By Maboud Swierkosz
I was wandering in the garden and noticed a large sunflower plant. In our area there is a variety of sunflowers that have multiple flowering four-inch blooms from top to bottom. There are many smaller yellow sunflowers scattered throughout the height of the plant. It is very different from the traditional sunflower of having one big head that grows so heavy that it bends and bows lower and lower towards the ground as the seeds become heavier.
This particular sunflower was tangled amidst dahlia flower bushes and the raspberry bush. My thoughts that arose, and seemed to push themselves out, were about eliminating this sunflower in order to clear the space to make things look better. I was absorbed in the process of the best way to get rid of it. I was very focused on that until mysteriously, a couple of little sunflower blossoms had woven their way between my fingers. I noticed them after I started to turn away to get the pruner; but I was almost pulled back by the flower, and then felt those flowers with my fingers.
It was a though the sunflower interrupted the push of my intense thoughts about getting rid of it. My awareness was guided to my hands and fingers and then I became present in the moment. The sunflower helped me to orient my being in relationship to its tiny flowers floating upon the skin of my wrinkled hands. I could feel how I was pulled from the pushing current of head-centric thoughts. In a way I was dragged to the shores of wholeness in the present moment. There was the experience of being dilated into presence from my contracted state. From this place I was able to behold and feel into the beauty of the yellow petals and its tiny brownish, goldish swirling center. Perhaps for a moment I understood the ‘language of creation.’
Needless to say I let the sunflower remain until the end of the season. I waited until the sunflower died and let it linger for a while so that the dead flowers (but living seeds) could be food for the American Gold Finches that visit the garden.
For me, the wazifahs of wholeness that may be at play here are Ya Qabid, Ya Basit, Ya Wasi’. As I reflect upon this experience I see that I was quite contracted (Ya Qabid) in my ego personality with its agenda. It is not that this is wrong nor right. But the tiny sunflower woven into my fingers aided me to be grounded in my true nature of spaciousness being (Ya Basit) which also included beholding the beauty of its essence. Together, Ya Qabid and Ya Basit are a dance of the polarities of my humanity and divinity. And they dance within the all-embracing womb of Gaia and beyond that is Ya Wasi’, the expansive and eternal mystery of Creation and the Cosmos.
Link to wazifah dance: Ya Qabid Ya Basit Ya Wasi’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txjfnz4dIeA
Link to live recording from Hummingbird Wazifah Retreats
https://taraandreamaboud.bandcamp.com/track/ya-qabid-ya-basit-ya-wasi