By referencing roses in the month of February, one might anticipate a post about love, friendship, and appreciation for others. Nope. Not here! Though, I will speak about roses as they relate to personal development.
Roses are known to be symbols of love, friendship, purity, all depending upon the color of the rose. Some traditions find that when gifting roses to another, one must send an appropriate color associated with personal intent and feelings. Simply based on color alone, there’s potential for miscommunication. Oh, my, it’s so complicated!
I am proposing another use for the beautiful rose, in which color does not matter. In past blogs, “Cloudy with A Chance of Sunshine” and “Glitter Money & Anxiety,” I mentioned how we can get stuck on pictures, ideas, thoughts, emotions that no longer serve us well. I spoke about our ability to find neutrality and simply release our hold on such things. But how do we do that? We open up our Spiritual Tool Kit and begin to play with roses.
Creating Your Spiritual Tool Kit
Inside a developed Spiritual Tool Kit, we will find practices in Centering, Grounding, Running Energy, Releasing & Clearing, Finding Neutrality, and Replenishing & Revitalizing, to name a few. This post introduces the tool for Releasing, Clearing & Finding Neutrality. In our practice to release and find neutrality regarding past, present and future triggers, we engage in a meditation exercise often referred to as Exploding Roses or Blowing Roses. By using creative imagery, paired with intention, we are able to release thoughts, emotions, and energy from our mental, emotional and spiritual space. One may also experience relief on a physical level. By our act of clearing out limiting beliefs, thoughts and old programs, we open up space and begin to integrate more of our greater consciousness into the body and mind. With more awareness comes personal growth, healing and clarity of purpose.
Foundational Rose Meditation: Exploding/Blowing Roses
1) Imagine a rose out in front of your space, as though you had a movie screen before you. The rose may be any color or size. If you tend to be more auditory, “listen” for a vibration/sound as you create a rose in your awareness. Perhaps you don’t “see” the rose, simply know that by your intention to create in conscious awareness, it is there. Find your certainty that it is so, and it is so.
2) Using your creative imagery and intent, now explode the rose like fireworks. Blow it up. Poof! It’s gone. No effort. You don’t need to wait until you feel that it is gone. Know that by your intention to dissolve the rose, it disappears. Once again, if you resonate more on a sound level, use a high pitch vibration to shatter the rose like a singer shatters a champagne glass.
3) Create and destroy roses, over and over. Create an orange rose. Explode it. Envision a yellow rose. Blow it up. Intend there to be a white rose. Poof, it’s gone. In this practice, we exercise the creativity of ourselves as Spiritual beings. By creating and destroying, we are finding our neutrality. We create an object of beauty, as seen as a rose, and then are able to release our hold on it. With neutrality, there are no attachments. As a creative Spirit, we can always create a new one to serve the next purpose.
Rose Meditation To Release and Clear
The practice of creating and exploding roses may function as a tool to clear our personal energetic space. Taking the Foundational Rose Meditation further, we can intend to place into the rose any ideas, thoughts, emotions, pictures, energy that we hope to clear from our energetic space, be it in our mental, emotional, spiritual or even physical awareness.
1) Create a rose in front of your space, whether visually, through sound, a knowing, or a sensing of it’s presence. Create the rose in which ever way you most resonate. With certainty, know it is there, for you have intended it to be.
2) Next, become aware of that which you’d like to release from your space. Are you carrying anger or frustration from work? Perhaps you are aware of tension in your shoulders. Do you feel energy in your space that belongs to someone else? Are you stuck on a picture from the past that no longer serves you well? Would you like to release invalidation, perfectionism, self-doubt?
3) Allow that which you intend to release, to fill up into the rose. You may imagine the rose to be like a vacuum. As you swirl the vacuum rose around, it sucks up that which is not of your own essence. You may decide that the rose is sticky. Just like a cotton candy machine, as we swirl the rose around, that which we intend to release sticks to the rose. The rose may act like a sponge. In any case, allow the rose to fill up with the energy, pictures, thoughts, emotions that no longer serve your higher purpose.
4) Once the rose is full, see it drift out of your energetic space and then explode it like fireworks. Boom! Without effort, it’s gone. Any energy that filled the rose, becomes neutralized and is released back to the earth or to whom it belongs. Create roses, fill them up, explode them. You may do this as much as you like to release a variety of energy and pictures that no longer serve you well. Once again, as Spiritual beings, we are quick, much quicker than what our bodies experience. As such, we do not need to wait until we feel this experience. Allow yourself to be in “no effort.” You have intended it to be as the creative Spirit that you are. Be certain it is so.
So Why A Rose?
By creating and exploding roses, we can clear our energetic space. But why a rose? This just happens to be the visualization practice that I learned from my teacher. He learned it from his teacher. Such is the way with practices and wisdom passed down through time. Perhaps there is historical symbolism within a rose, or hidden meaning of which I am unaware. In my knowing, the rose is simply a neutral symbol to use. They are of nature, come in a variety of colors and sizes. Each one is unique in shape and form. I personally find them to be beautiful. They smell fragrant. They are soft and velvety to the touch. They go nicely with a box of dark chocolate truffles… Mmmm… Okay. Back to speaking about roses…
Intention and creativity go a long way! As I mentioned in a past post, “Kindergarten, Clairvoyance and Pepperoni Pizza,” we can use any kind of mock-up to meet our intentions. What about helium balloons? One could place pictures in these balloons. As they rise up to the sky, the pictures are released out of our space. One may envision taking out a slide from the Grand Slide Projector and releasing it like a frisbee, tossed up to the sun where it melts away. Other people may see their troubles put into a gold or silver bag that is taken away by angles. You can decide what most resonates with you. In all cases, you are practicing a meditation for releasing, letting go and clearing that which no longer serves your higher purpose, a very healthy practice indeed!
More Tools for the Trade
You now have access to a new tool in your Spiritual Tool Kit. Of course, a more linear approach would have been to share the tools for Centering and Grounding, first; but after all, it is February. Of all months within the year, February carries the highest degree of awareness and appreciation for roses. We may honor the rose for it’s beauty, it’s symbolism to help express love, friendship, appreciation; and now we can engage a new awareness with the rose as a vehicle to help release, clear and find our neutrality.
Oh…
And if you’re like me, you might enjoy some dark chocolate to go with your roses!
-Amy Laederach
