Beloveds, you are a rose about to blossom, more than to blossom. Why more? You are opening up to your full blooming, bounteousness, and beauty.
 
How happy a rose is to bloom. A rose blooms and blossoms to her fullness, and yet stays rooted in the soil where she has always been. From the muck and mire, a rose grows tall. A rose doesn’t see the muck and mire distasteful as you do. The rose does not consider for a moment that dirt takes anything away from her beauty.
 
If some of the wet soil splatters on a rose’s leaves, the rose welcomes the spatters as she welcomes the brightening Sun. The rose thanks the nurturing soil and the warming Sun that shines Itself on the rose to let her know her own light and how much the Sun loves her. When the Sun is hidden behind clouds, the rose doesn’t mind. The rose knows that the Sun is beaming on her.
 
And when rain comes, the rose does not mind. The rose doesn’t gasp and say: “Oh, I’m getting wet.” In fact, the rose laps up and soaks in the rain. The rose feels enamored in nature and knows she has her purpose and place in the Universe and certainly belongs where she happens to be. The rose has confidence that she is taken care of.
 
The rose doesn’t have the vocabulary to name Nature as her beneficent Source. The rose doesn’t know to say God or Krishna or Allah or any of the names of the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. The rose knows she is growing and rising toward the Sun. The rose is a rose even as she doesn’t incorporate the names given to her in all the languages of the world. The rose knows its own nature without instruction, yet, even so, when her name is spoken, she reverberates to it.
 
The rose does not ask for anything. The rose is complete unto herself. She lacks nothing. She grows to the Sun. The rose doesn’t think what a passerby thinks of her or what anyone might think of her. She doesn’t plead for attention. The rose is secure in her own Rose-ness. The rose is content growing with a thousand other roses just as beautiful as she is. She doesn’t think about the colored raiment other roses wear. She is happy to grow with a thousand other roses in a garden or by herself, the only rose in sight. The rose is satisfied that she grows and grows toward the Sun. What more could a rose ask for?
 
The rose does not have to be admired or adored. The rose doesn’t have to be picked. She’s fine with being picked to go into a vase in someone’s home, and she’s fine being left where she is. Whether someone near is in attendance or she is loved from afar, the rose is secure in being loved and glories in being a rose. The rose knows Oneness without knowing the word Oneness.
 
When the rose unveils her full beauty, surrounded by admirers, she hears hearts exclaim, “Ahh.” When a rose unveils her full beauty, she isn’t being modest or immodest. No rose thinks this way. No rose hides her beauty. No rose hides herself before she blooms to her full beauty either. A rose is a rose, and what could deter her from being as she was born to be?
 
And when the rose passes her prime and her beauty fades, she doesn’t regret, and she doesn’t mourn. She knows she was to pass this way for a while and be all a rose can be. Now she returns to the soil where she began. Now she nourishes the soil that nourished her, or she bobs on the water of the sea. It doesn’t matter to her. Wherever her petals may lie, the rose knows her destiny. She is returning to the Sun from where she came.