Today I’m going to be vulnerable with you and share my feelings about a subject that used to be uncomfortable for me to discuss, and that is our connection to SPIRIT, and how that inspired my journey to start Rejoy Living Candles.
When I started this company, I had to come out of the “spiritual closet”; not so much a closet of "religion", but rather owning my own spiritual journey to focus on the qualities that UNITE us rather than labels that DIVIDE us.
For my whole life up to that point, I had been in a pattern of leading and caretaking for my family and those around me. But right before I decided to start Rejoy Living, I found myself in a very transitional and transformative place; I had just gone through the end of a marriage, I was living and working in one of the most conservative, high-pressure environments in Southern CA, and I was searching deep within myself for my next step and what I wanted to put out into the world.
As each layer of my crafted, buttoned-up business persona fell away, so did the masks I’d been wearing for my whole life. As I did more work on myself and tuned in to what my soul really wanted, I slowly revealed what was in my heart. And what I found was the my purpose on this planet and my mission in life was to invite others to step into all that is beautiful and meaningful about life and to empower other women like me to own their desires and step fully into their bliss.
Everything we do comes back to connection and JOY. It is your birthright to be joyful. It is your birthright to be loved because you ARE love.
It may sound small, but candles are a direct line to our personal pleasure center in the brain. We have to be fully present to strike a match and light that fire. And then we are enveloped in a scent whose only purpose is to bring us pleasure. Once I came to the realization that I wanted to use candles to reach out to people and encourage them to embrace their bliss,
I got honest with myself and sat down to create the four mantras in the mantra collection, deeply employing what each of these four words meant to me…
JOY was the first word that came to me; it is the easiest of the four words for me to step into and embody (probably because “joy” is in my name!). The meaning and mantra for JOY came to me when I was traveling, watching a guy playing with a giant bubble rope contraption and there was a little girl- maybe 3 years old with a head of blonde curls standing right in front of him- and every time he would lift the wand she would jump up and down, spinning in the air like this was the BEST thing that had ever happened in her entire life. I fell in love witnessing this little one having the time of her life over BUBBLES! And there it was: “play with childlike wonder and true bliss will be yours”.
As we get older we tend to minimize joy; “oh, there’s bubbles”, “oh, another sunset”, but even if you’ve seen a thousand sunsets, tonight’s is one-of-a-kind. So when you light JOY I hope you step into life and see it the way a child does. Even if you’re madly in love with your partner or your child or your family- they’ll never be exactly the same as they are in that moment.
Be present. Look at each moment with wonder and you'll experience pure, unadulterated JOY.
Next came GRATEFUL…Grattitude is the cousin of JOY; if you’re grateful for every moment, no matter if it’s positive or perceived negative, then you will be content in that moment. In fact, there was a study done where they measured neural responses in the brain and they found that when gratitude was present, there was literally NO ROOM for negative emotions. If you are feeling grateful, you literally cannot feel fear/resentment/sadness/etc. For that reason and many others,
I believe to be GRATEFUL is to be fully present and rooted in bliss. Which is why the mantra for GRATEFUL is “embrace the gift of every moment and discover true happiness”.
Next up was one that was a little harder to navigate: LOVE. I think the most important lesson I’ve ever learned is that LOVE is letting go. You have to throw out the analytical part of you that says “this makes sense, that doesn’t make sense” and instead surrender to the calling of your heart and soul. There is an incredible shift that happens when you simply love for the sake of loving. The mantra for the LOVE candle is “surrender wholeheartedly to love and embrace the mystic within”.
If you are willing to surrender to LOVE, I guarantee you will start to see magic happening in your life.
When you tap into the beauty of the present moment/experience/people around you, you can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of love and belonging. LOVE is a universal power you can access at any time by simply opening yourself up to it.
Finally, we come to FAITH…Faith was actually the hardest idea for me to put into practice. Because I had lived so much of my life from an analytical perspective- taking care of others, growing a business, providing for myself- it was surprisingly hard for me to act from a place of FAITH. I had come to realize what a big risk starting this company was for me; both financially, professionally, and personally. I didn’t know what was going to happen. All I knew was that I had something I wanted- needed- to share with the world. Stepping into the unknown is terrifying. It takes a whole lot of courage and whole lot of FAITH. It’s much more comfortable to stay safe in the cocoon of the “known” than it is to go out on a limb and say “I want something more”. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over and over, it’s that:
There is an internal wisdom that comes when you ask the universe: “what is the right path? where am I being called?”. It always knows the answer. That’s why the mantra for FAITH is “trust there is more than you know and let the magic unfold.”
I hope now that you know more about the stories behind each mantra, you can bring that feeling with you into your home along with your Rejoy Living candle…when you light one of these amazing scents, I hope you are enveloped not only with the evocative and luxurious fragrances but also by the meaning behind each and every hand-poured vessel of BLISS.
