Rosewood city. The urban legend that is immaculately constructed around the term — greed.
It's one such place Anisha and I witnessed in our expedition of life early on. This all-wise blueprint that we developed helped us along the way to cautiously make each move with set protocols that shouldn't be breached.
With the rod and staff of the Torah, we constantly scanned for the reptiles, beasts that could possibly cause a fatality because you live every day but could die only once.
Anisha and I had everything thrown our way, the world in its most spectacular and materialistic form. The roses with freshly endued petals. Yet the rose is not a flower of longevity in my eyes. It's a poetic flower that in analogical terms stands for degeneration progressing to speedy decay.
The flower of living in the moment.
The flower of death.
The rose is designed in a way to conceal the thorns at first glance, it's a prototype to the world as I visualize it through my wisdom-fueled glasses. The blood red, passion-driven, carnal adrenaline shot. The world has a knack of living in the moment. Endless debauchery, boatloads of cash and then comes the aftermath. The thorns.
To exit a life that we anyway hadn't gone too deep into, Anisha and I took the rather traditional route to life, which was slow living in a sprawling city culture. The benefit of this kind of living is that you hold the keys to the regulator concerning the speed of life you'd wish to flow at. We viewed corporate life as a momentary stint and pursued a life worth living.
A seeker's shovel to dig deeper into the soul.
It's not a bad thing to desire material stuff, but it's always better to incrementally evolve and advance into experiencing growth and knowing how to manage it. Exponential bursts are always better than being shot to success, as the climb helps you recalibrate, comprehend the pace and reconsider well every step because an error in judgment could prove fatal. While you step up and the difficulty gets harder, the rose deals get trickier, and the heart gets weaker.
The highs and tides of life are designed in a way that your heart will skip a beat and you will be on the wrong end of many dilemmas. Should I do this...or not...?
Introducing a spiritual staff of wisdom: In ancient times, a staff was used by a shepherd to lead his sheep to safe pasture and crush any opposing beasts or reptiles that could pose a danger. It's the quintessential weapon of the jungle. An infallible shield against the treacherous and dark unknown.
In my pursuit of seeking the staff of wisdom, I stumbled upon many twigs, appearing quite meritorious from a distance, but upon laying hands on it, it was as hollow and fragile as a kitten whisker. I also kept running, in my quest to learn this spiritual jungle of life and fell prey to pits dug by erroneous lying doctrines, which led me into a downward spiral of greater darkness than surface level. Upon overcoming all of this and being helped out of the pit, I found my staff, which was the wisdom-fueled Megachest — THE TORAH.
A moment of clarity extricates an individual and elevates him to being more free spirited to seize life, in all its mortality. We have only so many hours to live in the truth.
Hours of confusion brings bondage and eventual devastation when your limited time was given over to the momentary rose to be ravished…
A life with carelessness in calculus would result in an avalanche of sudden catastrophe upon your household.
But you have your free will —
DENY THE ROSE!!!
Psalms 23 JPS Tanakh 1985
"Hashem is my shepherd; I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me to water in places of repose; He renews my life; He guides me in right paths as befits His name. Though I walk through a valley of deepest darkness, I fear no harm, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff—they comfort me. You spread a table for me in full view of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my drink is abundant. Only goodness and steadfast love shall pursue me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the HASHEM for many long years."
A helper's manual is the Torah, to avert disaster.
To a person keeping Torah, the rose deal is never-never-land.
A spiritually infused soul will never experience true elevation of spirituality and contentment. The rose deal will sting you to be sorry that you handled it so incautiously. The doors of wisdom are to be pursued above the worldly strokes of materialistic hills and valleys. Wisdom is a constant that will help you ground yourself as you go up and brace yourself when you're low.
Our forefather patriarch Abraham showed us in all his splendor how to deny the rose deal offered by a shady and questionable entity, the king of Sodom:
Genesis 14: 14-22 JPS Tanakh 1985
"When Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he mustered his retainers, born into his household, numbering three hundred and eighteen, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. At night, he and his servants deployed against them and defeated them; and he pursued them as far as Hobah, which is north of Damascus. He brought back all the possessions; he also brought back his kinsman Lot and his possessions, and the women and the rest of the people. When he returned from defeating Chedorlaomer and the kings with him, the king of Sodom came out to meet him in the Valley of Shaveh, which is the Valley of the King. And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High. He blessed him, saying, “Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed be God Most High, Who has delivered your foes into your hand.” And [Abram] gave him a tenth of everything. Then the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, and take the possessions for yourself.” But Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I swear to the LORD, God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth: I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours; you shall not say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.’ For me, nothing but what my servants have used up; as for the share of the men who went with me—Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre—let them take their share.”
Abraham, our patriarch, shows us through example how he gave respect to Melchizedek, the priest of God Most High and denied having anything to do with the shady deal from the king of Sodom. The king of Sodom audaciously offers Abraham to keep the loot, as though it was his to keep or to give. Abraham had dispossessed the kings who dispossessed the king of Sodom. This man had no real footing to negotiate his stuff that is now in Abraham's hand. Moreover, now he wants Abraham's people for himself. But Abraham just overlooked his idle babblings and dictated the further course of action as he was the one in authority and command, with even the king of Sodom's life in his hand as he was already desolate after his defeat.
Abraham valued the people more and denied this shady source to add to his income, giving him his possessions back generously, in the event that this delusional entity starts claiming a rather different truth sometime later in the future; he walked away with his integrity high and values intact.
The rose deal stings you in your highs and your lows alike.
Turn down the shady deals, and always turn to The Torah to define shady.
Anything with overt emphasis on gratifying the fleshly desires against all moral code and ethics, for material gain and fame, is nothing but a rose deal.
As all roses are walked over, so does this deal burn its way down to the root in a whiff of time. It's a quick buck — the fast lane — spinning you off the highway into the abyss.
The rose deal is the way of death.
Rosewood City
A rose.
What's a rose?
A rose poses as the truth
But it's a sweet sugary dose.
It promises you wives
Leaves you with a bunch of money-snorting woes.
It promises you real friends
Leaves you with a bunch of bitter foes.
A rose, that's a rose
It's spearing through many men's cores
It takes you to the prison
Promising you grandeur open doors.
I'm telling you
Never trust a man with a rose
You'll meet him at your highs
But especially at your lows.
It's a beautiful flower
But it's petals are as far as it goes
The thorns appear like a zugzwang
It's something every true Jew knows.
Don't trust the redness
The beauty in its swirls
The rose is an enchanter
You'll be wearing pigs as though they were pearls.
Find me the flowers in the Word
It's the truth that's beautiful to me
I long for thornless flowers,
But sometimes roses are all I see.
