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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 name is Stefan, and I was born June 27, 1970, in Bulgaria. In early January, 2004, I was in Bari, Italy. While I was passing by a beautiful fountain in the center of town, something in me told me that in the water of that fountain I would find something I was supposed to find. I stopped near the fountain and began to look in the water, and in it, I found the diary of a young Italian woman! I thought, "I have a sign from the universe, and I have to find this woman." I checked all the phone numbers, all the email addresses, and all the postal addresses I found in the diary, but none of my efforts have helped me find this woman. I stayed in Bari for 10 months, and I experienced many strange situations connected with this diary, but I haven't found its author. In November of 2004, I finally left Italy. Do you think I am supposed to find the author of this diary? If so, should I go back to Bari and start over? If not, then why did I have this experience?

Dreamchaser:

You found this diary for a number of reasons that you yourself actually created. The first reason is so you would have a fantastic story to tell. You went to Italy looking for adventure and romance, and in fact, you found both in this diary. You have become very fond of this woman and you would LOVE to meet her. This all makes for a really great story.

Why this DID happen is so that maybe you would finally start to listen to your gut instincts. You "knew" something was going to happen there. You "knew" to go up to the fountain. THAT is the part that the Universe wants you to see. The fact that you just knew that something was there and you went up to the fountain, looked in, and pulled out this diary is very validating in and of itself.

You have always been incredibly "psychic." Actually, you have just about all the "clair" abilities. (Youíre clairvoyant, clairaudient, etc.) You just never really believe in yourself.

When you were really young, you were willing to follow your gut, but as you grew, people instructed in you other ways of being. You kind of buried the "Old Ways" down inside of you, and they have been trying to come out. A part of you was really drawn to Italy to be around strangers, as you felt that maybe there, you would be able to be more true to yourself.

I keep seeing the same pattern over and over in the world. If we have not already opened up to our true selves by the time we are around 33 years of age, then that is when it happens. Now some people are a few years younger, and some are a few years older, but usually, a massive soul-awakening happens in people around that age.

If you notice, you were just around the age of 33 when you went to Italy. I often think of Jesus Christ being put to death at the age of 33, and I wonder if the age at which this happened is meaningful.

Do you not find it a little odd that no one you contacted from her diary had any idea what woman you were talking about? These people were important enough to put into her diary, but not important enough in her life to know who you were asking about. That seems pretty odd to me.

I am SURE that Spirit is blocking you somehow. If you have not been able to find this woman by contacting all the people you found in the diary, I think that for now anyway, you are NOT supposed to meet her.

I do think that at some point, she is going to show up and get such a huge kick out of getting her diary back. There is actually quite an interesting story behind how it came to be in that fountain, but I will save that for her to tell you one day.

I wish you complete and total integration of your mind and your soul.

*****

Astrea:

My husband never passes by a piece of paper with any writing on it without picking it up. As he takes a long walk and run every morning, he's accumulated quite a few scraps.

One in particular stands out in my mind. It was a letter from a young man to his father, who at the time was in prison. It asked the father to meet the son, and invited Dad to live with him when he got out of jail. It didn't have any identifying addresses or last names, so we were never able to send it on to "Dad."

In the letter, the son forgives his father for leaving his mother, and welcomes him into his life. It was several pages filled with love and longing. We still have that letter, and we searched for its author and recipient for months to try to reunite them.

I often wonder if those two ever got back together. It is so sad to me that the father was never able to read the pages of love that his son wrote to him in that letter. I could feel from reading that letter that it took that boy long weeks of writing to get it just right. I hope that what we found was just a draft, and that the final copy did make it to its recipient, but I can't believe that in my heart.

You found that young girl's diary because you had a feeling you should look for something. She had thrown it away. She must have been desperately unhappy to discard her own personal history in that way. While I understand why you want to find her, perhaps finding the diary was for YOU, not for her.

Was it "meant to be?" You had a feeling, you followed it, and it happened.

I'm a firm believer that when you "have a feeling" that you should DO something; following that instinct is VERY important! I am NOT, however, a big believer in "meant to be." I think that we have choices, and one of those is to follow our intuition.

You did, and you found something VERY interesting! I'm so sorry your search didn't turn up the young woman you sought. Sometimes the consequences of our choices aren't what we want or expect. You've discovered this with that diary. My feeling is that you can't find her because she never wants to relive the memories recorded in that diary.

You, however, have gained more from reading it than she ever did from writing it. It's made you think more about how other people feel and perceive things, and I'm sure you've grown a lot from having it in your possession. If you were MEANT to find it, it has done for you what it was meant to do.

Seeing things through a young girl's eyes must be quite different for you! It's a whole experience you might never have had without finding that diary. Please use the knowledge youíve been given with kindness.

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.