Dear Friends,
One of my favorite vegetables is the artichoke.
I discovered them many years ago and loved to dip the leaves in butter and mayonnaise. One day I decided to cook one myself. It was a process.
After washing and rinsing, I first took a knife and cut the top off, then cut the pointed and very sharp tips off each artichoke leaf with a scissor.
After steaming the artichoke, I still had to peel away each leaf layer to get to the heart of the artichoke. The inside of the leaf is good to eat too.
Just before the heart, there is a fuzzy layer to peel away. After everything is cut, snipped and peeled away, the delicious delicacy of the heart is left and ready
to eat. It was a process to cook, however well worth the effort to enjoy this delicious vegetable.
I have often thought how the artichoke is a metaphor of life. We are all spiritually discovering that inner delicious part of us,
our loving HEART, our God/Christ nature. In human life it takes work. We need to cut away the blocks that may be holding us back and then snip off the rough edges
and peel away the negatives, doubts, anxieties and worries that intrude upon our journey to our REAL Selves, our Inner Divinity. It is a process, and well worth it.
Where are you on this spiritual process? Have you clipped off the sharp edges of your personality? Have you peeled away worries and doubts?
How close are you to opening up, releasing the negatives that hold you back, and allowing your Spiritual Essence of Divine Love be activated and known in your life?
For a wonderful artichoke life analogy, enjoy this YouTube by Jean Houston.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxVWl3sYJZE
“An artichoke is a mirror of yourself. Like Life, the artichoke gains richness and savor by being combined by many flavors of sweetness, salt, pungent, bitter, and spice. After it is braised, the stuffed artichoke becomes a hologram, each part containing the whole. It symbolizes how each aspect of life has the potential for a full relation to the totality…”
-Jean Houston ” A Mythic Life.”
Peeling Away, Abigail and Steve