2024 a year of sacred memory, dreaming dragons, and original prayer

Week 46--in which we explore the paradox of creating the future by looking back at the past 

Friends, soul writers, mystics, witches, and lovers of prayer,

In The Lotus and the Lily intensive that just opened we are looking back at all that has happened in the 11 months of this tumultuous year. In our first gathering last Tuesday, I invited everyone to sit back and listen to Thich Nhat Hanh introduce the Buddhist principles of interbeing and interdependent origination. Two concepts that can seem awfully heady. To bring these ancient truths out of the head and into the body as recognizable lived reality, Thich Nhat Hanh give us two succinct sentences that upend any reliance on cause and effect.

When I read these two sentences for the first time, it was January 1, 2010 and I was facing bankruptcy. I was desperate to find the key to creating a different kind of life.

I longed for a life filled with joy and possibility secured by a solid financial foundation.

I had tried everything the manifestation books and teachers had recommended. I had worked hard on the whole law of attraction thing. I had made treasure maps and vision boards and written positive affirmations—all things you have probably tried as well. And like you, I had come up short. Very short.

The pain of my situation, carrying the very real possibility of losing my home and having to tell my son he would not be able to return to college, had cracked me wide open.

So when I picked up Thich Nhat Hanh’s You Are Here on New Year’s Day fifteen years ago, I was so soft, vulnerable, and frightened, that these two sentences were able to leap off the page, bypass my logical mind, and enter my body. Bankruptcy was proof that my well-trained, problem-solving, linear-thinking mind wasn’t able to solve this massive problem.

And with three sentences, everything changed.

So, I’d like to offer you the same invitation I gave to the members of The Lotus and the Lily prayer intensive.

I invite you to sit back and let these sentences enter your body.

First, I read everyone a few pages of Thich Nhat Hanh explaining interbeing by asking us to look deeply into a piece of paper until we can see the tree, and before the tree, the sun, the clouds and the rain that grew the tree.

Go ahead. Try it. It's easy. Touch a piece of paper and imagine the tree and everything that created the tree. It changes your perception of what a piece of paper is completely.

Thich Nhat then Hanh summarizes this esoteric concept with:

“The Buddha said it in absolutely simple terms: ‘This is, because that is.’ This refers to the manifestation of phenomena on the basis of the law of interdependent origination. When conditions are sufficient, there is a manifestation.”

I could never have foreseen what happened next. I screamed. Shot out of my chair. Raced around the room shouting,

“Everything we think we know about manifestation is one hundred and eighty degrees off! It’s not about the manifestation! It’s about the conditions!”

I immediately asked for my conditions in deep soul writing, received them, drew them on a simple mandala, and decided to chant them every morning.

From the very first time I chanted my conditions, I could feel the words tamping down the worry and fear, and gently shifting my attention away from everything I was so sure I needed, onto how I choose to live.

Sixty days after I began this simple but radical prayer practice, I was no longer bankrupt.

I didn’t understand the power of living your conditions or of making a mystic mandala, but I knew I had stumbled upon something magical.

So I wrote a newsletter inviting people to try it. And here we are fifteen years later and thousands have read the book and come to my once-a-year prayer intensive to discover for themselves the truth of the Buddha’s teaching: “When conditions are sufficient, there is a manifestation.”

And, in case you’re wondering, Yeshua taught exactly the same thing. That’s why the book and intensive are called The Lotus and the Lily.

But here’s the strange thing about conditions. You can’t just ask, “What are my conditions?”

First, you have to prepare yourself to ask such a profound question. In the intensive, we prepare to ask that life-changing question by first looking back at the year we have already created, poking around to uncover all the wisdom, blessings, surprises, shocks, sorrows, and pains that generated that life.

That’s what we did in our first gathering. We looked back at the month of January. And we were all quite surprised by what was right there in our calendars and journals waiting to be noticed. Since that gathering, we’ve been looking back at February, March, and onward through the rest of the year.

Although I created this process and have done it for fifteen years, I am stunned by what I am uncovering.

What I could have so easily missed if I didn’t take the time to do this looking back process. Today, Saturday, I looked back April, May, and June, noticing a pattern emerging. When I got to June, I looked at a short note I’d jotted down after an Experiential Journey during the intensive on Original Prayer.

I squinted at what I’d written because I’d completely forgotten what I saw in that journey.

But as soon as I read the little note about that journey, the memory flooded back and I suddenly realized the beating heart of my year. And if I hadn’t taken the time to look back, I’d have missed it entirely.

Maybe next week I’ll tell the story of what I remembered. It’s a big story that holds all the facets of my prayer artist and mystic witch life together.

All I wanted to say today is that looking back is the secret sauce to beginning to create a life you can love.

Because we’re seeding a nine year, the completion of a cycle, we’re looking back not just at 2024 in Lotus and Lily this year, we’re going to look back at the whole cycle that began in 2017. And then, we’re going to spend two weeks releasing all the old beliefs and stories and wounds clogging up our bodies. And then, we’ll be ready to ask the question of a lifetime: What are my conditions? What are the conditions that will create in me the fertile soil for a life filled with abundance, beauty, service, joy, and love.

If that sounds like something your heart is longing for, you are still welcome to join us.

We gather for live events on Tuesdays through the middle of December. I also host a watch party on Thursdays for friends in Europe or anyone who can't be with us on Tuesdays.

You do not have to be live with us. Everything is recorded. Details on the landing page.

Registration will end next week.

The Lotus and the Lily
Harvest 2024 Seed 2025

to remembering what wants to be remembered, 

Janet

website: janetconner.com

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