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