Not All About Roses... Dreams, Gardens, and Clearing Karma in the Spring

 How vivid are your dreams? Mine are so intense that I'm sometimes completely disoriented when I wake up and find myself in my house in California instead of where the night-time adventures took me. I was so busy and now I'm resting? That's so strange... I think and start another day.  

Dreams are great for poems, though so I thought I'll write down the two dreams I had and make them into poems of sorts, too long and narrative for journal submission, but just right for the wordy blog.

On Friday after a Dream of Cleaning Vases

I ran away from demons, chasing me through crowded streets.

I cleaned off layers of black paint from an antique vase 

I inherited from my parents. See? It's smooth surface glistens 

as cobalt phoenixes dance in white, porcelain sky.

Let's arrange flowers you brought in this graceful vase -

hyacinth, irises and daisies, a pastel bouquet on clouds of sweet alyssum. 

No? How about a rose rainbow from my garden? Compassion, 

Yellow Mellow, Double Delight and French Perfume. Do not forget

the charms of decades-old Love at First Sight! Its scarlet petals lined with silver

remind you that nothing is ever simple. Everything changes. Nothing lasts. 

Let's walk down the garden path scented with orange blossoms.

Forget the lilacs of your youth. Let's smell the roses, shall we? 

The hybrid teas have a slight flavor but here's the Grande Dame - 

so magnificent in her fragrant, magenta gown.

Tired? Let me serve you Armenian tea - honey-hued, translucent liquid, 

steaming from the delicate China cup. Let's raise a toast

to timeless values. Let's celebrate togetherness and peace. 

There was a time to run. Time to stop running. 

There is a time to say "Enough!"  No pasaran. 

They shall not pass. When you say "No" 

They have to listen. It is the Cosmic Law, you know. 

Do not give up. You'll win your life back through loyalty and strength. 

Balance  your courage with the virtue of restraint. Hone justice 

with ageless wisdom. Do not be cruel. Always stay kind. 

Be careful - don't break the crystal core of your new heart!

How hard the lessons! How many failures haunt the past!  

Do not look back.  Regrets will turn you into a fierce demon. 

Breathe deeply, slowly in my vibrant garden. 

Live now, drink tea from Grandma's favorite, gold-rimmed cup!

May 8, 2023

The poem is inspired by a dream of washing a black-painted vase that slowly reveals its Chinese pattern of dancing phoenixes, blue on white. It seems like magic, removing dirt of the past, accumulated through generations, or done on purpose out of spite, to reveal such timeless, elegant beauty. There is a deeper meaning to the dream - the cleaning of ancestral karma, the hard work it takes to dissolve generations-old weight of ill emotions, regrets, despair. 

But then, there is the garden, birdsong and roses.  It's been my lifesaver in the plandemic, a refuge of serenity and beauty. I survived my bout of illness outside in sunlight, sweating it out while birds sang and orange blossoms filled the air with heavenly scent.  It is so important to be close to nature. Just enjoy life - of plants, birds, lizards, clouds. So much joy in ever leaf, every chirp and note of every winged creature. I was raised in a house with a garden, and loved going outside every day to watch the narcissus and daffodils sprout in their circles on the flowerbed, watch the golden forsythia bloom in an avalanche of petals, wait for the cherries to ripen, play with the willow branches, or read a book on the lawn.  Such simple, ageless delights. No TV, no fancy parties, just being alive in nature being alive, flowering and fruitful. 

When looking for a house in California I picked the one I've been living in for 25 years because of its large garden, fruit trees, and roses, so many patent roses planted back in the early 1950s, Four of these bushes are still alive, still blooming. A couple were "murdered" by a gardener whom I promptly fired - cut them down below the single bud, so the transplanted large-blossom hybrids could not grow back. These roses are "hybrid" because they grow from other roses' stronger roots.  At times the parent will try to bloom as well, shooting long branches out with small red flowers.  

The roses I inherited - Mister Lincoln, Compassion, Peace and Love at First Sight are still lovely, but not really fragrant. For delightful rose scents, I have to turn to the roses I planted - French Perfume, Mellow Yellow, Pop Art, and Grande Dame, Firefighter... The last two are quite alike, despite their names - dark wine-red in hue, huge double flowers, with rounded petals, more magenta in tone than wine of the Grande Dame.  Who would have thought that Firefighter would not smell of smoke and sweat? The Mellow Yellow is not as extraordinarily beautiful as the Oregold of darker, richer yellow and almost no scent. But the fragrance! I decided never to buy roses without rose scent again. 

Colors are interesting, too. Many of my roses are of a single tone - Mister Lincoln of dark, velvety wine-red, Electron and Compassion of clear, vivid pink, Mellow Yellow of creamy, sunny hue, the wine-red-magenta Grande Dame and Firefighter, and of course the pure white Iceberg floribunda bush, that guards the door with its year-round profusion of delicate blooms. 

Charmed by the Love at First Sight I inherited, I looked for two-tone roses and found Peace and Chicago Peace of white, light yellow and pink, Double Delight of white with dark pink edges, Deep Purple with burgundy edges on purple blooms, Rainbow Sorbet of yellow, orange, pinkish red changing in hues as they age, and, my most recent discovery, a fragrant Pop Art, its yellow petals striped with pink. The best of the best - both lovely and fragrant!  I have not kept the tags from these bushes, so I may have forgotten - one bush with pink-yellow-white blossoms seems to be Dream Come True. Another with soft-pink huge flowers = is it Carefree Wonder? 

This year I added some blue to my palette - small stems of szafirki and mid-size blue-yellow Japanese iris. Strong rusty orange in bunches of gazania compete with miniature carnations in white, pink and amaranth. White and pink African daisies I bought for 1$ each are still filling in the palette.  I'm very sensitive to color, so much so that I do not like black and white films, and do not go to see exhibits of drawings, which, in black and white are simply boring. But add color and the image explodes!  So here's another, more colorful dream, that went from jewel hues into pure gold and diamond of intense, joyful light. My life seems to follow the same trajectory. 

On Sunday, After a Dream of Jewel Lights

I remember us, together, flying upwards through the infinite 

lapis of cosmic expanse measured in constellations.

Intertwined in a tight embrace, we were one.  

Two halves of a divine apple of energy - twirling, swirling 

in a feeria of jewel hues - ruby, emerald, sapphire. 

Oh, how I miss those timeless days, years, eras of untold bliss! 

Language was not needed. Transparent to each other, 

we shared thoughts i an instant of yes, always yes.

We crash-landed on a small, distant planet of green forests

 and aquamarine seas.  Everything became heavy, dense 

on this continent of eroding rocks and cold rains.

Separated, we looked for each other in life after life, 

we passed test after test of  unforgetting. 

Would you recognize me without the crown of cosmic jewels? 

Would I find you in an alien landscape of chaparral and muddy winter streams? 

How could I tell it is you, among the desert dust of degradation? 

Yes, always yes, I recognize you in the topaz eyes 

looking at me  with this irresistible energy of masculine 

desire, commanding me to do, what I do not want to do.

Would you still love me if I were an ancient crone?

Would I still love the demon you've become? 

Greedy and resentful, hungry for scraps of my affection, fucus, time? 

Oh how I yearn for our return to the interstellar realm 

of jewel lights. Purified through water, fire -  lost and found - 

we will ascend from ruby, emerald, sapphire

through the sphere of gold diamond rays

ever expanding into the luminous

intensity of grace.

Patience, patience is the key. 

May 8, 2023

 

Planetary Church of Plants? How to Create a New Religion

I'm so glad and so grateful to be alive here and now, on this planet where crickets sing all around me, on my patio at sunset, in my living room at midnight.  Our planet is so vibrant, so green. No wonder, green is the color of the heart chakra, the emerald of love.

Isn't it fascinating to just wake up one day and look around and say:"yes, that's right, everything is just right..."?  It takes a while to get to this point - that's why the happiest people are those over 70, who retired and can just enjoy life in their gardens, while the least happy are those juggling jobs, careers, relationships, children, and survival in their 30s and 40s.  Instead of watching TV, Netflix, or browsing Facebook -"who said what about whom?" who cares? - I like sitting on the patio and listening to the multiple patterns and rhythms of the crickets all around me.  Summer evenings are full of delight. Noon, too, filled with hundreds of bees gathering nectar in my myrtle tree; this, to me is the sound of life, all these bees...

So what do I think about when listening to the crickets? How about making up a new religion? A Planetary Church of Plants? I share the invention of this name with a friend. Not sure I'll ever have it registered and incorporated, but I'll certainly attend its services whenever I feel like it. I created a catechism of sorts for it, too, a set of core ideas worthy of consideration and application in daily life. But before getting to those ideas, let us enjoy the mountains:

Blue Sierra 

oh, to float into blue distance
a dream of weightlessness,
knowledge of nothing but the air
in the lungs, air carrying the limbs
from cloud to cloud into being,
into tranquility, into peace

all made of water, we live
in the Cloud of Unknowing
we breathe a shroud
surrounding the mystical
peaks of the Ancient One
that will not be known
nor understood fully

we have to, we must fly
higher, we must grow wings,
strain in childish hope
that we’ll find brilliance
hidden beyond the bluest
blue of infinity, of time

(c) 2008, first published in Miriam's Iris: Angels in the Garden

How to Create a New Religion

My new religion is my own way of connecting to All that Is, I AM, the Source, the One.  I've read tons and tons of inspirational and spiritual books, and came to the conclusion that everyone is right. And everyone is wrong, too, at the same time.  The basics are to be universally shared and accepted but many religions hide them instead and ask to be paid for the secret.

ONE, as Spinoza discovered, God cannot be outside of this world since God is infinite. Therefore, as Apostle Paul wrote "we live, we breathe, we move, we are in God that is everywhere.

TWO, We are all one -all connected to the One in two ways - our eternal spark of life, the spirit, the Soul, and second - our bodies that are made of matter and are constantly being renewed and remade from new particles, food, energy, air, water - all that endlessly cycles through us.

THREE, Here things are getting complicated - we each have our own Higher Selves - the timeless entities that remains "in the spirit" while we live through one re-incarnation after another, learn one lesson after another. This Higher Self is made of eternal Light and connected to the physical body by a silver cord, or a link of subtle energy. Have I seen it? No. Why would I believe in it? Why not? I've been told to believe in my Guardian Angel already, so why not make this Angel my own self?

FOUR, Reincarnation, karma, and the laws of One, of Love, Forgiveness, and "as above so below" are real and our purpose here is to learn to Love and to collect those moments of Love, like beads of a diamond necklace.

FIVE, physical death is the end of one lesson, a gateway to rest and a prelude to return, first back to the Source for a respite - we go there if we do not have ties that bind and are free of karma. If we are on the right path, there is no spiritual death, in spirit, or soul, we are infinite, endless.

SIX, we come back for another lesson, another lifetime if a) we are slow learners and need to stay one more time in the same grade of the Earth school, b) we do a wrong thing and have to undo it by repeating the experience, and c) we are perfect already and all-loving, but we want to help others.

SEVEN, we are not alone, the universe is full of beings - humans like us and those who are from higher dimensions, more advanced in the school of Love. Some of them are full of loving kindness, but others are not.

EIGHT, the way out and up is to learn to love, be thankful, grateful, kind, peaceful, creative, joyous, and of service to others. Service is important, for how else can we prove we love, if we do not serve?

NINE, the way forward is to focus on Light (some of the entities and beings live in darkness and want to turn us also away from the path of Light) so we focus and analyse and improve ourselves and follow the path of ascension. This is done effortlessly, without striving. This means literally becoming lighter - freeing ourselves of attachments, and consequences of negative experiences and emotions. Only those with feather-light -heart can come in to the Divine Presence. Others have to go back and do it over again. Ancient Egyptians knew it already. Why have we forgotten?

TEN, All life - from rocks, sand, soil, mountains, through trees, animals, birds, insects, stars, oceans, and galaxies has a spark of life within. We are all one. Thus, killing sentient life for food is not acceptable. Killing and harming others, especially sentient beings is not acceptable. It does not come from Love, it is not Love, and it does not lead to greater Love, so it is spiritually useless. Thus, we do not eat meat.

ELEVEN, Meditation is a daily delight - mantras, prayers, chants, all help, but the focus is on finding Light, God, the Divine within - and on being aware of one's own energetic body and of the energy flows in and around us. This means also awareness of ways of protecting our own spiritual space. And noticing the presence of other entities or beings, sometimes kind and helpful but at other times willing to invade our space. So this means clearing the air, so to speak. Wrapping ourselves in our own cocoon of white light.

TWELVE, Therefore, the best way forward and up is to follow the "Golden Rule" (treat others as  you want to be treated) as well as basic rules of "Love Everyone, Respect Everything" coupled with the Hawaiian code of conduct: "Sorry, Forgive, Thank, Love" (Ho'oponopono) and the Native American Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz:
1) Be Impeccable with your Word,
2) Do not Take Anything Personally,
3) Do not Make Assumptions, and
4) Always Do Your Best.

Now, that my TWELVE has split into four parts, or twelve again, if counting each step, it is time to stop. Things are becoming too complicated.

Everyone knows those rules, anyway. Ancient Egyptians wrote out the Golden Rule as "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do" (Goddess Ma'at), and in a negative form as "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another."  In ancient Indian Mahabharata, the rule is described as a lesson to the king: "by self-control and by making dharma (right conduct) your main focus, treat others as you treat yourself."  In ancient Greece, the emphasis was on not doing the wrong thing: "Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing." – Thales. In Judaism, Leviticus (19:18) has the following verse: "You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD." Finally, in Christianity, the Golden Rule took the form of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (words of Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew 7:12 and Luke 6:31).

Knowing the words is not an issue. Doing the right thing all the time - now, that's a real challenge!
We can learn to be patient and kind from the trees.

A Tree Epiphany 

                          ~for Kristin Sabo who found the whale of a tree

I want the solid serenity of trees
the sighs of their boughs in the wind 
roots reaching to the core of the earth

an oak perhaps,or a grand plane tree
thatmajestic one in Descanso Gardens
a whale of the tree, floating on waves of air

or maybe that regal eucalyptus 
with multicolored bark - a canvas for centuries
shedding memories of droughts and storms

or liquid amber, oh my liquid amber
melting gold and bronze at my feet
nourishing the roots, seeds, new leaves

Wait for the sleeping earth to awaken 
the boughs sigh in the northern wind
the roots reach deeper, still deeper 

I adore the trembling of birches in the breeze, 
whispering:quiet, quiet, now listen –before 
leaves fall, bare branches shiver in the snow

an apple tree, comely and fruitful
in an abandoned orchard by the crossroads
shylyoffers gifts to all passers-by

I want the serenity of trees 
to fill my heart with their sighs, with their 
whispers, with their sleep.

Now that we've seen the whale of a tree - the Plane Tree in Descanso Gardens - let's make life simple. Let's go to the beach and enjoy building sand castles to be washed away by the ocean waves.