I have some very unfortunate and embarrassing news to share with you all today. This morning, I opened up the laptop, excited to begin work on the post I’ve been waiting to write for weeks...the Steemit post to launch my new book. I searched Amazon for the links to the paperback and Kindle versions to embed into the post and I couldn’t find my book! I started to panic.

I've discovered before that Amazon can be a little buggy sometimes, so I logged unto Amazon Author Central to see if I could get to the bottom of it. There I discovered Amazon had taken the book offline for the next five days! With today being Sunday Amazon’s Customer Support department is unavailable. Quite honestly I felt potent mix of anger and devastation.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation - we are challenged to change ourselves.” - Viktor E. Frankl

The book designer and I were having a glitch with the Kindle version of the book not displaying properly so my best guess is Amazon made the whole listing unavailable while they figure out what the issue was. It was then that I took a breath, re-calibrated my attitude and had no choice but to accept the situation or spend my the rest of my birthday sulking. I chose acceptance.

I'm very sorry for the delay. As a bonus for your patience, I’m going to post excerpts from the first two chapters throughout the coming week. I’m also going to let you know that the new tentative date for the book launch will be a week from now on Sunday, June 25th. I’ll communicate updates as they become available.

In this life we never know when the lessons are going to be presented to us. Today, I was given another lesson in patience. But you know what? The sun is still shining, it's still my birthday, and life is really good. Enjoy the day, Steemians.

Chapter One

Meditation is Liberation

You may have been drawn to meditation for a variety of reasons: to reduce stress; to heal from anxiety or depression; increase productivity; or just create a better life for yourself. The beauty of meditation is even if you begin your practice for a specific reason you will quickly start to experience unforeseen benefits in all areas of your life. What I’ve learned is meditation has the uncanny ability of seeking out exactly what is broken or unbalanced within you and fixing it. This allows you to become the best version of yourself, the greatest gift you could give the world.

The series of events that led me to meditation began when I was in my early twenties. My diet was bad, I wasn’t exercising, and I was making poor life choices until eventually, a terrible depression set in. I was going to college at that time and ended up dropping out rather than subject myself to the embarrassment of panic attacks during presentations or class discussions. The panic attacks grew to be so random and so severe that I eventually stopped socializing and became afraid to leave the house. This crippling limitation that appeared to come into my life so suddenly baffled and angered me.

In hindsight I understand that anxiety and depression actually took root in my psyche over several years. Each time I backed away from a fear and didn’t stand up to it the fear got a little worse and gained a little more power over me until the point it had full control.

One summer night, in the middle of a deep sleep, I had an experience that forever changed my life. At the time the extraordinary experience left me with more questions than it did answers. Over twenty years later I’m just beginning to understand it. Although I’m not ready to share the full details of this experience yet I can say that I’m sure it was the catalyst that led me to this spiritual path.

It was terrifyingly transformative, consciousness-expanding, and in hindsight very sacred. Afterwords, I developed an intense curiosity for all things spiritual and an unwavering desire to fight against anything that was holding me back from living my best life.

In the following months I spent countless hours reading self help books, some of which were slightly beneficial but only provided a temporary fix. After a few months of searching I was drawn to a small book on meditation in a local bookstore and it changed my life. I developed a regular meditation practice and stuck to it faithfully every day, even if it was only fifteen minutes.

Soon and idea came to me. I began to desensitize myself to the panic attacks by purposely putting myself into situations that I feared would trigger the anxiety and panic. Each time I did this I became stronger and the anxiety and panic attacks became less severe until they eventually subsided and I started to get my life back.

What I quickly learned is meditation is the best way to liberate you from whatever barriers are keeping you from being the absolute best version of yourself. We have simply forgotten how awesomely powerful we really are. Through the gift of imagination and the intelligence to bring our ideas to fruition, there is literally nothing in this world that we can’t accomplish. Ask yourself, what would you attempt in life if you knew, in your heart, that you could accomplish anything? How would you live each day of the rest of your life if you had no fear of failure?

More to Come Soon...

Please join me here next Sunday, June 25th for the book launch (fingers are crossed.)

Did you miss the first post about my book launch? If so, you can Click Here to read it.

*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.