According to legend, everywhere the baby Buddha stepped a lotus flower bloomed. In Thailand–where my parents are from and where I spent many childhood summers–lotus flowers bloom all over the country. They easily grow in natural ponds and spread quickly in water. As a little girl, I remember my grandparents waking me up before dawn so we could offer food and lotus flowers to the village monks as they walked by. The lotus is the most sacred flower in Buddhism and symbolizes resilience, purification, resurrection, and spiritual awakening.

The mantra Om mani padme hum describes the lotus as a symbol for enlightenment. It translates to: “Praise the jewel in the lotus.” All the wisdom is within us, so the ‘jewel,’ is in us—and we are the lotus flower. In order to bloom like a lotus flower we can:

    1) Accept where we are planted. Lotus roots are latched into the mud and cannot grow without it. In order to bloom, the lotus flower must grow through murky and unpleasant standing water. The mud represents the human condition that we all share–the impulse to hold on, to defend, to fixate on the emotion. It’s also in the sadness and the bigger losses. Yet each time there is a possibility of prayer, or of gentleness as the lotus makes its way towards the light; as we make our way towards blooming from the mud of our origins.

    2) Cultivate patience, which can help us see with clearer eyes. As the lotus bud breaks the surface of the water and receives the sunlight, its first petal opens, without a trace of the mud. It blooms one petal at a time, clean and clear. For me, this means allowing for things in our lives to be partially resolved (or sometimes not resolved at all), without grasping for immediate answers or perfect solutions. This also means trusting that we will see the truth of things when we are ready.

    3) Keep an open and receptive heart. Once we’ve accepted where we’ve been planted (no matter how uncomfortable it is) and are witnessing reality with clear eyes, the heart can give and receive the Love it longs for. Conditional love is seeing what we want to see. Non conditional love is seeing what is really there. When we receive reality as it is, blooming becomes a natural process and we are full of love and gratitude.

The lotus has a unique life cycle unlike any other flowering plant. At the end of each day, it closes up its petals and it sinks below the water’s surface once more, back into the emptiness, the darkness, that which is unknown–only to resurface again in the morning. As human beings, we have a unique opportunity to use what life gives us as fuel for our spiritual awakening. The fight over the laundry, the desire to make more money, the grief of losing loved ones, the stress over a health diagnosis–these are not obstacles to our awakening. Rather they are invitations to unmask who we think we are so we can become God-Realized. But we must allow the process illuminated by the blossoming of the lotus: fully grounded in earth, yet aspiring toward the Divine, ever blooming from within toward the light.