My Eyes Are Open: Personal Memoirs of Spiritual Awakening

By Janet DiTroia

At age forty-seven, Janet woke up from existing to living passionately. As a speaker, new author, life coach, and energy medicine consultant, Janet provides inspiration with wisdom, using ideas, suggestions, and tools to empower others to question their own lives and to make positive shifts in how they view themselves and the world around them. Janet tells a variety of short stories that may be tearful, funny, provocative, realistic, and spiritual. Her memoirs share personal episodes in the first forty-seven years of life; then she demonstrates how her shift in consciousness now impacts her world from the inside out.

There are points in everyones life when they question who they are and what their purpose is. It is common to wonder and ask questions. In fact, it is the way one learns to remember who they are on the inside. When you question, you seek to expand your mind, body, and spirit experiences. So many of us live on autopilot. Is it that we are so scared to question things we have come to make our everyday truths? Or is it the fact that we are so afraid to crawl out from underneath the blanket of security, safety, and protection, to see how really powerful we are Do you realize you can make an amazing impact within yourself and the world around you? I challenge you to explore these questions and to come up with what holds truth in your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Dec 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452522036

Janet DiTroia

Janet C. DiTroia has devoted her life to healing others in a career spanning over thirty years, which has given her the foundation to understand, observe, and see human beings in a different light. On her personal journey, she embraces her own spiritual awakening, which not only turns her world upside down but opens up the inner essence of who she is.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 Janet C DiTroia.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Balboa Press

A Division of Hay House

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.balboapress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2202-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-2203-6 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 12/30/2014

CONTENTS

Introduction

1     The Beginning

2     Catch My Breath

3     Tears On My Pillow/Much Wisdom In My Heart

4     Existing VS. Living—Which One Is It?

5     Who’s Life Am I Living?

6     Do You Practice What You Preach?

7     Are Details Running Your Life Or Are You?

8     If It’s Not Broken, Don’t Fix It

9     Fear Of Failure VS. Trusting Your Instincts

10   Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff

11   Change The Channel

12   Risks Or Miracles?

13   Are You Proud Of Your Children?

14   It Is What It Is

15   Beauty Lies Within

16   Leader Of The Pack

17   The Shift

18   To Have Clutter Or Not Have Clutter—That Is The Question

19   Threshold And Accomplishments

20   Passage Of Time

21   My Own Soapbox

22   The Little Things Do Matter

23   If Walls Could Talk

24   What Treasures Are In Your Box?

25   The Cat-And-Mouse Game

26   Tongue-Tied

27   Rose-Colored Glasses

line.jpg

INTRODUCTION

I finally have a reached a point in my life where I have much to say about a lot of things. It’s not that I think I know everything, but what I do know. I want to share with others maybe I will teach workshops and seminars all over the world. Whatever venue I choose, I will express myself to the fullest. I promise to do this with the upmost integrity, honesty, and authenticity, because that is how I live my life today.

I always have been a person with many words rolling around in my head. It is a wonder to me why I haven’t taken the time to write a book sooner in my life. Maybe I didn’t have enough trust and confidence in myself to put my thoughts down on paper, or maybe I just needed more life-enriching experiences to fill me to the point of overflowing. But whatever the reason, the right time has presented itself to me now. My hope is that others will benefit from some of my experiences. Certainly, I don’t see myself as perfect in any sense of the word, but I do see myself as artwork in the making. I could be called a work in progress, just like every other person.

I find myself exploding with thoughts, ideas, and images about the many things I want to share. I am fifty-four years young; some would call this the halfway point of life, and maybe it is. After all, many books have alluded to the fact that the human body is supposed to have a life span of 120 years.

So you think you’ve got it all? You know what you want, and you have a definite sense of purpose. Great! Kudos for you! Now let me speak to the other 99 percent of the population. You may have a basic foundation for how to live your life. You have formulated your beliefs, opinions, and perceptions, based on what you have seen, heard, and accomplished thus far. You have created a mind-set that may or may not be serving you.

I reached a point at age forty-seven where I knew there was a lot more inside of me. I couldn’t quite explain how I felt. I knew that everything happened for a reason, but I wondered why I wasn’t happy. I did not feel fulfilled. Why did I cry myself to sleep so many nights?

Do you ever feel like this? It can be a frightening feeling. Are you depressed? Do you feel sad often? I was depressed to a degree, but I came to understand that it was much deeper than that. I cried so much that I wondered how my tears could keep coming and coming.

Still, many things held true. I knew I was blessed with radiant health, a wonderful family, a good marriage (for quite some time), a nice home, caring friends, and a family that really loved and cared about me. What was missing? I thought that maybe it was my fault, my husband’s fault, my parents’ fault, or maybe it was my upbringing. I searched within myself to get the answers to many looming questions. I reached the point where I realized it was no one’s fault.

I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed and really had fun. I didn’t know how to relax and take things in stride or have a strong sense of appreciation and gratitude. Nothing I did ever seemed good enough to me. I was my own worst critic. I just had to do, do, do until I collapsed on my bed at night. I began to realize that something was missing in my life. I thought maybe I was just kidding myself; after all, this was life, and this was my life.

I then decided to compare myself to other people. All of the people I knew did the typical daily routines and rituals. I thought, is anyone really happy? Heck, happiness is overrated. Are you happy? Do you even know what happiness is? I didn’t. Do we know what we want in life? What is our purpose for being here anyway? I pondered these questions, and throughout the following chapters, I will visit many of the answers I found.

Reality Check

As young children, we are like sponges. We soak up so much information with everything we see, hear, touch, and smell. We are very impressionable for the first seven years of our lives. So many things about us and world in which we live are innocently conditioned into our subconscious minds at this young age. Let’s use a computer metaphor here: as adults, we run the conditioned programs that we have picked up in our early childhood. Many of these programs are incorrect, confusing, and based on other people’s beliefs and perceptions. We make choices based on all the information we have downloaded.

I realized I believed a lot of mistruths not only about me but about the world I lived it. Do you do this? As if it was a movie, I followed the script that was already written for me. I had little part in its creation (or so I thought at the time). Do you go through the motions, sometimes not even thinking about the experience?

My Life

Essentially, my life consisted of paying the bills, going shopping, cleaning house, cooking dinner, occasional outings with friends and family, and full-time work outside of the house. I was a busy girl, a productive girl. I got a lot of things done.

How much do you accomplish in a day? I finally realized what I do does not define who I am although once I thought it did. The busier I was, the better I feel about myself. Now I had purpose. I was needed! Don’t we all want to be needed and wanted in life? But that is confused thinking. These patterns of thinking were misguided by early childhood experiences. They were further cemented into my mind through media, family, authority figures, magazines, and everything else coming into my mind.

A deep sense of emptiness resided within me. For so many years, a word came up in my mind, but I just blew it off. The word was passion. I thought of myself as a passionate person, but somehow, I only heard the word when I could have been living it. Was I going crazy? Even to my confused mind I knew my inner voice was trying to tell me something. I made a promise to myself that I would not cover up my pain with an addiction of any sort. I don’t drink, other than an occasional wine, and I do not smoke or take any drugs. I minimize medicine and would have to be on my deathbed before I would take prescription drugs.

I am in the health field, so I know the ramifications of taking drugs has on the body. Certainly some drugs have their place for curing symptoms and illnesses, but everybody has to make their own choices about what to do for their health. I can only speak for myself. I went to see a therapist to make sure I was not losing my mind with all my racing thoughts and feelings.

Over time, I realized these issues were deep within my core being, and they then showed up in my emotional and mental outlook. This tremendously impacted my perception of the world. When