I host a live morning meditation on Facebook each weekday. This started during the first COVID lockdown as a way to support my clients and students online and I’ve continued in the years since. At the beginning I wondered how I could keep thinking of meditations, because for the first 6 months I was broadcasting every day. I decide on what the meditation is going to be by taking inspiration from whatever’s going on around me.
Yesterday as I drove to my dancing class, I could see that by the side of the road in South Shields and heading towards Heworth, the grass verges were absolutely covered with daffodils. They came as a surprise because it’s now light at 6.30pm, when it has been dark up to this point. They were clearly well-established, so they must have been like that every year. But of course, last March and the March before I wasn’t going to dancing classes and the March before that, my dancing class wasn’t along that route. So, I didn’t remember seeing them like that before, because I haven’t been that way in daylight for quite a long time.
It was an uplifting sight. It was like a carpet of yellow with splashes of white, because daffodils do have different colourations. If you are of a similar age to me, you may have learnt the Wordsworth poem ‘I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud’, when you were at school. I was in the choir, and we even learnt a choral version of it. So, I can’t hear that poem without hearing the music behind it.
Inspiration from Poetry
The first verse is the most well-recognised I guess; Wordsworth lived in the Lake District, so those are the lakes that he’s talking about. But what was important for my meditation was the last verse. And in the last verse, he remembers those crowds of daffodils.
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
If you can look at some daffodils, maybe outside your window, in your garden or even daffodils in a vase at home you can use them as a focus for meditation. But you can also visualise or imagine daffodils as a basis for an uplifting meditation.
Meaning and Symbolism
Daffodil meanings and symbolisms include revival and rebirth, and of course they do represent the coming Spring. They are associated with Easter, which falls in March or April and that’s associated with rebirth and new beginnings, but it’s also associated with hope. The daffodil is the symbol of the Marie Curie charity in the UK, a cancer charity, and it’s also the symbol of the American Cancer Association, I assume because it represents hope.
It also represents joy, resilience, good luck, prosperity, memories, and even forgiveness. The colour yellow is also a joyful and optimistic colour. Although daffodils do come in a range of colours, yellow is the most common.
In China it represents good fortune and good luck, and that might be because of its golden colour. In Japan, it’s associated with mirth and joyousness, so it’s an uplifting flower.
So, if you’re looking for a bit of a boost, this might be the meditation topic for you, bringing you some joy and optimism. If you get the chance, go and have a look at some daffodils, go and buy yourself a bunch of daffodils, or just notice how many yellow flowers there are right now. On the hill behind my house the gorse is just coming out. In gardens there’s forsythia, primula and pansies. Cheer yourself up by looking at some yellow.
If you’d like to know more about my daily meditation head over to https://louisecardon.com/halcyon-daily-meditations/
