I recently came through a very frustrating process with the vanity press that prints Grandmother Dreams. I needed a few cases of books to get me through Christmas, and I planned ahead by ordering them in early October. Things have rarely gone smoothly with this company. I should have known. The books came and they were misprinted, unusable (the title twisted off the spine and wrapped around onto the book back). Phone calls, emails, sending photos, waiting for mailing labels to send the books back, waiting for the printer to agree that they were misprinted, waiting for the publisher to okay reprints. I dealt with something related to this several times a week for months. The new books arrived––just 3 days before Christmas, too late. And they were misprinted. (The text was mis-aligned, on every single page of every single book). Aaaarggghh.
I was so frustrated that I felt like quitting. I’m guessing the publisher wished I would quit. They were sure losing money on this project. I was losing valuable time and energy that I could have aimed at other things. But I was reminded of a funny saying we have at my house: “If you quit, then you won’t get to do it.”
I wanted to persevere, but I didn’t want to expend any more energy on this problem. Then I realized that I could choose to continue on without an emotional attachment to it. That really lightened my load. Such a simple thing—choose to engage but not react, just let it keep moving at whatever pace it took. The correctly printed books came in late January, 5 months after being ordered. The Christmas season was long over. And that’s just the way it was.
Here is a related teaching from my third book (now in progress):
Universal Wisdom: A problem today is that humans are constantly bombarded with feelings, actually encouraged to amass more and more feeling. Think about plants and animals. Stimuli vary, but the intensity of that variation is only occasionally worth reacting to. Humans have come to believe that everything requires a reaction. Then the reactions create more reactions which create more reactions. The human system is overwhelmed.
This is difficult. The human world all around you is concentrating on Points, correcting energy to keep maintaining the Points. It is the human condition. And that has been layered onto with the explosion in technology and the sheer numbers of humans interacting on the planet. Even if you are not directly interacting, the energy is still there.
There is so much energy swirling in so many directions that you cannot possibly even be aware of all that. Others are making decisions all the time that affect how the present lines up. Thinking you have control is a function of the ego. Step back, energetically, from all of this pushing and fretting. When you relax into your spiritual core, you are opening Space around you. You are detaching from Points. You cannot be stuck in Points and also move in Space.
You do need to learn how to pull back and allow your feeling to be just part of the flow of Universe. Reaction is not necessary. Rest and repair are. Let the distractions fall away. Focus on Space and opening. That is how you keep the path free for opportunity.
🙂