God's Favourite Flower

The lotus is a symbol of beauty and prosperity. A common analogy compares lotus' rise to beauty from the mud with the evolution of man's consciousness from instinctive impulses to spiritual realisation. Within each human being is the spirit of the sacred lotus. Each of the seven major psychic centres in the subtle body are likened to a lotus of varying petals and colour.

Prana is the life-energy of the universe. There are three principal channels through which this life-energy flows - ida, pingala and sushumna. Ida, pingala and sushumna meet together at six different places along the spinal column. Each meeting place forms a centre. Indian spiritual philosophy calls these centres "chakras" or lotuses, because they look like the lotus flower. At the crown of the head is the seventh chakra called Sahasrara, the thousand-petalled lotus. Because it is in the brain, and not along the spinal column, it is not counted with the other six centres.

The following text is a lotus exercise by Sri Chinmoy for stilling the mind:

Please try to imagine a lotus inside your heart. Then try to imagine that the lotus is not only inside your heart, but that your heart itself is a lotus. When you look at the lotus or imagine the lotus, try to be deeply absorbed in the beauty of the lotus. It is your own heart-lotus. Then your mind will have no time to roam. When you enter into a garden, you look at the flowers and enjoy their beauty and fragrance. At that time you do not pay attention to anything else. You have no thought. You are only enjoying the experience that the flowers are offering. In the same way, try to be deeply absorbed in the lotus which is inside your heart. Then a day will come when you will see that this lotus is not a flower at all it is your heart itself, which is full of beauty and fragrance. If you start appreciating the beauty and fragrance of your own heart, then there will be no time for your mind to think of anything else.

Truth is the flower of our prayer-heart. Truth is the fragrance of our meditation-soul. When we pray soulfully, we see in the inmost recesses of our heart a lotus blossoming petal by petal. We place this lotus at the Feet of our Beloved Supreme, and then, while we are meditating, we smell its fragrance. This fragrance purifies the earth-bound mind and illumines the Heaven-free heart. Again, it liberates the pilgrim-soul in us that wants to walk along Eternity's Road to manifest the supreme Reality. ~Sri Chinmoy