Fearless Books & Literary Services

10/21/2024

Congratulations to the latest graduate of the Fearless Assisted Publishing program, fitness trainer and cancer fighter Carly Fauth, on today's official launch of PRAY FOR THE BEAR: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Unlocking Extraordinary Personal Strength. I coached Carly on launching an advance sale for the book, and she drew 300+ orders, putting this indie project well into the black before the first copies were even printed. You can read Carly's Prologue and order the book in both print and digital at the link below.

"If you see me in a fight with a bear, pray for the bear." -- Kobe Bryant

https://www.fearlessbooks.com/PrayBear.htm

09/24/2024

Congratulations to Fearless Literary author Vishali Shahin on the release of her book HOW TO CHOOSE PEACE: One Step at a Time. Drawing from her personal journey from constant rage to spiritual mentoring, Vishali Shahin shares down-to-earth, practical tools to foster serenity and choose the voice of peace, even if it is just one second at a time. She breaks down complex psychological concepts into engaging, everyday language and offers real-world strategies for integration.

You’ll learn an entirely new mantra — “So What!” — designed to combat perfectionism and self-criticism. This book’s blend of insightful anecdotes and doable exercises will fundamentally transform how you interact with the world — ensuring peace is not just a concept, but a daily choice.

At the link you can read an excerpt and choose your ordering link from a variety of print and digital platforms.

*For today only (August 24) the print edition is available for $4.99 from Amazon*

https://www.fearlessbooks.com/ChoosePeace.htm

09/06/2024

I'm honored to have assisted the publication of all three of Kevin Fisher-Paulson's books: A SONG FOR LOST ANGELS: How Daddy and Papa Fought to Save Their Family; HOW WE KEEP SPINNING...!; and SECRETS OF THE BLUE BUNGALOW.

Kevin's first title, SONG, was actually released under the Fearless Books imprint, and I released the 2nd Edition to Kevin's own Three Penny Press. Thereafter we collaborated on the two collections of SF Chronicle columns that followed.

The easiest way to buy any or all of Kevin's books is from Bookshop.org. I do not retain a royalty interest so all sales will benefit Kevin's family.

https://bookshop.org/search?keywords=Kevin+Fisher-Paulson

09/04/2024

To celebrate the return of 'Beetlejuice' in this annual season of ghostliness, here's a meditation on the eternal popularity of the undead. Hint: we have more in common with them than one might suspect....

an essay relating quantum physics and 'A Course in Miracles' to our experience of life, death, and reality

08/27/2024

About 20 years ago when I was a Senior Writer for Yoga Journal, I reviewed a book entitled WHAT REALLY MATTERS: Searching for Wisdom in America, by veteran feature writer Tony Schwartz. It was an entertaining if inconclusive tour of the human potential movement at the time, including encounters with Ram Dass, Ken Wilber, and Stanislav Grof, among others. Schwartz reported the benefits he experienced from studying the Enneagram, doing transformative exercises at Esalen, and so on. A lot of what he explored was old news to me, but it was fascinating to see a skeptical but reasonably open-minded mainstream reporter reveal his experiences in familiar territories.

As a review in Booklist noted at the time: "Schwartz, a reporter for the New York Times, has a nice wife, good kids, plenty of money. So why does he feel so bummed? In attempting to answer that question, the author set off on what turned out to be a four-year journey in search of the contemporary Holy Grail--peace of mind."

Another reason that Tony was so bummed was that he felt, even at that time, no little guilt about the money he'd made writing THE ART OF THE DEAL with Donald Trump. (In fact, that $250K financed his transformative trek.) I was so intrigued by this paradox that I called Tony to get some deep background on his book. He admitted over the phone that WHAT REALLY MATTERS was his way of "atoning" for the Trump book -- despite the fact that he felt he had earned every penny. That's because Trump proved to be an almost impossible interview subject, much less a helpful collaborator. Thus THE ART OF THE DEAL was largely the invention of a skilled freelance writer trying to make the best of a tough project.

In 2019, Tony was more explicit in an interview with CBS News, in which he said that THE ART OF THE DEAL was the biggest professional regret of his life -- and that his work on the project was a classic example of "selling out."

"'I knew this was a bad guy when I did the book,' Tony Schwartz told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Major Garrett for this week's episode of The Takeout podcast....

"'Trump is not only willing to lie, but he doesn't get bothered by it, doesn't feel guilty about it, isn't preoccupied by it,' Schwartz said. 'There's an emptiness inside Trump. There's an absence of a soul. There's an absence of a heart.'" (See https://tinyurl.com/5n6pcs67.)

I wondered back then if I would have succumbed to such a lucrative temptation (but one was never offered😕.) For better or worse, Tony's story led me to start thinking about Trump long before he came to embody the national shadow... leading to a poem I published in INSTRUCTIONS OF THE SPIRIT (signed copies still on sale at www.dpatrickmiller.com/Instructions.htm).

08/16/2024

GOP pollster Frank Luntz, who has recently wondered if Donald Trump is "trying to lose," zeroed in on the candidate's chief problem in his remarks to Kasie Hunt on CNN This Morning:

“If I were advising him, which I am not, I would look him straight in the eye and say, ‘Sir, you need to shut up. You need to stop behaving like a petulant child, and start focusing on what the American people want, in a way that they want to hear it.’”

But Trump can't shut up because he actually is a petulant child -- that is, his conscious personality is overrun by a young boy whose psyche was deeply wounded by the family patriarch, Fred Trump Sr. As Donald's psychologist niece Mary Trump has written, "By limiting Donald's access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son's perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it."

This is not an uncommon condition. It's well-known that inner child issues can run and ruin one's adult life, if not addressed in therapy or other forms of self-confrontation and healing. Instead of therapy or healing, Donald got wealth. And key to his success in politics is the neurotic American belief that wealth can fix everything -- or that wealth can enable you to get away with anything (i.e., "crime DOES pay").

Trump has ridden this neurotic wave of wealth-worshipping a long way, but it appears to be coming to an end. Sane Republicans with genuine political principles -- not just unconscious motivations -- are deserting him in droves, realizing that he never really stood for anything but his own internal pain, projected outward as bluster and hostility. If this country is lucky, enough voters will awaken from the dark neurotic dream they have shared with him to elect a new direction. If Donald is lucky, in his retirement he will find a wise and caring therapist who can help him distinguish his real Self from the petulant child within.

08/15/2024

Congratulations to Fearless Literary author Carly Fauth on the upcoming launch of PRAY FOR THE BEAR: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Unlocking Extraordinary Personal Strength. While we were working on her book cover I suggested to Carly that she might want to try a presale, and before I knew it she had sold her first 100 copies. (And all while doing chemo!) You can join the crowd at the link below. And here's Carly:

"I’m thrilled to announce that my book, "Pray for the Bear," is now available for presale! This November, you’ll be able to hold in your hands a powerful guide that blends my personal journey through breast cancer with inspirational short stories designed to help you unlock extraordinary strength in the face of life’s toughest challenges. I started writing this book during my first week of chemo and it was a way for me to make sense of all the thoughts in my head. It's a labor of love and I can't wait to share it with you."

Curious about what’s inside? Below is a sample chapter from "Pray for the Bear" to give you a glimpse into what awaits you:

08/10/2024

I've always thought of Donald Trump as the last, dying gasp of patriarchy -- a once-energetic cultural archetype that has run its course and is now bereft of virtue. In a sense, he is the best that a fading archetype has to offer: broken-down, self-hating and self-deceiving, projecting those energies out onto the world around him. So he cannot help but cheat, lie, and hate. It's not just Donald personally; he's flailing through the death of patriarchy itself. It's chilling that millions of people still gravitate toward these energies and unconsciously identify with them, but there's a whole lotta folks out there living without the benefit of ANY therapy 😎.

The good news is that a new archetypal energy is suddenly manifesting. It's not exactly or solely matriarchal. I'm fascinated by the balance of gender energies in the Harris-Salz ticket, with both of them showing a remarkable integration of their respective animus and anima energies. This is the energetic background of the joy that's arising from their campaign. It's not just a shift of the political winds, but a fresh breeze of inner psychic health.

That's a big surprise, and I think its positive effects on the election and the American mindset are only going to accelerate. The pundits are hooked on saying, "It's gonna be close!" (which keeps up their ratings, of course). But I think it might not be. If the joy carries through the Democratic convention, the ticket's rise in the polls may become unstoppable. By September, I wouldn't be surprised to see prominent Republican congressional candidates start backing away from the rapidly sinking ship of Trump. But if the GOP goes down with him, so be it. The party is definitely due for a rebirth of vision and values, because it's sadly lost both since identifying with Trump.

There is one value of patriarchy that's recently been expressed on the national psychic stage, however, and that's nobility in the face of irrepressible change. And we can thank Joe Biden for that.

08/07/2024

Congratulations to Fearless Literary author Meredith Heller on her feature story coverage in the PACIFIC SUN. Meredith is the author of two books represented by Fearless Literary and the Linda Chester Literary Agency: WRITE A POEM, SAVE YOUR LIFE! and WRITING BY HEART. This is what I call the "behind the scenes" work of world-saving!

Marin’s Meredith Heller & Ayya Santacitta In the open spaces of Marin County, two remarkable women are weaving their life’s work into the regional tapestry. Meredith Heller, celebrated poet and educator, and Ayya Santacitta, pioneering Buddhist nun and environmental advocate, embody a profound c...

08/05/2024

More thoughts on the paradox of happiness from "miracles of course"....

www.dpatrickmiller.com/OfCourse.htm
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“God's will for me is perfect happiness.”
— Workbook Lesson 101, A Course in Miracles

I’ve known perfect happiness once in my life, under the most paradoxical circumstances. About a year into my initial study of the Course, I was at the lowest point of a prolonged illness, where I would remain for some time. I was out of work, out of an intimate relationship, perpetually in pain from a vicious variety of bodily symptoms, and beset with the feeling of having failed at everything I’d attempted up to that point of my life.

I’d also undertaken this strange spiritual discipline that I had told relatively few people about, because I wasn’t sure it was something I should admit to anyone. This discipline, this bulky and difficult “course in miracles” was either helping me heal or driving me steadily into an otherworldly insanity. In my often-foggy mental state, I couldn’t be sure which direction I was going.

Then one morning, after the usual troubled and unrefreshing sleep, I awoke unreasonably happy. This was utterly unexpected because there was obviously nothing to be happy about, besides the sardonic awareness that I had “nothing to lose.”

Over a few hours’ time, it dawned on me that this was exactly the reason. In my current circumstances, I could not possibly be any less attached to the world around me, yet still be alive and conscious. Quite without meaning to — and quite exhausted by struggling not to let go of everything that had ever mattered to me — I had actually let it all go.

I was not happy about losing that struggle. Yet there was a paradoxical result: I was sublimely happy about nothing at all.

Every other form of happiness I could remember had been connected to beneficial circumstances: being in love, succeeding at something I had planned to achieve, being high on endorphins from long-distance bicycling, or simply walking in nature. But this perfect happiness had arisen in utterly contradictory conditions. I felt physically wrecked, professionally ruined, and emotionally alone in a way I had never known. I was barely able to walk a few blocks to the grocery store and back, much less bike or hike anywhere.

The happiness I felt wasn’t changing those circumstances, nor did I think it would. Within that same day, the unprecedented joy subsided, and I was once again consumed with the battle to live in constant pain and somehow find my way forward in the world again. Yet that happiness awakened me to a different kind of reality, something I’d read about in the Course without really understanding it. This perfect and unconditional happiness, detached from everything in this world, was actually my home.

a series of mini-essays inspired by the Workbook Lessons and other principles of 'A Course in Miracles'

08/02/2024

Congratulations to Fearless Literary author Sue Pearson on the launch of her memoir, YOU DON'T HAVE TO DIE TO GET HEAVEN. After four decades as a broadcast journalist (with three Emmy awards) to her name, Sue now serves as Editor of the Story Project at the Circle of Atonement, a major study resource for students of A Course in Miracles. In this book she provides a number of stories of her own spiritual growth...

https://www.fearlessbooks.com/ToGetToHeaven.htm

08/02/2024

The latest installment of "miracles of course"... www.dpatrickmiller.com/OfCourse.htm
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"I share God's will for happiness for me."
Workbook Lesson 102, A Course in Miracles

On the face of it, this lesson sounds kinda sweet — like, "aww, God wants me to be happy." But on closer examination the lesson presents an unnerving challenge, for it implies that we don’t have our own will, or willingness, to be happy. Thus we have to train ourselves to *share God’s will* for us to be happy... as if, left to our own devices, we might be inclined to actually oppose happiness.

Making one distinction may clarify this mystery. The Course is indeed here for our happiness. But it is NOT here to make us *feel better.*

Wanting to feel better may seem like the most natural thing in the world, and all of medicine and psychotherapy is devoted to that goal. It’s also not unusual for people to turn to religion or spirituality in a quest to feel better, although God is often seen as a kind of last resort.

For instance, in the Twelve Step mode of recovery, people are encouraged to turn to a “higher power” or “God of their understanding” after their own attempts to feel better have led them into addiction. Many folks enter recovery only after some kind of “bottoming out” experience in which all their attempts to feel better have left them feeling just awful.

So, both therapy and recovery are focused on helping us feel better and function more effectively in the world. But that’s not really the aim of the Course. What the Course does is challenge our whole notion of *who it is that needs to feel better.*

Obviously, somebody who wants to feel better is somebody who feels bad. The Course calls that somebody the “ego,” our individual identity that distinguishes us from everyone around us. That sense of a separated self is powerful, and we tend to be very proud and protective of it — which also makes us feel miserable pretty often. So if we devote our lives to making the lonely and defensive ego feel better, we’ll be undertaking a contradictory, never-ending and fruitless task. That’s because the ego is simply a part of our mind that’s *devoted* to feeling bad, fearful, and lonesome — all the while telling you that there’s nothing more important than making it feel better.

By contrast, the Course takes aim at our identification with the ego and suggests that our real Self is something quite different. For one thing, it’s not encased in a body, and it’s not subject to the laws of time and space. It's not separate from everyone and everything else around it. And it doesn’t ever need to feel better — because its perpetual state of feeling is joy. And here’s what the Course has to say about joy:

"Joy is eternal. You can be sure indeed that any seeming happiness that does not last is really fear." (ACIM, T-22.II.3:4-5)

Uh-oh. If this is true, it means that the happiness that comes from falling in love, or getting a great job, or having a wonderful dinner, or going to a mind-blowing spiritual conference... well, if all those kinds of happiness do not continue, unchanging, forever, then they are just mood swings of the ego. As such, all those forms of happiness amount to different kinds of fear.

Bummer! This is unwelcome news, because the kinds of happiness that do not last are all that most of us have experienced. And virtually everyone has gone through periods of depression in which every shred of ego-serving happiness has disappeared, seemingly forever. But every once in a while, and especially if you’ve had any kind of spiritual discipline, you may have gotten a whiff or a glimpse of that eternal joy… the kind of happiness that never goes away.

a series of mini-essays inspired by the Workbook Lessons and other principles of 'A Course in Miracles'

07/23/2024

Can you bluff your way all the way through life? Or must you take a fall some day? Written several years ago, this piece may now, at last, portray soon-to-be-current events. Revised with a Kamala update!

a parable about the end of a president's bluffing

07/18/2024

Just in time for summer reading... Fearless Literary is pleased to announce the publication of Jim Conaway's collection of three new novels, a co-production of Darling Thunder Press and Fearless Assisted Publishing. Receiving advance praise from the likes of Tracy Kidder and Peter Coyote, this captivating anthology touches on some of the same themes and settings that have inspired Jim's three previous novels as well as a dozen nonfiction titles. This is the fourth book of Jim's produced by Fearless Assisted Publishing, this time in collaboration with Darling Thunder Press, founded by Jim's daughter Susanna. Whether you're a veteran author or a first-timer, Fearless Assisted Publishing can smooth your path to professional publication.... www.fearlessbooks.com/NewConaway.htm

07/12/2024

The U.S. Surgeon General has identified loneliness as a major health problem, in fact an "epidemic." Is there a cure besides more and better socializing?
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A new essay in "miracles of course", a series of short essays on the Workbook lessons of A Course in Miracles...

“God goes with me wherever I go.”
— Workbook Lesson 41, A Course in Miracles

In May 2023, US Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued an Advisory entitled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” citing the experience of loneliness as one of the nation’s most serious health challenges:

“Recent surveys have found that approximately half of U.S. adults report experiencing loneliness, with some of the highest rates among young adults. These estimates and multiple other studies indicate that loneliness and isolation are more widespread than many of the other major health issues of our day, including smoking (12.5% of U.S. adults), diabetes (14.7%), and obesity (41.9%), and with comparable levels of risk to health and premature death. Despite such high prevalence, less than 20% of individuals who often or always feel lonely or isolated recognize it as a major problem.”

In his advisory the Surgeon General Murthy makes a crucial distinction between the issues of “social isolation” and loneliness:

“Social isolation is objectively having few social relationships, social roles, group memberships, and infrequent social interaction. On the other hand, loneliness is a *subjective internal state.* It’s the distressing experience that results from perceived isolation or unmet need between an individual’s preferred and actual experience.” (*emphasis added)

This is a fascinating distinction because a “subjective internal state” is one way of describing our spiritual condition. From the point of view of A Course in Miracles, the malady of “perceived isolation” is caused by perception itself. That is, when we perceive ourselves as beings who are fundamentally separated from each other and our source — the very definition of embodied ego consciousness — we will inevitably feel isolated. And that will tend to make us resistant to “social connection,” no matter how available it is.

The whole of ACIM is focused on dissuading us from the choice of perceiving isolation, because it is from that perception that our familiar world of hurt arises:

"The separated ones have invented many 'cures' for what they believe to be 'the ills of the world.' But the one thing they do not do is to question the reality of the problem. Yet its effects cannot be cured because the problem is not real. The idea for today has the power to end all this foolishness forever. And foolishness it is, despite the serious and tragic forms it may take." (ACIM, W-41.2:1-5)

When the Course urges us to recognize that “God goes with me wherever I go” it’s important to understand that this is not the same as a “belief in God.” That’s a conventional religious cure for the ills of the world — and historically it's had mixed results. Rather, the Course directs us to go within and experience “God’ for ourselves…

"… to sink down and inward, away from the world and all the foolish thoughts of the world. You are trying to reach past all these things. You are trying to leave appearances and approach reality."(ACIM, W-41.7:2-4)

“Reality” in Course terms is perfect love: a state of mind and being that is free of time, space, separation, and belief. And in that state there is no difference or distance between God and ourselves. As a repeating motif of the Workbook puts it, “God is but Love, and therefore so am I.” From our accustomed ego stance of isolation and fear, this all-encompassing love may seem like an impossible destination. We can gauge our resistance to getting there by noticing just how improbable it feels.

If it feels like we have to undo the whole world as we know it, then we're beginning to perceive things correctly.

The Surgeon General offered a host of recommendations for combating loneliness, including strengthening social infrastructures, reforming digital environments (good luck with that one!) and generally cultivating a “culture of connection.” Perhaps the most powerful means of cultivating such a culture has nothing to do with socializing. We can achieve more on everyone’s behalf simply by electing the personal discipline of going within, surrendering our habitual perceptions of the world, and getting real.

a series of mini-essays inspired by the Workbook Lessons and other principles of 'A Course in Miracles'

07/04/2024

For those who don't know the story... Bill Thetford, the typist of the original draft of A Course in Miracles, passed away on July 4, 1988. His often conflicted relationship with Helen Schucman, who dictated her notes for ACIM to him, was never resolved during their lifetime. Helen died in 1981 after a struggle with pancreatic cancer, having never really accepted ACIM's message of forgiveness either. As she told her friend Willis Harman shortly before her death, "I know the Course is true. I just don't believe it."

In the summer of 1988, Bill Thetford was staying at the Tiburon home of Judy Skutch and Bill Whitson while visiting northern California. The playfulness of his retired lifestyle was in evidence on the day before a July 4th party that Judy Skutch was planning. As she told me, she was startled to see Thetford dance a little jig in the living room, exclaiming, “I’m free, I'm finally free. I'm flexible!"

Worried that he might be having a manic episode, Skutch asked him what he meant. "He looked me in the eyes," Skutch recalled, "put his hands on my shoulders and said, 'I am not holding any grievances.' I said, 'Oh, come on,' and then I asked him about several problematic people from his past. He had a specific answer for everyone, that he'd written to so-and-so, and gone to meet someone else, and extended his love and forgiveness to everyone.

"Then I said, 'And what about Helen?' He laughed and said, ' How could I not forgive Helen? She was the opportunity for me to learn forgiveness.' Although Bill had a great sense of humor, I don't think he was trying to be funny. I thought he said this with real joy."

The next morning Skutch asked Thetford if he still felt so ebullient. "He said, ‘Sure, it's freedom day. It's my freedom day.' And I said, 'Well, I'm glad it's still working,' because I was a little suspicious of all this." When she asked him if he wanted to come along with her to the grocery store, Thetford said he would walk and catch up with her.

"I must have made a face," Skutch recalled. "I guess he could see I was worried about having to wait for him, because he said, 'Don't worry, dear, if I'm not there in time you go home without me.' Well, a chill went through me and I put my arms around him and said, 'I'll *never* go home without you.' He just patted me on the head and smiled, and off he went." Skutch then gathered her shopping list, purse, and keys, and went to her car. She had driven a short distance down the driveway when she saw Thetford collapsed there, dead from a heart attack.

The dramatic difference in how Helen Schucman and Bill Thetford were able to make use of the spiritual teaching they brought into the world emphasizes yet another of that teaching's paradoxes. Although it consistently urges a surrender of ego-driven perception and motivations upon its students — promising that the ego's voice will be replaced by the beneficent guidance of a mystical agency called the Holy Spirit — A Course in Miracles also stresses that surrender cannot be forced upon anyone.

"The power of decision is my own," the Course says in Workbook lesson #152... meaning that we all have the choice of whether we're going to believe what we know to be true...

preview of UNDERSTANDING A COURSE IN MIRACLES by D. Patrick Miller