comfort received on the page. But those trips were financed on my already-burdened credit cards. By November, I had to face the reality that I was bankrupt. I sat down with my son and told him how ashamed I was to be in such a pickle. I couldn't even say the word bankrupt; it came out as a little sob. My son, Jerry, wise before his years, said, “Mom, there's nothing to be ashamed of. I'm proud of you. You're doing the work you want to do. If bankruptcy is the next step, take it.” With his words the shame dissolved, and I called a bankruptcy attorney. But his first available appointment wasn't until the following February. What was I supposed to do till then?
The next morning, I said my prayers and got in my sacred writing chair. I told Spirit all about my financial woes and my loving son and the appointment with the attorney. I asked a lot of hard questions: Why, if I'm doing the work I'm here to do, am I broke? How did I get here? What am I supposed to be learning? Where's the blessing in bankruptcy? I want a beautiful life! I want real prosperity. How do I create that? Tell me how to create a beautiful life, and I will do it.
Well, I received answers. I was told to write at the very deepest soul level every day of December. And I was told exactly what to write about and in what order.
Week 1: Spend a week in preparation. Learning how to create life is deep; you need to prepare yourself.
Week 2: Look back at your life. There are gifts buried in there that you haven't explored and don't understand.
Week 3: Release and forgive. You are full of old wounds that haven't been released, and until you release them, there is no room for the new to grow.
Week 4: Before you ask for anything, get clear about what you want and why you want it, so you are sure to create a life of purpose and joy.
This outline made sense to me. In fact, it sounded similar to what I'd been doing on my annual Soul Day. Every New Year's Day, I'd spend time in prayerful preparation, then I'd write about the year just completed and all the gifts and learnings I received, and finally, I'd talk over what I want for the new year.
This process had always worked, but it had been wildly effective on January 1, 2006. That year, no matter what I asked for, I received it. I said I was ready for my marketing partner, and five days later, the news and information outlet United Press International (UPI) invited me to write a weekly column. I said I was ready for my publishing partner, and book publisher Conari Press contacted me in June. I asked for a relationship, and met a man thirteen days later in my favorite restaurant. That year, 2006, was far and away my most magical year to date. I wanted another year like that.
On January 1, 2010, after four weeks of intense spiritual exploration, I felt ready to call in a magical new year. That morning, I woke early, made a pot of coffee, and headed to my writing room. I said my prayers and settled in for a day of divine dialogue. But when I reached for my journal, I noticed a bright yellow book, You Are Here, by Thich Nhat Hanh, at my feet. I began to read and couldn't stop. Thich Nhat Hanh kept drawing me deeper and deeper into his book with his gentle, loving explanation of the Buddha's great teachings. In a chapter on how everything is connected, I turned the page and stumbled upon a sentence: “When conditions are sufficient there is a manifestation.”
I stopped and read it again. Then I read it out loud. Then I leapt out of my chair. My hands shot to my forehead. I raced in circles around my room gushing, “Oh my God! Oh my God! Everything we think we know about manifestation is 180 degrees off!” I ran to my white board and scribbled “When conditions are sufficient there is a manifestation” in green marker. I stared at the sentence, letting this deeper understanding of manifestation settle into my bones. Here I was, wanting to manifest a beautiful life, but I had my eyes on the wrong half of the equation. I was focused on what I wanted, but it's not about wanting. It's about creating the conditions that organically produce what I want. Conditions first; manifestation second. From the moment I read that sentence, my Soul Day changed forever. Heck, my whole life changed forever.
I spent the rest of the day alternating between reading You Are Here and talking over what I was learning with the Voice—what I call the speaker of the divine guidance that appears on the page when I'm soul writing. The Voice and I had rich conversations about the full implications of “when conditions are sufficient.”
Suddenly, I wondered if this is what Jesus meant when he said, “Seek first the kingdom and God's righteousness and all else shall be provided” (Matthew 6:33). Surely the two great masters, the Buddha and Jesus, would have to have taught the same thing.
I jumped out of my chair and searched my bookshelves for Blessings of the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz. I knew from spending time with his earlier book, Prayers of the Cosmos, that Jesus spoke Aramaic, a rich Middle Eastern language that carries literal, metaphorical, and mystical meanings simultaneously. When the gospels were written in Greek and then translated into Latin and finally English, much of the majesty and impact of Jesus's words were washed out along the way. In Blessings, Douglas-Klotz says that in English we read, “Seek first the kingdom,” but in Aramaic, Jesus's words are much more thrilling and clear. To give us a sense for what first-century Aramaic listeners heard, he translates “Seek first the kingdom” into a whole page of poetry. In the end, he captures Jesus's intent with this summary: “Here Jesus says that when we pursue a right relationship with the Universal One and allow this relationship to realign our lives, we produce a condition of receptivity in which anything we need to help us complete our purpose in life will be supplied by the universe.”
With the wisdom of the two great masters stirring in my heart, I made an Intention Mandala for 2010. (Later in the book, I'll explain exactly what a mandala is, why it's important, and how an Intention Mandala fits into the Lotus and the Lily process.) It had pictures of what I wanted, but those images were on the periphery of the circular mandala, not the center. At the heart of my mandala, I drew a lily and on each petal wrote one of my conditions—the six actions I take every day to live a life aligned with Spirit and become the fertile soil in which my beautiful life can grow. Then I gave my mandala a name: “My Breakthrough Year.”
I posted “My Breakthrough Year” on the wall and began a daily mandala prayer practice. Every morning, I stood in front of my mandala, handed my desires over to Spirit, and announced aloud that I would spend the day focusing on my part of the equation—living my conditions. I talked to my mandala every morning, and from its position overlooking my computer, it spoke to me all day.
Forty days later, I had my appointment with the bankruptcy attorney. He explained the process and asked if I had any questions. “One,” I said, “I made $12,000 in January. Is that a problem?”
“Well, yeah, it's a problem,” he said. “You're not bankrupt.”
After the appointment, I drove to my favorite holy place, St. Michael's Shrine in Tarpon Springs, Florida. There, I poured tears of gratitude onto my soul-journal page, thanking the angels and Spirit for leading me to the teachings of the Buddha and Jesus. “How can I thank you?” I wrote. The answer was simple and clear: teach it. I've taught the process I discovered, which I call “the Lotus and the Lily,” ever since.
And now, here you are.
How to Use This Book
This book, The Lotus and the Lily, will lead you on a dance with the wisdom of your wild soul—the part of you that is authentic, alive, and hungry for the full adventure of life. Your soul has never been wounded and never can be. It emerged from divine ground, and it will return to divine ground. In between, it is here to play in the fields of life.
Most of us have only a cursory relationship with our brilliant soul. We hear occasional tapping on the window—perhaps a nudge to explore an idea or ask a bigger
