REVEAL

A Sacred Manual for

Getting Spiritually Naked
MEGGAN WATTERSON
HAY HOUSE, INC.
Carlsbad, Caliornia New York CiIy
London Sydney Johannesburg
Vancouver Hong Kong New Delhi
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Copyright 2013 by Meggan Watterson
Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.
hayhouse.com

Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House

AusIralia FIy. LId.: www.hayhouse.com.au Published and distributed in
the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, LId.: www.hayhouse.co.uk Pub-
lished and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA
(FIy), LId.: www.hayhouse.co.za Distributed in Canada by: RaincoasI:
www.raincoasI.com Published in India by: Hay House Fublishers India:
www.hayhouse.co.in
Cover design: Johanna GoldLeld, LLC Interior design: Riann Bender
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any
mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a pho-
nographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmit-
ted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair
use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior
written permission of the publisher.
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 in-
directly. 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 re-
sponsibility for your actions.
Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the Trustees of Amherst
College from The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition, Ralph W.
Franklin, ed., Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Fress o Harvard UniversiIy
Fress, CopyrighI 18 by Ihe FresidenI and Fellows o Harvard College.
CopyrighI 1S1, 1SS, 17, 183 by Ihe FresidenI and Fellows o Har-
vard College.
ReprinIed by permission o Ihe IranslaIor. "We Three" by Jalal al-Din
Rumi, The Essential Rumi, Irans. Coleman Barks wiIh John Moyne, San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco 1S by Coleman Barks.
The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser 200S by Muriel Rukeyser. Used by
Permission. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Watterson, Meggan
Reveal : a sacred manual or geIIing spiriIually naked } Meggan
Watterson. -- 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 78-1-401-3820-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. SpiriIual lie.
2. Spirituality. I. Title.
BL624.W365 2013
204'.4--dc23
2012043250
Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-4019-3820-8
Digital ISBN: 978-1-4019-3821-5
16 15 14 13 4 3 2 1
1st edition, April 2013
FrinIed in Ihe UniIed SIaIes o America
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This book is dedicated to every woman
who desires to hear and follow
the soul-voice inside her.
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Reveal_interior.indd 8 1/23/13 9:15 AM
Contents
Invocation ............................................................................... xi
Introuction ..........................................................................xiii
e First Veil: REVEAL Your Soul-Story .................................. 1
e Second Veil: REVEAL Your Sacred Body .......................... 23
e ird Veil: REVEAL Your Soul-Voice ............................... 45
e Fourth Veil: REVEAL Your Divine Worth ....................... 71
e Fih Veil: REVEAL Your Inner Mystic .......................... 101
e Sixth Veil: REVEAL Your Soul-Work ............................. 131
e Seventh Veil: REVEAL Your Spiritual Community ........ 155
Benediction .......................................................................... 175
Endnotes ............................................................................... 181
Acnowledgments ................................................................ 185
About the Autho ................................................................ 191
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xi
Invocation
i am the sex of human that has consumed the fruit,
the snakes offering.
and no, i am not guilty. and yes, i am naked.
and no, i am not ashamed.
and yes, i am that silhouette there in the distance,
the one always found dancing.
i am a scarlet letter, i am burned at the stake. my name is sita, i am a bride.
my name is thecla, i will never be married.
i am shaped like a triangle, i am as curved as the number three.
i am s-like and undulating. i am re, and i taste of an ancient sea.
i am that feeling you had when you tried to forget me.
i am that moment when you eclipsed yourself, and suddenly
i am herea shrine within you left too long unattended.
i am that impulse you had to light a candle there. yes,
i am this simple. yes, i come this easily.
for you, i will press myself at like a book that has never been read.
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REVEAL
xii
i will hold myself there against your skin and watch as your eyes close
from the heat of me, so near to you.
i will let you handle me like a verse of sacred scripture,
i will entrust all of my pages for your beholding.
for you, i will open to the meatiest chapter of myself,
i will go straight to the pith, the real juice.
and i will say, read here, beloved stranger, start sipping this nectar
for the soul journey of which you are now a pilgrim.
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The Sixth Veil
147
Do:o No+u:o
When I saw Liam Neesons hand go up, my anxi-
ety struck a large gong inside me; I could hardly stand
still from the reverberations. I steadied myself on the
desk, my desk, and answered every other parents ques-
tion in the hopes he would put his hand down in the
meanIime. He didnI. I Lnally nodded in his direcIion
and prayed that I could respond to him without acci-
dentally allowing my jaw to drop at his excessive beauty.
Ive never IrusIed mysel less. He began speaking, buI all
I could think was Holy crap, Qui-Gon Jinn from The Phan-
tom Menace is asking me a question. I was freaking out so
loudly inside I had to squint in an effort to concentrate
and actually hear what he was saying.
He asked me an arIiculaIe and relevanI quesIion
about the fact that the curriculum I had created for the
7th grade World Religions class did not include a sec-
tion on atheism and agnosticism. I was amazed that I re-
sponded at all. I cant remember what I said, but I know
I went on for far too long and didnt even come close to
answering his question.
Thankfully, the master teacher who had been as-
signed to help me learn how to translate my theological
lexicon into language a 7th grader could understand had
the wisdom to be there with me that night. She cut in
on my verbal train wreck and answered Mr. Neeson like
a normal, functioning human being.
There were two doors to my classroom. When the
parent-teacher conference was over, I shook hands
with several of the parents, relieved that I had made it
through the evening without passing out. Then from the
corner o my eye, I saw IhaI Qui-Gon Jinn was leaning
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REVEAL
148
against the door frame as if he was waiting for some-
one. I assumed it was for me. (Of course, he could have
been waiting for anyone in the room, a notion that only
occurred to me once I got back home.) My responseI
bolted out the other door.
By this point, I read my life the way I read my
dreamssymbolically. Too many synchronicities had
happened for me to ignore the evidence that curious en-
counters are in my life to teach me something. For me,
encounIering Qui-Gon Jinn had everyIhing Io do wiIh
the greatest lesson I became a 7th grade World Religions
Ieacher Io learn: Doing NoIhing. I had Io work my as-
sets off in a private all-boys middle school to learn the
delicate art of effortless action. This is what Qui-Gon
Jinn would call Ihe Force, and whaI Taoism would call
Wu Wei.
In order to help make Wu Wei more comprehensible
Io my class, I assigned Benjamin Hos The Tao of Pooh.
Wu Wei, according to Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism,
pertains to the art of knowing when to act and when
not to. It is a feminine way of being in the world that re-
quires the ego to submit and allows for the natural ow
of the universe to unfold.
The literal meaning of Wu Wei is without action,
without effort, without control. Its a state of effort-
lessly doing what needs to be done. It contains the para-
dox of acting in such balance and harmony with the
universe that theres no actual action at all. It is just a
sense of allowing the perfect equilibrium of the universe
to establish itself through you.
The aim is to align yourself with the Tao (or the Force,
if you prefer) in order to acquire a form of malleable and
invisible power. Its a power that at rst seems weak or
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The Sixth Veil
149
submissive, like water owing the way the current directs.
And yet, the combination of the waters exibility and
the currents strength creates epic wonders naturally. Yes,
think Grand Canyon.
Winnie-the-Pooh personies the philosophy of Wu
Wei. Somehow, without Pooh even trying, everything
turns out perfectly for him. No matter what comes his
way, he doesnt get caught up in making something more
complex than it is, the way Owl does, and he doesnt
become fearful or pessimistic like Eeyore. Pooh just lets
everything be, controls nothing, and inevitably comes
out of every situation on top.
This Taoist feminine principle of effortless action il-
luminated what already existed in my life. It gave me
the capacity to see what had already come to me without
effort and enabled me to distinguish between what I had
to do and what I thought I wanted to do in the world. I
learned to resist nothing.
What am I talking about?
Compulsion is the state of being compelled, a force
that compels, or a persistent, irresistible impulse. I be-
came conscious of actions that truly originate from
within me, actions that my soul compels me to take. I
realized that I had failed to notice what I was already
doing, because it felt less like doing and more like being.
It was work I didnt even consider work because it didnt
feel like work at allI had to do it, and it sustained me.
Lighthouses dont go running all over an island
looking for boats to save, writer and activist Anne La-
mott reminds us. They just stand there shining.
4
Rather
than chase after where I imagined the light might be for
me, I stood still and became it. I started right where I was.
I Iook sIock o my compulsions: pilgrimages, Iheology
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REVEAL
150
degrees, devouring every ction or nonction book that
had to do with the Divine Feminine, and, of course,
being kneed. I could see then that the REDLADIES, the
small womens spirituality group I had been facilitating
since I returned from the pilgrimage ten years ago, is
my soul-work. I was providing what I needed most to
receive: Ihe spiriIual menIorship o women.
This is how I knew I was doing Ihe work o my soul:
in order to build my career, I kept meeting the precise
challenges that would require me to let go of my ego
even more. I practiced my soul-voice meditation as if it
were a sacred game of Simon Says. If I heard my soul say
No, I listened, even if it didnt make sense to my ra-
tional mind. I let my soul lead. I had been humbled too
often to think that I knew the way. I didnt. My soul did.
Day by day and faster than I ever could have imag-
ined, my career as a spiritual mentor or freelance mystic
was realized. I had nally learned the sacred feminine
art of doing nothing, ercely loving the ego into submis-
sion to allow the soul its sovereignty.
Hov Womr Pv\v Wur No Or Eisr Is W\+cu:o
I was standing at the podium in front of a sea of
women. I was looking down at the words I had typed out
to speak, but a raw emotion was washing over me, hold-
ing me silent and forcing me to be present to it.
For the rst time in my life, I wasnt a spiritual out-
sider. I was in the presence of my community, my tribe,
and my long-lost soul sisters. I was standing at last in my
spiritual home. Gratitude was radiating out of me with
a force that made my hands shake as I held the pages of
my speech. This is when I sobbed unintelligible sobs of
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191
About the Author
Meggan Watterson is a spiritual mentor, speaker,
and scholar of the Divine Feminine who inspires women
to live from the audacity and authenticity of the voice
of their soul.
She is the facilitator of the REDLADIES, a spiritual
community that encourages women to reclaim their
bodies as sacred and to be led by the soul-voice inside
them without compromise or apology. (Some break
bread together; REDLADIES break dark chocolate.)
Meggan is the founder of REVEAL, a womens spiritu-
ality event that is a triumvirate of one part ery soul-
voices, one part ritual, and one part dance party. She
received a MasIer o Theological SIudies rom Harvard
DiviniIy School and a MasIer o DiviniIy rom Union
Theological Seminary aI Columbia UniversiIy. She lives
in New York City with her son.
WebsiIe: www.megganwatterson.com
Follow Meggan on Twitter (@megganwatterson) and
Facebook (Meggan Jane WaIIerson).
To join the Reveal community online go to the
REVEAL Facebook page.
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sIarring Louise L. Hay & Friends
(available as a 1-DVD program and an expanded 2-DVD set)
WaIch Ihe Irailer aI: www.LouiseHayMovie.com
THE SHIFT, the movie,
starring Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
(available as a 1-DVD program and an expanded 2-DVD set)
WaIch Ihe Irailer aI: www.DyerMovie.com
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All of the above are available at your local bookstore,
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193
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