Monday Mindfulness Minute: Can you see the sunflower in the sunflower seed?

"...charity is a way of perceiving the perfection of another even if you cannot perceive it in yourself... it's a way of looking at another as if they had already gone far beyond their actual accomplishments in time." A Course in Mircales p. 27

It blows my mind to contemplate how vessels as tiny and seemingly dull as seeds contain the potential to grow into beautiful flowers and mighty trees. Consider a sunflower seed for instance. Could you imagine the surprise on the Native Americans' faces when they compared the sunflower seed with what it could become?

Examples abound in nature of seemingly tiny things containing mighty potential or things that appear to be dull turning into beautiful stories. So, why do we seem to forget that the same holds for us and those around us?

Of course, it's much easier to judge somebody for where they are, what we deem to be the truth from our limited vantage point, and then lock them into that position. But this would be the same as throwing out the sunflower seed because it wasn't "beautiful." It might not be beautiful yet, but it contains beauty. We/they might not have it figured out yet, but the answer is somewhere inside of us/them.

Let us consider this week how we may limit ourselves and those around us (family, friends, neighbors, etc) because we are limiting them to what we see in front of us instead of the potential that is within them. Let's extend some grace and trust the natural flow of life that magically got us to this point from a cell smaller than a seed.