Welcome to the Delicious Dignity Podcast. Let's settle in securely and ever so nicely into the brilliance of our own dignity. Hello my lovelies, here's another series within the podcast and this time it's about the spiritual meaning of the rose or rose mysticism, rose mystic teachings. And I want to do this series and each episode will build on the other over time. So it's kind of like a pod class. And in essence, mysticism, what that really means is a direct, personal, one-on-one, intimate connection with the divine or ultimate reality or energy or universe or whatever you want to call it. It's your own path, your direct experiential path and engagement with the divine. And so that's why this series is called Rose Mysticism, because we are practicing the divine. And in this case, we're doing it with the help of the rose. And if you've seen, there are so many mystical branches to almost every religion you've ever heard of. For example, the most popular one that people know of is from Islam, we get the Sufis and Sufism. And so this idea that mysticism is just sort of beyond dogma or blind obedience, but instead a direct and personal connection with all there is, that's what we're really going for with this Rose Mysticism series. I mean, that's what the whole podcast is about. But this specific series is targeted specifically with the rose in mind as an ally, as a friend, as a guide. You know, John O'Donohue introduced me to this term. He's an Irish poet. And he introduced me to this term called Anamkara, which means friend of the soul. And that's really what the rose is to us and for us during this Rose Mysticism series. It is a friend to our soul and for our soul. And so... I just want to say why I feel particularly qualified to give you this rose mysticism series, because there's no qualification in being a rose expert in terms of rose mysticism. But I've done a lot of work with the rose. I've designed gold jewelry based on the rose and sold it. I've held retreats for women based on rose mysticism. I've made potions from it and even sold that. I've made skincare with it. I cook with it. My logo has the rose in it. I wear rose petal earrings every chance I get. I have three different kinds of rose perfume. My house always has roses. And of course I channel with and work with rose on a spiritual level. And some of my spiritual work on the rose has been published in the Spirituality and Health magazine. It's really just been with me since I was born. You know, I come from a culture that uses it in everyday rituals and special occasions and their cooking. And I truly couldn't imagine a world without roses. That would be a miserable world to me. And it's from this connection, this one-on-one deep connection that I have with the rose that I offer you these contemplations so you can take what resonates and you can leave the rest. You know, much like some people who believe that the world is flat, I would love to believe that the world is held on the very beautiful petals of a rose. And, you know, like the earth is just held up by the rose. That's my fantasy. That's what I would love to see one day. But I just, yeah, sometimes I... I imagine that in my mind and I'm like, oh my God, how beautiful it would be if the earth was just sitting on a rose. Of course, this makes no physical or biological sense, but hey, you know, a girl can dream. So anyway, I would invite you to gaze intermittently. So on and off throughout this episode at a picture of a rose, or if you have a rose in front of you, sort of gaze at it just off and on while you're listening to these missives, but just so that it can help you cement the energy of what I'm saying a little bit more nicely, shall we say. Okay, so the first part, what I wanted to say to you is that when I interact with the rose, and I've been interacting with it for so many years, and depending upon the culture I'm in, people have very different reactions to the rose. And For some people, I've noticed that they have a kind of smirk on their face or they have a kind of, they think the rose is rather silly. It is something incompetently soft, something trite, something passive, reserved for Valentine's Day when you want to show romantic love. And I found that very interesting because when I heard people talk like that or insinuate that that's how they thought about roses as just something cheesy, or corny. It never occurred to me that that's what roses are. Never. Not one time in my life did I look at a rose and say, oh my God, that's so cheesy or corny. Because it's fascinating because I see such a correlation between the rose and the sacred feminine or the divine feminine. Because much like the divine feminine, the rose has been relegated to the role of this silly little girl, something trite, something soft, something passive, right? The roles like the feminine has suffered the disrespect and the sort of twisting of its true nature. We infantilize women, we invalidate them, we trivialize them. And that's a lot of what the feminine has gone through for hundreds, if not thousands of years. We trivialize the best parts of what a woman is and what she has to offer and what the feminine is and what that has to offer. And that is why I feel like the rose and the feminine has sort of a tie in there. Because in a way, we do that with roses and we think that they are this ridiculous little thing. And they're not. Because roses are actually... pretty hardy flowers. They have very hardy stems. They're almost like little trees. The Rosaceae family, which is the rose family, doesn't just include roses. It includes so many edible fruits that make it one of the six most economically important crop plant families. That's how many edible fruits it has. For example, Apples, pears, quinces, apricots, plums, cherries, peaches, raspberries, strawberries, rose hips, almonds. They all come from the rose family. And of course, there are a bunch of ornamental trees and shrubs that are also included in this, like rowans. Although I don't know why a rowan is considered an ornamental tree, but that's also part of the rose family. And my point is, is that Far from being this soft, delicate little flower, it's actually quite the opposite. And far from being this small, delicate little thing, it's this prolific, huge thing. It takes so many different forms that are so important to humans in general. And a little fun fact is that from the Oligocene, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, but The Oligocene period or epoch of planet Earth, which is about 33 to 22 million years ago, we have fossil records from that time indicating that roses might have existed and grown back then as well. And so it's this ancient flower, you know? And it's not just something you grow in your garden. It's actually really ancient. And for 5,000 years ago, give or take, we have been cultivating it. It's one of the oldest cultivated flowers in the world. And so it's ancient, it's fertile, it's prolific, it's tough, it's tender, it's soft, it's hard. Are you seeing the sort of connection between the roses and the feminine? An example of this is if we look at some of the mythology of certain goddesses. certain goddesses associated with the rose, like Aphrodite or Inanna. Aphrodite was this beautiful woman who exemplified beauty. She could make people fall in love with her and all of that stuff. At the same time, she was incredibly cunning. At the same time, she could get really jealous and fly into a rage. The same is true for Inanna. She is the goddess of fertility, but she's also the goddess of war. And so now we're understanding the concepts of polarity and holistic ways of thinking and living because we're never just one thing. And so we started off with talking about the feminine. Now we're going into a discussion or an understanding about the rose being symbolic of everything. The rose having a holistic meaning. instead of having this dualistic sensibility. I'm only one and not the other. I'm only soft, but I'm not hard. Or I'm only hard, but I'm not soft. You see, because the rose is one of the oldest cultivated flowers in the world. And so it shares a very close bond with humans. It is not so lofty that it's unreachable, but it's also not so concerned with concepts of enlightenment and transcendence. The rose says that I practice imminence, the divine qualities that are so desired as somewhere out there already exists in everything. It doesn't need to get anywhere or be anyone or go into a higher dimension or be better than thou. It's not the mystic on the mountain. It's the mystic that's now become an everyday human. The rose loves the earth. And all it wants to do is spread its beauty across all the lands. And so instead of seeing duality, soft and hard, black and white, only tender but not strong, etc., what it's seeing is everything. Everything is the divine. Everything is inherently beautiful. Everything is inherently beautiful. lit up with this kind of energy or universal energy, if you want to call it that. And so that's how it exudes this message of heaven is a place on earth. It is not somewhere up in the sky. It is not a place you get to once you've done a lot of good things in life. It is not a reward, but it is a lived reality. The rose doesn't shy away from its own beauty. It doesn't pretend that it doesn't need its thorns either. And so that beauty of polarity and wholeness seeps into this idea of practicing heaven on earth. If you look at a rose, that balance of unfurling bloom, serrated leaves, a thorny, hardy stem, it literally gives you the recipe of everything you need to do in order to anchor your heaven on earth. So practically, it would look like instead of having a lot of goals, you have a lot of gratitude. Gratitude over goals is what the rose says. Because you're focused on the here and now. You are seeing the imminence here and now. You're seeing the divine here and now. So you have gratitude. You don't have goals which make you go somewhere or do something or live in the future. You have this sort of present moment awareness and appreciation for all there is. And so what would your life look like if you had more appreciation instead of yet another goal? I'm not saying to do away with your goals. I'm just saying, what if you amped up the appreciation a little bit more than you have? So what the rose does is that it activates... the divinity or the universal energy inside of you to play a bigger role in your life while simultaneously anchoring that divinity on earth. And I feel like if nothing else, that is the true meaning. That is the highest state of the energy and the desire to ground or grounding. People talk a lot about grounding and I think That's the highest purpose of grounding, is to activate the divinity within you and simultaneously anchoring it into the earth. So that's why I think the rose makes a wonderful ally for times when you feel like you're bypassing your emotions, you're indulging in spiritual escapism, because it's a very clean and clear energy to ground yourself with, especially if you have trouble with popular grounding methods. And that is something... I feel like I'm going to create a whole episode just on how to ground and grounding practices that actually work. And that's why I think if you identify as an empath, the rose can be one of your best friends. And if you are someone who understands or feels like they've gone through a lot of spiritual depression or you're going through a lot of spiritual depression, a quick explanation of what that means. It's this feeling like you've been abandoned by God. You're missing what you left behind because you remember the time before you were born and you just keep wanting to go back to that place. And so there's a spiritual kind of depression. That was the quick and dirty definition of it. There's obviously a lot more nuance to it. But if you're somebody that feels that, the rose can be really helpful because it reminds you of that time before time. And it helps you be here now as well. And so I feel like that's a wonderful ally for people like that. And of course, just in general, it's a wonderful ally for living the good life, whatever that means for you. So we touched upon the sacred feminine. We touched upon how it connects to duality and holism and polarity, how that connects to heaven on earth as opposed to heaven is something you get to after earth. And now we're going to just go over some practical ways to experience or practice heaven on earth as a concept. So obviously, the most obvious thing you can do is if you can get pure rose oil, go ahead and do it. If you can afford it, that's wonderful. Go ahead. And you can work with it in terms of anointing the soles of your feet, the center of your palms, the middle of your forehead. I told you back in episode five how I don't really like driving long distances and rose oil really helps help me enjoy the ride, which I never thought I'd ever I'd ever do in my life. And so, yeah, so that's an example of how you can use rose oil. Another obvious example is you can keep roses in your home, you know, in a vase, or you can grow your roses, or you can give roses to people. If you go to somebody's house, you can just take a bouquet of roses with you and give it to them. So these are all ways that you can, these are all obvious ways you can work with roses as heaven on earth. However, The other way you can do it is just try to contemplate where can you love or be with the earth even more than you already have been. And I can give you some examples from what I do. You know, every time I go out for a hike here in Sedona, I always offer the earth something. So I give it a little bit of my water or something like that, just as an offering to say thank you for having me. I'm a guest and I'm thanking the earth for having me. So that's just a small example, but you can bring that energy into whatever you're doing. The goal is to anchor that feeling of sacred and heaven here on earth. So the first way is to identify where you can love the earth more, where you can be with the earth more. The second practical way I can offer you to anchor heaven on earth is to Episode six, I talked about the mindfully versus heartfully exercise. I would encourage you to go visit that. You can look at the ritual guide for episode six, and it will walk you through the differences between heart and head to help you identify that appreciation feeling and that love feeling, thereby anchoring that heaven on earth. The other fun thing you can do is you can train in a classical dance or you can watch it. For a while, I did belly dancing as my classical dance. I mean, to you, it might be ballet or whatever, or one of the Indian classical dances. You can either train in it, you can watch it because, you know, have you seen the Sufi twirl, the whirling of the Sufi? It's the same idea, except classical dancing is, is bringing that in a more formal way onto the earth. And drumming is another way you can anchor heaven on earth because it sort of mimics the beat of the heart. Rituals, you can do more rituals. And hey, if you're listening to this podcast, you're already doing it. Another fun, simple thing you can do is that there's a song called Heaven is a Place on Earth by Belinda Carlyle. It's a song, and I think it's from the 80s. And it's just a fun song that you can listen to every morning when you wake up. You can also start an appreciation practice where you maybe journal 10 things you appreciated about your life or your day every day. And you don't have to make it a chore, but it's just something you do everywhere you go or every time you make a transition. So when you leave your house, you remind yourself, oh, what is one thing I appreciate right now? When you get into your car, you ask, what is the one thing I appreciate a lot right now? When you sit down and you're waiting for a friend at a coffee shop, what is the one thing I appreciate right now? So you can bring this appreciation practice more into your life. The other thing you can do is also grounding practices. Grounding is a good way to sort of mitigate the desire to escape the planet and escape your thoughts and escape your feelings. And like I said, I'll be doing a whole episode on that later. But that is something you can bring more into your life, some kind of grounding practice. And when I say the word practice, you don't necessarily have to make it into a chore and make yourself do it even though you don't want to do it. It's more of something that's there for you to use when you need it. And then over time, hopefully it becomes a dedicated practice. But initially, it doesn't have to be. There's also this beautiful painting by Georgia O'Keeffe. It's called Abstraction White Rose. You can just gaze into that and that can be your morning meditation. You have your open eye meditation where you're gazing at that painting and you're doing some kind of breathing exercise. See how you feel. And the final practice or idea I can offer you is counting the roses. I know most of you have heard of the rosary. which is interesting, that name, rosary. And so just like you can use a rosary or you can use a mala where instead of chanting something that you might not understand or a prayer that you don't resonate with as much, you instead use each bead on the mala or the rosary as something you appreciate. So if there are 108 beads in a mala, you have 108 beads to go through that say, 108 things that you appreciate about your life in that moment. And you're really stretching that muscle of appreciation there. So maybe do that once you have built up some muscle with it. But yeah, those are some practical ways to experience and practice heaven on earth. They range from very easy, very fun things to slightly more serious and more involvement with it. So I hope you really enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed making it for you. And I do want to say that I am sorry if I stumble over my words a lot, especially in this episode, because sometimes it's really difficult to put into words what it is I'm sensing or feeling. But I think I got my point across with this episode. I'll get better with time, I promise. And so until next time, my friends, may your dignity enjoy life. and love and create its own special little heaven here on this earth bye