For spirituality to be helpful as a transformative personal life philosophy and worldview, it is crucial that you discern the difference between the organic body, mind, soul (lower-self), and spirit (higher-self).
Enlightenment is an ongoing process — in everyone — at all times. We are being enlightened, more and more, as we flow in the Path. Even a baby’s life experiences are significant for enlightenment, and so is the life of an uneducated, poverty-stricken mother in Africa. As you will see in the Butterfly Path, the uneducated old woman in the rural village is most probably the wisest person in the community, most qualified to give spiritual path directions — because she has life experience, empathy, compassion, inspiration, and the superior wisdom that came from that. In Buddhism they call this the superior (prajna) wisdom, karuna. In Hinduism it is the highest wisdom (prajna paramita) called maitri, and in Teacher Jesus’ teaching it is *chréstotés *— this is the superior Path.
Butterfly Path transcends mind and its consciousness because those faculties are the pinnacle of the lower-self. Awareness of the divine realm in and about us is superior in spirituality, and consciousness is most-important in the lower-self. On the Path, we realize that our ego is an important part of our soul, and we must recognize it without becoming a prisoner to its constructs. We acknowledge self-harming ideals, and heal from self-imposed lower-self constraints, so we can move our awareness to the spiritual realm (higher-self). Nurturing our intuition is important on the Butterfly Path, and essential for evolution of the higher-self.
Each lifetime brings interesting learning opportunities, for us to overcome the limitations of the soul, and realize our spiritual potential. In the lower-self, we carry soul impressions passed on from previous lives (our wisdom travels with us), but in every lifetime we also inherit karmic consequences and issues from our ancestors, caregivers, and community. These are mostly positive influences because we learn how to deal with this new world. They instill in us soul impressions about the issues that they tried to deal with, in their ways, within their means.
A simple example would be of two people who grow up in a home where alcoholism is an issue.
Dad, who inherited from his parents a very bad self-image, hurts mom sometimes; their son learns to detest the abuse of power and bullying. He learns to deal with his emotions on his own. He learns the deep damage of loneliness and powerlessness, and introspection becomes his forte. Therefore, he learns much wisdom from reflecting on life and society in general. He grows up to be an actor who portrays this, and brings to the surface the deep experiences of human suffering. He touches many lives, helping millions to understand what inner conflict is inflicted in domestic violence situations and alcoholism. He raises his children with emotional skills and sensitivity. His older sister, on the other hand, is a younger soul and she did not have the same wisdom skills to manage her experiences. She got married very young, to a man as broken as she is, but he does not drink. The baggage she inherited, and could not process, hurts her family. She is passing it on to some of her children. Her husband is a ‘third generation survivor’ of WW2. His great grandparents suffered during those times and because of their inability to process their experiences, they passed on a lot of bitterness, a great lack of joy, and victimhood baggage to their children — which seeped through to later generations. This couple are also not dealing with their issues and have now been diagnosed with mental health problems. Psychiatrists keep adding more prescriptions. Some of their children are younger souls who do not yet have the wisdom to deal with the baggage they inherit; only one child is coping well, the older soul, who has most probably learned his wisdom from a past life.
Everyone inherits some challenges and some goodness from our ancestors and community, and we learn wisdom through that. That is why we are here, to learn personal development skills from a variety of experiences. We are intrinsically connected to our ancestors and the fruits of their actions and mindsets. We should honor this, embrace the good and rid ourselves of the negative energy, lest we too may resign ourselves to being victims. In ancient cultures and some pristine traditions still around today, every home has a shrine to honor the ancestors. They would sometimes place a cup of tea there for nana, and great grandpa’s favorite tobacco. They know the ancestors are mindful of how things flow in their households, and they know the ancestors are now in a state of being where they can see their own mistakes and they are trying to improve themselves. The shrine also expresses gratitude for what the ancestors passed on because much wisdom came from the, and they made many sacrifices to feed and clothe their offspring.
We do not need chemicals to achieve the heights of spiritual bliss in everyday life. Butterfly Path is spirituality without psychotropic drugs. These drugs are for the lower-self minds. Drugs have no effect on the spirit. Some drugs purportedly give some people a brief mind-view of the world that spiritually advanced people experience naturally. We can understand this as if an 8th grader (for example) visits a university to sit in on a senior class for a few minutes. The experience may inspire the 8th grader to further studies, or it may go by as just one more interesting day in her life. There is no drug that can elevate a junior soul to a senior level in an instant — as there is no drug to help an 8th grader to graduate college in an instant.
Another notable truth in this regard; the advanced spiritual person’s reality is unattractive to the junior soul. Some advanced ‘spiritual powers’ may on the face of it seem to juniors as tantalizing or magical, but are in fact not so exciting, because it comes with responsibility and deep awareness of things that sadden most people. Higher spiritual skills do not come to uncaring people. Therefore, the ability to sense people’s mental states and true feelings, for example, comes with responsibility and sadness sometimes. It complicates our lives and can often be undesirable for those who live with it. You see, we are training to become deeply compassionate and humble spiritual care-workers. When we graduate this School, we will spend our spiritual lifetime as care-workers — that is what we are training for.
The ability to sense the presence of the Divine, every so often rapt one in an awe so powerful, it may be temporarily incapacitating (which is sometimes a bit weird when it happens in a normative social setting). This is a burden when you were caught off guard and the company you are with cannot understand it. Most people who experience higher spiritual faculties need help and training to ease the burden. Some people experience burnout, even depression and other mental conditions when they manage these skills incorrectly. The ability to sense spiritual energy in people is not something that comes to uncompassionate or non-empathetic people.
Energy is Everything The Butterfly Path looks at life from an elevated perspective — therefore we become aware that everything is energy. As spiritual beings in the process of becoming, we are increasingly aware of the spiritual energies of people, spiritual beings, animals, plants, and natural beings. As with all people, not only do we affect the energies of others, their energies affect us. Our personal relationships with everything around us, and our body, mind, soul, and spirit become more important when we learn how to keep those energies beautiful.
Butterfly Path straddles the spiritual traditions of the world, therefore, adherents appropriate into their lifestyles whatever is important to them, not only from their own cultural traditions, but across cultures. We see that Yoga is as important to some as Qigong and Tai Chi are to others. While Wayist meditations from Daoist roots are important to some, others follow Walking Talking Meditation where one remains present throughout one’s normal working day in a meditative state, aligned with the energies.
On Butterfly Path we learn to genuinely appreciate that spiritual energy wellness is essential to general wellness. Several traditional energy wellness modalities from around the world have an influence on our own modality, primarily from shamanic and Qi traditions of China and South America, and from geologic energy regulators like crystals and gemstones from European cultures, incorporated into local variants of Pranamayati (the energy healing modality of the Butterfly Path).
The Promise When you implement what you learn about the Butterfly Path, your life will start to change.
You will experience the change in your spirituality.
Your worldview will become peaceful.
You will find the purpose of your life.
You will be happier.
You will feel healthier.
Your relationships will improve.
You will embrace self-love.
Butterfly Path is not only the high awareness that captivated the mystics, bodhisattvas, and yogic teachers of all ages in swoons of spiritual ecstasy toward enlightenment, it is also the ideal solution for those of us struggling with ambivalent, confused, or uncommitted spirituality. Once embraced, Butterfly Path brings about healing, contentment, and wellness of the* soul* (lower-self and brain-mind), body, and* spirit (higher-self).*
Butterfly Path puts you in touch with the purpose of your life. To live purposefully brings inner harmony and resolve to get through difficult times, it also builds strength of character.
Butterfly Path is like a pair of mental eyeglasses* …* lenses that shape your worldview. Like a polarizing filter, it removes the haze; things become clearer and brighter. The world looks much more beautiful when you are happy about yourself, and you are in a good mood; that too is what Butterfly Path does for people, it changes their attitude and so too their worldview, and things just seem more pleasant and workable. When we look through Butterfly Path lenses, our world is more understandable, we are more at peace with key players in our life, because we understand where they come from and where they are headed. We take things less personal and find we have compassion, not only for ourselves, we also project loving-kindness to others. This simple shift in energies increases our quality of life tremendously.
Through the Butterfly Path, you will see every religion in a positive way because you will better understand where the people are at, the conditions that shape their behavior, and why they cannot show love in the same way as you do. This change will increase your ability to remain in beauty and contentment with life, because it increases your tolerance for those who are different.
Through Butterfly Path you learn that the world is mostly benign, you will celebrate the amazing advances we have made (for example) in human rights, children’s rights, animal rights, planetary rights, ecological awareness, and so much more — as you start to fret less and focus less on the little things that the media and politicians would like you to worry yourself sick about. People are so used to the negativity peddled by the media. Breaking News is never about good things. We bitch all the time about how bad things are with regards to the rights of the individual, gender issues and the ecology — we forget to celebrate how far we have come and how amazing we are in that. We must learn to own our own minds and seek also the positive things in life — balance is crucial for wellbeing and spirituality. We need positive reinforcement; else we fall into a deceptive idea that the world is all bad and full of negativity.
As your energies change in this positive way, you attract like-minded people. Those who are not of like mind will stop being attracted you. Your relationships with yourself, your body, mind, heart, and spirit will change for the better as you see the improvement in your relationships with significant others. One of the biggest changes in relationships will be how you automatically bring an end to relationships that are not good for you. You will be renewed as you break with damaging relationships and make new connections at a higher level of awareness where humbleness, simplicity and loving-kindness are of primary importance — and THAT is where your higher spirituality takes shape.
On the Butterfly Path, you also develop your higher-self. When the higher-self develops, you develop your spirit. You grow into the awareness of the higher energies that have always been around us and are always available to us, but we paid no attention.
On the Butterfly Path, we learn to tune-in to the energies of divine presence, and that energy flows through us. Divine energy is the energies of spiritual beings. We call it sacred or divine energy because it belongs to those whom we call gods, buddhas and angels. The intent of divine energy, by nature, is to uplift, heal, and to foster wisdom within us. As it flows through us it repairs, soothes, changes, and makes us better and happier people. On the Butterfly Path, we learn to speak to divine beings. Many people use culturally-conditioned titles or attributions like buddha, lord, god, goddess, angel, deva, devi, Allah, or God, when referring to spiritual beings. It does not matter what we call them, or if we use any ‘name’ at all. The spiritual beings of our tribe are very much aware that in the human condition, we are divided into culturally-conditioned groups with many languages. They know we are talking to them through our higher-self, just as they communicate with us in our higher-self (our intuition wisdom and sense of divine presence) without the use of language. Human language resulted from the use of organic vocal cords, something spiritual beings do not have because they do not have organic animal bodies.
When it comes to stepping into relationships with spiritual beings (an option that a large percentage of practitioners choose to make part of their lifestyle and meditative mindset), we note that culturally-conditioned customary names for spiritual beings remain important. Many practitioners use imagery of bodhisattvas, angels, buddhas, Hindu gods, the Source, other saints and sages, and Teacher Jesus or Avalokiteshvara (Guanyin) the Christ figure who is associated with the Buddha of Compassion, also associated with Jesus’s spiritual second coming as World Savior, wo is also associated with Lord Vishnu — it does not matter, all are spiritual beings, all are rooting for us - and our cultures have allocated all sorts of names to them. Do not worry about that, they know our limitations because most of them have walked this same Butterfly Path to become the gods that they are.
In Butterfly Path we learn to appreciate the importance of understanding reincarnation or transmigration of souls; of Karma as the regulator of our curriculum in the school of life; and of Dharma as one’s individual, personal sense of duty (inner moral code); and loving-kindness, the panacea of spirituality.
The higher-self skills we have come here to learn are all rooted in the three spiritual qualities: Humbleness, Simplicity, and Compassion. That journey starts within; we cultivate compassion for self, simplicity in dealing with self-issues, and humbleness in our (in)abilities to deal with other matters.
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN EXISTENCE For a spirituality to be helpful as an agent of personal transformation, it must have clear teaching about what is the spirit, the soul, the mind, and the body. We cannot continue to live in the dank basement of old times when neither the sciences, the religions, or the gurus of personal change and spirituality could satisfactorily speak to this topic. It was ludicrous that psychologists, therapists, priests, change gurus, and monks used to say, change your mind, uplift your spirit, free your soul, and escape the burdens of the human condition — yet none could explain to you what any of those things are. Looking back on it, it is almost unbelievable that humankind came so far with technological advances, and in the year 2020 no one could explain that which is the essence of the complex that we call human — the mind(s), the soul, the spirit, and the body.
The spirit is an integral, interconnected aspect of the human. In the past, Western people thought of healing and wellness only in terms of body and mind (mind is part of the soul), but they ignored the spirit. People considered bio-energies and mental energies, yet, ignored the spiritual energies. A person and a community cannot be whole (or well) if a major part of its essence is disregarded and neglected. Butterfly Path is cognizant of the whole person and how we exist in the biological, mental, and spiritual states.
To understand the simplicity and beauty of the Butterfly Path, we present upfront the clear and simple teaching of the essence of the human condition and its purpose.
***Four Principles:
1 The Way Flows from The Source*** The Way is the design, plan, and process of creation. The Way contains all Yin and all Yang. All creatures are subject to it.
The intent, plan, and process for human souls and their spiritual tribe is unique, as is the purpose of life for other types of beings existing alongside us in the universe.
To be at one with the Way is to flow along in the Plan and Purpose, to fulfill one’s eternal potential.
2 Soul is A Mind-Held Idea of Self - Spirit is Immortal Soul is a mind-held idea of self that dynamically changes as life goes on.
In the human body, the soul relies on a functioning organic brain. Under normal conditions, the soul’s energy is adequate to hold the soul together after death of the body (long enough to incarnate again). Many mind-held ideas become manifest; this is the principle by which we create.
The human soul (which is a mind-held idea) can evolve into an immortal spiritual being — this is the only purpose of life.
3 Earth is a School for Souls Our souls come to this Earth school (from wherever we originate) for the single purpose of becoming spiritual beings. We accomplish this when the soul masters the spiritual disciplines of loving-kindness, humbleness, simplicity, and compassion at every chakra-mind level. These are arduous courses that take many lifetimes to complete.
To graduate from this Earth school is to become a spiritual being - to be enlightened.
This is an existential path. We have lower-self (soul) desires and needs that drive us to experience a multi-faceted life, in which we develop our higher-self (spirit) and overcome the lower ego needs. Life must be lived fully and with joy. Every experience holds potential for extracting wisdom (which is required to graduate). Almost every experience holds potential for joy — this is a tough concept to digest, but in time it becomes clearer and when it does, you have gained great power.
We are hyper-sensual beings incarnated to a hyper-sensual planet. It is through the senses and sensuality that we distill wisdom from experiences.
4 There are Two Phases on the Path It is not so much that there are two Paths, but that the same Butterfly Path has a distinct Caterpillar phase and Butterfly phase, with considerable overlap about half-way through. You are most probably reading this book because you have started the Butterfly phase, but you are also living the Caterpillar phase at times—and that is how it works. A Butterfly does not form overnight, its process of formation starts with the life of the caterpillar and there is gradual change.
***The Caterpillar Path of the Lower-Self (soul) *** This phase unfolds by itself. In this phase of soul awareness, change happens slowly. Over many lifetimes Karma will present learning opportunities to the soul, to gain wisdom. All younger (or junior) souls in the Way travel this Path. The natural emphases at this stage of development is on brain-mind, knowledge, self-obsessed thinking, ego, consciousness, and religions or other ideologies. We go through this phase, unaware that we are destined to another state of being — as caterpillars are unaware that they will become butterflies. Even when we are explicitly told about the higher realities, we cannot comprehend it. The Plan of nature unfolds in us and one day, we awaken … to know the butterfly nature that is within.
***The Butterfly Path of the Higher-Self (spirit) *** The Butterfly Path is the spiritual path; it is consciously and intentionally walked. In this phase of spiritual awareness, change happens quickly. Spiritual wisdom is sought and gleaned with the help of Lotus Family teachers and guides known to some as buddhas, gods, or deities.
The two Paths apply accordingly to different stages in their spiritual journey. Those on the Caterpillar Path most likely will not find the Butterfly Path interesting. It is natural and appropriate for them to be unconcerned with (and often unaware of) the domain of butterflies until they reach the stage of butterfly needs.
To understand the ancient teaching of the Butterfly Path, let us begin by studying the subtle anatomy of the subtle energies of body, mind, soul, and spirit. So, get ready for your first tutoring lesson in this Earth school — Spiritual Anatomy.