The Lotus and The Lily
Harvest 2025 & Seed 2026

I shot out of my chair screaming: “It’s not about the manifestation! It’s about the conditions!” With that, the law of attraction flew out the window and a radical and far more beautiful and ancient truth flew in. In deep soul writing, I asked for my conditions. Because I had spent a month preparing to ask this question, my conditions came quickly. I recognized immediately that these six sentences describe perfectly how I want to live—how I consciously choose to live. To make sure my conditions stayed front of mind, I made a simple mandala and wrote them in the center. Then starting the next day, I stood in front of my mandala every morning, stared at it, and spoke my six conditions aloud.

On February 6, I met with the bankruptcy attorney. He explained the process; asked if I had any questions. “Yes, I said, I made $18,000 in January, is that a problem?” He got up, escorted me to the door, and said, “You’re not bankrupt. Call me when you’re bankrupt.”

I didn’t understand how my mandala worked, but I knew it had. So I set out to learn about mandalas. It’s a profound mystical education that continues to this day. The more I learned, the more astonished I became by the power of this ancient, yet incredibly simple, sacred geometric form.

I needed to share this magical process, so I wrote about what had happened in my Notes from the Field Sunday newsletter and invited a few subscribers to join me in the first intensive of what eventually became The Lotus and the Lily.

The Lotus and the Lily became my 2^nd book. It was published October 2012 and is now in thousands of hands. I continued to teach the process every fall, always incorporating expansive new ideas. When we gathered in November of 2020 to look back at that astonishing year of covid and quarantine, we realized we needed much more time to look back. Luckily, Emma Kupu Mitchell had just completed her labyrinth facilitation certification and she introduced a truly radical and magical way to look back at the past 11 months of the year on a medieval 11-circuit labyrinth. After walking the labyrinth to look at the past, we got the wild idea to walk the labyrinth a second time, to see if we could hear whispers from the future. Surprise, we did!

In short, The Lotus and the Lily process is alive. It is constantly showing us new and even more magical ways to integrate the life we’ve lived and prepare us to welcome the life that wants to be lived in the year to come.

Mystics around the world now gather from mid-November to mid-December to identify and integrate all that has happened in the year ending, identify the hidden treasures it has held for us, and create space for the new by untying the old. Then, as we approach Solstice, we listen for whispers from the seed that wants to be planted and nourished in the coming year. With that tender seed in our hands, we create a Mystic Mandala infused with images of our conditions—how we will nourish that seed in the next solar year.

Without fail, we are stunned by how the mandala we make with our hands—the mandala we think we understand—sings a song all her own, delivering insights, surprises, and synchronicities throughout the coming year, guiding us gently but firmly into a far more beautiful version of who we came here to be than we thought possible.

Indeed, it is the diametric opposite of both the patriarchal drumbeat to set goals and work hard to achieve them and the new age “law of attraction” command to focus on what you want. It is not a treasure map, vision board, or any other materialistic process packaged as spirituality. The Lotus and the Lily is a radical mystical exploration based on the eerily similar teachings of Buddha and Yeshua on what actually creates a beautiful and abundant life coupled with the eerie power of the mandala to gather all we need to live the life that wants to be lived.

This miraculous process comes to life without any attempts to manage, control, or predict the outcome. It is a powerful and delight-filled vehicle for alchemical transformation.