Rose Mysticism 4 - Planting the Internal Eternal Mother

This fourth session of the Rose Podclass explores the spiritual meaning of the rose through the mother (the oldest archetype) as the source of all true strength. This is me wishing you happy Mother's Day in the most meta sense possible. Because the inner mother is the foundation everything else is built on. 

Inside this session:

• The episode opens with a channeled rose contemplation
• The uncorrupted and corrupted qualities of the mother archetype — and how to recognize both in yourself
• The mother wound across four levels: personal, cultural, spiritual, and planetary (based on Bethany Webster's framework)
• A powerful three-part ritual to identify your current inner mother, define the one you need, and begin planting her within you
• The episode closes with a final blessing from the rose.

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20:40 Mark Correction: I said "headless figure".  I meant "disembodied head".

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Reference Episodes:

• Episode 27 - Rose Mysticism 3: Unlocking the Power of the Prostitute Archetype
• Episode 21 - Rose Mysticism 2 - Reclaiming Your Sensual Divinity
• Episode 14 - Rose Mysticism 1 – Practicing Heaven on Earth

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Transcript

Dilshad 0:03

This is Delicious Dignity, where we cultivate a self so potent, so clear, so vital, so truthful, that our life is all the more luscious for it. Let's call ourselves into being, shall we? Hello, lovelies. Happiest of Mother's Day to you. And I mean that in the most meta-cosmic sense possible. This episode is for everyone, whether you had a mother or not, whether you are a mother or not, and whether your relationship is lovely with your mother or not. Don't get hung up on gender or on roles or anything like that, because the mother we're talking about today, it's an energy, it's an archetype. And I would argue it's the oldest archetype. It's so funny because I thought I was done with the Rose Mysticism series. And it was not done with me. I thought, you know, there were just three parts to Rose Mysticism. And each of those three parts are just so profound that I've already recorded and already published. And I just thought there was not much more to it because, you know, we were practicing heaven on earth, we were reclaiming a sensual type of divinity, and we unlocked the power of the prostitute archetype. And all of those are really deep and intense topics. And I felt like it covered the whole of Rose mysticism until one day I was just sitting there and I asked, okay, so I'm done, right? Is it time for another series on the podcast? And it was like, no, we're not done. We need to talk about the mother. And after that realization set in, another episode was born from that one. So yeah, we're not done with the rose mysticism series, and I thought we were. So because it's been a while, I just want to introduce to you the concept of rose mysticism. So let's start with the word mysticism. Mysticism is so different from religion or dogma, right? Mysticism offers a path to spiritual knowledge and transformation at a soul level through direct, experiential engagement with the divine or ultimate reality, whatever you want to call it. It's direct, it's experiential. Those are two most important words for you to remember here, because this is your own path with the divine, your own. It's unlike any other. And mysticism is about practicing the divine. Oh, isn't that a delicious statement? Mysticism is about practicing the divine. And there are mystic branches to every religion, if you've noticed. With Christianity, you had everything from the Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, the Cathars, the Bugomils. In the Islamic tradition, we have the Sufis. Every religion ended up having branches to this mystical experience of the divine, because it's beyond dogma, it's beyond blind obedience, and in a sense, it's beyond patriarchy. And so combine that with the rose. See, the rose is one of our oldest plant allies. We have fossil records of the rose from I think the period of time is called the Alagosin period. It was about 33 to 22 million years ago. And we have fossil records from then about the rose plant. We know that the rose is one of the oldest cultivated flowers by humans. And so, in a way, I feel like this flower has seen our history, has been witness to our history, has worked with humans in a very deep and profound way. I introduced to you John O'Donohue in one of our previous episodes, and he's this beautiful Irish poet, mystic himself, and he has this phrase called Anamkara, or he introduced me to the phrase Anamkara, which means friend of the soul. And I feel like that's what the rose is. And of course, the rose has been associated with so many deep and powerful goddesses, from Inanna to Aphrodite to I can't even remember now I'm blanking, to a bunch of different goddesses in the Vedic pantheon. So this rose flower is just a beautiful, beautiful, symbolic plant. And not to mention the rose family or the rosacea family includes so many edible fruits that we love: apples, pears, apricots, cherries, peaches, strawberries. And it's it's one of the most important crop plant families that we have as humans. So do you see this interplay between the rose and mysticism? Oh, I forgot the main rose goddess of them all is Mary or Marium or the Magdalene. And so this really ancient, we would say, divine feminine sort of interplay between the rose and the rose mysticism, even the word rose ocrucians that I mentioned before comes from the word rose. I think the rose like the feminine has been relegated to the role of this head in the clouds fantasy of something trite, something incompetently soft and passive when it's anything but it's got its thorns and it's got so much beautiful value and nourishment that I feel like ended up maybe is one of the reasons why it wanted me to talk about the mother today. So I just wanted to introduce to you all these different concepts and remind you because it's been a while since we did a rose mysticism episode. So the way this works is I'm gonna start off with a little missive or contemplation directly from the rose. And I invite you that when you're listening, gaze intermittently at a picture of a rose or an actual rose and try to gaze at the center of the rose while you listen to these missives and listen with soft ears, you know, not with hard ears. It's almost like you're listening to background music. And so, first we'll start with the mystical contemplation, then we'll go a little bit more into theory, and then we'll go into a beautiful, most powerful ritual that I can possibly offer you on this podcast. So let's begin. So here's the contemplations and gaze intermittently at the rose, okay, if you can. The rose says mother first. Mother first. Mother first. Without mother, you are nothing, no thing, and you can't be anyone. The mother is the substance that substantiates you. The mother is the archetype of love. The mother line is your birthright. The mother line is your history and your future. The mother line is where you come from and who you belong to. Absolutely everything is about the mother. The mother is everything that's ever kept you alive, safe, and warm. The mother is sanctuary, the mother is mercy, the mother is justice. You do not have to be a child to want the mother. You have to be a wise woman to want the mother, to even become the mother. The mother is us all, the mother is our true nature. The mother is everyone we ever wanted to be. The mother is the truth, the mother is freedom. The mother is the primal, the primary ancient force and power through which the sacred art of birthing and creation comes from. From languages to paintings, to blessings, to tea, to galaxies, this is the sacred art of birthing and creation. The mother gives life indiscriminately, yet also knows how to take it away swiftly and discriminately. The mother is the energy that gives life, including taking away what hurts life to give life. The mother is goodness beyond morality. The mother is who we are when we are most supreme. Composting is the ancient system of the mother. The dead provides nourishment for the living. The mother knows what must die. The mother knows what must live. What cannot be of use to life, even in death, is not real. So says the mother. The mother holds all. The mother is gravity when no one is watching. The rose says, Come home to this mother. The rose says, You are this mother. You know, as I spoke this all out loud, I almost want to make this a meditation to just have on the podcast that you can download and just listen to it over and over again. I hope you were listening with soft ears, because that went right into my heart when I was speaking it. Okay, so now that we've had this missive or message from the rose, let's attempt to define what can be undefinable. So, because we're talking about mother as an energy, and you might have already noticed parts that made you comfortable or uncomfortable. And if so, note them down now before you listen to the rest of the podcast, because this will help you in the ritual, this very powerful ritual that we will do towards the end. Now that we are going to define mother in a more, shall we say, practical way, I'd also like you to listen here for anything that makes you shut down emotionally or anything that triggers you emotionally in any way, good or bad, because that is food, that that is nourishment for the ritual that we will do. What is mother? If we had to define it as an archetype, we'll also have to define qualities in a human mother, and we had to define them as a cosmic mother. What are those qualities? This is what I'm offering you as a definition for the mother. The mother is nurturing, the mother is life-giving, the mother is loving, and even has a kind of foothold in the realm of unconditional love, meaning, I will love you even if you make a mistake, do something bad. I will love you anyway. You are loved even if you make a mistake. I remember the first time I ever connected directly to the divine mother. It was so intense. And one of her messages to me was the divine mother loves the divine child. And that's another quality of the mother. She really enjoys the child. And I use female pronouns here, but you know, you can use any. But she really enjoys her child. She there's an enjoyment of her child. She's kind, she feeds, there's a feeding quality to her. She's protective, but the mother is encouraging, championing. The mother is deeply connected to emotions where not only does she acknowledge them and sit with them, but she also helps with them. She prioritizes and she's a safe space to run to, to be with. So make a note of anything in there that triggered you or had an emotional reaction because now I want to talk to you about the corrupted qualities of the mother. And this is something that you might see in human mothers, or you might have noticed in mothers in, you know, your own mother or other people's mothers. And this has a lot to do with a concept called the mother wound. The mother wound is a term that was introduced to the world by this beautiful woman named Bethany Webster. And she basically describes the mother wound as a social condition that's rooted in patriarchy. Because it's all about how patriarchy has sort of corrupted the mother. The mother wound, according to Bethany Webster, the way she defines it is it's the pain, the limiting beliefs, and the psychological adaptations that we internalize when a mother, due to whatever her own wounds are, is unable to consistently provide that mothering for us. And it gets passed down, especially daughter to daughter, mother to mother. It just gets passed down one generation after another. And it's all the ways in which patriarchy hurts or corrupts this mothering influence. Can you almost see now why the Rose is such a great ally and even introduced this topic? I can't believe I didn't see it before. So the mother wound can happen on many levels. It can happen on the personal level, which uh, you know, with our dynamics with our mothers, we it impacts how we see ourselves, each other, and even our potential. Then we have the cultural mother wound, and that is the systemic devaluation of women, especially in extremely patriarchal cultures, but in any culture really. And it's just rooted in this dysfunctional imbalance between mothers and daughters, between mothers and their children. Then we have the spiritual mother wound, and that is the feeling of being disconnected and alienated from a higher power and even life in general. And then we have a planetary mother wound that the harm that has been caused to the earth, we're seeing climate change, deforestation, etc., that's threatening life on this planet. We can have a mother wound from all these four levels personal, cultural, spiritual, and planetary. And that formula was um taken directly from Bethany Webster's work. In this way, the mother as an archetype gets corrupted. Let's talk about some of those corrupted qualities of the mother. We talked about all of the qualities before, right? So we said nurturing. So when the corrupted quality of the mother, when it comes to nurturing, is violating. So in a way, the mother is violating in some way, either through abuse or through some kind of, well, just abuse, let's just say. So instead of nurturing, we are violating. Instead of life-giving, she's life-taking. The mother makes you small or just sort of cuts you off from life in some way. Then instead of loving, we have the mother being stoic or icy or dismissive. Instead of unconditional love, it's now conditional love based on performance and performative behavior. Instead of enjoying the child, the child is now a burden, or she becomes the child herself, and the child is now the mother. Instead of kind, we have cruelty and extreme criticism and criticizing. Instead of feeding, we have starving, neglectful. Instead of protective, we have a kind of throwing under the bus or scapegoating a quality to the mother. Instead of encouraging, we have demeaning and shaming and guilt tripping. Instead of championing and cheerleading, we have sacrificing performative and scapegoating. Instead of acknowledging emotions, we have bypassing or suppressing or dismissing them, or simply leaving the child to be alone in them. And instead of prioritizing, we have the sacrificing of the child. And instead of having or being the safe space to run to, we have running away, hypervigilance, the moodiness, the unpredictableness, the shockingness of the space that this type of corrupted quality of the mother takes. And of course, we're not really sitting here criticizing our mothers, nor are we criticizing the aspect of the mother itself. But what we are doing is we have to notice, right? I've said this so many times on this podcast, and there's nothing more you take away from this podcast is sometimes acknowledgement is the healing. And so to not look at something is to rip the potential for healing from your soul. And that's not fair, right? So we're looking at these things not only from situations or people that we've noticed outside of us, but also how we treat ourselves. You know, everything I just said about the corrupted quality of the mother, these are also actions we take towards ourselves internally. Which brings me to the ritual now. When we have a strong inner mother, we are just strong, period. There is no strength that you can have without having a solid inner mothering figure. And I feel like the rose offers itself as an archetype of the mother, for you to be able to install that within yourself, to plant that as a seed within yourself. And sometimes we need a divine mother first for us to understand what the internal mother might look like for us personally. For example, for me, it's always been Kali. Kali, this fierce yet tender mother, the life-giving and the life-taking away mother. I feel like she represents the soil, uh, the deep dark space of the universe. And I just absolutely love that mothering figure as an archetype for the kind of mother I want inside in my soul. I've also leaned into Kwany. I've also leaned into Mary and or Mariam as an archetype for the kind of tender yet fierce mother that I want to have as a figure inside of my psyche. So let's get to the ritual part of this. So there are three areas to this ritual. The number one, the first part is analyzing your current mother state. What is the current state of your inner mother? And you can use three areas for inspiration. Number one, you can use everything we just talked about, all the contemplations, all the misses, all the definitions as a sort of clue as to what your internal mother state is currently at. You can also use the archetype of the rose or the energy of the rose, maybe to tell you what your current mother state is. Or you can look at all of the beings that you perform a mothering role for and how you show up as a mother to those beings. For example, for me, it's my dog. And how I mother my dog is usually an indication of how I mother myself. Get that part really down. You know, maybe you have to close your eyes and look inside of you and say, who is my inner mother? And get a visual. Get a really strong visual of what your internal mother looks like. And maybe your internal mother is just perfect and beautiful and a merry-like figure inside of you. Again, I'm not asking you what you want her to be. I'm asking you, based on how you live your life, what you've demonstrated you do in your life, what is your current mother state? For me, it's always been like this headless figure. So it's just a head and these arms, and the finger is coming out of the hand and is held upright, the index finger, and the index finger is wagging at me. And the hair on the head is all kind of curly but frizzy and just very sparse on the head. And just this menacing or kind of cruel look on the face, this very hyper-critical, hyper-shaming expression on its face, and kind of always wagging its finger at me. And it also takes the shape of a neglectful person, or at least it used to, because you know, there's a lot I did to kind of get it to its current state. So we'll talk about that in a minute. And a good way to kind of get a clue as to who your current mother state is is another thing you can do is look at what your inner critic, your inner doubter, your inner saboteur feels like to you. And that usually is a good clue as to what your current mother state is. Whatever holds you back from life is usually an indication of the current state of your inner mother. And usually, not always, but usually you'll kind of sense. It in your chest area, you might sense it in other areas, but really get a good visual. My biggest clue when I first did this exercise a few, I think about it was some maybe eight years ago. My inner critic led me to understanding what my inner mother was like. You know, the other clue that I talked to you about, which is look at how you mother other beings that you're responsible for. With my dog, when I first got my dog, I think for the first year, maybe a year and a half, I forgot to enjoy my dog. I was just so busy with vet appointments and training and uh providing for this dog that I just forgot to enjoy my dog. I forgot to play with my dog as much as I would have liked to. It was just all about survival. And even though there was not really a need to be that much in survival mode, but there was there was a part of me that took myself and my dog too seriously. And I forgot to play, I forgot to enjoy. So that was another aspect of my internal mother state at the time that I had noticed and then I transformed later on. So hopefully, all these examples gives you an idea of your of how you want to look at your current mothering state. Because now we'll go into part two, which is what would you like your mothering state to be? What is your needed mother state? And again, you look at all of the areas I mentioned above for clues. For me, especially look at the rose as an example to just see what are the qualities of the rose that you would like in a needed mother. For me, when I established my inner mother, I wanted a mothering figure that didn't have the wagging finger. And instead, she had open hands and open arms, kind of like the Mother Mary figure we see in Christian ideology, where she has her arms open and it's kind of like a come to me sort of energy, or you are welcome here, or you are blessed in my presence, um, open arms. That was the kind of energy I wanted to install. Like instead of hyper-critical of every action I take, she is instead celebratory, welcoming, appreciating, and honoring what I do do well, you know. And so again, get a really good visual. So I gave you an example of my visual. Yours might be something very different. And then we go to the third part of this ritual, which is identify a place in your life where you don't mother yourself. And then go fix it. Fix it. So the way you do this is there's always a place in your life where you know where you are not mothering yourself, you know, where you're not nurturing, appreciating, honoring, loving, all of the qualities we talked about before. For me, way back when it was food, I would just push my body and not give it enough nourishment, enough nutrients. And I would just keep pushing it, make it stay up all hours of the night to study, to work. And I and also the other aspect is I wouldn't take care of my emotions. I wouldn't acknowledge them. I wouldn't let them flow. I would almost punish myself, you know, that wagging finger, I would punish myself for having emotions. So I really had to work on my internal mother to help me with those things. And so if I if it was food, then I would work with my mother to be like, oh, I need to nourish myself. I need to give myself food. If I had an emotion, I would sit with my emotion and say, okay, as from my internal mother to myself, how can I mother myself through this emotion? And now these days, it's about my internal mother just wants to, I just want a lot of reassurance in general. So I give myself that reassurance. And I also want a lot of rest, so I give myself a lot of rest. So visualize the mother that we identified in part two, which is the mother that you want or need, and visualize what she might say to you about this place in your life where you don't mother yourself. I remember for me, she said to me when I first did this exercise, darling, you need food. Darling, can I feed you? That is how she would speak to me. And I was just such a sweet, oh, it was so sweet. Yeah, I don't know if you can feel the sweetness of those words, but that's how that's how it sounds when she speaks to you. If you've noticed there's no shame in there, there's no critic criticizing in there, because that was my current state of the time of my internal mother was criticizing. It was just like, oh, let me feed you, darling, let me feed you. Or I can understand why this makes you angry. Let's devise a plan for how we can work with this anger and how we can prevent it from eating you alive. The way that mother, my internal mother, started talking to me, it just gave me such security, such strength, and such a feeling of gravitas and substance to me. That's the ritual, that's the three-part ritual. You can even ritualize this more. When you do this ritual, you can light a candle, you can make a little clay figurine of the mother that you need. You might even draw the mother that your current mother state is, and when you're ready, burn it and send it up to the great mother to be like, here, you can take this. I want another type of mother. There's so many ways you can ritualize this. You know, you can even put a drawing of your needed mother or your the mother that you want under a glass of water, and then drink the water ritually as a way to say that you're imbibing the mother that you want and need. So that's what I wish for you this Mother's Day is that you work with your internal mother, you meet your internal mother, you install the well beautiful mother that you want, and you work with her ritually, because for many of you, I acknowledge fully that this will be the first time we've discussed the mother in this way, the first time you've ever thought about the mother in this way. Just rinse and repeat. Every day, meet the mother. Maybe for the month of May, it's Mother's Day month. Meet the mother every day. Just say hello, say hi, wish her well, say good morning, mother, you know, what whatever works for you to remind yourself of that, and it takes so little. It's really one of those things where you just pay it 5% attention and it will give you 500% results. You know, it's one of those things where I can't explain it. Again, this is about mysticism. You have to experience it to understand it. And in the future, there will be many, many more episodes on the mother, the divine mother, the human mother, etc., and the mother wound. But for now, I wanted to start it off by introducing you to your mother. Okay. If you please, I would like to speak to you as from my internal mother to you. And if she would speak, this is what she would say. It's okay, my darling. It's always okay. You're such a precious, precious soul. Look at you brimming with life, brimming with possibility, brimming with love. You are safe. You're so loved. You're cherished. I'm in awe of who you are. And I appreciate you so much. I love that you're alive. Every cell of your body is so welcomed. You are welcomed in your entirety. There's not one part of you that is not welcome. Your dignity is upheld, and I honor you in all your glory. I respect you in all your sweetness. Your heart is safe with me. I'm here for you always and forever. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being alive. Okay, my lovelies. Much love to you. I just want to end the episode on this note, so much love to you. Until next time. Bye.