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     In the winter, spring, summer and fall of 1985, the author had the opportunity to join the community and staff members at Camelot each and every morning in the Chapel of the Holy Grail for the morning decree service. After the decree service, which ended about 9am if memory serves, he would greet each Saint depicted in the photographs that adorned the rear wall of the chapel, and then depart from the chapel and enter into his daily communion with the Roses of Camelot. The rose garden of Camelot was located just outside, and in front of the Chapel of the Holy Grail.

After a period of communion with the roses, he would drive to a Carl's Jr. restaurant in Agoura (California) and over a cup of coffee and a cheese omelet, inside of which was a green chili pepper (mild), he would record his thoughts and observations about the roses in his journal. This was his daily morning ritual for many months.

In this little work, which was originally self-published asa small pamphlet, he offers those thoughts and observations, transcribed from the original entries he made in his journal at the time.

But first, let's consider a special remark made by the Ascended Master Kuthumi on the subject of the rose:

The Roses of Camelot Steven S. Showers Chapter 1 I just felt it. It was so precious, but so illusive. An angel tapped me on the shoulder. And I felt it. It was a prayer to God, it was a trust in God, it was a longing to be within His embrace yet in service to His purpose, a hope of never parting, the seed of an unspeakable passion. All of this communicated in an instant by a tiny touch. Chapter 2 The spirit of this garden is in the heart, consisting of two concourses of roses, 30 years long and three yards wide, running from the south to the north, separated by a well-kept expanse of grass. I walk this course each morning prior to the 8 o'clock hour. The cool air is a familiar friend then, the ground dew-laden and moist, and the sky a mixture of pastel pinks, oranges and blues. Sometimes the trees and the garden and the white adobe buildings are shrouded in a misty fog, but no matter, this is the time of day when the sun need not stoop to look you in the eye. Beyond the roses our path leads int the north pine grove, and into it we will enter, marking the end of our journey and the beginning of our day. But in this, our eyes have taken us farther than our feet. Our friends are close at hand. The essence of the lavender hugs the earth closely; one must be upon one's knees and bowed in grateful wonder to partake of it. Come, let us greet each rose one by one. Each has its own story to tell. Each its own account from a larger saga; an epic tale of a soul's galactic journey back into the heart of the One. We will listen quietly with our part of that heart. Some will sing the dramatic interludes. Some whisper softly around the corners of the mind. Some speak boldly upon a solar soapbox, while other speak in metered rhythm, in cadence with the rippling waters of life. All roses speak the natural language of the soul. To hear them, we must listen with the same ears that we listen to God with. Roses speak louder, are more easily heard, are more easily understood, than the still small voice within. To understand them, we use the same mind that will ultimately understand God, yet the mystery of a rose is much simpler to understand, designed for the mind of a child. Behind every rose is a rose of light, and that light is a healing light. Every word they speak is within that framework of radiant joy, happiness, and love. All things are joy to them, except of course, in what they see the humans do. But even in this, their sacred sadness, is still expressed in their unending hope for our happiness. A small butterfly is sitting atop a newly opening rose. Its long flexible straw like whip of a tongue is zealously mopping up the surface of the rose petal. It stands in one position as its tongue moves over a large area. It appears to be vacuuming up drops too small for my eyes to see. It spent a good while doing this, and I began to wonder what it was really after. I was a bit impatient because there were several large drops I could see, and he seemed to be ignoring these. But by and by he plopped his tiny straw right smack dab in the midst of one of these larger dew drops without disturbing it at all, and before my very eyes the crystal sphere shrunk into nothing and it was gone. All inside the little butterfly. I half expected to see the little butterfly swell up in the process but that didn't happen. I will have to wait for bigger dew drops or smaller butterflies. Many bright pink roses blossomed from new buds overnight. I have smelled these roses for numerous days now, through many cycles of bloom and fade. Never before have they had a strong fragrance. But in the midst of this gathering they do. The angelic Nada has been at work here. The delicious softness of a rose petal upon one's upper lip ... Who would have imagined it? The sensation lingers ... What, I wonder, does this say about my Father's love for me? I ask this of a deep pink variety, of one who was in full bloom, though newly open, intensely fresh and fragrant, with petals packed tightly around the periphery of its center. This rose reminded me of the one thousand petaled rose of our hearts which the Lady Master Nada had mentioned. This one had many petals, and I wondered about the purpose of so many petals, the purpose of the petal itself. Without petals there could never be a rose. My eye caught the glint and shimmer of sunlight on a single petal ... A field of ruby jewels in the finest microscopic arrangement. Pale pink and fluffy white, this rose is, in the penetrating morning sun. Look deep into its interior and you will see that it glows from within, a pink luminous ruby light. The fire of the moment unfolds just as any rose. The beauty of it grows and grows and grows. Unfold the threads of your real identity! Feel the flow of purging healing fire reuniting your soul with the heart of universal joy! Freedom! Is being fee to be in Love with God. Feel it! Taste it! Savor it! The natural unhampered state of the soul is that blessed dynamic state of pondering the beauty of that inner embrace. I have learned from this rose, that the rose of the heart is an eternal rose. I watched another bee climbing between the rose petals. He was very determined. He used all the muscles he had at his disposal to wedge and push and shove and reach with all the force of his little being, pushing aside the rose petals into the depths of it to get what he was after. From the outside, where I stood, it was funny to see this petal moving and bulging as this bee groped his way into the inner sanctum of this outer petal finally wedging himself between two pink petals of the rose where, with all the tendons of his facial muscles it seemed to me, did reach to secure that for which he came. There was obviously something of great worth and value for him there. Hard work it was, and not idle pastime, to be sure. He knew what he was after and he was determined to get it. Through a leafy hole in the green elder bow trees in the distant field, a sunlit shaft beams over the intervening earth, still dew-wet and dark, not yet touched by the morning sun. The beam holds within its embrace, at the apex of the bush, a single orange colored rose. A few steps closer to the Holy Grail, a translucent golden pink, a pastel tangerine, that has the purest though subtlest golden yellow at its center, catches my eye and won't let it go. There is a power that is peculiar to it, maybe the fairest incarnation of the purest mountain maiden, she speaks to the soul from the silence, of the beauty of the heaven world from whence she came, to which we are all native. Her fragrance is faint to earthly senses, yet she stands as if she were the only light in a pitch black room. I have seen her star of peace more than once before, while the beauty of a rose. To see, to adore, to feel the beauty of our divine mother is to be vaporized into an ethereal mixture of many sweet fragrances, rising as a mist above the pool of the soul afire with a passionate Love for God, wafting up into His nostrils as the sweetest atar of roses, a potpourri of many colored rose petals of our fair Camelot. More profound then even the savant aroma of the yellowed pages of this ancient tome, is the substantial fragrance of the yellow rose. Look over here. There are many on this bush. Rightly names Peace, she is the fragrance of the sun. The fragrance of every rose is different. They are all beautiful, but they are all different. Each fragrance is stamped with its own unique message. Each message is designed to give us an insight into the rhyme and reason behind God's everlasting loving kindness and compassionate regard for every part of life. Each fragrance is a galaxy of cosmic thought in its own right. And its singular effect upon the soul is the effect of J - O - Y. If you are to hear what he has to say you must learn to rightly divide the word of joy. You must make the conscious choice so to do, and as you experience it more and more, you begin to see the intricate divisions within what was to you before just one undifferentiated mass of bliss. The joy invoked by each type of rose is different. To tell the difference between them, you must be capable of feeling more than one type of joy at once. The key to that capability is your feeling memory. That memory is not a matter of mind, it is a matter of heart. That is where the memory of good feelings is stored in your heart. Remember what joy #1 feels like while you are feeling joy #2. When you discover the difference, that is joy #3. When you place your mind upon the geometry of a rose, the life force of your soul rises to the realm of your heart, here you are embraced by a delicate but powerfully majestic] beauty, beautiful beyond anything you have ever seen with your own eyes. Creamy white at its inner portion, changing to burgundy red at its outer periphery, its fragrance is thick and sweet, a mix of countless vine, the ancient spice form timeworn barrels of frigate wine, the mind swoons in its embrace and surrenders to its incomprehensible beauty. There is at the center, a pool of such delight, that the soul is already making preparatory runs along the high dive board, moments, only moments separate it and a sailing dive into the sweet embrace of an all engulfing bliss. The scent of this rose, the color of an ocean sunset, is the sum total of the fragrance of all flowers, and you can sense the freshness of the ocean breeze in it. The fragrance of the violet purple rose is as the sweetest of lemons. Don't take my word for it, go see for yourself ... So you see? ... The tightly packed petals around the center of this deep pink variety? How soft they are. Take a deep breath of its supremely rich and full perfume. See your lungs take on a soft iridescent glow, the color of the fragrance itself, which permeates and diffuses throughout your entire body. Hold your breath in for a few moments and feel the sensation of being aglow with this ruby pink radiance. I found another little bee inside of the outer petals of the rose. A fuzzy little fellow of a smallish variety. I poke him with a small stick and he rolled over so I could scratch his tummy. He was blissed out, which is a crude way of describing the melting and diffusion of consciousness into that of the rose. It's as if the rose has absorbed his little spirit into itself. I let him be. Everything God has made is designed to make His children happy. A rose is proof of that. A rainbow resting upon the air of a mist mountain meadow, a child of the pre- dawn glow, proof all the more of His desiring, and its invariable fulfillment in those who have so inclined their hearts, in those who have surrendered theirs, to the lifestyle of a rose. The blueprint of your life is like a rose. You must see your life within the context of that beauty. That's how God sees it. Roses put you in touch with the most beautiful part of yourself. They can see what you do not yet see. They can see what you have not looked for, for a very very very long time. And when they show it to you, at first you will think that what you see is the rose, but nay, I say what you see is the beauty that God has placed inside of your very own heart. The true and real beauty of all that can come forth from the heart is contained within the cosmos of a rose. The truest art and the truest music, you will find emanating from the heart within you. It this not a worthy goal? To achieve happiness, not at the expense of others, but through the appreciation of the beauty God has placed within your very own heart? That is the truest and the surest happiness. That is where I want to be. A butterfly alighting upon a rose and gone ... Surrendering to the lifestyle of a rose ... A rose is always in a state of change. It is continuously in the process of unfolding. Every part of it. And a rose has many parts. And each part has a unique pattern of unfoldment, all in harmony. From the microscopic atomic level you can see that it is a galaxy of unfolding star bodies. And the music of the spheres must be resonant with that galaxy of cosmic harmony. The roses teach us that it is wise to seek the emanations of our own hearts, to learn the difference between the petals of the narcissus blossom and its odor, and that of the inner rose. Once we find a single petal of that inner rose, that petal can be followed to the center. And here, the outer bounds of the stellar sphere are near, and every fiber of your doth ring, as every angel in-between, plucks a note upon those strings; a fantasia played upon the woven fabric of your soul, a special song of love for a very special soul. Once the image of a rose is fully ensconced in your mind, God takes note, designing an entire garden around it, planting a flower at a time, causing them to grow and blossom as you nurture and care for them. He will paint a crystal blue sky high stop that garden, and cause the sun to shine therein. There will be a zenith to its travel, and glorious setting too, when the day is done. You will then great each star one by one as they appear in the done of a cosmos He has placed as a crown upon your head. Keep your eye upon the North Star through the evening hours, and before you lay down to rest, choose a star to travel with. Since He has placed it within your mind, He cannot be far behind. Every garden will be different from one mind to the next, though a rose will be at the center of each. Chapter 3 At the eastern end of this valley, a cloud of white spray hovers around a descending fifteen thousand foot pillar of crystal blue water. It slides silently into the clearest and bluest pool. A living stream step-cascades in its gurgling climb down from this sheltered pool and into the open valley, feeding the many colored flowers and indeed, the stately pines that ring this mountain meadow. The angel guardians are in charge of the mountain breeze, and spend many many hours sending their bright white cloud creations overhead for our edification. Crisp white sheets of radiant paper are folded into shapes of precise dimension by the shining hands of angelic children, and with golden scissors, they trim away that which is not part of their very own heart, and once unfolded, a snowflake of intricate beauty appears. Many of these are needed to make up the bright white winter clouds. As I have pondered the beauty of their sculptured faces, and of the valleys, and green pined ranges kissed softly by the caress of ocean mist, I have seen within me, a rose unfolding, and the joy of expectancy of what I would be, this variety, is the tangerine rose of Camelot. We are growing at the center of our meadow now. It's very late in the morning, almost noon. The sun has moved directly overhead. We can feel its warmth on the top of our petaled head. See the golden meadow grasses wave and dance all around us in the arms of windy partners. Every point of the full blue sky dome we can see, and clarion ring of their heralding echoes through the interweaving granite peaks that encircle our mountain land. Yes, the perfect companions for the silent whispering breeze. Listen. Their voices blend with the waters, and the intonations of the tallest pines. The deer have crossed the stream and entered the meadow from the south, grazing quietly amidst the autumn flowers for a time, they have tarried longer than is usual today, and we too must be on our way, to the north and into the pine grove we must go, before the winter snow.

     In the Spring of 1986, I submitted, for publication, my Roses of Camelot manuscript to Erin Prophet, who was, at the time, the editor of Heart Magazine. She did not consider it suitable for publication in a magazine that carried the title "Heart". This is what she said, in her own handwriting. Make note of the fact that you have to tilt your head into an abnormal position to read what she has to say.

     Yes, Erin, it certainly would be unsuitable for people who don't know about Camelot, to understand that there are beautiful roses there, and moreover, people who are able to appreciate the beauty of those roses, and of course, people who are able to appreciate the God who created them, and the angelic spirits who ensoul them. Such a message would surely be unfitting for the readers of "Heart" magazine.

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