Spiritual practice “Lotus Flower“
“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 theliterature 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
***
I couldn’t wait to get home and plant my small seed. Sensei, of course, said that one can do this spiritual practice in any place. But I decided to start this noble deed at home in peace and quiet. At home, I quickly finished all my petty tasks. When my parents settled down to watch TV, I sat comfortably in the lotus pose. The time had finally come. Concentrating, my persona thought: “Let’s begin the planting…” but I panicked a bit. First, I didn’t know what the lotus seed looked like. I had seen the flower in a book, but not its seeds. Plus, I didn’t know what this planting would look like and what I would plant it in. I had seen how seeds sprouted in the soil. But for some reason it didn’t satisfy me, as the soil in the soul, even an imaginary one, somehow didn’t coincide with my notion of eternity. Reflecting on it a little, I found an acceptable way out. One time I had seen my mother germinating kidney beans by placing them in wet cotton wool. I liked this method. “Then let it be a bean,” thought my persona. “After all, it’s my imagination. And the most important thing is what I do, the essence, as Sensei said.” Having concentrated once again, I started to imagine placing a small white bean inside of myself in the area of the solar plexus, immersing it into something soft and warm. Then I started to repeat affectionate words inside myself, nursing my small seed. But no feelings followed. So, I started to recall all the good words that I knew. And here my persona was astonished to discover that I knew far fewer good, beautiful words than bad, swearing ones. This was because I heard the latter everywhere on the street and in school and they replenished my vocabulary more often than the good ones. My thoughts, again imperceptibly, switched to mulling over some conclusions, logically clinging to each other. Realising this, I tried again to concentrate on the flower, but nothing happened. After about twenty minutes of fruitless efforts, my persona figured that I was doing something wrong. Finally, I went to sleep, having decided to ask Sensei later in detail about my mistakes. But I couldn’t fall asleep. Darkness covered everything around me. Objects and furniture in the room lost their natural colour. A thought came to my mind, “Our world is really so illusory after all. It just seems to us that we really live while in fact we are like children, inventing a game and playing it. But unlike children, adults don’t grow up, because they get so used to the created image that they begin to think that everything else is the same kind of reality. And in this way, our entire life passes in falsehood and bustle. But, as Sensei said, ‘The real you are the soul, that eternal reality that exists in actuality. You need only to wake up, to awaken from illusion, and then the whole world will change…’” As I went deeper into contemplation of the eternal, I began to feel somehow nice and light. And that’s when I felt something warming up in my chest and tickling pleasantly. Small ants started running through my whole body from my tailbone to the back of my head. Such a pleasant, peaceful state came over me that I wanted to embrace the entire world with my soul. In such a sweet slumber, I fell asleep. I slept as if in a fairytale because when I woke up in the morning, I felt such inspiration, such lightness as I had never experienced in my life.
***
A few days later, on our way to training, the guys started to share their impressions and results. It turned out that everybody understood Sensei in their own way. And everyone’s internal Love grew differently. Kostya imagined that he planted a lotus seed, as he said, “into some kind of a lifegiving substance of the Universe.” Moreover, he only did it yesterday, while all the time before he was diligently searching through the literature looking for proof of Sensei’s words. He didn’t have any kind of feelings; he simply imagined the process and is now waiting for the result. Tatyana imagined this Love as the birth of Jesus in her heart, since she was brought up by her grandma as a faithful Christian. She had feelings of happiness, internal delight, and light pressure in the area of her heart. But her heart began to ache a little. Andrey tried to concentrate purposefully every day on the area of the solar plexus in order to achieve at least some kind of feeling by thinking about the lotus. Only on the third day did he feel a barely noticeable slight warmth, not even warmth really, but as if “something was tickling in that place as if touched by a feather.” And Slava wasn’t even able to imagine how all of this happens “inside of his organs.” Before the beginning of the training, our group waited for a moment when Sensei wasn’t busy and we approached him with questions. We started to tell him about our experiences. Tatyana interrupted the conversation out of turn and complained to Sensei about her heart. The Teacher took her hand and felt her pulse like a professional doctor.
“Right, tachycardia. What happened?”
“Don’t know. It started to ache after I concentrated on the birth of Lord in my heart…” And then she spoke in more detail about the awakening of her divine Love.
“I see. You concentrated on the organ, on the heart. But you mustn’t concentrate on an organ. The heart is the heart, it’s only a muscle, it’s the pump of the body. By concentrating on it, you put it off its rhythm and interfere in its work. When you learn to control yourself, only then will you be able to concentrate on the work of the body and its organs. By doing that now, you’ll only harm yourself. You need to concentrate particularly on the solar plexus. Everything is born from it. That is the main chakran in ‘Lotus’, called Kundalini.”
“Well, I read that when Kundalini awakens, some kind of snake crawls there along the spine,” Kostya bragged a little with his education.
“This definition is from yoga,” answered the Teacher.
“It’s typical for people to mix up everything with time. Originally, in the ‘Lotus’, Kundalini was a chakran located in the area of the solar plexus… What I told you about the lotus flower, I repeat, are just images, nothing more, so that it would be easier for you to understand, perceive, and feel it deeply.”
“And in general, what does it look like in reality? Please tell us one more time, just for dummies,” Andrey asked with humour.
“You simply feel the fibres, growing the internal power of Love. This feeling, let’s say, is as if you were anticipating something very, very good. For example, you are waiting for some huge, long-awaited present you’ve dreamt about. And now you receive it, you’re happy, you’re overfilled with gratitude. You feel tingling all over your body, in other words, you perceive this feeling in the area of the solar plexus, as if something beautiful, good emanates from you, or you are expecting that. That’s the feeling you should have, which you evoke artificially and constantly maintain in the area of the solar plexus. Finally, it becomes natural for you. And people begin to feel it. In other words, you radiate this happiness… And that’s all. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a flower or something there. These are merely images for easier perception.”
“And the flower that should surround the body. How does that work?”
“Well, are you familiar with such notions as the astral, mental, and other energy bodies, simply put, the multi-layer aura around a human?”
“Yes.”
“So then, when this power field of goodness expands in you, then you start to feel a kind of multi-layer of petals. You feel that you are cocooned, protected, that you are blossoming in lotus. And at the same time, you feel that you are like the sun over the world, you warm everything with the glow of your vast Love. “This is a continuous meditation, wherever you are and whatever you do, you evoke these fibres, these feelings, these flows of energies. The main point is that the more you practice, the stronger they become. Finally, this process gains material characteristics and you’ll really be able to have a positive effect on people. In other words, you’ll be able to do it when you yourself completely change: both internally in thought and externally in action.”
***
In the days that followed, I tried to evoke these feelings while doing different things. But it worked well only when I specifically concentrated on the “lotus flower” while doing some kind of physical work. Furthermore, I began to keep track of my thoughts at least a little bit. One day, while sitting at home and doing homework, I tried to recall all I had thought about that day. But I was unable to remember not just my thoughts, but even all of my actions. I was able to recall some general things while details surfaced with difficulty. Most importantly, good deeds went under the category of “that’s the way it should be,” and I hardly remembered them. However, negative moments, negative emotional bursts were engraved in my memory in detail. That was when I, as they say, consciously felt the power of the animal nature. Sensei’s words came to mind by themselves, “A thought is material because it’s born in the material brain. That’s why a bad thought oppresses. This is the first Guard, which always tries to defeat the human. One day I will tell you about it in greater detail, about how your thoughts are born and why their power over you is so strong.” I thought, “Why doesn’t Sensei say everything at once? Why does he keep postponing until an indefinite ‘later’? This ‘later’ may never happen for some of us… But on the other hand, the way I perceived his words at the first training and now are completely different. Before, I simply listened, and only now have I begun to understand things because I started to practice and to work on myself. I already have some results, some experience and, therefore, I now have concrete questions. Sensei always gives detailed answers to concrete questions.” Suddenly I had an insight: “He is just waiting for us to understand his words, so to say, for when we let them work through ourselves, when our minds conceive everything on their own and take the side of the soul. Otherwise, all this knowledge, as Sensei says, will remain for us as an empty ringing in an empty head. Sensei said that we have to constantly work on ourselves, that every minute of life is valuable, and we should use it as a gift of God for the perfection of our souls.” These words strengthened my confidence and optimism. Later on, I recalled them often, when my body was overcome with apathy.
From the book “Sensei” by A. Novykh
***
We had to urgently put our thoughts in order. As an “ambulance“ I tried to escape from this “raging torrent“ and concentrate on performing the “Lotus Flower“ meditation. At first I did not succeed, because one or another phrase from Ahriman‘s speech constantly distracted my thoughts. And I could not get rid of this obsession, until I realised that this stream of thoughts did not distract my attention, but it attracted me. So, I wanted to hear it, and more precisely, not me, but my Animal gravitated toward it. So what‘s the deal? After all, my desires are in my hands! Realising the essence of my mistake, I already began more purposefully performing the “Lotus Flower“, because all my desires and intentions were united in a single channel of concentration, ignoring everything else. Although Ahriman‘s speech subsided, it was still manifested in some second thought. Yes, Ahriman is Ahriman! Then I decided as a “shock artillery“ to make a new meditation on the “Lotus Flower“, which recently, on one of the meditation lessons, Sensei taught us, talking about the infinite variability of the “Lotus“. Before that, my attempts at mastering the new meditation were clearly unsuccessful, although Sensei repeatedly stressed that everything depends on the person himself, on his inner essence. But this time, obviously from the purity and sincerity of my intentions, the “Lotus Flower“ showed itself in an absolutely unusual way. When I reached a clear concentration on the solar plexus, I suddenly saw with some inner sight the Lotus flower! I saw it, but did not present it as usual. This flower was beautiful. I have never seen such a thing in my life! Pure white petals radiated a bright, but at the same time very soft light. And the middle of the flower gleamed with a golden glow. And the most striking thing is that this divine flower was alive! I noticed that the more I gave it my tenderness and love, the more it reacted to my sincere feelings with the swaying of its tenderest, purest petals. In the beginning, this wobble was barely noticeable, surprisingly alive, I would say “breathing“. And then the flower began to wake up and manifest itself more and more. And at some point it seemed to me, but then I really heard a very pleasant sound coming from one of the waving petals, like a sweet singing of a light breeze. Then another petal sounded in its own way, producing an amazing sound, not resembling one of the sounds familiar to me. After it the third petal “showed“ itself in this growing melody. And literally after a while I completely immersed myself in the enchanting symphony of the Lotus, consisting of harmonious, delicate, very pleasant sounds. This music simply fascinating with its divine sound. And the more I immersed in it, the more I grew in the sense of inner universal joy and infinite freedom. But the most striking was the feeling when this magnificent sound coming from the Lotus began to turn into a bright soft light, which seemed to envelop me from all sides, filling from the inside with its amazing purity. At the same time, it gave birth to a hitherto unknown sensation of complete happiness, in which I simply dissolved without a trace, immersed in indescribable bliss. I seemed to disappear with the body. Remained only Lotus and the realisation of a huge extraterrestrial Love! Leaving the state of meditation, I felt so great that I wanted to embrace the whole world with my soul. The mood was excellent. And the most striking thing in my mind was absolute clarity and purity of consciousness.
From the book “Sensei – IV” by A. Novykh
