So I haven’t been all that faithful in keeping everyone up to date on what’s happening re the little “Spirit teaches a simples seeker” books, but here I go, after a long delay.
Spirit teaches a simple seeker – Letting Go – Here and now
“Letting Go” was published in late December 2024. It was a struggle to get it out there before the end of the year. Why did it matter? It was an ego trip by me. If it had a 2023 publishing date to it, it would be eligible to be represented at the “Celebration of SFU Authors” in the Spring of this year, 2024. We barely made it through and I’ll never, ever again wait until late in the year to get the publishing process started. What a stress. And all because I seemed to need to wait until Balboa, the publisher of choice, had a publishing sale. It would be so much easier if money was more available, and yet, perhaps most authors struggle with limited (if any at all) money to spare from their survival needs’ budget.
Enough complaints from my personal perspective.
“Letting Go” is a self-help book based on my own life-long lived experiences of struggle to hold on to relationships that no longer, if they ever did, served me well. Spirit, my inner teacher (or is He an emergence from the collective unconscious?) seems to put Simple Seeker through the grinder by helping her to understand that she is the primary cause of her own relationship problems. I need to learn to relax and accept that any mental stress is a warning sign of built-up tensions, and that tensions can be relaxed by simply accepting them as they seem to be. Everything and everyone is in relationship to everything and everyone else, and yet some relationships need to be seen for what they are, without any attempt to change them. Abuse is abuse. Why pretend that it isn’t. And, what to do about it? Accept it for what it seems to be, and step away from it. I always seem to have responded with denial, pretending that it wasn’t intended as abuse, until it became increasingly abusive enough to require me to accept that it must be intended. Even then, why would anyone be intentionally abusive? It provides a temporary sense of power over someone else. And, misery loves company. After all, if you’re in an angry mood, who needs to see a happy camper nearby?
Anyway, the long and the short of the message of Letting Go is not to try to let go of the relationship, but of the tension that it seems to cause. People may not exit your life simply because you stop letting them get to you. We can let go of the stress they cause us, which we actually cause ourselves, by letting it get to us. We can refuse to be pulled into a stressful discussion, or, as a comedian might say, “Exit stage right.” Walk away.
Spirit serves as a holistic therapist to a simple seeker – me. Perhaps readers will relate to some, many, or none of the short sessions in Letting Go. Whether or not you do, is of less importance, at least to me, than if you enjoy the confrontations between this simple seeker and an unseen voice of authority in my life.
Love,
Jean Whitred
(a simple seeker)
Simple Seekers 