Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Doing Everything Right and Not Getting the Promised Reward

Don’t you just love it when you do everything right and still don’t get the promised reward? In my case, with my novels for example, I write a wonderful query letter – agents and my fellow writers saying it’s quite good, and get 38 rejections and 20 no responses. [Perhaps one of those no responses will come through…ya think?] Or with my volunteer activities, I’m ‘active’ with two well-known, respected organizations, do all I’m supposed to do and again, nothing much happens [Maybe something will happen soon, in its own ‘good time’].

Or with social networking, again, I do all I’m supposed to, respond quickly, post, follow etiquette and again, nothing much happens [Here, too, maybe something will happen soon, in its own ‘good time’]. Really keeps you going, doesn’t it; its soo motivational? Who’s to blame – me for not wanting it badly enough or not trying harder, the ‘system’ for being a lie, or a combination of the two? Or, perhaps it’s supposed to be as it is, that I’m not ‘meant’ to have what I want. Or, there’s something to be learned and I’m missing it.

What should I do in these situations? Redouble my efforts, try harder? Join the Tea Party? Write a letter to the editor, or better yet, write a blog like this one? Keep on keeping on and allow things to unfold in their own good time? Get my bloated nothingness out of the way of the divine circuits? Remember that if I always do what I always did, I’ll always get what I always got?

Yesterday, my wife and I went to a new gourmet hamburger place giving free burgers. As you might imagine, the line to order was long, it took 25 minutes to get to the cash register. But, hey free Kobe steak burgers, regularly $8.50 apiece. If I was ever gonna try one, it was then, the price was right. We waited another hour, resisting the urge to go to the waitresses or cash register. Finally, after everyone around us, all of whom had come in long after us, got their orders, I politely talked to two waitresses and asked for our money back [we purchased a drink, onion rings and their special zucchini fries]. After another wait, the manager told us our order was ‘lost’ and gave us our money back, but we really wanted to eat there. We ended up at Burger King.

Last night, at 2:50 AM, I was still beating myself up for waiting so long. Do I wait too, long in general? Is there a pattern there? Clearly, no amount of waiting, wishing and hoping was gonna make our burgers appear. Was I ‘wrong’ to wait so long? Am I ‘wrong’ for waiting so long with the other things I’m not getting? Yes and no. If all I’m doing is ‘waiting’, then, yes, waiting is ‘wrong.’ But if I’m doing other things, being guided to other things while I’m waiting, such as learning to draw [something I’ve always wanted to do], then no, it’s not wrong to wait and in fact, its not really ‘waiting.’
Plus, while we were waiting yesterday, my wife and I were pretty mellow, chatted nicely and didn’t get too upset, angry or blaming. We were very disappointed, but not pissed off.

This incident also reinforced another aspect of my spiritual growth work and that is learning to trust my intuition. After waiting peacefully, in a centered place, I could have known that my urge to check with the waitress or manager was intuitive, not anger. I didn’t know that, but will next time. Learning the difference between ego driven emotions and spiritual guidance in the form of intuition is worth the wait.

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