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Cultivating Bliss: 4 Ways to Explore Your Inner Garden, by Debra Moffitt

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

I'll bet that you have a secret garden. You may not realize it, but there's a place within you that holds the seeds for healing your heart and cultivating peace and joy; I call this the secret garden. I first discovered secret gardens during my travels to Europe. They popped in during conversations in French when I was talking with a man about my deep desires and dreams to write. He said, "Keep that to explore in your 'jardin secret'." I remember walking away and scratching my head. "What's a secret garden, anyway?!" I thought. I didn't think much about it until I traveled to an Italian-speaking area of Switzerland, and, in another deep conversation the language was different but the same advice arose. "Keep that to explore in your 'giardino segreto'."

Do I have a secret garden? I wondered. With some research I discovered that secret gardens first sprang up during the Middle Ages, that war-torn, plague-infested time of great social strife and upheaval. They grew behind protected walls where only a few people had keys. Secret gardens were places where monks, seekers, healers, and secret gardeners planted healing herbs, fruit trees, vegetables, and delicate flowers. These secret gardens often held a natural source of water. As I reflected I discovered that secret gardens are perfect symbols for the sacred space within us.

How to Find Your Secret Garden
My secret garden first started to appear to me in dreams. At first it showed up as a desert where nothing much grew, but as I began to cultivate my relationship with my soul-Self (who I call the "inner gardener"), trees in the secret garden of my dreams began to bud. Flowers blossomed. The more I cultivated my relationship with Her, my soul-Self, the more vibrant and live I became and my creative life blossomed. The physical world around me also changed. As I cleaned out my inner junk; weeded the inner garden; and kicked out pests like anger, envy, and jealousy, there was less drama in my life and I began to find more balance and equilibrium.

You can begin to become aware of your own secret garden and transform it into a garden of bliss by cultivating the inner landscape. The inner gardener is the wiser, higher Self who knows what we need and provides it at exactly the right time. The more we align with her, the closer we come to a harvest of joy. Her ways are mystical and magical. That inner gardener speaks to us through intuition, dreams, synchronicity, and symbols. She protects and guides us well when we pay attention, honor her, and act on the wisdom she brings.

Getting to Know Your Inner Gardener
Sometimes we may not recognize the presence of our wise inner gardener. The mind likes to take control and the physical body likes to have its desires met. But the wise inner gardener speaks to us in the still, subtle voice of the spirit and hearing her requires tuning in and aligning with our highest aspirations in order to hear her. She may warn about people not to associate with by bringing a dream or she might speak in a voice that comes through the heart. I have even had her stop me on a mountain path in the Alps as I was about to step on a viper; I felt a strong hand jerk me back, but there was no physical presence around me. My next step was about to fall on the poisonous serpent. A dream the same morning warned me to pay attention, but I ignored it. On a deeper level the serpent, for me, represented the kundalini energy and the need to use it with care and in appropriate ways.

If you'd like to explore your secret garden more and discover your bliss, here are some ways to experiment with:

1. Plant Seeds of Love. Thoughts are like seeds. If we set the intention to plant seeds of love in the inner garden of the spirit, we can begin to consciously cultivate them in daily life through paying attention to the mental dialogue. Are your thoughts kind, constructive, and loving as they go out to yourself and others? You may also want to consciously plant and cultivate seeds of peace, kindness, creativity, courage, and more.
2. Cultivate Your Inner Landscape with Dreams and Symbols. The inner gardener, that wise, divine aspect of our Self, speaks to us through dreams. Often mental chatter and our usual way of reasoning and thinking makes it hard for deeper inspiration to come through. Dreams allow for messages to come through and can bring good guidance. If you use dreams, it's essential to attune to the highest and best. Surround yourself with protective, white light and say a prayer or a mantra of protection. Keep a note pad and pen beside your bed or a recorder and keep tract of the images and scenes that arise. Patiently begin to decode your personal dream symbols. Garden of Bliss explores some ways to do this.
3. Develop a Solid Relationship with Your Inner Gardener. The inner gardener is our intuition. She gives guidance and teaches us the right direction—when we listen and act on what she offers. We are not separate from her, but she may appear in dreams and visions as separate and apart because we may feel we're not good enough or worthy enough to be one with her. She is the spark of the Divine within us; that Divine Self is wisdom itself. Sometimes it's hard to believe this. But when events begin to occur where we receive information, warnings, and guidance from her that turn out to be true and right, we begin to trust her, our soul-Self, more. The more we align with her and act on her guidance, the more that relationship deepens.
4. Work to Stay Grounded. In cultivating the inner landscape and exploring spiritual life, it's easy to become ungrounded. Sometimes we don't want to be connected to this dirty, messy stuff of life, but being grounded is an essential part of doing spiritual work. Some ways to get out of one's head and get one's spirit back into the body include literally getting your hands dirty by potting plants, working in a garden outdoors, weeding a flowerbed, and walking barefooted on the ground. Hiking in a forest will help to bring you into alignment with natural beauty and harmony, and get you into your body.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2013. All rights reserved.

My 12-year-old daughter has been having "dreams" that I think may be actual encounters with some sort of astral entity. In the dreams, she says that a "freaky looking" creature that resembles a fat baby with big black holes for eyes is harassing her. It doesn't "walk" - it zooms around and can travel through walls. For the most part, it just pokes at her and seems to get a kick out of getting a reaction out of her. In the first dream, after it poked her she poked it back, and it started laughing, like it was playing a game with her. She says it's like an evil little toddler. When she runs away, it chases her and moves through walls to poke her again. She wakes up panicked and really freaked out. I told her that whatever it is, it seems to want to provoke a reaction, so to get rid of it, she should try to ignore it. She said she can't control what she does in dreams, so she doesn't know how THAT will help. I am wondering if maybe this creature is something real in the astral. Any thoughts?

- Robyn

Dreamchaser:

Not everything in this world or on the Otherside is beautiful or even pleasant to look at. In fact, some things are just downright ugly. That includes spirit guides, ghosts, entities of all kinds (like this little blob thing) and even some angels.

Just like some humans are not attractive, some Otherworldly beings can be downright hideous. Just because something is ugly or scary looking does not automatically make it evil. We should have learned that lesson from the story of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. I believe it is human nature to equate ugly with evil, and frightening in appearance with negativity.

This dream being is a real entity on the Otherside, and it is simply playing with your daughter. When she poked it, it laughed, and now they play a game together - or so the being thinks. Just like lots of other annoying young creatures, sometimes it does not know when to stop, or when enough is enough.

Your daughter can simply say STOP in her dream to this being, and the being will stop. Your daughter thinks she is powerless on the Otherside, but she is not. She can implant the thought or command to say STOP in her own mind while she is awake, and then she will "remember" it while she is asleep.

Another thing that you may want to tell her is that she has guides, angels, and all kinds of beings on the Otherside who are there to help her. They will hop to her every command (providing she is not asking them to harm or hurt someone).

So before she goes to bed at night, she can ask for the spiritual beings around her to please help her with this troublesome little blob that she encounters. They will help her while she is sleeping.

Anything we experience while sleeping occurs on the astral plane. Everything that is there is VERY real. We may think we are having these fantastic dreams with all these amazing imaginary creatures, but they are real adventures.

To some people, it may really come as a shock that what we dream is REAL in the astral. Granted, things look different there than they do on this plane, but it's just like life on earth: if we travel to distant lands, we will see people who look different, encounter foods that look and smell different, buildings that look different, etc.

Being on the astral plane is just like traveling to a distant land and experiencing new things. Just because there are no beings on this planet that fit the description of your daughter's newfound playmate, that doesn't mean he's not real on some other plane.

Help your daughter learn how to summon the helpful beings around her, for they won't jump to our aid without being asked first. That is a very powerful lesson for us all.

I wish your daughter peace-full dreams.

*****

Astrea:

All kinds of strange things happen to sensitive people during puberty. We're psychically more open then than we are at any other time in our lives. Anyone with any kind of psychic ability will start to experience things that are extremely hard to understand.

Since your daughter has some natural psychic talent (she probably gets that from you!) this is the time to ENCOURAGE it. This is the MOST PSYCHIC your daughter will ever be naturally, without having to work at it. She's coming into her ability, and if it isn't squelched, she'll always have it.

Remaining open is so difficult, and these creatures make it even harder. That's their JOB! They like to discourage those of us who can see them, whether we're awake or sleeping.

Sometimes as we awaken psychically, unpleasant entities hang around us. As our bodies change and our minds expand, lots of "things" such as she's described will enter into our dreamscape. Given her age, I believe sheís dealing with a real astral entity, for this sort of thing is common during puberty. Since her hormones are probably going wild, these entities are drawn to her unsettled energy.

Whether this one is demonic or angelic, it seems to be really annoying, so it's time to get RID OF IT once and for all. Fortunately, there are many things you two can do to rid her of this pesky experience.

I have lots of recipes for getting rid of nightmarish creatures. The best way for people your daughter's age is to put the shoes she's worn that day under her bed facing opposite directions, one facing north, one facing south. If she's worn several pair (as teenagers often do) do this with EVERY pair she's had on that day.

This will keep unwelcome astral entities at bay, because with her shoes facing opposite directions, they won't be able to figure out which way to go to enter her dreams.

Also, put a little lavender pillow next to her bed pillow. The scent of lavender will drive away evil entities because it smells too NICE. It will also cover up the aroma of her hormonal changes, further confusing this creature.

Since she is open to "visits," she may experience some Angelic Presence in her dreams, but it's doubtful she'll remember it. Angels come and go, but usually don't want to be "seen" or remembered. As she gets older, these impish creatures will move on to other teenagers, but it's scary at the time it's happening.

Dreams fade so quickly. If she's willing, have her record her dreams in a dream journal, so she'll have them to remember when she's older and perhaps her OWN daughter is going through something similar. Her children will probably inherit her abilities, so it may be very helpful to have a record of her experiences to refer to.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.