Polarity. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The same polarities can be seen in the plant itself<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Like with all plants, this polarity can also be observed in the form and growth patterns of the Impatiens<\/strong> plant:<\/p>\n

Impatiens glandulifera<\/strong> has shallow roots. It doesn\u2019t take time to settle and put roots down. There is none of\u00a0 the staying power of Chicory<\/strong>, which is almost impossible to uproot; Impatiens<\/strong> can be pulled out easily.\u00a0 It is considered an invasive species because it pushes other plants aside. \u2018Just get out of my way.\u2019\u00a0 It grows fast, in its main growing season it is said to grow up to an inch a day.\u00a0 The growth lines on the stem are straight and sinewy; there is no meandering around.\u00a0 The leaves are pointed and lanceolate, sharp like lances or spears.\u00a0 And the bullet-like seeds \u2013 the ripe seed pods will split open when touched and send out the seed bullets. I have played with the Spotted Touch-me-not<\/strong> which grows here in the area and watched the seeds splatter. (The above description is heavily inspired by Julian Barnard\u2019s book \u201c Bach Flower Remedies – Form & Function<\/em>.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"2036707_0c2a69f2\" \"IMG_2710\"\"images\"\"images<\/p>\n

Yet the flowers of Impatiens glandulifera<\/strong> are pink-white, with a shape that is complex and intricate compared to the straight-forward growth of the stem and leaves, invaginated, open to the world and to the insects crawling into them. \u00a0The flower heads, gently swaying on the stem on their small stalks (peduncle), don\u2019t trap the insects like some plants do but allow them to crawl in and out.<\/p>\n

Here we see the balance of polarities so typical for the plant world.\u00a0 The upward pressuring rush and ill temper of most of the plant are balanced by gentleness, sensitivity and pink-white colour and intriguing design of the blossoms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One thing I would like to mention is that while I was taking Impatiens<\/strong>, I happened to be contacted by someone who was also using Bach Flower Essences.\u00a0 She used HealingHerbs<\/em> Impatiens<\/strong> and \u00a0had tried the Californian Impatiens<\/strong> after I shared some of my experiences with her. From both our observation I would say that the English Impatiens<\/strong> helps more – or more quickly – with feelings of irritation and\u00a0 impatience, whereas the Californian<\/strong> Impatiens<\/strong> seems to work more on the experience of time itself. I noticed for example that even after taking Impatiens<\/strong> for a month or two, I \u00a0was still not mentally particularly gentle with other drivers on the road etc. This surprised me at the time because I would have suspected otherwise.\u00a0 After about three months I noticed that somewhere along the way this \u00a0had changed, too.\u00a0 My conclusion is that the Californian variety does help to come to greater gentleness and patience, but these effects show up later.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is the the nature of Time?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, to come back to the experiences re the nature of time<\/em> and the experience of in September, I kept wondering: \u00a0where exactly was the painful distortion in the my experience of time? \u00a0Was it in my soul, in how my soul could enter the flow of time?\u00a0 Or was the problem with Time itself, and did I experience \u00a0one of the many faces of time, a destructive and negative one?<\/p>\n

It was almost as if I were shown different guises of time. This \u00a0leads me back to the question what \u00a0that we call time really is.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a question I have lived with for many years. Through experience and reflection I have arrived at the understanding \u00a0that time is\u00a0 a mysterious \u2018something\u2019 which can change it appearance, guise, qualities and move through us and our life streams in different ways \u00a0at different moments.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0Time runs away – then stops running<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

To illustrate this, I will briefly insert another experience I had recently which did not involve Impatiens<\/strong> but \u00a0a different essence, Green Cross Gentian<\/strong>. There were a few days in December 2019 where I had felt acutely that time was slipping though my fingers, running away from me.\u00a0 I had a quite a bit of work to do, was trying to get it done, and somehow it was always later than I thought it was. It was not that I\u00a0 was idling or \u00a0being distracted. Somehow everything I did took more time<\/em> than it should have; I had the unpleasant feeling that I was chasing after time, it was running away from me and I just couldn\u2019t catch up. On this occasion I suspected a particular influence of a more psychic or spiritual nature directed at my home. \u00a0This is not the place to go into the details of it,\u00a0 but the essence that I needed to deal with this influence ( the fact that is was stealing time<\/em> from me was just one side effect)\u00a0 was Green Cross Gentian. https:\/\/www.fesflowers.com\/green-cross-gentian-flower-essence-gives-us-strength-faith-to-meet-the-challenges-of-our-time\/<\/a>Green Cross Gentian<\/strong> is an essence I have been finding \u00a0very helpful when people are carrying energies or karma linked to the planet as a whole.\u00a0 I decided to spray Green Cross Gentian<\/strong> in every room of my home, and within one hour<\/em> time wasn\u2019t slipping through my fingers anymore.<\/p>\n

It was remarkable.<\/p>\n

The more I observe, the more I am certain that time can expand, contract, accelerate, slow down, stand still, disappear, that it has its own tread and velocity. In a talk I recently attended, the presenter described Time as the sculptor of our lives<\/em>.\u00a0 She described how certain experiences can get locked into time: when we have suffered trauma for example, the past intrudes into the present and assumes a presence that doesn\u2019t rightfully belong to it, almost like a tenant one cannot evict.<\/p>\n

I have long wondered: what exactly is<\/em> Time?\u00a0 There are no quick answers (no pun intended). Phrases\u00a0 like \u2018time doesn\u2019t exist\u2019, or \u2018time is relative\u2019, or \u2018 the past doesn\u2019t exist\u2019, don\u2019t really \u00a0have much substance.\u00a0 Nor is time this thing we try to measure with our clocks that has sixty seconds a minute and is always constant. That is at best the corpse of time. Corpses are real too in their way, but only as corpses. To think that something that is living and flexible can be caught, apprehended, comprehended with something as fixed as clockwork is illusory.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Time has so many aspects! It is cyclical, periodical, it has rhythm. Time brings a lot of repetition, yet new things that haven\u2019t existed before enter into these cycles. The year always has the same four seasons, yet every year brings something new is different.\u00a0 Time can also come from the future. Sometimes we have dreams in the now that bring in an element from the future.<\/p>\n

Maybe the essence of Time is more akin to way a plant grows through time, rather than to the movement of the hands of a clock.<\/p>\n

What would a plant be without time? What would wine be without time? What would music be without time?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"timeChronos and Kairos\"kairos\"<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t have the answer,\u00a0 I have my observations, experiences, \u00a0my thoughts and questions, and of course, time to continue living with this question! The Greeks had two words for time that I am aware of: Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is the basis of chronology, of measurable time.\u00a0 Kairos is difficult to define, exactly because it isn\u2019t finite and measurable. \u00a0Here\u00a0 is an excerpt I\u00a0 found on Wikipedia:<\/p>\n

“Kairos has classically been defined as a concept that focused on “‘the uniquely timely, the spontaneous, the radically particular.'”[10]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0Ancient Pythagoreans thought Kairos to be one of the most fundamental laws of the universe. Kairos was said to piece together the dualistic ways of the entire universe.\u00a0Empedocles<\/a>\u00a0was the philosopher who connected kairos to the principle of opposites and harmony.”<\/em><\/p>\n

In biblical terminology, \u00a0Kairos was thought of as the quality of the right moment. Older cosmologies speak of deities ruling or representing time (e.g., Chronos, Saturn, Father Time, to name a few).<\/p>\n

Kairos eludes the neat little blocks of experience that our modern minds crave. Yet our modern mind is just\u00a0 few hundred years old at the most, a drop in the Ocean of Time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And then there is the power of plants to alter the disharmonies we can feel in regards to time. How come a plant has the ability to do this? What did the Impatiens<\/strong> essence do for me?\u00a0 Did it bring the way \u00a0time lives in me in synch \/synchronicity with the way Time actually exists?<\/p>\n

I \u00a0believe this was part of its action.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you, Patricia for bringing me the gift of Impatiens<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been using flower essences since 1985.\u00a0 \u00a0In 2003-2004, I completed the certification process with the Flower Essence Society.\u00a0 Yet I had been feeling the need \u00a0\u2018to drink from the source\u2019 again to receive fresh inspiration,\u00a0 so\u00a0 I decided\u00a0 in 2019\u00a0 to participate in the Professional Course at Terra Flora.\u00a0 One day during that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-flower-essences","category-impatiens-impatience-and-the-mystery-of-time"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1058"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1086,"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions\/1086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theflowersofaeskulap.com\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}