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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.

Do you advise for or against reading for yourself? When I try to use a pendulum, I wonder if I'm influencing it to give me the answers that I want. It's the same with tarot. Is it wise to do readings for yourself, or do we just end up leading ourselves down the garden path by viewing everything through the lens of our desires?
Thanks! - Lisa

Dreamchaser:

I am probably going to take a lot of heat for this answer, but oh well - I like living on the edge!

We can't read for ourselves because we can't be objective enough to see clearly. I've had people tell me that I'm not really psychic if I can't read for myself. I think that idea is totally false.

Obviously, I am psychic, but I am also human. If I try to read for myself, I get caught up in what I want to hear or have happen. If I think I want a certain outcome, I try to make whatever divination tool I am using give me that outcome. This is sort of like trying to cram a round peg into a square hole - and appearing to succeed!

What we CAN do is ask for signs from Spirit. (Ironically, this relates to our other question this week.) We can pray for messages and/or meditate in our own way to hear our own answers.

We all have psychic ability. We all have a sixth sense and "gut instincts." If we ask for clarity or an answer, it will come to us. Usually, however, that answer comes in the form of a message from Spirit via an external source.

When I'm seeking answers for myself, I listen to everything around me. I listen closely to the music on the radio or whatever is on television or to conversations around me. So often I hear the answer I'm seeking from "casual" sources.

For example, I recently asked Spirit if I should break off a relationship with a person who does not seem to be honoring me and my spirit. The answer came when this person did not contact me and did not return my calls. While this may not seem obvious to some people, I knew it was my answer.

It's only human to not like all the answers we receive and then to try another method to see if we can get a different answer. We can make our minds "see" or "hear" what we want them to see or hear, but we're only fooling ourselves. When asking for answers and guidance, we have to be truly open, receptive and honest with ourselves. We also have to be ready to receive any answer - even those that don't match what we think we want.

One way I rise above all of this confusion is to just live my life in the NOW. If I am living in the NOW, then whatever I need automatically comes to me. The past and the future don't matter when I'm in the NOW. I just trust that whatever comes across my path is exactly what I need at that time. It may not be what I think I want, but I know it is what is right for me.

When we live in the NOW, we relinquish the control we THINK we have over our lives and allow Spirit to guide us.

I wish you obvious answers.

*****

Astrea:

Reading for oneself is tricky, because regardless of the method, it's possible to influence or misinterpret the information received.

I imagine trying to use a pendulum for yourself would be VERY difficult, as your subconscious might "swing it your way" without you realizing it. Cards might be a little more accurate, though you can influence which ones you draw from the deck based on your desires. Even if you're good at automatic writing, you may never be sure that you aren't just writing down what you hope to see.

Every reading is an emotional experience, whether we're trying to read for ourselves or others. The more emotionally invested we are in the happiness of the person being read for, the more we'll influence the answers received.

My fellow psychics seem to be evenly split about whether it's wise to read for oneself. Some of them do it every day, and it becomes just another daily habit like brushing their teeth or getting dressed. Many of them believe this is a great way to test yourself and get connected with your divination tools before you go to work with them.

Like me, others believe you should NOT read for yourself or your own family because it's so hard to drop those rose-colored glasses.

Most people who are doing readings for themselves are involved in some kind of situation where they are worried or feel out of control, and when I feel that way, my cards WILL NOT cooperate and give me any kind of clear answers. Also, most people wouldn't be able to see past all the apparently negative stuff on the surface to the ultimately positive reasons it is happening.

If you MUST read for yourself, I recommend one of those $300 astrology programs that some genius mathematician has honed to a fine point. Those will give you objective readings because you can't control where the planets are landing in your sign at the time. Astrology isn't foolproof, but it's about as accurate as anyone can get in this kind of work.

Otherwise, I feel it's better to get someone ELSE to read for us. Even a friend can exercise more objectivity about our concerns than we can.

Sometimes I just spontaneously receive messages from my guides whether I try for them or not. The other day as I wrapped up many hours of doing readings at Psychic Chat, I discovered a card was missing from my tarot deck. I looked under the chair, and there it was. I was AFRAID to turn it over, but to my relief, it was the Sun. If it had been the Tower, I might have crawled under the chair with it and stayed there until the next morning!

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.