32. Heather (Calluna vulgaris) (Ling)
Group: Loneliness
Flowering time: July August September
Indications: Self-absorbed people who fear loneliness
Negative: Desperate for attention: Need to be heard: Self-centred states where it is difficult to think how other’s feel: They talk and talk and are difficult to get away from. They are desperately lonely inside and use emotional manipulation to get other’s to do what they want. They tend to use their hurts and problems to bid for attention. They do not listen and tire others. Exhaust other’s by demanding and stealing their attention. Button – holers who can be seen at social events. They don’t allow the other person to get a word in as they monopolise the conversation.
Positive attributes: Objective listening. Ability to tune into the comfort that comes from within.
Quote/Image : ‘Wounds are not sent to make us small and frightened; they are sent to open us up and allow beauty grace and compassion to root within us.’ John O’Donahue.
“We are all very anxious to be understood, and it is very hard not to be. But there is one thing much more necessary.’
What is that, grandmother?’
To understand other people.’
Yes, grandmother. I must be fair – for if I’m not fair to other people, I’m not worth being understood myself. I see.”
George MacDonald
Notes: Not yet found
Heather is a lonely state that cuts off the individual from their inner source of belonging and forces them to look for comfort and attention from others. It is a state where the individual can be trapped in a cycle of longing with inability to listen or open to another view. The flower loosens the hold of the self-absorption allowing an inflow of comfort belonging and compassion thereby releasing the ability to turn the attention outwards and listen. In their frightened lonely state of imprisonment they demand that other’s stay near to them and obey their wishes – and when they open to love they realise truly loving another means releasing the other to live the dream of their own highest desires.
The curious thing about states is that we can be so thoroughly captured by one that we are not even aware we are in it or of it. Loneliness is a more subtle and interior prison than simply a desire for company, perhaps it is closer to a longing for understanding. Many people experience alone times without feeling lonely, yet the Heather state cannot bear it. Those outer conditions that most closely mirror our inner state are the hardest to bear. Perhaps true loneliness is a sense that there is no-one with whom we can share an interior world. when we feel understood we experience a sense of belonging to the world and we cease to feel alone. In a Heather state we long for people who see the world as they see it, yet we are too preoccupied with our own feelings to make the effort to understand another. We demand that it is for others to make the effort to understand us. Self-pity compels us to ignore the signals that we are overstepping boundaries. We demand that others see the world as we see it, yet will make no effort to see the world as they see it. We have not learned that we can only receive that which we are prepared to give and when this information comes to us we are astonishingly transformed. It is as if light crept into a closed space. We begin to forget our own troubles and develop a genuine interest in the others. No thistle can grow in the place where a rose is planted. Perhaps this is the gift of Heather, the hardy, little purple flowering plant of moors and scrublands.
