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If you’re drawn to the Prickly Poppy flower, you may have a subtle habit of feeling responsible for others’ stress or suffering. When people around you have a hard time, you may feel unable to maintain a sense of lightness or cheerfulness, because you have a deep-seated sense of solidarity, or sense that: If they are suffering, I should be too. If people around me are stressed and overwhelmed, I cannot be lighthearted and cheerful. This can be related to emotional struggle, or chronic physical illness and pain. When others experience major hardship, loss or persistent challenges, you may feel a sense of heaviness.
You may be overly empathetic, leading you to absorb people's problems or negative emotions into your system. The worst part of that dynamic? Once you've absorbed it, it feels like your own.
Alternatively, you may suddenly look around you and get a sense that the world we live in is less supportive, more inflammatory, and in some cases, dangerous. You may look around you and see more homelessness, drugs or people with discomfort and chronic health conditions.
You may feel the call to embody more leadership, which could involve keeping your mind stabilized and heart happy, no matter what is happening around you. You may wish you to simply cherish what you have vs. sweating the small stuff. You may desire to embody gratitude that acts as a beacon of joy & light-heartedness.
Prickly Poppy (Argemone gracilenta) dissolves any sense of dry, hot, crackly, prickly, dusty, dangerous, treacherous or tenuous – in our systems or as a reflection from our environment. It empowers us to learn how to keep our minds strong no matter what’s happening around us. Even if others are struggling, we do not give ourselves permission to get sulky or mopey. We are learning how to develop the muscle of a neutral, objective mind.
Just as the side mirrors in your car say, “Objects may appear closer than they are,” your own shadow side may occasionally appear much bigger than it is. The ability to examine it can help us ultimately see more clearly.
Remaining neutral in the face of observing others struggle is key to two things: 1. Not taking on other people's energies, habits or tendencies. 2. Trusting that every person has the capacity to solve whatever problems appear in their life, as they are in effect, the creator of their realities.
Prickly Poppy helps us develop leadership qualities, especially being able to ‘hold’ a lot and not let it overwhelm us. We are no longer affected by the energies of others in our environment or to some extent: our family. Or loved ones. As our capacity to hold/manage more human complexity grows, we develop more comfort in being seen, being visible and being of service as a stabilizing factor (vs. getting sucked into the swirl).
Also known as Cowboy’s Fried Egg, Prickly Poppy blooms in the Sonoran desert between April and November. Oftentimes, it needs to experience the flash heat of a fast-moving wildfire in order to germinate. Its petals look like paper, but they are soft to the touch. The flower looks like a fried egg: sunny side up.
Spines keep most predators away, but if any animals continue to try to eat this plant, they will learn the hard way. Substances called Berberine and Protopine course through the plant, which cause munching animals’ blood vessels to dilate; their bodies fill up with fluid and their tissues swell up. If they eat too much they bloat up and die. This species is only found in Arizona and New Mexico. [Don’t eat other people’s poison; it will start to affect you!]
MAGNIFIES: Lightness, taking things easy, not personal; In a world of prickles and thorns, the flower is soft, open, light, easy-going; Preparing ourselves to be leaders
DISSOLVES: Feeling responsible for others’ suffering/overwhelm/stress; Cannot have hard convos because you take on too much; Cannot thrive because external world is struggling
Love + flower petals,
Katie
