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The Secret Rose Garden

By Florence Lederer

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The Journey

THE JOURNEY
THE FORSAKING

SEE, your companions have gone;
Will you not too make a start?
If you desire to take wing as a bird,
Then leave to the vultures this carrion world.

Forsake your relations,
For your real Friend must be sought.
He who is drowning in the sea of Not-being
Must cast aside all relationships.
What are father and mother,
Sister and brother?
Your very son may be your enemy,
Yet may a stranger be your kinsman;
Even your fellow-travellers on the mystic path
Must be renounced.

All relations are a bond, a spell,
A fairy dream,
An absolute illusion.

Omit not the duties
Of the law to them,
But have regard to yourself.
. . . Abandon gold and women,
For they are a source of anxiety.

THE TRAVELLER
THE traveller on the path,
’Tis he who knows from whence he cometh;
Then doth he journey hastily,
Becoming as pure from self as fire from smoke.
Unfolded to him are a series of revelations
From the beginning. Till he is led away
From darkness and sin.
He now retraces stage by stage his steps
Till he reaches his goal the Perfect.
Thus is the perfect man evolved
From the time he first exists
As inorganic matter,

Next a breath of spirit, and he is living
And from God draws his motive powers.
Next the Truth makes him lord of his will,
As in childhood his discernment of the world unfolds.
And now the world's temptations assail him.

. . . Anger appears and desires of the flesh,
And then avarice, pride, and gluttony;
His nature becomes evil,
Worse than an animal or demon;
Now is he at the lowest point of all,
The point opposite to Unity.

. . . Should he remain fettered in this snare,
He goes further astray than the beasts;
But if there shines a light from the spirit world,
Divinely attractive,
Or if he can find a reflection of proof,
Then will his heart respond in a feeling of kinship
To this Light of the Truth,
And he will turn back and retrace his steps
From whence he came.
To faith assured he has found his way
Through certain proof, or the wonder
And attraction of the Divine,

. . . He throws away his selfhood utterly
And ascends in the steps of the most Pure.

EXHORTATION
THOUGH the world is yours, you remain dejected,
Who so pitiable as you?

You, who are a man, arise and pass on,
Wait not day or night at the halting-stages,
Tarry not behind your fellow-travellers and the caravans.

THE TWO STEPS OF THE JOURNEY
THE journey of the pilgrims is two steps and no more:
One is the passing out of selfhood,
And one towards mystical Union with the Friend.

FEAR
As the Arab racer needs not the whip,
So you will not need to fear
When on your journey you have started.

When purified are your soul and body,
You will not fear the fires of hell.
Throw pure gold into the fire;
If it contains no alloy, what is there to burn?

LOGIC
IF God guides you not into the road,
It will not be disclosed by logic.

Logic is a bondage of forms;
A road that is long and hard.
Leave it for a season. Like Moses
Cast away that staff
And enter for awhile "The Valley of Peace."

THE INFANT AND THE YOUTH
THE young infant in the cradle
Stays at his mother's side,
But when he is grown manly
He goes forth with his father.

So you remain with your mother,
The fleshly elements,
Until you join your Father up on high.

THE ALMOND-TREE
As the kernel of an almond is spoilt utterly
If it is plucked from its husk while unripe,
So error in the path of the pilgrim
Spoils the kernel of his soul.
When the knower is divinely illumined,
The kernel ripens, bursts the husk,
And departs, returning no more.
But another retains the husk,
Though shining as a. bright sun,
And makes another circuit.
From water and earth springs up into a tree,
Whose high branches are lifted up to heaven;
Then from the seed of this tree
A hundredfold are brought forth.
Like the growth of a seed into the line of a tree,
From point comes a line, then a circle;
When the circuit of this circle is complete,
Then the last is joined to the first.

INTERMINGLING
You are plurality transformed into Unity,
And Unity passing into plurality;
This mystery is understood when man
Leaves the part and merges in the Whole.