Symbolism of The Lotus and The Muddy Pond

ESPsychic Mandy discusses the “Lotus” and the “Muddy Pond” and what these powerful Buddhist symbols represent.

For those who do not know the symbolism of the lotus and the muddy pond, you are not alone. I would not know for myself until a year ago. The most I understood was that the lotus was a symbol of spiritual purity. I did not know why. That is, until a friend shared with me a vision she received involving lotus flowers. This would inspire me to look up the symbolism of a lotus to ascertain what her vision was communicating.

What I came across was a quote from the Lalitavistara, a sacred text of the life of Buddha by Dhrarmaraksha (308 AD). It states:

“The spirit of the best of men is spotless, like the new lotus in the muddy water which does not adhere to it.” 

What I would learn is that this beautiful flower gains its symbolism from the fact that it begins its life deeply rooted in the muddy pond. It then sprouts out of the muddy water and flowers above it, in a manner which its petals do not touch the pond's mud or slime. Therefore, as a symbol, the lotus can represent growing up in a world that is full of various conflicts and impurity, while having the ability to rise above it and remain untouched. This state of remaining 'untouched' allows for “enlightenment;” define as:

“A blessed state in which the individual transcends desire and suffering and attains Nirvana.” -TheFree Dictionary.com 

To further understand the symbolism of the lotus, it helps to also understand the symbolism of the muddy pond.

 

What does the muddy pond symbolize?

If we can see the water of the pond as representing our thoughts, emotions and desires, the mud and slime in the pond then represents how these can become clouded; blocking us from having a clear perception of our most pure and natural Self.

Relating this to our human experience, the muddy pond can represent being conditioned from birth to adhere to various socially accepted mind-sets; perceiving that they represent the truth of who we are and how we should live. For instance, we learn from a young age that approval is given if we obey certain rules, laws and customs; or if we share certain beliefs. These beliefs and mind-sets form our desires. In Buddhism, many of our desires and attachments to the world and its thought patterns are seen as the source of our suffering.

When it comes to my book I Am the Lotus, Not the Muddy Pond, the “muddy pond” represents the “polluted part” of what I call "the collective consciousness."

 

What is this “collective consciousness?”

In effect, it is the bigger pond of consciousness that connects most of us together--concerning the way we think and behave.

We all have our own individual consciousness and can make individual decisions, but the collective forms its own body of consciousness and makes its own decisions--which are subject to the same laws of manifestation that our individual consciousness is. In fact, many of our thoughts may not solely be our own. They may result from our being “tapped into” a bigger pond of consciousness. Ultimately, we both affect the collective consciousness with our individual thoughts and are affected by it, as well.

These ponds of collective thinking form the various social mind-sets that we base our lives and identity upon. These “ponds” or mind-sets can also become “polluted” in the same way our individual thought patterns can: via unhealthy thinking patters, fear, unworthiness, self-sabotaging habits, etc. The collective consciousness merely reflects the thoughts and feelings of the individuals, and groups of individuals, that influence it.

For example, many of us find security in following the same lifestyles, rules, behaviors, desires, ethics and ideas of money and ownership as others. We are therefore conforming to a collective consciousness. We are also affected by the media, various books, gurus and religious leaders which tells us what to strive for, what to own, what styles are popular, what to eat, drink, watch, and more. We then take on these thought forms as our own and mistake them for who we are. That is, unless we can learn to rise above these mind-sets and see them for what they truly represent: that they are not our true Self--as represented by the lotus that rises above the mud.

 

Does this make the lotus a symbol of hope?

Yes. Through denoting our ability to rise out of this pond of mud, the lotus, in a way, becomes a symbol of hope. Each stage of the lotus represents a stage in awakening. Awakening, then, becomes the ability to fully see the pond, while recognizing that it is not the truth of who we are. When we begin to awaken this way, we begin to rise above the pond.

The stages of enlightenment can be symbolized by whether a lotus is fully open, partly open, or closed. A closed lotus represents the Buddhist before he finds enlightenment; while the open lotus represents the attainment of enlightenment. This is why Buddha is often depicted as seated inside of an open lotus flower.

The different colors of the lotus also have symbolic meaning:

• The white lotus symbolizes purity of body, mind and spirit.
• The blue lotus symbolizes wisdom and knowledge.
• The red lotus is a symbol of love, passion and a giving heart.
• The purple lotus symbolizes the mystic and mysticism.

As for the pink lotus, I found two interpretations. One states that the pink lotus is supreme and symbolizes the Buddha himself. The other interpretation is that it symbolizes the history of Buddha. In the latter definition, the gold lotus symbolizes the attainment of Buddhahood/enlightenment.

 

Becoming a more open lotus can help heal the world!

In no way do I claim to be on the path of enlightenment. I am merely a student. What I write about is largely my own journey as I learn to see the pond’s mud for what it is: MUD.

In the end, I believe our ability to find our lotus Self is dependent upon being able to let go of the need to conform to various ways of the world or lifestyles. When more of us are able to do this, we will begin to purify the pond of collective consciousness. Then, we will have the capability to bring real love, inspired unity and peace into our world.

Mandy is a psychic visionary, empath, channel, EFT Practitioner. She is the author of the book I Am the Lotus, Not the Muddy Pond: Achieving Peace Through Non-Conformity and the EFT Divination and Chakra Deck. As a empathic healer and reader, Mandy works 1-to-1 with clients, helping them to achieve clarity, peace and balance. Through her writing, Mandy seeks to spread a message of healing and peace and as it relates to a bigger picture or the collective consciousness.

Intuition 101

by ESPsychic Melissa

Lots of people wonder what intuition is. Is it magic? How do you know when it is happening? Does everyone have it? The answer is: YES, EVERYONE has it!

Breathe in… and breathe out. As you begin to clear your spirit from the energy chaos in your life, your mind begin to expand. You will begin to see and feel the pure inner light that connects you to Source, and your deepest knowledge and awareness.

Often these intuitive feelings go far beyond linear beliefs. Rule based systems cause you to look outside yourself for information, and blueprints for living. These allow others to tell you what to feel and how to live.So, how do you connect to the mysterious Source, where the portals open, and pure knowledge exists?

INTUITION is a non-linear experience of emotional and energetic awareness.

You will connect to and receive deep feeling and knowing. It is also called the 66h Sense. It is the heightened sense we feel when life becomes open in multi-dimensional ways.

This is also known as the 5 CLAIRS that are accessed by many professional Empaths, Clairvoyants and, Mediums. We ALL have them! So let’s explore basic ways to access them:

* Clairvoyance or seeing Light, or Clear Seeing. This is seeing images, Colors symbols, images, like a painting. Photograph and film , that gives deep vision into our lives, and the lives of others. It imparts awareness and heightened visual and inner sight. It is also called the activation of the Third Eye.

* Clairaudience is Clear hearing or hearing light. This can be a whisper that gives you information. It can be the voice of your higher self or Spirit Guides, ancestors, Gatekeepers. Messages can come through songs, phrases, remembering dreams. Clairaudience is listening to our own inner voice for the truth in our lives, and beyond our lives.

* Clairsentience is Clear feeling or feeling Light. This is deep ancestral knowing that is encoded in our DNA. It is fight or flight and a gut feeling, also called instinct. It is emotionally feeling and knowing experience with clarity that guides your life path and choices to excellence and success!

* Clairgustance is Clear tasting or tasting Light. This Clair can allow you to receive information through tasting When the energy body expands or stressors are activated, hormones are released. This can trigger taste, as if through sense memory. It can be the taste of something another person is eating or drinking. Spirit can also cause a craving to connect you to them and make you aware of their presence and messages.

* Clairscent (Clairsalience) is clear smelling and smelling Light. It is a sense that is activated when we connect with another person, living or in Spirit. We smell a scent connected to a grandmother we loved- a favorite perfume - or a friend who may be reaching out to you through a smell connected to a job he did. It could be the fragrance of pipe tobacco by a living business colleague smokes, who needs an answer about a business project, It is reminding you to contact him. It is another path for receiving important intuitive information. 

INTUITION is a powerful path to developing and trusting our higher emotions, knowing and gut instincts. This applies to people we meet, business associates, potential partners, projects and investments. There are many tools to develop our intuition.

Here are some proven ancient and modern ways to align with one of your greatest talents and abilities! 

MEDIITATION: is the path of stilling the mind and Spirit and getting out of linear judgment and analysis. It is experiencing a place that is beyond normal states of consciousness, where energy, creativity, Spirit and Source exist.

Here are some different approaches for meditation: Eastern meditation, Guided meditation, Visual meditation that works with Colors and images, subliminal meditation, holisync, binaural beats, All of these forms of meditation help to access altered and heightened states of intuition. 

BEING AND WALKING N NATURE: connects you to deep meditative experiences. Being immersed in nature and living energy, you reactivate the balance within your body, mind and Spirit. 

MOVING MEDITATION: Tai Chi, Chi Gong, Martial Arts and Yoga focus on breathing, meditation and movement to achieve intuition and deep feelings and clarity. These are used by many Chi and Zen Masters. 

DANCING: Jazz, modern, Afro-Haitian, hip-hop to trance all awaken vast amounts of intuitive energy in the body and heighten our emotional and energy bodies. There are Root Chakra points in the bottoms of your feet. Activating them through dance begins the process of awakening all the Chakras and Kundalini. Energy! 

BREATHING and BREATHING EXERCISES: such as Breathing in for 5, holding for 16 and exhaling for 8 and repeating up to ten times will energize you and your intuition.

The Breath of Fire and Alternate Nostril breathing done In Yoga, also awaken energy and Intuition. 

CREATIVITY: Painting, singing, dancing, creating and listening to music working with Color all activate your intuition. Creativity is life force energy that manifests in many expressive ways that elevate and expand our awareness. 

STUDYING ASTRONOMY and PHYSICS: Connecting with other universes and other dimensions of energy and existence take you beyond personal understanding. of life. As you expand and deepen awareness through studying astronomy. Physics, cosmology, you see and feel the infinite universes that exist and that we are connected to! We all come from the Stars!

There are infinite ways to develop your Intuition that strengthen your natural talents and CLAIRS. Awakening these abilities align you with dynamic and expansive energies, leading to clarity, creativity and infinite possibilities in your life.

If you are called to deepen and explore your Intuition where do you begin?

Working with an Intuitive coach can expand how you see, feel and experience the world your life, career and creative projects, and relationships. It can accelerate your development and trust in your natural talents.

Once you learn to trust your emotions, perceptions and messages- possibilities expand and you perceive opportunities that have been unseen before.

It is a force that comes through you, that guides and leads you to deeper and more intense perceptions that can create wealth, success, dynamic health and love! So start exploring the many universes within yourself, as you begin to trust your natural gifts of intuition! 

Melissa is a professional Energy Designer. She specializes in Interior Design, and Feng Shui. She is also a professional Clairvoyant, Medium and Life Coach, certified Hypnotherapist. She is member of The International Association of Professional Life Coaches, The American Association of Psychics and Mediums, as well as The American Federation of Certified Psychics and Mediums.

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Using Crystals For Protection

By ESPsychic Ravenne

As a light worker, healer and psychic reader I find that I could not do without my crystals as part of my psychic protection routine. I'd like to share with you two of what I deem to be the essential part of my crystal kit.

Firstly TOURMALATED QUARTZ a crystal that forms a bubble of protective light around anyone who wears or holds this crystal near to them. It is known to protect against psychic attack and negative thought forms by yourself or projected onto you by other people. It acts as a vacuum to your aura quickly clearing any negative build ups of energy or any empathic conditions you have picked up from some else. This crystal turns negative energy into positive and light energy.

Secondly. SELENITE as a light attracting stone it absorbs and radiates light and vibrates at a high frequency helping to clear negative energy, not only from the aura but also from any area you use selenite in, this is ideal for healers and psychic readers who deal with a lot of people directly day to day. Selenite is also great for clearing psychic tools such as tarot cards, pendulums and other crystals. You should never need to cleanse a selenite crystal however you can empower it by charging it under the moon light.

Using both these crystals together is a fantastic way of clearing and shielding whilst still radiating your own light and positive energy.

Ravenne

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Battle of the Psychics and ESPsychic Jennifer

Battle of the Psychics and ESPsychic Jennifer: We would like to introduce Jennifer.W an ESPsychic and American Federation Certified, Psychic, Medium, Energy Healer. Jennifer has had psychic ability since childhood, sensing the spirit world, clairsentiently, clairaudiently, and clairvoyantly.

So, You Think You Are Psychic?

There Are Many Ways You Can Tell If You Are Psychic, a Sensitive, Empath, Medium or Clairvoyant

by Sunhee Park

I have been blessed with psychic ability, empathy and an ability to heal using energy. There are so many things that would happen that I could not explain, nor did I want to talk about it to anyone. I have accepted that I do have psychic gifts and healing abilities. If you feel you are different, try to talk about it with someone else who you know does not judge you, that is the first step.

Here are a list of things that can help you identify if you have psychic gifts:

1. Feeling spirit activity

There are reasons to why you want to sleep with the lights on and raise your electricity bill out of the roof. There are reasons as to why your hair on your arms, neck or back stand straight up when you walk into the basement. You can feel spirits present. You cannot deny a part of who you are because once you do deny, then you are stuffing a gift down inside. The first thing to enhance your gifts is to acknowledge to yourself that you could actually be different and feel more than normal people. This does not mean that you are a nature of freak, it just means that you can feel more.
2. Connecting to a person's spirit is when you walk into a room full of people

Do you stare at someone as if your in a trance? And no matter which part of the room you are in, your head keeps turning to that person? This means that there is a familiar feeling from that person's energy. They could be going through something similar to you in the present. They could also be feeling the same way you do. You feel like you have spoken to this person before or they look familiar. What you are feeling is their aura and you have a connection with this person. You are connecting with a person's aura and its a positive thing. Unless they tell you to take a picture it lasts longer.

3. Knowing what someone is going to say before they say it

Do you know what someone is going to say, before they say it? This is reading someone's mind, called ESP or Extra Sensory Perception. This is a sure sign that you are picking up the thoughts in someone's mind and their thoughts transfer like lightning onto your brain. If you are doing this, you may want to choose which person's thoughts you are feeling, acknowledge it to yourself and mentally throw it back onto the person. Empathy is also a form of ESP where a person's emotional state transfers onto you as if you are now their emotions. We call people who absorb people's feelings an empathic sponge. They are soaking up the feelings to feel how the person is exactly feeling in order to deliver a message.

4. Ability to locate lost or missing objects

When someone asks you "where are my keys", your body automatically goes to the place where the missing keys are. This is called finding. You can feel where an object is if it is hidden or not, your body goes to find it. A more advanced technique of finding is called remote viewing. This is when you are on the phone with someone, and you can describe where they are at and actually see colors of walls or type of interior. This comes with practice and is also combined with a gift called Clairvoyant.

5. Psychic precognition

This is when you state a fact about the future and predicting if they will be getting a job, or breaking up with their partner, traveling to another country, getting the house they bid on and so on. Some psychics have premonitions of bad events as well but are not necessarily trying to poison your mind and make you feel negative. A true psychic will deliver it in a positive and loving way.

If you feel that you have any of these gifts then try to read up more on how to exercise them as opposed to denying them. You do not have to become a professional psychic. The beauty of these gifts can be applied to everyday use with your family, job, health, finance and creativity. This just makes you more well rounded in all aspects of your life. There are many gifts that I have not mentioned here, but I will be writing more often than not.

Find the original article at http://voices.yahoo.com/so-think-psychic-12135878.html?cat=34

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Happiness In The World

By Jennifer Johnson

Something has bothered me for most of my life. I try to explain and never had the speaking skills to help people understand. I decided to write it in hopes that maybe I can help add to anyone’s happiness. I really believe that this is imperative to healthy and happy living. I am very passionate about this. I may even sound repetitive.

Please do not believe that happiness can only come from within. When I hear people say this I feel nothing but pure sadness for the person who believes this.

Happiness comes from God or your creator. You can be happy doing the things you love to do. There is nothing wrong with that and it is not perusing a false sense of happiness. It is okay to look for happiness in things that make you feel good. If it feels good, it is from God. It is not a false sense of good. It is just good.

The positive, healthy, good things I do that bring happiness in my life are riding bike, hiking, walking, writing, reading, learning, swimming, yoga, church, crocheting, and photography to name a few. I enjoy many things that bring happiness in to my life including children and family. I always find happiness everywhere. This is very significant. The reason why I find happiness everywhere is that I believe God is everywhere. I do not believe that my creator only exists within my heart.

If I believed that happiness could only come from within, cancer would kill me. I find happiness everywhere. I choose to do things to add to my happiness adding to my overall health. Whether cancer or not pursue happiness within and in the world.

Your creator is everywhere. Therefore finding happiness is easy. Happiness is an experience that is in you and in the world. Your creator is in your heart and in the world. He is in the couch you sit on, the trees, objects, people, animals, hands, fingers, toes, EVERYTHING. Happiness is in ALL! That is why happiness comes from anywhere and anything.

Realizing that God is everywhere will bring happiness. Everything you do will bring happiness to you. God created all therefore he is ALL. Pursuing happiness inside of you and outside of you is what God wants you to do. He wants you to enjoy YOU, the world he made, and the world he continues to make. He makes the roads through the hands of construction workers. He puts happiness and love in everything. It is your choice to see that God exists in ALL. That is what he wants you to know. Your creator is waiting for you to enjoy everything. All you have to do is choose to believe.

Start believing that God is everywhere and become enlightened with love and happiness. Happiness IS beyond your heart, it is EVERYWHERE. Choose to see that good spark of God in everything!

Jenny

http://thegoodspark.com/2013/05/22/happiness-in-the-world/

ESPsychics Rocks!

by ESPsychic Pamela

I have been working on psychic advisor lines for many years. I can still remember the fear I felt the first time I gave a complete stranger a reading over the phone. Talk about trusting your Guides and Angels to come through! And they have ever since.

The first line I worked for paid me twenty cents a minute and charged their clients much more. They were unethical to their customers and advisers. The company would not allow their clients to buy minutes upfront so they could keep racking up their credit card bill. My manager told me I gave my readings too efficiently and quickly. She wanted me to keep them on longer. Which I refused to do and became popular quickly with clients. One of my clients was astonished that I had used my real picture because another adviser had a famous authors picture on their profile! I was on that line for a month before finding a much more ethical line to work for.

I worked for four other popular lines  that treated their clients and advisers much better than the first: with dignity. The only problem was they paid, “Minimum wages for psychics.” Those lines will remain nameless, but they paid their psychics  anywhere from 32 to 75 cents a minute. These lines had some very nice clients. But they also had some clients that were very needy and rude. The way I do my readings is  to give them the information the way I receive it. One woman asked me when a guy she liked was going to call. I told her on Friday and she wanted to know what time on Friday.  She got angry when I couldn’t give her a time.

I remember the first time someone hung up on me as I was giving information. I was so devastated! The phone rang immediately afterwards and I had to recover quickly. After a while, I got thick skin because I realized they didn’t like hearing the truth. In time, I got tired of giving my best to those abusive clients for such low pay. I used to hope that they would hang up and not add any more money. Maybe if I were getting paid more it would have been easier to take. I was thrilled to leave them behind.

The lines I work for today are totally different.

ESPsychics psychics are vibrating at a much higher vibration than the past lines I worked for. We are light workers working hard to help others.  ESPsychics treats their psychics with respect and compensates us well. Because of that we give it our all.

At ESPyschics we care about our clients no matter where they are at. We help them.  It must be that energy that attracts wonderful clients. Not once have I prayed that a client hang up like I did with those other lines. There is a feeling of family here and I am proud to be a part of that family. ESPsychics rocks! I am happy to read for you at http://espsychics.com/psychics/pamela/

Blessings,
Pamela