- How to awaken the Soul and your inner Love?
- How did Buddha attain enlightenment?
- This meditation can help you find your true self and to learn your own divine nature.
Lotus Flower is a spiritual practice that brought Siddhartha Gautama to enlightenment and transformed him into the Buddha — a god-like being. Some of the pharaohs of Ancient Egypt also mastered this practice. The echoes of immaculate perfection of this practice can be found in Hindu books in Sanskrit, in ancient books of Chinese sages, and Ancient Greek epics.
The technique is quite simple and anyone can learn how to do it.
Everything about this unique spiritual practice and meditation, you can read in the book by Anastasia Novykh — "Sensei of Shambhala. Book I"
Additional information about "Lotus Flower" meditation you can also find in the book "Birds and a Stone" by A.Novykh:
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This spiritual practice is called ‘Lotus Flower’. It consists of the following. You imagine that you plant the seed of a lotus inside yourself, in the region of the solar plexus. And this small seed grows inside of you thanks to the power of Love generated by your positive thoughts. Thus, controlling the growth of this flower, you artificially get rid of negative thoughts that are constantly turning over in your head.
Do we really think about negative things all the time? Ruslan asked.
Of course, Sensei answered. Just follow your thoughts carefully. People spend a lot of time visualising different combat situations, recalling negative memories of the past, they imagine themselves quarrelling with somebody, proving something to someone, how they deceive someone or hit back. They think of their illnesses, material deprivations, and so on. It means they always keep a complex of negative thoughts in their mind.
And here, you intentionally get rid of all these negative thoughts by internal control. The more often you keep a positive image in your mind, the quicker the seed of Love grows. In the beginning, you imagine that a seed starts growing, and a small stalk appears. Then it begins to grow, leaves appear on the stalk, then comes a small flower bud. And finally, by gradually nourishing it more and more with the power of Love, the bud blossoms out into a lotus. The lotus is at first golden coloured, but as it grows, it becomes dazzling white.
How much time does it take for it to grow? I asked.
Actually, it depends on you. Some people need years for it to grow, others just months, yet others need days or even instants. It all depends on one’s desire and the effort one makes. One should not only grow this flower, but also support it constantly with the power of his Love so that it does not wither or die. A person keeps this constant feeling of cultivation at the level of subconscious or, to say it more precisely, at the level of a controllable, remote consciousness. The more Love you give to this little flower, that is, the more you cherish it and take care of it in your thoughts, protect it from surrounding negative influences, the more it grows. This flower is nourished by the energy of Love, I emphasise, by the internal energy of Love. And the more you are in a state of Love towards the whole world, to all people and to your surroundings, the bigger the flower becomes. But if you start to get angry, the flower weakens. If you lash out in intense anger, the flower withers and becomes ill. Then a lot of effort will have to be made for its recovery. It is a kind of control.
And thus, when this flower blossoms and starts to increase in size, it starts to emit vibrations instead of a scent, the so-called leptons or gravitons, call them as you like, that is, the energy of Love. You feel the petals of this flower stir, making your body and the surrounding space vibrate, emanating Love and Harmony into the world.
And is it somehow felt at the physical level? Zhenya asked.
Yes. The lotus feels as burning in the solar plexus region, as heat spreading. That is, these feelings arise in the solar plexus region where, as legends say, our soul is. This region starts getting warmer and warmer. The whole point of all of this is that wherever you are, whoever you are with, or whatever you do or think, you should always feel this heat, the heat that, figuratively speaking, warms not only your body but also your soul. This internal concentration of Love is located in the flower itself. Finally, the more you take care of it and glorify this Love, the more you feel that this flower, while growing, expands and tightly surrounds your body with its petals, and you are inside of a huge lotus.
And this is when something very important happens. When you reach the stage when lotus petals surround you from all sides, you feel two flowers. One is inside, under your heart, and warms you continuously with the feeling of internal Love. And the other one, the bigger one, is like the astral shell of this flower that surrounds you. On the one hand, it emanates the vibration of Love to the world and on the other hand, it protects you from the negative influence of other people. Here, the law of cause and effect is at work. To put it in the language of physics, a wave effect takes place. Simply said, you emanate waves of good feelings, intensifying them many times over through the soul and thus creating a wave field, full of grace. This force field, which is constantly felt and supported by the fibres of your Love, at the same time has a certain beneficial effect not only on yourself but also on the surrounding world.
What happens with everyday practice? Firstly, you always control your thoughts, learning to concentrate on the positive. Therefore, automatically you are not able to bear ill will toward anybody or be bad. Because this practice is done every day and every second. And it’s for life. It is a special method of distraction, as nobody can fight negative thoughts by force. Love cannot be compelled. Therefore you need to distract your attention. If a negative or undesirable thought comes, you concentrate on your flower, you start giving your Love to it, that is, you artificially forget all the negative things. Or you switch your attention to something else, to something positive. But you feel the flower all the time: going to bed, waking up, at night, during the day, whatever you are doing – studying, working, participating in sports, and so on. You feel Love burn inside, feel the currents of Love moving in your chest and filling your body. You feel this flower start warming you up from inside with a special warmth, the divine warmth of Love. And the more you give, the more it arises in you. Constantly emanating this Love, you perceive people from the perspective of Love. That is, secondly, what is very important, – you attune yourself to the frequency of the good.
And the good means success, luck, health. It means everything! You start feeling happier, and that has a positive impact on the state of your mind. The central nervous system is the main regulator of all vital activity. Therefore, first of all, this practice improves your health. Besides, your life becomes smoother as you start finding reconciliation with everybody. Nobody wants to quarrel with you, you are welcome everywhere. You won’t have any major problems. Why? Because even if you have some troubles in life, as life is life, you start perceiving them in a completely different way than most ordinary people. You already have a new perspective on life that helps you to find the most optimal decision for the situation. For the Wisdom of life awakens in you.
And thirdly, most importantly, your soul awakens within you and you start feeling yourself becoming a Human, you come to understand who God is, that God is an omnipresent substance, and not just a fantasy of a few idiots. You start feeling the divine presence in yourself and strengthen this power by your positive thoughts and feelings. You no longer feel alone in this world as God is in you and with you, you feel His actual presence. There is an expression, ‘He who is in Love is in God, and God is in him, for God is Love itself.’ It is also very important that you start feeling the aura of the flower that is inside and around you.
How is the aura felt around the body? Stas asked.
In time, you see this vibration around yourself as a slight glow. The air seems to become lighter and more transparent, and the colours of the surrounding world seem more vibrant to you. The most fascinating thing is that people start noticing these transformations in you. There is a common expression, ‘a person is glowing’, ‘he shines.’ So, that is actually the glow of this wave field, generated by Love of the individual himself. People around this person also start to feel this field. They feel good when this Person is somewhere near, as they also start feeling joy, internal excitement. Many people recuperate from their illnesses. They feel better even just from his presence, no matter how sick they have been. Everybody is drawn to this person, opening their souls to him. That is, people perceive Love. This is the Heart’s open gate on the path towards God. This is what all the Great ones talked about and what Jesus meant when he said, ‘Let God into your heart.’
This ‘Lotus’ spiritual practice has been used since the beginning of time. Since olden times, the ‘Lotus’ was said to create Gods, that God awakens in the Lotus. In the understanding that a divine substance – a soul – awakens in the ‘Lotus flower’, in Harmony and Love inside of you. For you are continuously taking care of your flower, controlling your thoughts and feelings at all times so that the ‘Lotus flower’ does not wither.
So then, does a real flower grow there? Slava asked with surprise.
No. Of course, there is no material flower there. It is imaginary. This process may be called in different ways: the awakening of divine Love, the attainment of enlightenment, full unity with God – ‘moksha’, ‘Dao’, ‘Shinto’. Call it what you like. But all of this is just words and religion. And this is simply creating a certain force field by your positive thought and feeling of Love, which in turn affects the real world around you on one hand and, on the other hand, it changes the internal frequency of the perception of your mind.
And the soul? I asked.
And the soul is the real you, it is a kind of eternal generator of divine power, if you like, but which needs to be activated by your constant thoughts of Love… I will tell you about the soul and its purpose in detail some time later.
But then Kostya joined the discussion.
You said that this practice is very ancient. How ancient is it?
I have already told you that it has existed as long as humans have existed as conscious subjects.
Well, so how long then, seven, ten thousand years?
That’s too short a period of time. Mankind in its civilised form has existed more than once before, and in fact, with much better technologies than now. It is another question why these civilisations disappeared. Someday, I will tell you about that too.
If this practice is so ancient, there should be some legends of it left in our civilisation too.
Certainly. The fact that the spiritual practice of the ‘Lotus Flower’ has existed before can be confirmed by numerous ancient sources. The ‘Lotus’ was given, for example, to some chosen Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. And if you look at the literature on this issue, you will find evidence that Egyptian myths and legends say that even their sun god, Ra, was born out of the lotus flower. This flower served as a throne for Isis, Horus, and Osiris.
In the ancient ‘Vedas’ – the oldest Hindu books written in Sanskrit – the lotus is one of the key topics also. In particular, regarding the three main male incarnations of God – Brahma-Creator, Vishnu-Protector, and Shiva-Destroyer – it says the following, ‘The body of the God Vishnu bore a giant golden lotus with ‘lotus-born’ Brahma-Creator on it. The golden thousand-petalled lotus was growing and the Universe grew along with it.’
Up to the present day, in China as well as in India, this flower has depicted purity and chastity. The best human qualities and intentions have been associated with the lotus. In China, they think that there is a special ‘Western heaven’ with a lotus lake and that every flower growing there is bound to the soul of a dead person. If an individual was virtuous, his or her flower blossoms, if not – it withers.
In Greece, the lotus is considered to be a plant devoted to the goddess Hera. Hercules made one of his voyages in a lotus-shaped golden sun boat.
However, all these are legends and myths, which are not so made up. These stories were based on real facts of people’s self-development thanks to this ancient spiritual practice. It's just that in earlier times, when the animal nature prevailed in the majority of people, the ‘Lotus Flower’ was given only to the chosen, more or less spiritually mature individuals. And it is natural that other people later regarded these individuals as gods. For an individual, who grew ‘Lotus’ in him and awakened soul, in fact becomes God-like as he can create in Love by mere thought.
When the time came to spiritually educate the majority of people, the Bodhisattvas of Shambala gave this spiritual practice to Buddha. It is owing to practicing this technique of the ‘Lotus’ that Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment sitting under the Bodhi tree. On approval of Rigden, Buddha gave it to his disciples for further dissemination within people. Unfortunately, over time, people distorted the teachings of Buddha and created a whole religion based on this practice. As a result, even Buddhists, exercising their religion now, imagine their paradise as an unusual place where people are born like Gods on the lotus flower. They are looking for this place, although it is always inside of them. They made Buddha into a God, even though he was just a Human who had learned the truth by means of this spiritual practice. That’s the reason why, by the way, the lotus became a symbol of Buddhism as well as why there is an expression, ‘Buddha sits in a lotus’ or ‘Buddha stands in a lotus.’ He has shown people by example what an individual can achieve by defeating his animal nature. He has really done a lot of good for spiritual development of mankind by disseminating this spiritual practice among people in its original form.
The same prayer was given by Jesus Christ for awakening the divine Love.
Do you mean to say that prayer and meditation are the same thing? Tatyana asked.
Actually, yes. It is the same with the prayer ‘Our Father’, given by Jesus. It is just that everything is so commonplace there, people ask for bread and such, but the essence is the same: an individual develops himself, cultivates his soul by controlling his thoughts, his desire, and by steadfast Faith and Love.
In general, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, and all the great ones knew this spiritual practice, as they sipped at the same source. It helped them not only to become their true selves but also to help other people learn their own divine nature. Why was it so pleasant for everyone to be near Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed? Why, as the saying goes, do ‘saintly people’ shine? Why is it that sometimes we don’t want to leave the company of strangers upon meeting them? Because they emanate this Love. Because they are continuously growing this power, the power of good, the power of Love, the power of this divine manifestation in people. They say about them that God is in this person. And it is actually true.
So, I should just think with Love about this flower? Andrey asked.
No. Not only should you concentrate and think, but most importantly, you should provoke these feelings of warmth in the solar plexus region and fortify them at all times with your good thoughts. Many may not be able to accomplish this right away. Because you need to get to the root of the matter, visualise it more realistically, and, I repeat again, evoke all these feelings. Why do I draw your attention to it? Because when an individual evokes these feelings, he starts maintaining them not just with his mind, but also at the level of his submind, more specifically, at the level of his subconsciousness. This leads to the awakening of the soul. It just can’t help but awaken. And the more you nourish it with your Love, the more it will awaken, and the faster you will become your true self, the one you have eternally been inside, and not in your external mortal body shell.
And after a brief silence, Sensei added.
Life is too short, and you’d better succeed in glorifying your spiritual nature in your heart.