Roses: creating special places for internal growth

Portland, Oregon, boasts a notable rose garden which blooms for over 6 months each year. The International Rose Test Garden is a spectacular place of beauty and grace. With areas overlooking the green forests of the Pacific Northwest, this magnificent garden emulates inspiration and grand simplicity with elegance.

This rose garden is the longest-running continually operating rose garden in the United States, boasting over 10,000 rose bushes with 650 different varieties. The climate in Portland assists these lovely roses to bloom with reverence, granting the city's nickname "The City of Roses."

The rose garden was created by Jesse A. Currey in 1915 to protect and create a safe space for the roses grown in Europe during World War I, as rose lovers feared the roses in Europe were in danger of being bombed.

Fascinating, the vision and perseverance to protect these hybrid roses; and this vision took off as cultivators from England began sending over their roses. Soon after, other countries and cities around the globe started sending roses.

This rose garden, and other notable lovely rose gardens around the world, are such special places. The beauty of a rose invokes love, romance, peace, and tranquility. Just being in the presence of one single rose is enough.

The rose is a great teacher of hardiness and softness, a mix of strength and subtlety. These qualities can be experienced following the middle path, a place where we design our life through positive vision while being consistent with our passions in order to create our internal and external special spaces.

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As the famous Sufi poet Rumi reminds us:

“Come out here where the roses have opened. Let the soul and world meet."

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When walking this middle path, we create and explore ways to cultivate and visit our special spaces, whether imagined or real. Our life, then, unfolds just as a rosebud opens; slowly, gracefully, and with presence.

The stems of this created rose bush are strong and steady, developed and nurtured through perseverance and positive alignment by tapping into our true nature. This experience fosters and inspires internal growth.

When we have inner calm and peace, our rose can withstand any weather easily with love and kindness. We know the buds will form when we practice mindfulness and awareness crafts, as we create our reality; our dreams become realized when we focus on the maintenance and care of our precious roses.

Knowing there will be thorns along the way, the trick is to bring our awareness to growing our roses, with gentle detachment to the thorns. Our mind's attention can be fickle and linear at times; unfortunately when we focus on the thorns, the mind is not able to truly see the flowers.

Instead, remain with consistent focus on growing the buds, tend to them with care, and know the roses will bloom! Awareness of the positive brings positive transformations, always; this is the law of attraction.

When we entertain and direct our thoughts, actions, and emotions towards a positive creative process, extraordinary spaces open up beyond what our limited thinking mind can even fathom. Yet if we are focused only on the thorns, we will remain there, not expanding nor experiencing the special place of expanded living.

Create a special rose garden in our being, tend to our rose bushes, allow them to grow and flourish as we feed them inspiration and joy. Be the creator of our special place, live here, know this place.

This is where freedom and expansion live. The roses grow in their own way, endlessly showing us new directions and paths, yet always on a growth journey to bring forth budding flowers of all different designs, colors, and scents; and upon anthesis...smiles.

Cheers!

Kether

Spunky Mind

"“I took a rose from a vase

and fastened it in her sash.

She sighed a sign of ineffable

satisfaction, as if her cup

of happiness were now full."

– Charlotte Brontë