Tag: Messenger

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Forgiveness, Trust and YouTube

I hired this amazing video guy and last week we shot a really cool YouTube video promo for my book. He did a great job, I think. It’s fun, it’s atmospheric, and at the end it says ‘Available wherever books are sold’ and then lists my website, www.unlikelymessenger.com.

Beautiful. The only problem is, the book isn’t available wherever books are sold. In fact, it isn’t yet available, period.

And that website address isn’t even live yet, either. Oops.

But I wasn’t worried, because I figured I’d hold the video for a bit and release it when all systems were go. (Hopefully within another week or 2 the book will be available for preorder on Amazon, and the website will be up as well.)

But the video guy uploaded it to YouTube without telling me. And I found out because I saw it splashed across my Facebook page. And my Twitter page.

Then he needed to tweak the file format for best viewability. So he kept uploading new versions of the video – and Twitter and Facebook kept breathlessly notifying everybody about each one. So people kept going up there to view it.

The first video got 66 hits within just a couple of hours. Then the 2nd video got 29. Then the 3rd and 4th got a few each.

Then he put up a 5th video. And deleted videos 1 through 4, losing me over 100 page hits and some 5 star ratings in the process, and leaving a boneyard of broken links all over Twitter and Facebook.

So it was kind of exciting but mostly horrifying to watch this slow motion WTF train wreck taking place.

But I’ll tell you what, it was a prime forgiveness opportunity.

I’ve been practicing A Course in Miracles for a few years now, so usually a forgiveness situation like this is a no-brainer: Side with the person and not the circumstance. The Course says the person is in Oneness with God; eternally perfect and entirely innocent of whatever crime I think he’s committed. And the circumstance is nothing more than an imaginary fever dream.

All I know is, I feel deeply peaceful whenever I side with the holy innocence of the person. And I feel like hell whenever I don’t. So that’s why I’m usually so diligent about practicing forgiveness and overlooking the imaginary circumstances. I prefer to feel good.

Except here’s the thing: As you know, if you’ve been following this saga from the start, back in 2006 I was informed by Spirit that I was going to write books. Becoming an author was just about the furthest thing from my mind at that point, believe me.

But eventually I embraced the job offer, and have been engaged in this Blues Brothers-esque ‘Mission From God’ ever since.

So there’s a certain expectation of a little Heavenly help, here. And that YouTube debacle didn’t exactly qualify as helpful. So when I sat down to apply forgiveness to the video guy, I found I couldn’t get past the pointless mess created around the video’s release.

I had to stop right there and remind myself that I really have no friggin’ idea of what’s the best way to help my book find its audience. Or anything else, for that matter. I’m still caught up in the fever dream; how the hell do I know if 100 hits and some positive reviews make any difference at all to the effectiveness of that promo video? Or whether that video will make any difference to the success of the book?

So last night I just surrendered the whole thing to Spirit, and trusted that everything has been happening exactly as it’s meant to be. I had no other options, really.

And in the resulting ocean of peace that washed over me, I was able to connect with the divine Oneness of the video guy’s true nature and forget that whole Twitter/Facebook/YouTube mess.

And I discovered in the process that the video guy is holy, magnificent, radiant and totally perfect exactly as he is.

And I’m good with that.

POSTSCRIPT

This morning Video Guy informed me he could restore all my page hits and 5 star ratings to the remaining 5th version of the video. So I’m back up to 115 views, a half dozen 5 star ratings, and no lasting damage done.

I love it when I learn important lessons and it all works out happily ever after. Don’t you?

(to view the 5th and final version of the video in question, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3saOMax3xM )

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Coming out of the spiritual closet

I hear a Voice. That’s about it, really.

I didn’t always; the first time I heard that Voice was when my best friend Johnny opened his Buddhist altar to show me what was inside. As those altar doors swung wide, visible waves of sparkly, effervescent joy tumbled out to greet me, followed by a crystal clear Voice that spoke out loud inside my head.

And the Voice said:

LONG TIME NO SEE.

Okaaay. I was a dark and snarky 27 year-old club kid at the time, but that Voice was hard to ignore, so I let it lead me on a breathtaking journey of spiritual discovery that continues to this day.

But unexpected as it was at the time, the arrival of that Voice was not my first brush with Crazy. As a child I was tormented nightly by light-filled ghosts. And I never could predict when time might stutter or stop without warning, or when spatial blips might cause buildings or whole city blocks to appear or disappear at will. I never really doubted my own sanity; the likelier explanation was just that the universe hated me.

Although my brain sometimes seemed to work differently from the brains of others, I just thought it meant I was weird. Or spacey. Or maybe low blood sugar-y.

I never possessed the understanding or the vocabulary until very recently to call these things what they were: Visions. Trances. Out of body experiences. And nobody was more surprised than me to realize, decades after the fact, that those light-filled ghosts weren’t ghosts at all. And they most definitely did not hate me.

I was always deeply ashamed and afraid of my weirdness. My differentness. But now at this advanced stage of life I say: Screw it. This is what I am. This is what I do. I get messages from Spirit, and I pass them on. So this is me, giving notice that I’m officially out of the spiritual closet.

My book (besides being the story of how all this came to be) is filled with messages from Spirit, and you’re welcome to ‘em. And I’ll keep passing those messages along as I receive them, for anyone who’s interested.

To paraphrase Deepak: I’ll just be singing in the shower. Y’all are welcome to listen at the door if you choose.

Just don’t peek in the keyhole. That would be creepy.