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flowers
Their Spiritual significance
Photo Collection
Divine solicitude rightly understood
Let us understand and receive with gratitude this Divine Solicitude, so often not understood.
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Malvaviscus arboreus Dill. ex Cav. (Malvaceae)
Wax mallow
Pale pink
Divine solicitude (in the sense of solicitude for others, a tender and affectionate and watchful care for their need and their good), the care of the Divine for the sadhaka.
The Mother
The Mother. Unpublished. Writing of Feb. 1921.
"Solicitude" - do you know what that means?
Not very well.
Not very well? It is... well, it is "care" in English, that is, attention, help, concern, precisely the concern to help and do good; this is solicitude. When you feel solicitude for someone, you do... you find out his needs and try to satisfy them; you have good thoughts, good feelings, you want to help, support, make him happy. This is solicitude. So, to stand back from solicitude is to refuse these things when they come, either to disregard them or refuse them.
However, very often one does it without knowing it. For example, every feeling of independence, of the need to look after oneself, of not wanting to submit to any discipline, any rule, of standing on one's own feet, not wanting any support except one's own, and being free, independent in one's movements: this is to stand back from the divine solicitude. To want to do what one likes, one's own will, in quite a free and independent way - "only doing what I want" - this is to stand back from the divine solicitude.
One does it quite frequently!
The Mother
The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother.- Volume 6. - Questions And Answers (1954)