Donna Goddard shares her love for the Divine and the world with a large international audience and has a strong social media presence. She has authored about twenty books on spirituality and personal growth—nonfiction, fiction, children’s fiction, poetry, and specialty books in writing and dance.
Welcome to The Book Series, a new video series that shares inside information and the spirit behind my many books. The first video in the series is How to Write as a Spiritual Person. It is based on my book Writing: A Spiritual Voice.
As we evolve, our thoughts hold more power to create what we envision. Practise holding your intentions clearly in your mind and feel that you consistently add energy to their springing into life. In this way, you can create many things that seem impractical or impossible. Ensure your creations benefit everyone involved, or you will pay a bitter price. No one must suffer from what you create. People suffer relentlessly from what they have made in their minds, but we must not contribute to that. If we intend to bless, and only bless, our creations get the entire force of the universe behind them.
Continue reading “Writing—Energy Field”I have an ever-evolving idea of the body of work I want to offer the world. One day, God willing, it will extend beyond my lifetime. It’s not just about the accumulation of titles but, rather, the growth of an energy field. To some extent, the books don’t even have to be read. People who have never read them can still benefit. Many great authors form part of our collective consciousness without us even knowing the titles of their works. The energy field of their body of work extends beyond time and space.
Somewhere along the way, there develops within the soul a yearning that can no longer be ignored; a craving for the great Love affair. We feel it drawing ever closer. It is the greatest of them all. It cannot fail. It is all-consuming. It is incomparable. It is the love affair with our own true nature and the source from which it comes. The desire is in all of us but, more often than not, it is ignored for other interests. We wrestle with each interest, trying to make it work, growing with each adventure until the light has grown bright enough for us to reach for it.
We love with all our heart, in every way that we can love, but the heart is not burdened. We learn to keep it light and pliable. It has space. It breathes. It waits on Life to give instructions. It sings with sweetness when the winds are soft and warm. It stands with calm patience when the storm is brewing. It lets go when death and seeming endings have left their irrefutable mark. It moves. It heals. It hopes. It allows Life to be lived in the safe, fertile, and still inner space where it grows stronger and more compelling every day.
I began writing my first book, The Love of Being Loving, in 2005. The book came from decades of spiritual work and lifetimes before that. It is a small book of 23,000 words, but it took me three years to write because I was a new writer and, true to my writing style ever since, I like to make every word count. After finishing it, I tried to get it accepted by a few publishing companies. As is generally the case, that went nowhere. In fact, I gave up after trying four publishing houses, which isn’t many, but I felt I needed to go a different route. The manuscript sat in my desk drawer for another three years.
Life took a different turn, and I took the dormant book out of the drawer and got the momentum to self-publish it. The whole process of forming the idea, learning about self-publishing, and rewriting the book took another two years. The massive advances in self-publishing, which sprang from the ability to print on demand, were very timely for me. Finally, my book was published in 2013, having had an eight-year journey from inception to birth.
All authors know that the birth of a book is a huge milestone, but it also marks the beginning of the equally challenging journey to get it in front of people. That involves making oneself into a public persona with a distinct voice. It involves marketing and selling. Otherwise, the manuscript might be out of the drawer and into the market, but it will be so invisible that it will not be doing much more than sitting in the drawer.
Writing is a long-term career. It takes a lot of time, money, perseverance, learning, and soul. Making a mark as a writer and having an influence in the world is a process which generally accelerates slowly.
If you know that the spiritual voice is in you, and you would like greater access to it as a writer, then Writing: A Spiritual Voice can help you to develop your capacity to hear and heed that voice.
After six months of living in Store Creek with the cold weather, it was good to finally arrive at spring’s doorstep. Merlyn wondered if that was why Ben had decided to visit today. He said it was a rental inspection. But that was just a joke. At least, Merlyn hoped it was a joke. Although it was two years since their separation, they had been married for three years. Nothing needed inspecting. Merlyn’s mind was put at ease once he arrived. He appeared to have no interest in checking on anything. He chatted for an hour or two before saying that it was time to return to the city and that he had a big week ahead of him at the State Ballet.
The fruits of serious spiritual devotion have an unmistakable flavour, sometimes even more retrospectively. It had been a challenging few years. I was twenty-six and had been progressing through an existential crisis, an involuntary falling apart of life’s meaning. I felt a profound human aloneness, and with all my praying, I failed to feel God’s love in any way that could help my state of being. Besides the care and protection of my two little children and my spiritual studies, I had no interest in anything. Everything seemed trite to me, meaningless and often painfully intolerable. I had lost faith in everything human to give solace to my soul. It was not intentional. It is simply what happened over the space of a few years. I was at the bottom of the valley—all things lost, but nothing gained.
What else could I do but pray? Only God could rescue me. I did not doubt that God would do so, but first, it seemed that all would be taken away so that new ground would be available for working with. One morning, during the earlier years of this struggle, I walked along a path at a quiet beach near our home. I had my toddler in a stroller and my baby in a tie-on carrier. It was a beautiful suburb in seaside Sydney and all the more beautiful for the glorious day. However, try as I did, none of this had any ability to lift my spirits.
The preceding few days had been particularly difficult. Even the tiny bit of hope I was given after prayer seemed to have disappeared. Tears of grief and despair were my increasingly constant companion, though I knew not what I grieved. Much later, I realised it was the necessary grieving that accompanies the loosening of the ego’s hold over our consciousness. It is the inevitable struggle of being born human, yet the soul seeks release from the bondage of thought that constantly revolves around the precious one—ourselves. We grow up trying to develop enough of an ego to be able to survive and thrive in the world. That, in itself, is a mighty effort. Even before we have it mastered, the deeper Self starts speaking to us, whispering in our ear that this life is not enough. Then we, almost without noticing, begin the quest to pull apart the ego we so courageously tried to build.
Having no other option but to go forward, I walked along the beach boardwalk with my little ones hoping that the natural beauty would, even marginally, rescue me. After a while, I must have forgotten about myself. I was looking out to sea, and the grandness of it all caught my attention. I forgot, for a moment, to feel so bad. That was the chance. And given a chance, It came rushing in. It was so brief that it was over before I even noticed it. But there it was, nevertheless, unmistakable. It came like an invisible breeze brushing past me, coming from the sea, returning beyond, into the Infinite. It wasn’t a breeze. It was the breath of God.
As soon as it went, I called internally, No, stop! Come back. I have been trying to find you. Stay with me. I need you.
I knew it was the Divine by the lightness it brought. It was a sweet presence, softening the mind. It was a very welcome breath of fresh air. It could not stay at that time, but it would later return and become a progressively more comfortable acquaintance. The veil was beginning to part.
If we can’t see people clearly, we can end up trusting people and situations that are not in our best interest and dismissing people and situations that would make our life better and happier. It is not just in regards to little things, but if we understand the far-reaching and powerful effect of thought, we realise that it can even be a life-and-death matter. Thought is very powerful, and the underlying intention is everything.
To get to the underlying intention of anything, it helps to ask ourselves, What is this for? We can ask it about everything. Eventually, it is not necessary to ask it so often as experience and wisdom lead the way with little effort. Once asked, we must listen for the answer. Don’t listen to the ego’s answer. Its answer will usually be the opposite of the truth. Ask with an open mind. If we discover that we are deceiving ourselves about some matter or that we have been deceived by someone else (intentionally or not), then that is a good discovery. Once we know what a particular venture or relationship is based on, we will also know its outcome. To those inexperienced in such thought processes, this may seem like magic or foolishness. It is not magic. It is simply understanding the human mind. And it is not foolish. Those who do not understand their own minds can never be fulfilled or happy.
