Awake in the World

Do you think that you need someone else to make you happy? Why not marry yourself instead? Nadine Schweigert, a woman in South Dakota who had been through a divorce created a wedding ceremony to marry herself. If that sounds strange to you, then maybe you’ve never abandoned your true Self. But if you’re like me you may have found yourself in relationships where you separated from your authentic Self to please others and make them happy. Self-betrayal is no way to have a healthy relationship with anyone. So the woman in South Dakota invited a small group of friends and family to join her in a celebration of vows to herself. The vows included a commitment to love, respect and cherish her Self.

How often do we think we need someone else to love us to be happy when what really need is to make the big steps to care for, nurture, and love ourselves? This kind of Self love is not the narcissistic kind that focuses on taking care of selfish pleasures. It’s about going deep and learning to give the kind of love that we yearn for from others to ourselves. When we marry our Self and develop the relationship between our self and that higher, Divine Self, that wise Self will guide and dance with us. Life becomes magical and alive with synchronicity. It may not always be easy, but Nadine says that through kindness to herself she lost 50 pounds and stopped drinking.

If you were to fall in love with your Self and write a love letter, what would that look and feel like? I challenge you to at least begin to look at yourself with eyes of kindness that look for and develop your qualities. Why not give your Self a hug and say, “I do”?

Register to win copy of Debra’s new book, Garden of Bliss on Goodreads.

Copyright Debra Moffitt, May 2013.

Bio: Debra Moffitt is the award winning author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life and “Garden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery” (Llewellyn Worldwide, May 2013). A visionary, dreamer and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices, writing and creativity in the U.S. and Europe. More at http://www.awakeintheworld.com and on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/DebraMoffittAwakeintheWorld

Writing can help to heal the heart. Research related to health and wellness has proven that writing is a way to face illness and grow. I first learned about this through Dr. John Evans, who created Wellness & Writing Connections conferences and workshops. Inspired by Dr. James Pennebaker’s research on how writing can help people heal, Dr. Evans began using writing to heal from his own illness and found that putting pen to paper brought big benefits. The upside was so good that he decided to share his results with others and encourage them to write as well. Today he works with Duke Integrative Medicine Center doing workshops for caregivers as a way to relieve stress. He also presents workshops like “Transform Your Health: Write to Heal” through the International Association for Journal Writing and writes for Psychology Today.

Dr. Pennebaker, Professor at University of Texas at Austin, inspired a lot of work around writing and healing. He said, “Emotional upheavals touch every part of our lives. You don’t just lose a job, you don’t just get divorced. These things affect all aspects of who we are—our financial situation, our relationships with others, our views of ourselves, our issues of life and death. Writing helps us focus and organize the experience.”

One of Pennebaker’s exercise goes like this: Over the next four days, write about your deepest emotions and thoughts about the emotional upheaval that has been influencing your life the most. In your writing, really let go and explore the event and how it has affected you. You might tie this experience to your childhood, your relationship with your parents, people you have loved or love now, or even your career. Write continuously for 20 minutes.

Sometimes we’ve avoided the emotions linked to difficult experiences so they remain blocked inside. Writing is a way to release them. One of the important keys is to write affirmations and focus on the positive even in difficult experiences. It’s a way to change perspective and take away the gems and lessons from situations that might seem challenging.

I love to write and have long used it as a way to process my experiences. I believe that the explosion in the number of people who want to write books is due in part to the way that writing helps us to discover ourselves. Have you had this experience? It can happen sometimes in conversation too, but writing has a power that helps to heal and to also discover what’s going on in the sometimes mysterious workings of our inner self. I find my notebook (no lines please!) is one of my best friends. It listens without criticism. It allows me to express what I feel. It never ever chides me for being wrong, or mean, or gushing, or anything else for that matter.

Writing is especially helpful to help me sort out big events and traumas and gain perspective. When I can explore the tough stuff on paper it’s a way of finding revelation. When I can get the words out of my system it unlocks pain and frees me to be more content. My words are not always pretty and positive. They reveal fear, pain, depression, despair, but they also reveal moments of transcendent joy, an appreciation for beauty, and love. Without words on paper it would have been much harder for me to understand my experiences and paint the shades of my emotions.

Writing as a therapy is more and more recognized and I highly recommend it either in an organized group setting or on your own. At its best it can open the way to a deeper experience of life.

Bio: Debra Moffitt is the award winning author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life and “Garden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery” (Llewellyn Worldwide, May 2013). A visionary, dreamer and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices, writing and creativity in the U.S. and Europe. More at http://www.awakeintheworld.com and on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/DebraMoffittAwakeintheWorld

If you let your soul dress you up, what would you look like? Would your soul choose different clothes and ask you to dress or style your hair differently? Sally Miller is a soul stylist, she helps people to connect with their soul-Self and make life choices from this deep place. So how’s the soul’s style different from something say that your personality might choose? Well, if you’re like many people you choose fashions and actions based on what others think, on what you think they expect and like. You may tend to adapt to expectations, compare yourself to others, react to the superficial, and make choices from this place. Sally encourages people to go deeper. 

“My intention is to teach people that they are not lost, broken or ugly, but in fact they are whole and perfect and beautiful! I want to help people not to be afraid of change.”

I asked her how beauty and personal expression are linked to spirituality.“That is like asking why is authenticity important!,” Sally says.“We are all here to be creative expressions of our souls evolution.” The fashion world and a lot of beauty products companies thrive on creating images that are not real. Then we spend a lot of time, energy and money trying to measure up to those unrealistic standards. But the soul has another way. It respects the deep Self and the uniqueness and beauty of everyone. “What a boring world this would be if we were all the same,” Sally says. “I think it is a movement of authenticity that will shift our planet and change our world. When you begin to see your own ‘Soul’s Style’ then you slowly stop comparing yourself to others, you begin to see yourself as bright light in the world. We realize we are art on to ourselves. It always blows my my mind to think that there is 8-10 Billion people on this planet and no two people share the same soul… We are all here for our own unique creative way to express the pure light inside of ourselves. We cannot begin to act ‘as one’ in this world until we have embraced the one within us and free ourselves to creatively express our beauty, our Soul’s Style of expression. We are ALL beauti-FULL!”

But getting to that place of self-acceptance may not always be easy. “It seems to me that the million dollar question right now is ‘What is my Soul’s purpose?’ But it is not all unicorns and fairies and shooting stars. Some parts of the journey are, but other parts are downright scary and seem to be a lot of work! It is painful to peel back all the layers of false self that you have either inherited from generations or have created for yourself along your life’s journey. I believe that “healing” is a return to one’s pure self. We are already what we seek. We just need to let go of all the crap, false identities, and beliefs so that the gem within can see the light of day and radiate!”

Bio: Debra Moffitt is the award winning author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life and “Garden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery” (Llewellyn Worldwide, May 2013). A visionary, dreamer and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices, writing and creativity in the U.S. and Europe. More at http://www.awakeintheworld.com and on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/DebraMoffittAwakeintheWorld

Joseph Campbell suggested that when we “find our bliss” and it will lead us to where we need to be. Bliss goes beyond happiness.

Everyone wants to find happiness. Happiness is good. It’s a wonderful feeling that comes from buying a new dress or eating an ice cream cone. It may be connected with having physical desires met, but happiness can be fleeting and temporary. Joy dives deeper and last longer. It touches into the spiritual and comes from within. Bliss is the ultimate harvest of spiritual life. It’s an experience that transcends the physical and according to wisdom traditions, it is our true nature. If you want to find that path through the shades of happiness and joy to bliss, how do you get there? One way to  begin is to cultivate your inner secret garden, that sacred space within you where  the seeds you plant can be cultivated and grow into a harvest of joy.

Some essential tools that help to dig deep and tend the inner garden include a regular meditation practice, a dedication to pay attention to and act on the guidance of your inner gardener – that higher, wiser part of you that is Divine – and a yearning to get rid of inner junk and pests that stand in the way. This junk is often old stuff from the past, including attitudes and habits that may have served us well at one time, but now just get in the way and hold us back. It’s time to let go of these and grow into the new life that’s waiting.

One of my favorite ways to cultivate bliss in my secret garden is through consciously choosing guiding values. Values are like seeds. They may include peace, kindness, generosity, joy, determination, patience, and more. When we choose the seeds we want to grow more of in our life, we can begin to cultivate them both inside during meditation and also through actions in our daily lives. One of the seeds I tend regularly is love. As the inner tending and nurturing progresses, we attune more deeply to spirit and become one with its qualities of peace, awareness, and bliss. These qualities are our divine nature and the more they are expressed in our lives, the closer we live to the Source. With patience and perseverance, the secret garden transforms into a garden of bliss.

Bio: Debra Moffitt is the award winning author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life and “Garden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery” (Llewellyn Worldwide, May 2013). A visionary, dreamer and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices, writing and creativity in the U.S. and Europe. More at http://www.awakeintheworld.com and on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/DebraMoffittAwakeintheWorld