I’ve published fifteen novels, including the popular "Silver Sphere Series" and "The AndroBiotica Adventures." Before quitting my day job, I spent more than thirty years in corporate communications as a marketing director. My most recent novella, "Return of the Visitor," is now available on Amazon.com and other major online book retailers.
For more information about my novels, please visit www.davidgittlin.net and www.davidgittlin.com
Go beyond the mundane mutterings of mind
I tell myself
Into a broader perspective
Into a deeper reservoir of peace and love within
Dive
Explore
I tell myself
It’s there
It is really there
Deep within
I’m told there is no end to the depths
Yet, here I am
Standing on the shore
Barely scratching the surface
Despite all of my sanctimonious efforts
I’m okay with it
I tell myself
Better to taste the drop
Than to taste nothing at all
Comparatively speaking, writing a novel is the fun, easy, first step of the self-publishing process. The second step, creating an attention-getting book cover, offers its own unique set of challenges. However, the most intimidating and difficult undertaking, to most authors, is the third step—Online Marketing. These words strike terror in many authors’ sensitive little hearts because they want as little to do with the outside world as possible.
The most intimidating marketing question is: “Where do I begin?” In this blog, I’ll let you in on some of the advertising methods I’ve tried and the results I’ve had. I’ll save you time and money. I’ll guide you through the marketing process from the completion of your manuscript to the final strokes of your marketing plan.
Before we begin, bear in mind that more than a million books are published every year. Therefore, we have to be good at marketing. Damn good!
After completing your final rewrite and the inevitable tweaks that come afterwards, it’s finally time to upload your book to online retailers. Next, you announce it on your blog, your author website, your Facebook page, and your YouTube channel (optional).
Now what? Gulp…
This is the seriously hard part—driving people to these outposts in cyberspace.
Let’s take a look at what has worked for me and what hasn’t.
The first step in marketing your book online or ANYWHERE is to create a relatable, attention-getting cover. We’re taught not to judge a book by its cover. Ironically, this principle doesn’t apply to actual books.
I’ve read that the cover of a book needs to be genre specific. By this I mean your reader can quickly identify the subject matter inside, whether it be Romance, Action/Suspense/Adventure/ Thriller, Espionage, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and so on. The trick is to make your book genre specific without making it look like every other book in the space. The idea is to stand out from the crowd, not get lost in it. If you are an accomplished graphic artist, go ahead and do it yourself. Just be sure that you follow the specifications of your print on demand supplier. If you are not a great graphic artist, like me, go ahead and shop for an artist who can turn your cover vision into a commercially viable package.
Please choose an artist with a specialization in book cover design. This person can have other specialties, but they must also be fully versed in the art of book cover design. If you are creating the book cover, make sure to research the subject. There are many pitfalls, just as there are with writing a book.
I used three different artists to create the covers for the three novels I published. Besides the fact that I get bored easily, there may have been a method to my madness. Each of my novels is in a different genre. Some artists have genre preferences and do better work in those genres. There is no set rule. Some artists are good in any genre. They may be more talented and expensive than others, but you won’t have to go through the angst of breaking in new ones. And you may get a better overall result. Or not. Choose carefully.
If you have an idea of what you want in your book cover, great. If you don’t, that’s okay. Just be sure you choose a capable artist who you can communicate with. Don’t be guided solely by cost. Choose someone who knows what they are doing; who inspires your confidence, and “gets you.
Blogging is a great way to get yourself and your work “out there.” It’s not hard to create a blog, even for graphically challenged people like me. WordPress and Wix are two of the most popular sites now. You don’t have to be an expert at coding to make a nice looking blog. You can also choose an upgrade plan that will give you more customizing options. I believe the upgrade plans are worth it. WordPress has a premium plan for only $99 per year.
Once your blog is created, don’t let it just sit in Cyberspace. Take a little time each day to read and comment on blogs by folks who write about subjects that interest you. Those people will then read and follow your blog if your content is good.
Take note of how other people promote their work on their blogs. I’ve found that the subtle approach is the best way to do it. Keep in mind that content is king. What you have to say and how you express it will ultimately determine your degree of success. And, make sure the template you use to create your blog is Smart Phone Friendly. I finally woke up to the fact that most people read blogs on their phones. Duh. I dumped my old templates and replaced them with new, easy to read, phone-friendly ones. Now, I’m attracting more followers than ever before, and I’m making many new friends.
I’ve experimented with ads on Facebook. I’ve racked up tons of likes and very few sales. In my humble opinion, paying for ads on Facebook is a total waste of time and money for self-published authors. I have an author friend who is running great ads on Facebook, but he’s not selling any books. I’m not saying ads in general don’t work on Facebook. They do. But you are an up-and-coming author struggling to find an audience. You aren’t Macy’s. You aren’t selling specialty items currently in demand like face masks. See what I mean?
A Facebook page isn’t essential, but I strongly suggest that you put some time and effort into making a good one. If nothing else, FB pages add credibility and overall impact to your marketing campaign. And they are FREE. You might even sell some books from your page using the SHOP NOW button. Pick a glowing book review and pin it at the top of your posts column. This little maneuver has increased views and engagements on all three of my Facebook pages.
Upload a JPEG of your book cover with a link to your Facebook page. If you have lots of friends who spend half of their lives on Instagram, you might get lucky. I don’t use Instagram. Don’t ask me why.
I’ve created and distributed press releases on PR Web with a target audience of 30,000 journalists and bloggers. The idea is to drive traffic to your websites and generate publicity on major news sites and search engines. You can participate at various cost levels starting at $99. The more you spend, the bigger the audience. I participated at the second highest level at a cost of $289 per release. (The highest level currently costs $389). To add interest to the releases, I created a book trailer video. (A simple book trailer without actors will cost anywhere from $250 to $300 from a reputable company).
Bottom line: I could not relate any book sales to my press release adventures. Save your money.
Book trailers are nice to have but they aren’t essential to your marketing campaign. When I first started marketing my books twelve years ago, the pundits all said that you were dead in the water if you didn’t have a book trailer. As it turns out, this is baloney. Book trailers are a nice addition to your marketing package, but they aren’t powerful generators of sales. I made trailers for my first novel, Three Days to Darkness, and my second one, Scarlet Ambrosia–Blood is the Nectar of Life. I had fun making them and they didn’t cost too much. Recently, I used the first trailer I made as the cover photo on my Facebook page. (Note: The video has to be two minutes or less to be uploaded to the cover section). To my amazement it worked. More than a thousand people visited my Three Days to Darkness page in the span of two weeks. I made some book sales at the rate of two percent of the visits. I’m still getting views. But here’s the thing: if you have a limited budget, use it where it will do the most good. I’m getting to that. Stay with me.
If you can swing the cost, make an audio version of your book. As you are no doubt aware, people don’t read as many books as they used to. Audio books are getting more popular every day. I used ACX to make the audio book for my third novel, Micromium: Clean Energy from Mars. I liked using ACX and they are part of Amazon. I signed an exclusive agreement with them, which means I get a bigger royalty (70%) on each audio book sale. With this agreement, your book is automatically uploaded to Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. The downside is, you don’t get exposure on sites like Hoopla, Overdrive, and Bibliotheca, which serve libraries. If you don’t go exclusive, ACX offers a non-exclusive agreement wherein you can distribute to any platform and get a 25% royalty.
If you hire a narrator for your audio book, which you can do through ACX, a good one will probably cost you between $100 and $150 per finished hour. Your narrator does the narration and all of the production work. You direct them and approve the finished product. I had a great time making my audio book with an amazing woman who did a fabulous job. I’ve done reasonably well with my audio book. I’ve noticed that having an audio version available has increased my overall book sales.
When you launch your book, you want to have a sufficient number of positive reader and editorial reviews available on retail sites and Goodreads to convert browsers into buyers. Unless you have twenty friends and a handful of book critics ready, willing, and able to post glowing reviews, it makes sense to purchase a few of these.
There are a number of sites available for these services. I have found the best and most reliable site for reader and editorial reviews to be indiereader.com. Check out their website. I bought reader reviews and an editorial review from them. I’m 100% satisfied with their service, reliability, and results. I’ve also used midwestbookreview.com for fair, reliable, and less expensive editorial reviews. Readers Favorite is an excellent site for FREE reviews. Check it out.
Sponsored ads on Amazon.com are the most effective marketing tool I’ve used so far. If you have a limited budget, this is where to spend it. The ads are easy to create. You set your daily budget, write your copy, set your campaign dates, and off you go. If the ad doesn’t work, you can scrap it and try different keywords. You can see which keywords are working and which are not and adjust accordingly. Best of all, you can see how many books you’ve sold and how much it has cost you to sell those books. There’s no baloney and no guesswork. And, let’s face it, most of the books people buy are sold on Amazon. To create a campaign, sign in to your KDP account, select the book you want to advertise, click on the three dots to the far right of the book, and select promote and advertise.
I hope you will find these tips helpful. I wish you all the success in the world, and keep writing.
The word I hear bandied about is “surrender.” Truth be told, I’m not a big fan of surrendering. I’m not really sure what that word means in relation to the path of awakening. I’ll have to fumble forward to find my own way of “letting go.”
Once every seven years or so, I get to the point where I just want to scream obscene epithets from my terrace railing. Since I’m not a big fan of being arrested, I’m able to contain myself. Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep the dam of frustrated emotions from spilling into the lap of some innocent bystander. I feel like I’ve done everything that can be done to accomplish my goals and my efforts are bogged down like German Panzer tanks in the snow on the Russian front.
The funny thing is,unlike the German Army in 1942, I find it possible to actually get somewhere when I reach this point. In one sense, it’s a scary place, a place of desperation, a feeling of being at the end of my rope. But I’ve found it can also be the beginning of something better than the orbit I was in. You might call it a breakthrough to a higher altitude, if you don’t mind pedestrian metaphors.
When I have looked in every crevice and corner and turned over every stone in search of the faintest glimmer of light—the light is usually not very far away.
There comes a time when human effort is met by something that looks like chance, but it is not chance. Some people call it Grace. Some people call it luck. I call it proof positive that persistent effort, and faith in myself and the universe, will unlock the door to whatever my heart truly desires.
Sometimes I think I want something that turns out to be only a construct of my mind. I’m chasing a phantom with no real substance. Sometimes I overestimate my abilities, and I set unrealistic goals. However, if what I want comes from deep within my heart, I believe nothing can stop me from attaining my heart’s desire.
One of the good things about advancing age is that it makes it easier to focus on priorities. I mean real priorities—the meaningful stuff, because the clock is ticking, louder and louder. There simply isn’t time to screw around with trivialities and dead ends. I’ve been everywhere, done everything, made a fool of myself, and accomplished a few goals. You might say I’ve grown weary of missing the point. I want the real thing—the beauty within my heart—and I know it can’t be far away.
To illustrate my point, I’m reminded of a crossroads I reached earlier in life.
It’s one of the most frightening passages life confronts us with. What we’ve been doing doesn’t work anymore. We’ve come to a fork in the road. One fork leads to the known. The other one leads to the unknown.
I had spent my entire career working in a family business. My father and my uncle built the business. They passed away, leaving the next generation in charge. My father and uncle expected me and my two cousins to continue where they left off. In theory, my cousins and I had the education and the experience to handle the transition seamlessly. Except we didn’t share a vision for the future, and I frankly couldn’t stand one of my cousins.
After several futile attempts to carry on as expected, I saw the handwriting on the wall. I did not foresee the business flourishing with the three of us at the helm. I decided to sell my share of the business to my cousins. It was one of the hardest decisions I ever had to make.
Up until this fork in the road, my life had been structured from the outside in. I had done what was expected of me. Now, it was up to me to structure my life from the inside out.
I have found this wise old saying to be very true. “When one door closes, another opens.” To express it another way, letting go of one thing leaves room for another. The scary part of navigating this passage is enduring the empty space left behind in the wake of releasing the known. We are normally left with only a tiny kernel of an idea; a faint voice whispering beneath the clatter of every day life.
I had always dreamed of writing fiction. From a solid background in marketing communications, I began writing short stories in my forties. While still employed in the family business, I took online courses in screenwriting at UCLA. I learned the basics of character development, drama, conflict, and plotting. I used screenwriting as a bridge to my main goal: Writing novels. After selling my share of the business, I now had the time and the freedom to pursue the dream.
Part of me thought I had gone mad. That part turned out to be dead right. Logically, what were the odds of finding an agent and a publisher? It’s not something to think about when writing a first novel. Trust me.
I discovered that writing a novel is a very lonely process. I was accustomed to interfacing with all kinds of people in business. Now, except for a few friends, wife, daughter, and mother-in-law, I was completely alone. Doubts and fears assaulted me. I figured real novelists enjoyed their solitude. I kept thinking, real novelists are self- sufficient artists. They can take or leave people. All they need is their cats or dogs. Maybe this is true. All I know is I’ve managed to write three good screenplays and three good novels since taking the fork in the road that leads to the unknown.
There are certainly ups and downs mucking about in the unknown. I have to say, though, that it’s more interesting and rewarding than steady doses of the known. It’s actually fun to travel back and forth between the worlds of the unknown and the known.
Let’s take writing this article to illustrate my point. When I began, I only had a vague idea of what it would be about. I did, however, have the definite intention of writing something that would be of interest and benefit to you and me. So, what is my point? Here it is: Nothing happens if you don’t take the first step. You’ll stay stuck in the same rut, and that’s no fun. Have the courage to adventure into the unknown. Trust yourself and the talents you’ve been given. Nobody gets rich, creates anything meaningful, or finds a deeper source of happiness following the crowd.
Is the car running away from something? Is it running towards something? Or is it just some dumb kid with a lead foot accelerating off of a dirt shoulder? If you picked option three, you get an all expenses paid free night at a Comfort Inn in Sawdust, Idaho. Here’s a more detailed description of what happened.
The cop who gave the kid a speeding ticket has left the scene. The kid is angry. He’s also trying to impress his sixteen-year-old girlfriend sitting next to him in the bucket seat of a restored 1971 Pontiac GTO.
The kid is basically a nobody, despite his ability to restore vintage cars, who is trying to prove he’s a somebody. It doesn’t help that he’s preternaturally short and stubby for a seventeen-year-old. It does help that he’s been blessed with freakish good looks. And, he’s never had a bad case of acne. His girlfriend, Luisa, is an average-looking teenager who started wearing braces later in life than most of her peers. Fortunately for Luisa, a company called Invisalign has invented a unique clear plastic brace that doesn’t look as bad as metal braces. These braces aren’t even called braces. They are called “clear aligners.” Isn’t that clever?
(Please note: I had never heard of Invisalign before I wrote this post. I was vaguely aware that something like clear braces exist, so I Googled “Clear Braces.” Invisalign came up. For all I know, the claims the company makes are pure poppycock).
To be perfectly honest, Luisa’s good fortune regarding her braces is completely beside the point. The big question is, as I’m sure you are wondering by now, why does Luisa hang around with the kid? There is no cut and dried answer, as is the case with many things in life. It may be that she is a good listener. The kid does most of the talking in the relationship, and, as far as Louisa can determine, she is the only person around who takes an interest in what the kid has to say. Another factor is that nobody besides the kid is beating a path to Luisa’s door. So, a bird in the hand applies.
There are other subtler reasons to account for the kid’s presence in Luisa’s life. We don’t have time to get into all of them. Mainly, and to her surprise, Louisa has admitted to herself that she likes the kid. A little. Upon further examination, she has realized it’s impossible not to form a connection with someone you spend regular time with, unless that person turns out to be a serial killer.
I’ve been remiss in mentioning the kid’s name. It is Elmore. The name is another cross the kid has to bear. His father was an avid fan of the writer, Elmore Leonard. Hence the first name. Shit happens.
Elmore likes to impress anyone who will listen with his knowledge of fast cars. He likes to put adults on the spot by asking them questions like, “Do you know what the letters GTO stand for?” Occasionally, an elder will know the answer, but most of them say, Grand Touring…Uhh.
Elmore stands there smugly and says, “It stands for Gran Turismo Olomongato.”
A pregnant pause normally follows. Elmore proceeds to explain that Gran Turismo Olomongato is an Italian phrase denoting a race car that is officially sanctioned for grand tour racing competition. Upon hearing this, Elmore’s audiences generally find an excuse to peel off in another direction, leaving Elmore to ponder why such a phenomenon happens with maddening regularity. He then consoles himself with the thought that most people beyond the age of twenty-one have become passionless souls obsessed with boring careers.
I’ll have to end here, because I know that people don’t like to read long blogs. I started writing this by randomly downloading the picture at the top. I recommend it as a fun exercise if you have no clue what to write about. If I had something socially redeemable to write about, I would. If you are looking for a theme to this blog, try this: To Stay Sane in the Midst of a Worldwide Pandemic, Sometimes It Helps to Write About Nonsense. This is probably a good practice any old time.
Questions abound as to what will happen to Elmore and Luisa. How will they grow as characters? Will they fall in love? Who besides these two will enter the story? What is the central conflict. And who is the antagonist? If you have any interest, let me know and I’ll continue the saga. And, if you have any story ideas, don’t be shy to suggest them. Your thoughts are welcome.
To say there is a lot going on these days is an understatement. To say most of it is very troubling will not shock anyone. To ask, “What can I do about it?” is a worthwhile question.
Can I trust politicians in this country, Republican or Democrat, to protect me? No.
Can I change the world through the political process? I don’t think so.
What can I do, then?
Here are a few ideas.
I can become a better person.
I can take precautions to keep myself coronavirus free and not infect others.
I can reduce the time I listen to the constant drumbeat of bad news.
I can use the extra time to pause and reflect upon something sublime for a change. I can look at life from a different perspective. I can ask myself these questions:
What if consciousness became curious and created this world, including you and me, simply to have the pleasure of experiencing itself?
What if consciousness had already created millions of worlds and dimensions before it created this one for the same simple purpose?
In other words, what if we owed our existence to the natural tendency of consciousness to expand and play?
If this is true, then why do I take myself so seriously?
If consciousness wants to have pleasure and play through me, then why is there so much destruction and suffering in the world?
Do we bring most of the suffering and destruction upon ourselves?
What if we found a way to make life less of a struggle?
What if we opened ourselves to the love and joy that must exist somewhere within us?
What do you think would happen?
What if consciousness became curious and created this world, including you and me, simply to have the pleasure of experiencing itself?
What if consciousness had already created millions of worlds and dimensions before this one for the same simple purpose?
In other words, what if we owed our existence to the natural tendency of consciousness to expand and play?
If this is true, then why do we take ourselves so seriously?
If consciousness wants to have pleasure and play through us, then why is there so much destruction and suffering in the world? Do we bring most of it upon ourselves? It seems the answer is self-evident?
What if we found a way to make life less of a struggle?
If we opened ourselves to the love and joy that must exist somewhere within us, what do you think would happen?
I downloaded this image randomly because I had no idea what to write about. Let’s see if we can have some fun with wordplay.
Airplanes have always interested me. They still do, as long as I don’t have to ride in coach. I used to make model planes as a kid. I only made the plastic variety, because the technique for making paper and balsa wood models always eluded me. They made it look so easy. And the finished product looked beautiful. Expert model plane makers painted them in custom colors. I never met anyone who could make one. You must possess a god-given talent to do it. You have be an artist, in the model plane sense. Chalk it up to an early encounter with limitations.
Talking about limitations, they didn’t bother me as a kid. Like most kids, I just went on to the next thing. No big deal.
Later in life, limitations became a big deal. It hurt to bump up against them. It hurt to see my dreams go down in flames. I had to learn to accept my limitations. Accepting limitations is a wise thing to do, but it’s definitely not fun. That’s why god gave us imaginations.
Q: Without imagination, where would I be?
A: I’d be Stuck in a cramped, bad news, and boring world. (There is only one event that can make the news worse these days: Nuclear War).
If I imagine ten things and can only make one of them happen, I’m better off.
If I imagine a better world for me, automatically the world around me changes for the better.
Okay, back to jet propulsion….My mind won’t let go of this imagination thing. No one, except myself, can stop me from having a jet-propelled imagination. People can laugh at me, including my wife, but I don’t care. I’ve pretty much lived in an imaginary world up to this advanced stage of life. I’m still here. I will not try to fix it if it ain’t broke. As you can imagine, living eighty percent of your life in an imaginary world has it’s advantages. It also has it’s disadvantages. And so on.
If I don’t do a better job of sticking to the topic, I’ll have to change the title of this post to “The Benefits of Using Your Imagination,” or something self-helpy like that.
Jet propelled. Hmmm….Who am I? Well, certainly not jet propelled. That narrows it down a bit. I can list all of the things I do and who I am in relationship to others, but I don’t want to bore you.
So, Who am I? Really?
I’ve learned that I’m essentially consciousness experiencing itself. I understand the concept, but the experience, the reality of it on a consistent basis, stubbornly refuses to ground itself in me. Another one of those limitations? Not really. I’m infinite and limited simultaneously. I believe it, even though it isn’t my everyday experience. I know people who experience it daily. It’s amazing that I even know them. There aren’t many people walking around who can honestly make this claim. Not that I’m special or anything. I’m just crazy enough to hang around with this tribe.
Okay, so I’ve successfully (for the most part) avoided the subject of “jet propelled.” I’m still going to leave the title as such, because most people will not be interested in the other stuff I’ve talked about.
If you’ve gotten this far, thanks for reading. May all (or most) of your dreams come true.
I’m taking a ten-week online course about awakening to consciousness. One of the teachers in the course made some statements in a video about money and happiness that irritated me to the bone.
The teacher said, in effect, that the pursuit of happiness and money in our culture is the cause of many of the problems we are experiencing today. He also said our pursuit of happiness and money doesn’t work, and that we are undergoing a “paradigm shift in consciousness,” presumably to something better. He went on to indicate that the pursuit of happiness is not one of our primary drives. He said it is something that our culture has conditioned us to do. I thought my earbuds had malfunctioned when I heard this.
Because these statements are broad, they open the door to misinterpretation. I may have misunderstood what this fellow was saying, but the statements moved me to bring up a few points.
This teacher may be talking about the way we seek money and happiness, and there is a certain truth to this. But I also picked up from the discourse a bias against the acquisition of wealth and our traditional pursuits of pleasure.
It’s easy to get lost in the wilderness when we are breaking new ground.
While we can always do better, we have to use discretion in the ways that we effect change in ourselves and the world around us. Positive change is gradual. We don’t want to drive off a cliff and explode in a ball of flames. We want to be careful not to “throw the baby away with the bath water.”
We all need pleasure. We all need love. We all need happiness and, dare I say it, joy. We need them as much as food, shelter and clothing. And there is nothing wrong with having all of these things, not just marginally, but amply, in any pursuit, including awakening to consciousness.
I’m sure, at least in myself, that the search for happiness is my primary drive. The big “shift” came when my experiences as a young man taught me to look for happiness within myself first.
If I am happy and fulfilled within myself, then I will have something worthwhile to share with others. It may be that I can’t grasp and hold onto happiness, but I can surely point myself in the direction of experiencing more feelings of joy, peace, and love which, in my book, are foundational to well-being.
This teacher also makes a point that money does not provide security, peace of mind, or happiness. While it is true that money alone cannot provide these things, I am certain that a solid financial base contributes substantially to our individual and collective health and well-being. Not having enough money is a distraction. If I have to constantly worry about where my next meal is coming from, or the roof over my head, or having enough clothing to wear, there will be little or no time left for achieving anything besides survival goals.
And the sad truth is that most people in this world today are financially vulnerable to the point of distraction. With the added burdens of the pandemic, our survival needs are more than a distraction. We are faced with the threat of severe illness and death every day. Life was hard enough before the pandemic hit. It’s nearly impossible for many of us now.
However, if we take the pandemic out of the picture, and, at the risk of sounding unsympathetic, our economic problems don’t stem from our democratic government, our culture, or any other external factors. As Shakespeare’s Cassius said, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
We have the freedom to choose what we do with our lives. If our opportunities for economic advancement are limited, we have the power to change those conditions.
We all have resistances in our bodies and minds to the realization of personal happiness. With the application of intelligent free will, we can overcome these barriers.
Having enough money is a blessing. It is a resource that enables us to feed and protect our families, to have a semblance of peace of mind, to achieve higher goals, and to help others.
I’ve managed my life so that I am free to pursue higher evolutionary goals. I am not a slave to anybody or anything. I am relatively free. I’m certainly not free in the sense that the Buddha was free. But I’m free enough to operate in the way that I want to operate. If I screw up, it’s on me.
I’ve seen too many broke and unhappy “spiritual seekers.” They use their quest as a haven from their failures in life. It’s an easy trap to fall into. It’s a cop-out.
Whether or not we are actively pursuing an awakening to consciousness, there is nothing wrong with striving for happiness. Happiness is a choice and an attitude. It doesn’t fall down from the sky into our lap. It’s a constant learning process. It can be extremely tricky. It can be very simple. It requires discretion. It can be a struggle. There is only one obstacle that can prevent you from realizing our vision of happiness. That obstacle is us.
If we are on any consciously intentional path to awakening, there is nothing wrong with striving to attain financial security. We only have to know how to use money for our own betterment, and the betterment of mankind.
There is nothing to hold us back from achieving our goals besides the worn out saying that goes: “You can’t have your cake and eat it.”
You can.
Flowing through my heart
the sounds of life everlasting
Pieces of Truth
I am unaware of
The thief steals my joy
and I am alone
to face the stars
and the consequences of my life
Why does this happen
in crazy spirals
over and over?
Things could be so much easier
if I would only let them be
Where are you Radiant Flower?
I ask my heart for the answers
and they do not come
Then, without notice,
the answers come in torrents
like waves crashing on the shore
Later, I am alone again
without the armor of love to protect me
And then, I remember
The Radiant Flower blooms
when I want it to
with every cell of my being
And then, to my surprise,
I see the Radiant Flower has bloomed
once again
I am constantly amazed that people wander around all day staring into their smart phones, as if these devices somehow magically fulfill all of their needs except possibly eating and procreating.
Before we continue, let me assure you of a few things, gentle reader. Despite a lack of addiction to my iPhone, I am fairly certain that I am not an alien. I do not live in an ashram. I have not recently arrived here from the year 1910 by time machine. I live a conventional life blessed with wonderful people around me including an extraordinary wife and daughter. I even liked my mother-in-law, may she rest in peace, which is the only thing that makes me unusual. Come to think of it, I also read paper back books regularly, which also makes me odd.
Like most people, I want to connect. Personally, I am content with fewer connections than most people I observe. At the same time, I admire people who can connect extensively with others while managing to live constructive lives focused on a positive purpose. (I’m not entirely sure people like this exist in large numbers these days, especially with respect to common sense coronavirus safety precautions).
I am sure, however, that a great deal of “over-connecting” is going on these days in a frantic effort to fill a space in the makeup of a human being that was designed to be filled from within.
Studies have shown that the generations born after the Internet boom have difficulty concentrating on a single task for extended periods of time. For example, today’s student typically has trouble writing papers and reading course materials with a high degree of comprehension. The studies attribute the difficulty young people have concentrating to the habit of constant multi-tasking encouraged by the endless flow of entertainment and information available on the Internet and social media interaction.
Where does all of this “outer-connecting” and constant external focus leave us? Unfortunately, IMO, a little empty inside. Perhaps lonely too.
I believe we have to spend more time connecting with ourselves. More specifically, we have to connect with a place inside that is an oasis of peace, harmony, and love.
I’m fortunate to have found that place inside. It is better described as an option to go within to experience a feeling of peace and completeness. It’s something I discovered more than thirty years ago. This feeling has stayed with me through changes, ups and downs, good and bad, and a shift into a new and different spiritual community. It’s not usually a strong feeling. It’s often subtle. But it’s there.
I balance my active outer life with a serene, fulfilling inner life. This balance has helped me to be happier, more productive, and more positive. You might say what I do on the outside has more meaning and is more effective because of the peace and harmony I have found within. It’s not an idea. It’s not a thought. It has nothing to do with my mind. It’s a real experience of peace and fulfillment emanating from my heart. (I’m speaking in ideal terms here to make a point. As my dear departed mother used to say; “Some days are diamonds and some days are gold.” Mom had a great attitude. I have to add: And other days are, well…fill in the blank). Moving on…
Peace begins in the heart, as does love, joy, compassion, and hope. We have the choice to make these feelings a bedrock of our lives. Or, we can continue to pollute the garden of our hearts by planting the weeds of hatred, cynicism, and despair. It takes a conscious effort to cultivate either one. Which choice will you make?
