I attended a “writers workshop” this weekend, one I had been looking forward to for a long time. It was a gift from a friend, as I would not have been capable of paying the five hundred dollar entrance fee, and thus it was a doubly large opportunity.
This was not a workshop to teach writing, but rather a weekend in which “a small to medium size” publishing house, specializing in spirituality and new age books, was to provide a fairly large group of writers with access to a publisher and two editors.
In the first two hours of their presentation, the publisher demystified what every one in the room was hoping the opportunity would allow them to become – “The Best Selling Author”.
Here is the thing about that…
It seems that a bestselling author is someone who sells between 3 and 5 thousand copies of their book a year, at the remuneration rate of $1.50 per book. (As you can see the very first thing we learned is not to give up our day job.)
A New York Times - Bestselling Author, is someone who has sold those same 3 to 5 thousand copies of their book in a somewhat more compressed time frame. (The publisher did say there was some sort of proprietary information that was used by the New York Times, to determine which among the 3 to 5 thousand selling writers would make their list and thus be given the mantle of New York Times Bestselling Author, even so, becoming one was a matter of 3 to 5 thousand copies sold per X time frame.) Tell me… that does not surprise you….
As an aside, the authors that we are all really familiar with and hold in our imaginations when we think of the term “bestselling author”, among them, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, Richard Bach, these are as the publisher said the ”1 percent of 1 percent”. In other words, the potential that someone in our group of a hundred or so budding authors who were attending the conference, might actually become that next 1 percent of 1 percent, is so small, as to be practically statistically impossible.
The publishers positioned themselves as being a “partner” to the writer in the process of bringing a book to market. Of course the word partner almost implicitly implies a 50/50 relationship, and the publisher went on to demystify that as well, by describing a relationship in which we, the writers, would both write the book and be responsible for somewhere near 60 percent of the sales of the book.
They emphasized in great detail, the necessity of the writer possessing what they called “a platform”. This is the writer’s dedication to, and capacity for, garnering the attention of others. Things like… where do you speak? How many people are on your face book friends’ list? How many times have you been interviewed by local media? How committed are you about getting the word out, regarding your book and its benefits? And a great deal more along those lines.
In addition to this demystifying process they also went over, very thoroughly, the submission guidelines found on their web page for the ins and outs of properly getting your work in front of them.
It would not be very hard to imagine that there were a significant number of people in the room, who were very disappointed to discover that the “dream”, was a 1 percent of a 1 percent proposition. Moreover that the Dream Merchants were not the source of the realization of that dream, which was no doubt a large part of the draw for folk who traveled from many other states to attend this weekend workshop.
On that first night there was a good deal of surprise, followed the next morning by some sharp responses from the crowd. For instance one young man stood up and said, “Well, if we do all the writing and most of the selling of the book…what do we need you for?” A sentiment that was shared by a good many in the room, I suspect.
There were three primary centers of influence in the room. The publisher/editors, the conference coordinator – who also books speakers for a large spiritual conference held each year – in several locations around the country, and my friend who owns a large school here in the valley.
Because I was seated at the front of the room, I had a front-row-center view of all the influential folk who were imagined – by the writers – to be capable of helping the attendees to realize their dreams.
And so I bore witness to a fairly steady flow of…”I am special, what I do is important, can you help me to find public agreement and succeed at being special and important?”
I know that the above statement sounds unflattering. I am sure such a raw examination of the process is one that may seem jaundiced and critical, please attempt to accept my sincerity, when I tell you that it is neither jaundiced nor critical, but rather, just plain old garden variety realistic.
The Dream Merchants, like dream merchants in every other field of human endeavor from acting, to race car driving, are all sincere and kind folk who are looking to serve others in the pursuit of their “dreams”. In the field of New Age/Spirituality, it is highly likely that everyone there, with the exception of myself, wants to save and/or heal the planet. (I find the planet to not be in need of my ministrations, not that I would not hug trees if I were called to do so…but rather that I can find no fault amongst the things that exist, not because I favor them necessarily… but simply because already existing, makes denying or arguing against them a fool hardy pursuit).
Being alone among so many is a unique perspective, and allows for a type of understanding that might not be available to others who are deeply, even passionately engaged.
To describe just how alone, among many I was, if I were to present myself to the “centers of influence” I would more likely say…”I am not special, what I do does not matter, and can you help me rid myself of the last vestigial effects of a conditioned mind, and the self it gave birth to?”
Now, it might be likely that you have a strong reaction to the statements I just made, and if you were an aspiring new age or spiritual author you might well want to pray over me, or put a crystal upon my brow, or lay hands upon me, or any number of other processes designed to heal me from my low self image.
And in doing so, you would miss the much deeper truth that I am trying to point at. When someone is suffering, and I do mean suffering, from low self-esteem… that condition expresses itself in one of two ways. They either sink to the earth in tears and the rending of clothing, (metaphorically speaking), or they blast you backward with their excessive amount of charm, flattery, and seeming high self-regard.
For instance the publisher brought to the stage an author on the verge of being published and defined this author as a “hustler”… (which in spiritual circles deserves some examination, in and of itself, but we will leave that for another time), the moment she appeared – having long ago stopped seeing peoples exteriors – what I saw was a kind of over wrought and unconscious high energy need, to be approved of, applauded, and acknowledged. Her zeal was undeniable, her commitment was equally undeniable, but her depth was slim and her reach only momentary.
It is only when you can operate from the whole truth, or from both sides, or from the deep center that your reach has the capacity to change more than the surface chatter, that the mind is so capable of producing.
I would say that a good deal of the folk that were in that room, including one of the presenters and the soon to be published author, are so driven, precisely because, they cannot touch the place inside themselves that deeply fears that “I am not special, what I do does not matter, and can you help me rid myself of the burden of a conditioned mind, and the subsequently inauthentic self it has given birth to?”
I look back over the course of my many years of spiritual dedication and I find without fail, that the Teachers, writers, and healers that I have been drawn to were the ones that could help me move, however slowly on my part, toward embracing my fear that I was not special, nothing I did mattered, and who could help me to embrace the death of the self, that is so necessary to live a liberated Life.
Each Teacher in their turn was more powerfully capable than the last, of seeing themselves both as the shining one, and as the dark and hungry one. It is in this synthesis of the opposites, this willingness to see the deeply unconscious fear of not being special or important, that finally gives rise to the Impersonal self, which is more than special and a great deal more than merely important.
Of course, my Beloved Teacher, was the deepest well from which I drank, in all the years when I could not face my own hunger by myself.
In this weekend’s workshop, I sat quietly in that large room and was deeply and compassionately aware, that the vast majority of people on both sides of the influence division were there because they cannot embrace the dark one, the hungry one, and the fearful one.
It is strange for me now, having come such a distance from the belief that anything outside me can save me or resolve what only I can resolve, into a place where so many, are searching for so much.
Mostly it did not arouse me, mostly I was quiet within and unmoving…only twice, did I find myself off the rails and in the weeds.
On Friday night or perhaps Saturday morning when the “how to” became the central focus, I could feel myself winding up and having the potential to get lost. The communication about the one, two, three, of how things work was so clear and so without compromise that like a virus or a contagion, I had to gird my loins, as the Bible says, to protect me from sliding backward, into the notion that we as humans know how the world works, and how to make all things happen.
Don’t get me wrong, it is not that I disbelieve the shakers and movers when they say they know how to get it done. Of course they do, look around us, it would be stupid of me to say that things cannot be accomplished in the 1234-step process of “How It All Works” … and I am not a stupid woman.
It is not that I disagree that you can accomplish a great deal following that model, it is rather that I posit the theory that you will not end up where you wanted to go, and so much more importantly, that peace will not end up being the result of the accomplishment you produce.
Here is the flaw, as I see it, in the 1234 linear model of “how things work”; at birth we woke up, in a particular – family/place/time –and by observation and imitation, we acquired a viewpoint that was fixed, solid, and entirely unreal. We began to live from that viewpoint until it became a fixed habit of mind, that fixed habit of mind has a very particular type of blindness, and weakness, and neediness. Out of that blindness, weakness, and neediness we formed what we began to believe were our life goals or purpose, and out of that, we chose actions and the infamous 1234 plan of bringing those goals to fruition.
If you are strong, capable, committed, talented, and willful, a good number of your lifes goals have been accomplished…and then, you are either severely conscious of how much it didn’t match what you were hoping for on the inside, as was the case with me, or you were merely mildly dissatisfied and deeply unconscious of the dissidence between what you imagine and what you received, and therefore you are most likely to have picked a new goal with new objectives to pursue, and carried on “manifesting”. (By the way this is a very bumpy ride and creates a great deal of karmic load, that must be resolved at some point in the future, it is not unlike a child insisting that he gets his way, despite the fact that it puts his well-being in severe and dangerous peril.)
Contrast that with this model.
Consider that there are only two really important experiences to have in our lives, the end of fear and the resurrection of trust. The first requires that we move with total dedication toward what we don’t like, don’t want, are afraid of, and cannot even imagine surviving. As we do this our courage grows – courage from the Latin “cour” meaning to live who you are with your whole heart – the second, trust, which is born of the first.
Now let us say that we have a working familiarity with fearlessness and trust, now we merely sit quietly within the Impersonal self and wait for the action that suits the moment to arise of itself. We cannot have, nor do we need, a plan, a goal, a purpose, a mission, and have long ago resolved the motivations of desire, (which this weekend allowed me to know is not entirely gone from my life).
We come to be aware that, “I of myself can do nothing”…further we allow that what is waiting for us to mature, so that we may be of some use can then move through us unimpeded, and free of the need for a specific outcome, or a certain type of recognition or validation.
This method of bringing things to fruition resolves karma, rather than building up additional debt…and more, it ends emotional hunger, psychological longing, and fruitless striving, along with the utter futility of ending up somewhere that does not and cannot match our internal need for deep connection. The Bible said it best a millennia ago, Matthew 16:26 “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Here is the thing that causes the first rub.
You may not be the one destined for greatness, you may be the one destined to toil quietly in the dark.
So far in my life, I am most definitely the one toiling quietly in the dark.
I once asked my Teacher, before I had resolved resistance in my life, which I haven’t experienced for a good long while now, what the difference was between resignation and acceptance. (You could boil everything he ever taught me, or anyone else, down to that one word…Acceptance, so this was a fairly large question on my part.)
Without a moment’s hesitation he said, ”Acceptance is the capacity to find the beauty and the value in whatever life event we are facing”, and of course that means that resignation is merely the negative, or static form of passive resistance.
The beauty and the value…
I am obese, nearly penniless, aging, without influence of any kind, and almost always alone. I can’t imagine anyone in our world of the best, and the brightest, and the first, experiencing the type of subtle envy that would create for me a fan base, like the one that the publisher described as necessary for selling a spiritual book.
And yet, for every one of those seemingly negative aspects of my life, I could define for you great beauty and great value.
Given the model that was laid out for a book proposal submission, and the requirement of having to be about the business of creating fans, I will not be sending in a book proposal. And that aroused the second ripple that I had the opportunity to work through for myself.
I experienced some measure of sadness or loss around the notion that I will, in all likelihood, not become a traditionally published author…and certainly not the 1 percent of the 1 percent. But you would be wrong in assuming that the loss and sadness I felt was due to being disabused of that illusion. I value greatly being disabused of my illusions, rather, what caused the sensation of loss and sadness was the recognition that there are still remnants of a self who wants and desires.
So late Sunday after the conference was over I found myself in tears, and with a prayer on my lips, (something I rarely do, as I have stopped seeking change that I will imagine will create happiness and change is fundamentally the reason for praying), what I wanted, was some form of help to take me deeper into stripping me free of the self I once imagined me to be.
I miss the power and impact of having the Impersonal Self embodied in another, with whom I can sit and rest. I miss feeling the quiet strength of Emptiness flowing freely and without reservation, toward anyone and everyone who is willing to give up seeking. I miss the wisdom that issues forth from someone who does not need or seek approval or validation. I miss the strength of someone who can say yes to anything and everything that Life presents, without hesitation, argument, or even the slightest shred of disharmony. I miss the Love that has no sentiment, and thus can and does, have the will to shake you free if you have the courage to face your fears.
But that time in my life is over – my Teacher is gone, if not in body then in mind, and more, I no longer need him – that said, I do sometimes miss him.
So I suppose one could guestimate that I received as much as anyone who attended the workshop, but as always, it came not from the external realms where I might have snagged someone else’s attention and support, but rather from the internal realms where I once again recognized that my life, and wealth, and success, and value is measured not by the visible outcomes…but by the invisible capacity to earn for myself the hard truth, the whole truth, the non-dual truth.
As for writing, I do that already and I will always do that, as for publishing I do that already as well, as for earning an income from my work … that remains to be seen, and is, I suspect, not mine to decide. For myself, I will not seek fans, or build a “buzz”, or network, or search for admirers, as all of that runs counter to my message.
My life is a commitment to the inner, the events that populate my external life are drawn to me by the Will of Something larger than myself, and I yield to that…and in the yielding, find for myself a home, a haven, a small measure of sanity in an otherwise insane world.
I suppose the best possible outcome, is that my words and your intention meet somewhere beyond time and distance and support us both, in some small measure, in turning within and discovering the sanctuary that is without limitation, without bounds, and without the need for any form of external support.
It can after all, be said in just one word…
Acceptance.
9/20/11
Post Script: Something about this essay does not sit well with me I cannot find the location of the dissidence I feel surrounding it. So I am left with a quandary, do I delete it and not include you? Or do I send it and trust that even though I find something amiss that you might benefit, even so?
I had a conversation yesterday with my Christian friend and in attempting to describe the value of being disabused of the illusion that I will be able to make a living writing, he commented something along the lines of “so you have given up wanting to be a guru?”
Because he believes so strongly in the story of the Holy Trinity and Jesus as the only son of God, my exploration of other veins of thought has got to be unnerving, for him, if not downright heresy. But in his question he it a nerve and I suspect, that nerve is buried somewhere in this essay. My path has led me from the story of traditional Christianity, into New Age circles, and through that, into the non-dual teachings of the Ageless Wisdom Traditions, of which, my Teacher was a Master.
I am prepared now, finally and hopefully, to dissolve the last stronghold of the conditioned mind upon my life and its direction. The end of desire – a true end to it – is a frightening place. Where will it take me, and how will I survive without it? I hope to discover that answer, and to report it back to you…
9/21/11
Adayre R. Miller
Photo courtes of flickr photo sharing and “the trial” if you wish to see more of this artist’s work please follow this link www.flickr.com/photos/thetrial/1241596127/
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