Clear Vision 2015! Creativity, Intuition & Writing Workshops in January

Kick start your 2015 with a creative boost and fire up your intuition.Charleston, SC, Jan. 2nd-3rd

Charlotte, NC, Jan. 9-10th

Asheville Area, NC, Jan. 16th-17th

Intuition is the best source for sparking creativity. The best and most creative ideas and the best solutions to problems come from a higher level of awareness — and not the usual level of mind that most of us rely on every day. Einstein said it best, that the solutions we’re looking for don’t come from the same level of mind that produces the questions and problems. So how do you go higher and deeper? How do you get original ideas and find your true self-expression? This fun, playful workshop teaches through experiential exercises that help you to discover your own natural creativity and develop your intuitive abilities.  Register here: Clear Vision 2015! Workshops.

Everyone possesses creative powers and intuitive abilities. When we open the doors to subtle perception, it inspires creative life to expand. In an environment that recognizes, supports, and encourages intuitive development and creative inspiration, self-confidence soars and you begin to trust your insights and creative gifts and thrive. If you are ready to make a giant leap in 2015, this dynamic, playful, yet deep workshop, invites you to embrace your creative life and explore your natural abilities. We’ll use writing, grounding exercises, guided meditations, work with emotions, and self-expression, and intuitive assessments by workshop leaders as ways to develop more clarity and self-awareness around personal aims, relationships, and projects. This highly interactive workshop aims to encourage participants to bring more clarity to their lives and trust the inner voice. Immediate intuitive feedback from workshop leaders, who are recognized intuitives, will help you to develop your own gifts, fine tune your hunches, and draw out your inner strengths. You will be encouraged to step into the adventures your soul is calling you to embrace.  Register here: Clear Vision 2015! Workshops.

• Discover your intuitive strengths and what inspires you creatively.

• Set clear intentions around using intuition and creative energy.

• Connect with creative energy and increase self-confidence in it to accomplish aims.

• Find out what may be holding you back.

• Discover new directions to explore.

• Build intuitive and creative self-esteem in a supportive environment.

• Find out what makes your soul sing – and go for it.

  We’ll use tools like:

• Creative visualization

• Guided meditation

• Writing

• Drawing and collage

• Dance and movement

• Intuitive assessments by workshop leaders

• And may even take a creative cat nap!

 Who is this for:

This workshop is for anyone looking to develop more creativity, deepen intuition, write with more inspiration and find more clarity in their lives. People in transition with a career or relationship, trying to discover what steps to take next with a project, and/or seek to listen more deeply to your own wisdom and intuition will find this particularly beneficial.

Register here for Clear Vision 2015! Workshops.

Times for all retreats:  Friday, 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.  :  Saturday, 10:00 a,m, to 3:00 p.m.

Addresses:                 Charleston, SC Area: To be announced.

                                   Charlotte, NC: Elemental Healings, 5200 Park Road, Ste. 200 – C

                                   Asheville Area: To Be Announced

 Workshop Leaders – Bios:

 Debra Moffitt, is an American author of two award-winning books, “Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life” and “Garden of Bliss“. Her books are translated into Spanish and Lithuanian, and sold to publishers in China and India. Debra has taught workshops at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and The Sophia Institute in Charleston, South Carolina and worldwide. She aims to help people who come to her to make the unconscious conscious and to gain greater Self-confidence. She leads an annual French Alps retreat and  shares time between Charleston and France

 Sarah Scott (Scotti) Putnam is a skilled intuitive and a dynamic powerhouse of a teacher based in Charleston, SC. She studied with Sonia Choquette, and serves international clients through her abilities to discern and accurately interpret information relating to health, relationships, careers, and emotional issues. She also receives accurate and valuable information from loved ones who have passed on. She teaches intuition workshops and aims to bring out the best and serve the highest good of those who come to her for support and guidance.

Register Now for full workshop:

                $155 (includes $5 Paypal fee)

For Friday Night Only

        $25       

Vision & Values 2014: Invitation to Free Teleconference Jan. 8th

 “Habit rules the unreflecting herd.” – William Wordsworth

Reset, Rethink, Listen for Guidance

The New Year provides a perfect opportunity to explore where we’ve been and where we want to go. It’s a time to look at the real transformations we yearn to make within ourselves and practical ways to make them real. Maybe you yearn to create a regular meditation practice for yourself, or cut down on coffee or find a more fulfilling job. You’ll have an opportunity to explore your vision for 2014 using guided visualization and meditation. You’ll also be invited to clearly define your values for guidance and decision making.

If you’re yearning to kick off 2014 with more clarity and insight, you’re invited to explore aims and guiding values for the New Year as a way to become more proactive and conscious about what and who you invite into your life. Facilitated by award-winning author, Debra Moffitt, this interactive online event invites you to explore your inner life and become more conscious in 2014. Debra is on the faculty of Esalen Institute and Sophia Institute and teaches workshops worldwide.

Jan. 8th from 7:00 to 8:00 a.m. EST

Location: Your Home/Phone Conference Teleconference Phone In Number USA +1 424-203-8405

Access 655298

Facebook Event Link

Trusting Intuition – Anchoring Impressions in Writing

Bliss (Photo credit: Sonus Ex Machina)

“Messages from your soul, your inner gardener, arrive in subtle, barely perceptible flashes. Everyone receives intuitive information, which helps guide and protect us. The ways we receive intuitive insights are unique to each individual. Some people hear words with their inner, subtle hearing. Others see pictures or scenes. Some people feel energies and sense if something is beneficial or not.

You can develop your intuition by paying attention to how the information arrives for you. A good way to do this is to keep an intuition journal and note your hunches and experiences. Does the information arrive in images, through sound, in a distinct feeling? Keep track of how the intuitive hits play out. This will help you to refine and better intrepret the information you receive. The more you act on the subtle messages, the more your intuition will grow. Recording your experiences will help you to learn to trust this wise source of information and deepen your relationship with your inner gardener.” From “Garden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery” by Debra Moffitt. pp. 44-45

Join the Intuition & Writing workshop: Fueling the Creative Fire with the Voice of Your Soul with Debra Moffitt and Scotti Holloway at The Sophia Institute, Feb. 7-8, 2014. Go to link to register and for early bird rates.

Moving Inward with the Winter Solstice

Winter solstice on Saturday, December 21st, marks the longest night of the year. It’s a natural time to draw inward and contemplate the activities of the passing year. This period opens up an opportunity to explore the landscape of the spirit. Meditation may seem easier as distractions lessen, and life can become naturally quieter. It’s also a time to begin to consider what seeds of the spirit to plant in the New Year.

What important events occurred during the current year? What, if any, aims do you have for your spiritual practice in 2014? These may be things like cutting out coffee, or working to eliminate self-sabotaging thoughts. You may want to draft a list to clarify where you’d like to go with your inner life. Much of what happens in the physical world is a reflection of the inner state of mind and spirit. The clearer I become in my inner life, the more clearly I know where to invest time, energy, and attention. It sometimes requires efforts to become quiet enough to hear what the voice of my soul is saying, and where it is guiding me to go. The solstice can be an ideal time to listen more deeply to that inner guidance. When the inner landscape is cleared and new seeds are consciously planted, the harvests can be rich and deep and create more peace in the world.

For more on cultivating the inner life, check out “Garden of Bliss“.

 

Leap of Perception: An Expansive Approach to Living in the Intuition Age

If you’re feeling hemmed in and know that there’s much more to you than what you’re currently experiencing but don’t know quite how to access it, then “Leap of Perception,” by Penney Peirce deserves a read. Penney wrote about working with dreams and intuition long before working with either became common. Through her simple, guided exercises and partly through the subtle energy of awareness that she transmits through her writing, Penney invites us to step into expanded states of consciousness.

The magic of Penney’s descriptions about states of consciousness is that by drawing awareness to them, she makes them recognizable, and from that place of awareness we can shift into a more expansive state. Most of us, most of the time, hang out in the place of linear perception. But Penney invites us to step into the Intuition Age by making a leap into spherical perception. “After changing from linear to spherical perception reality functions differently,” she writes. “For starters, there is no outside world!” Did you grasp that? “Linear reality is like a donut and its empty hole,” she says. “Because you’re looking elsewhere for what you want, for validation of who you are, and for the meaning of life, you don’t experience your true self in the center. You can feel ‘mindless’ or ‘out of your mind.’ Your consciousness has ‘left your body’ to occupy other points of time and space – and in effect, ‘nobody’s home.’ You, yourself have become a gap!”

If that sounds familiar, if you’ve been feeling empty and like you’re not enough or don’t have enough, Peirce encourages us with her reassurance. “To transform and find Intuition Age perceptions, you need to take up your rightful place in the center of the here and now and in your body starting with the center points in your head and heart.”

Part of the magic of her writing is that her astute observations help us to identify experiences we’re having that feel less than satisfactory, and she shows us ways out (or in) and the shifts can happen instantaneously. This is ancient wisdom written for today, right now, in clear terms that have the ability to transform your perceptions in an instant.

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, February 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

The Beautiful Fragrance of Your Life

English: Canal du Vassé, city of Annecy France Français : Canal du Vassé, ville d’Annecy (la petite Venise Savoyarde), France (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bending played on acoustic guitar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After a day of intense writing this week, I headed out into the old town of Annecy. On this spectacular evening as the sunset casting a golden light on the crowds, I heard some fun, funky, music that seemed to create a mood that perfectly matched the beauty and sparkling feeling of the moment. I followed the sound to find out where it was coming from. Crowds strolled along the canals over the bridges decked with popping-red geraniums. A large crowd stood around a ruddy-faced guy with a sound box who worked really hard to get attention. He appeared dirty, loud, and coarse, and I knew that this was not the music or the person who had drawn me here. The music I heard floated down the canals and created a beautiful setting for the summer scene. About 20 feet away a young man stood playing an electric guitar. He had a rhythm box and his sound didn’t overpower anyone, but instead acted quite like bees, birds, and flowers in nature that all blend together and create a harmony. A few people sat on the cathedral steps and one woman took a photo of the guitar player. But most people just strolled by and occasionally tossed a coin into his guitar case. He played. He played his heart out and he played well. It didn’t matter that the crowd stood around the coarse guy and seemed not to really notice him. He played and the love in his playing created a beautiful setting for the whole city for blocks around.

While much of the world is drawn to reality shows and coarse, low-level things, many beautiful things go unnoticed, but fill our lives everyday. In my life it’s the lake outside my window, the moon rise, the fresh mountain air and the clear skies that I consciously make efforts to pay attention to and love. It’s not always the things that yell for the loudest attention and demand recognition that merit it, or will uplift us in the end. Nature shows this well. A beautiful rose or jasmine act like the guitar player. They simply open up and share their scent. It’s their nature. It’s how they are. If you’re one of those people who creates beautiful, quiet harmony in your life, please know in your heart, that just as this guitar player’s music created a beautiful environment for those of us out that evening, so your beautiful life creates and benefits others. Being peaceful and joyful doesn’t attract a lot of attention. But it does make a huge difference in your life and in the lives of those around you. Thank you to those of you who are creating a fragrance of peace and harmony with your life.

Finding Joy with Mark Nepo

Though Mark Nepo‘s writing has been with us for a while, it wasn’t until Oprah received a copy of Mark’s “Book of Awakening” through one of her staff assistants that it came to the notice of millions. This all happened at a critical time. I interviewed Mark when he’d just lost his day job and faced some health problems. At what seemed like one of his darker hours, Oprah discovered Mark’s work, the “Book of Awakening” and  that darkness turned to light as this book, which he’d written some ten years earlier, became a New York Times bestselling  book. Oprah recently did two more interviews with him for upcoming shows from her home in Hawaii. Regarding all the success, Mark remains grateful but unphased by the recognition of his work, and he continues to teach and practice presence in much the same way as before. I asked him about his recent experiences and to tell us more about his latest book, “Reduced to Joy”. He’s also offered us one of the poems from his book at the end of this post.

Q: You have written about awakening, silence, and finally joy. “Reduced to Joy,” your latest book of poems feels like a culmination of your many years of spiritual connection. Are joy and bliss the final experiences that arrive on the spiritual journey?

Mark Nepo: I’m not sure there is any final experience to this mysterious journey. I think we continue to be brought closer and closer to the aliveness we carry. For me, joy is different than happiness. While happiness is a fleeting mood, joy is larger and more lasting than any one feeling. If each feeling is a wave of emotion, then joy is the ocean that holds all feelings. As I get older, I’m coming to realize that joy is central to our knowing peace. It’s one deep way that we access Oneness. I’m also beginning to see that joy is the hum of Oneness. It’s the sensation of being connected to life itself. Another way to speak of joy is to say that it’s the reward for facing our experience. Often, what keeps us from joy is the menacing assumption that life is happening other than where we are. So we are always leaving, running from or running to. What keeps us from joy, then, is often not being where we are and not valuing what is before us.

 Q: How did “Reduced to Joy” come into being?

Mark Nepo: Poems come slowly. They break surface like dolphin after long stretches of going under. So writing a book of poems for me is different than writing my other books. I have to sit when I’m able and try to make heart-sense of what life has been doing to me and with me. Like wringing out a sponge, I squeeze what matters onto the page, let it dry, and see what’s there the next day. One by one, they gather into an instructive whole. All this to say, that by trying to make sense of my own experience, I’ve discovered a theme to the journey, that we are all reduced to joy, worn away of all excess. To survive this, we often need to hold each other up in order to discover and return to what matters. This book explores these essential relationships, which keep shaping me.

Q: I love the title of your book. As your poem, “Where is God?” expresses, it seems that once all is stripped away there’s nothing more to obscure joy. Can you speak more to what joy is and is not and how we might know the difference? 

Mark Nepo: After all these years, I’m beginning to see that tranquility is the depth of being that holds what we think and feel, not the still point after we’ve silenced what we think and feel. Serenity is the depth of being that holds difficulty, not the resting point after we’ve ended difficulty. And peace is the depth of being that holds suffering and doubt, not the raft we climb on to avoid suffering and doubt. This leads us to joy, which is much deeper and larger than any one feeling. Happiness, fear, anxiety, contentment, doubt, regret, unworthiness, anger, despair—all these and more are the waves that rise and fall in the sea of being.

 Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share with readers? 

Mark Nepo: These poems have been retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years. They have been my teachers about the nature of working with what we’re given till it wears us through to joy. My hope is that the poems in this book will serve as a threshold to an underlying connection to the greater life we are all a part of. I hope the book will be a resource for you when faced with the difficulties of living. I hope the poems will confirm that, no matter the struggle you find yourself in, you are not alone. May these poems be honest companions on the journey to joy.

A Poem from “Reduced to Joy” by Mark Nepo

Where is God? 

 It’s as if what is unbreakable—

the very pulse of life—waits for

everything else to be torn away,

and then in the bareness that

only silence and suffering and

great love can expose, it dares

to speak through us and to us.

It seems to say, if you want to last,

hold on to nothing. If you want

to know love, let in everything.

If you want to feel the presence

of everything, stop counting the

things that break along the way.

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

Intuitive Guidance 101: Daring to Move Beyond Your Comfort Zone

Stepping onto the spiritual path isn’t all peace and roses. It pushes us into a place that moves us beyond our usual comfort zone. As attune to the highest within us and listen to inner guidance, that guidance sometimes pushes us to try new jobs, to stretch into new creative projects, and to sometimes to move to new places. Author, radio host and intuitive, Bernadette Dickinson experienced just that as her inner life awaken. She lived in Seattle, but over several years her dreams kept pointing to a move to Colorado. She says she worked in marketing, but a series of events occurred which acted like questions from the Universe that said, “Are you ready to move now?” Bernadette says, “I really wasn’t, but it quickly became clear that if I didn’t live was bound to get more difficult.”

She writes, “I took a week off to get clear on what needed to happen and make some choices. During that week, Spirit opened up the “plan” for me. After realizing I had a strong pull to go, I moved to Colorado. I was shown a general area and after 3 calls, rented a house with 2 acres over the phone. Within 3 days I was living in Colorado . I had no idea what I was going to do for work, how I was going to make it or even what the area was like. It took a huge leap of faith but, 13 years later I am living on that same piece of property. I built a 3300 sq ft house, a greenhouse, and am raising dairy goats, chickens and I produce a lot of our family’s food.”

She felt her Spirit was urging her to physically move and yet she resisted. I asked her “How do you reconcile the difference between Spirit and the part of you that doesn’t want to follow that inner guidance?” I love Bernadette’s response. She says:

“I’ve been resisting Spirit a good part of my life. I was born a natural Clairvoyant and Clairaudient. Being raised in a Christian home, these gifts were not honored. I kept my gifts hidden as much as possible and it caused me a lot of turmoil. Throughout my life I found, when I listened to Spirit and did what I was told, things went really smoothly. When I resisted, there were so many obstacles, so much struggle. When I’m in resistance to Spirit’s urgings I tend to get very depressed and sad. I start getting physically ill and things around me start to malfunction. It’s fairly easy to reconcile my ego desires at this point, due to the intense lessons I’ve endured resisting Spirit.”

I asked her some more questions to help us understand how to work with inner guidance. Here’s the short Q&A

Q: How do you receive inner guidance?

Bernadette Dickinson: Sometimes I get guidance in dreams, very lucid dreams. At other times, messages come through visions. I meditate a lot, during that silence Spirit can easily speak to me. I tend to have warnings show up in very unusual but obvious ways when I’m going in the wrong direction.

Q: I love your comment: “If you think the spiritual path is boring, you are way wrong.” Please speak more to this.

Bernadette Dickinson:  We tend to think of spirituality as a burdensome practice. It is just the opposite. I learned many years ago that if I make my spiritual walk the priority, everything lines up perfectly. I’ve learned so much about the workings of the Universe by focusing upon Spiritual growth. It never bores me to learn and experience miracles. It’s quite exciting to ask for guidance or assistance from Spirit, knowing that the answers will come in the most profound, unexpected ways. When you ask for assistance, suddenly someone shows up in your life experience that is just what you need. When you ask for guidance, things start appearing to give you that guidance. It can be an email, a phone call, a road sign. The Universe is unlimited, likewise, the experience of Spirit working in our lives is unlimited.

Q: You said that part of us tends to create drama. Which part is this? How does that happen to you?

Bernadette Dickinson: As humans, we are programmed to operate from our Ego Mind. The Ego tends to focus on selfish desire and intellect. When we are unaware or unconscious of the ego, we tend to create emotional fixes. It shows up in the form of immediate gratification. It bolsters our sense of pride, arrogance and a false sense of connection. When we are disconnected from Self and Spirit, we feel like something’s missing. We feel empty, sad and experience a deep sense of longing. The Ego wants to soothe that, giving us ideas of filling that void with things outside of ourselves. We think we need to focus on something outside of ourselves, be it food, sex, attainment of physical things. In this case, we do things to ourselves and others that is not based on Love but fear. We create a false connection and immediately feel lack, disconnection, discontent. Rather then redirect ourselves to our Soul Self, we reach outside again, repeating the same cycle of distraction and disconnection. It’s a vicious cycle, damaging our bodies, hurting others and even the environment. Our soul longs for connection, a knowledge of self and Source/God. When we override the Ego, quiet the mind, our inner guidance directs us to what we really need. Once we make the connection to Self, we are able to observe our emotions, thoughts and desires from a place that allows us to make a deep connection to All That Is. In those moments, the “needs/desires” dissipate and we realize we have no need of anything outside of ourselves.

I tend to create drama when I’m overwhelmed. Something happens or it doesn’t, I instantly want to react by “doing” something to fix what is happening. I find when I’m not grounded, I emotionally react to things and blow them up with words, accusations, fears. If I’m bored and what an emotional fix, I might start an argument with someone. It’s crazy to me, that we are so attracted to emotional drama. When I feel the urge to create any kind of drama, I know it’s time to stop, get quiet and check in with my inner guidance to see what’s really going on. Once I identify the internal cause, I can calmly follow the guidance to peace.

Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Bernadette Dickinson: There is so much I’d like to share with others. Most of all, I want everyone to know they have the power to create their own reality. They have power to make deep connections that are real. Life is very exciting and fulfilling when we have faith in Divine guidance. It becomes peaceful, joyful and ever expanding.

Bernadette’s website is www.bernadettesvision.com. She also wrote a book called: “30 Days to a Charmed Life”. It’s a workbook filled with exercises to help anyone change their life. It reveals the ways she worked through her own fears, lack, and misunderstandings “to become who I am today.” There’s a link on her website to Kindle Ebook version.

Copyright Debra Moffitt, 2013. 101 Series Copyright Debra Moffitt.

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

 

Harnessing the Power of the Summer Solstice

Can you feel the excitement in the air? The days are hot and sunny, and summer officially begins this week on June 21^st. It’s

Stonehenge Summer Solstice man on stones (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

the longest day and the shortest night in the Northern hemisphere. I love this day. In the South of France it’s celebrated by jumping over bonfires as a way to gain courage and embrace the power of light and fire. That tradition dates back to pagan times, long before the Catholic church arrived to taint it with negative views about the appreciation of nature and the power of the five elements.

There’s a whole history of rituals related to this day and ways to honor and capture some of the magic of this mystical portal into summer. For centuries people have gathered at Stonehenge to welcome the season. Author Deborah Blake who writes on magic and rituals says, “The earth is at its most fertile and life is bursting out all over.” She advises that this is the best time for magical work “for abundance, fertility, and any kind of growth.”

I love it both as a time that presents an opportunity to burn away the old habits and baggage that no longer serve. And at the same time it’s a moment where the whole world feels alive with the vibrant, radiant energy of sunlight. It feels like a time of great possibility and a moment to enjoy life to its fullest. In France the day often coincides with the “Fete de la Musique”, a country-wide music day where  you’ll find people playing harps on street corners, rock bands pound out a rhythm from pubs, and orchestras spontaneously set up in open squares to play under the rising moon.

How will you spend the solstice? Make a plan to turn it into a special day. Go to the beach for a picnic with your beau. Dance with girlfriends under the moon in a grove of trees. Paint or write on a project that your heart yearns for you to create. Kiss a loved one. Join me at Esalen Institute June 21^st-23^rd for a magical writing retreat. Play! Happy summer.

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

Looking For True Love? Marry Yourself

Happiness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

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.

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