The Secret of the Rose

It’s springtime. Tulips and crocuses, with lilacs right around the bend. And, of course, the rose is on its way, too. It’s a time of renewal and rebirth, a time for the re-emergence of that which has lain dormant; a time for new love and the dreams of an extended winter’s night ready to be fulfilled.

Bette Midler wrote and sang it best in the “The Rose.” For, especially when things seem their gloomiest, it is essential that we know there is a seed buried so deep within us that even during the starkest winter snows it can and it will survive and then thrive. But it needs a little help from us. We have, after all, free will. With our determination and conscious intent, with our refusal to ever give up, and with our stubbornness to stay with it until we have healed our ideas of lack and limitation, this seedling essence of us will blossom to its fullest. If we stay with our dream long enough and refuse to get lost in appearance, doubt, and old stories, we will ultimately be changed by the warmth of the sun’s love in the spring thaw, which actually is a metaphor for the love that we are – that magnificent core which joins us together as a Universal family of one. This seed of us and our potentials, forever nurtured by the core of love that we are, can one day become the rose. It can one day blossom into the promise and fulfillment of us.

That day can be today.

The good news is the “spring” of our potential is not limited to the calendar. On the other hand, often our personal “winters” are not limited to three short months. But working for the experience of healing, rebirth and renewal is more than worth the wait and the effort. We are all so very worth our own effort. I know because my “winter,” fueled by the experience of and then recovery from horrific childhood abuse, lasted for the first three decades of my life, plus a few extra years thrown in for good measure.

Ah, but then came spring…

My favorite spring arrived one November, over twenty-nine years ago. My long winter’s dream was no longer ensnarled in pain and suffering. I had grown to the place where I was only interested in experiencing the parts of life I had not yet known. I was divorced, the mother of three, but I had never known true love with a partner. So I took out a fresh canvas and new paints and set about creating my dream. I knew that I had to be willing to own in me everything I desired in my partner. How could I magnetize into my life something that I had not at least energetically and emotionally integrated with?

Being a natural organizer, I began by making a list of what I wanted.

What a list! I wanted someone who was intelligent, kind to the core, funny, attractive, wonderfully sexy to me, knew himself, and perhaps more important than anything, someone who shared what drove my life. A spiritual perspective that we are created out of the substance of a Divinity that is forever, a Light that is greater than dark, a Love that is greater than pain. He didn’t have to express this passion for what I call God in exactly the same way I did, but it had to be an integral part of who and how he was.

And then I added the next piece, because in order to accept the potential of my dream, I needed to be able to resonate with the feeling of being so loved and treasured. I needed to be able to match the picture of what I wanted with the passion/feeling of it. Now that was definitely something new. It certainly didn’t reflect anything from my personal history of childhood cruelty and rejection.

I went on a mission, searching industriously for a model of today’s dream . And then one night, voila, there it was right in front of my face, reaching out to my consciousness from my Sony television. Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers. “Hart to Hart”. On screen, they treasured each other. The way the character of Jonathan Hart was filled by his lovely wife, how he drank her in – I soaked it up. I would say to myself, “Yep, that’s how my guy will look at me. That’s how we will delight each other.”

I turned back to the metaphoric rose I was coaxing into becoming the blossom of my intention for my personal life.

A picture and a passion. Heart to heart.

I checked to make sure I didn’t have any hidden agendas. I didn’t want my partner because he would heal me. I had already done that for myself. I didn’t want him to validate me, complete me, or take care of me. He was simply the part of my life I had not yet experienced.

A new mantra formulated in my mind. I felt so certain that my counterpart existed and that some part of him was looking for all that I was. I began to think and repeat and repeat: For every thought there is a corresponding factor. That which I am seeking is seeking me. The law of attraction in action!

And yet when the day came, when my big moment was upon me, I almost canceled. It was 1982, the night before Thanksgiving. I was tired, planning a holiday feast the next day for my children and some friends, and here I was with a last minute plan for a kind of non-date date with a great guy named John with whom I had been friends for a year. But really, nice as he was, I didn’t have time for this. I was after all very, very busy looking for Mr. Right.

John returned to my home with me after the non-date movie we went to see. We opened a bottle of wine, turned on the music, lit the logs in the fireplace, and chatted easily as we always did. We laughed and teased, and then something magical happened. In the soft glow of the light, I began to see facets of this lovely man I hadn’t realized were there. His quick smile, his defenseless attitude, his wonderful mind, his handsome face – they all were suddenly coming together in a new awareness within me. “Put away your telescope,” my inner senses said to me, “Mr. All-that-you- have-ever-hoped for is right before your eyes!”

The flower of my springtime blossomed lusciously that winter. John and I, living out a romance that has never faded, will celebrate our twenty-ninth wedding anniversary this May.

The calendar tells us now that it is spring once again. Embrace it – the colors, the fragrances, the vitality, the blue skies and warming temperatures. And if there is, for whatever reason, a cloud darkening the heart of your spring, remember there is a power within you greater than the dark, greater than the problem. For even in the appearance of the darkest winter day, the seed of the rose that holds your dreams and hopes is rising to the surface, just waiting to be recognized -- just waiting to blossom into the fulfillment of the love that you are.

©2012