Sacred Lotus Love – Mandalas
June 21st, 2015
In years past I’ve received emails from the Missouri Botanical Gardens saying “the sacred lotus are blooming”. I haven’t received an email yet, so I hope they haven’t bloomed. I want to take photos and be in their presence before the flowers fade.
It’s hard to say what my favorite flower is, often I say it’s whatever is blooming right now. Lotus and roses are my top two though. Perhaps because they are both so beautiful, are considered sacred and have spiritual meaning.
Lotus flowers are beautiful pure blooms that grow up from the mud. A symbol of consciousness. While it’s roots grown in the mud, the blossoms emerge pure and clean like the consciousness of humans toward enlightenment.
The lotus bud symbolizes the potential of consciousness.
In yoga the chakras are recognized as human energy centers that start at the base of the spine traveling up through the top of the skull. Traditional mandala images of chakras are represented by lotus flowers with different number of petals surrounding each mandala circle. The first chakra mandala has four lotus petals, the second six, the third ten. All the way to the seventh crown chakra with one thousand lotus petals (sahasrara) symbolizing pure consciousness and enlightenment.
The opening bud symbolizes the opening of the soul and heart.
The lovely mandala center of the lotus is where the seeds are formed. Perhaps like eyes looking within to the soul.
It is the womb that holds the seeds of future lotus plants and the symbol of ever emerging consciousness of all souls.
The rains seem non stop here is St. Louis lately. The forecast is for partly cloudy skies, the best for taking photos, and little rain. Maybe I will take my camera tomorrow to the Missouri Botanical Garden and bask in the sacredness of the lotus.
MANDALA COLORING- I tried to create a PDF for this blog of the black and white lotus and lotus bud coloring mandalas that I drew. It didn’t work. If you would like me to send a PDF or JPEG of these two images, please email me at “linda-at-creativityforthesoul.com”, BUT replace the “-at-” with “@”. Don’t use the quote marks. (If I put the easily copied email address, I will get thousands more spam emails at this blog, sorry to make it complicated.)
To see my previous blog post about lotus, click here.
ENJOY & CREATE.
P.S – ENTERING THE SACRED THROUGH IMAGES, WORDS, NATURE & GARDENS
I’m very excited about the August 16-21 course “Entering the Sacred Through Images, Words, Nature & Gardens” that I will be teaching at a retreat center – KANUGA – in North Carolina. My dear friend Kelly Larson of Spirited Hands Art is coming with me to help and experience. We made plane reservations today. Can’t wait to go and be in that “thin space” to let art and nature be the threshold of entering into sacredness.
