"Are you a . . . ?

Seeds X, 44

Seed: “Are you a . . .

. . . good witch or a bad witch?” It’s Halloween. I couldn’t resist. You know, I’ve probably seen The Wizard of Oz a hundred times, and I had to rewatch Dorothy’s arrival in Munchkinland to be sure that this line belonged to Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. In fact, it’s her first line.

What she’s really doing is qualifying her prospect. Her pitch will change based on whether Dorothy, her newly arrived prospect considers herself a good witch or a bad witch. Dorothy, of course, denies that she’s any kind of witch at all. Glinda—f.y.i. Billie Burke at age 53, widow of Florenz Ziegfeld—made me think.

You see, Dorothy refuses to be identified by the label offered to her, and each one of us has that right as well. The point is that WE get to decide how we’ll think of ourselves.

At All Hallow’s Eve, the veil to the Spiritside of the world is very thin. If there’s an idea of yourself that you don’t yet embody, reach for it. It’s, once again, up to you.

So. Are you a . . . ?

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.
Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my website SusanCorso.com and my blogs , Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

Spiritual Leaders for Change

spiritualleadersforchange.org

Deepak Chopra

Jack Kornfield

Roshi Joan Halifax

Barbara Marx Hubbard

Rabbi Michael Lerner

Stephan Rechtschaffen

Sister Jenna

Lama Drolma Palden

Dean Ornish MD

Reggie Ray

Krishna Das

Sylvia Boorstein

Jean Houston

Pema Chödrön

Marianne Williamson

Barbara De Angelis

Alex & Allyson Grey

Ed & Deb Shapiro

Oscar & Cindy Miro-Quesada

Swami Beyondananda

Peter Fenner

Robert Thurman

Jai Uttal

H.H. Sai Maa Lakshmi Devi

Lama Surya Das

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Jack Canfield

Julia Butterfly Hill

Gay & Katie HendricksP

ir Elias Amidon

Richard Moss

Eli Jaxson-Bear

Corinne McLaughlin

Gordon Davidson

Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi

Sharon SalzbergGangaji

Joan Borysenko

Judith Ansara & Robert Gass

Christian de la Huerta

Rev. Dr. Susan Corso

*************************************************************************************
As spiritual leaders signing this letter we are stepping forward to say: “We can make a difference.” As our spiritual practice empties, opens and strengthens us, we are naturally moved to engage in the world with compassion, equanimity, and the dedication to live our values.
We know many of you are already both concerned and involved in this year’s Presidential election. Yet, in the past weeks, many of us have heard friends in the spiritual community expressing ambivalence about voting. When asked why they wouldn't vote we heard things like: “It doesn’t make any difference”; “I’m more interested in spiritual practice than politics”.
Humanity is at a crossroads. We can no-longer afford to sit on the sidelines. We are asking you to get engaged.



The 2000 presidential election was decided by just 500 votes and this November appears to be just as close. Every vote matters. Your vote and the votes in your community could make the difference.


Please make a heart-felt inquiry and look at the candidates. Ask yourself who best reflects the values you want to live by – those of spirituality in action.


Who do you believe will lead this country and the world in the direction you would like to see it move?


Which candidate will foster security through international cooperation rather than wars of aggression?


Which candidate will move policy most quickly toward a sustainable habitable planet for future generations?


Which candidate will most support our commitment to human rights and equal opportunity for all people?


...and then Vote. Let your voice be heard.


Together there is nothing we cannot do.


TAKE ACTION NOW
1. REGISTER TO VOTE & Detailed Voter Information

2. VOLUNTEERFind out how you can help!


3. FORWARD THIS MESSAGE


Visit our site for fliers, email resources (optimized for forwarding) and more information on how to get the message out.

Let’s bring the benefits of our practice into our lives. The world needs us.


Please help us Spread the Word.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

I needed my hand held this week, and my friend, Court, came to my rescue.

First, on the subject of holding hands at all, it’s a nice thing to do. I love holding out my hand when someone else needs their hand held. It assures me that when I need mine held, someone will show up to do it. Thanks, Court!

Second, I needed my hand held in a cyber way. I needed to (finally) learn how to post videos on my blog. I’d tried and tried and failed and failed. Someone I knew had to know how. I put a request out to my friend having seen videos on his blog.

Third, in the process of having my hand held, I learned several more bits of blog trivia and so did he. So we were both blessed.

When you want your hand held, there’s a reason for it. Accept the reason and reach out—you just might be surprised and delighted at who reaches back.

I'm learning video posting

This is a great idea!

Hilarious!

http://www.aarpvote08.com/?d=U3VzYW4gQ29yc28

I already have one vote!

Helper/Helpee

Seeds X, 43

Seed: Helper/Helpee

I quit helping people years ago. Does that surprise you? At the time, it surprised me. I had a client, a dear one, who I’d gone out of my way to help turn on me in rage and resentment. It took me a couple of years to process what happened.

Finally, I got it. I’d helped her and that made me “better than” her in her eyes. My intentions were good, don’t get me wrong, but the way I offered help to her, she felt “less than.” I wrote her an amends letter out of my new understanding.

Helper/Helpee relationships often mean that one person is up, and one person is down. It’s not always a pretty scenario. The thing I learned, and it might shock you, is this: Every situation which involves more than myself must serve both (or all) persons involved.

When I realized that I learn as much from my client as he or she does from me, we are both served. We both grow. We both heal. So, I gave up helping a lot time ago, and instead, walk parallel with people when they ask me to do so.

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness,
they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.
Check out the Seeds Archive for past messages of inspiration.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my website SusanCorso.com and my blogs
Ode Magazine and The Huffington Post.

The Overrated Mind

I’m a thinker—I admit it. I think, not because I am, but because I like to think. Thought fascinates me. Mine and that of others.

Since I turned 50 though, my thought has been systematically heading south. What do I mean by that? I’m learning to think with my heart. I think it’s a natural aspect of getting older. Consider this:

As we age, life tends to become simpler, more clear. We know what we want and we know what we’re willing to do to get it. Many years ago, I decided that the Prime Directive of my life would be Peace. This means that I measure every choice I make by this question: Does this (whatever this is) contribute to or diminish Peace? It makes my choices simple.

We all need a Prime Directive. It doesn’t really matter what it is. I have a client whose primary value (same as Prime Directive) is Love. He measures every choice as to whether it’s loving or not. A friend of mine uses Compassion as his standard. I know someone who is all fired up for Justice; another who values Freedom above all.

Do you see a pattern here? I sure do. All of these primary value notions are intangibles. If you think about it, they almost have to be in order to be big enough to encompass any circumstance. These sorts of ideas are umbrellas.

The thing is, one’s Prime Directive isn’t available in the mind. It’s not something we can decide upon and implement like a goal or a strategy. Nope, a Prime Directive has to come from the heart. Has to. Because that’s where individual prime directives live.

I laughed this week at a Google quote from Joss Whedon (the creator of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer) and friends, “It’s not enough to bash in heads. You’ve got to bash in minds.” Well, maybe not bash. That definitely doesn’t contribute to peace.

But we do have to question our minds. The mind is a wholly overrated commodity in our logic-addicted civilization. And, if you think about, you probably can’t even say where the mind is. The brain? Sure, we all know that brains live in our skulls. But minds? Where do they live?

Here’s a secret: the best aspects of our minds live in our hearts. That’s why my thinking has gone south. When I feel peace in my heart, I know I’m making the right choices. When I don’t, I know I’m stuck in that elusive mind-space that wants results based on intellect. Intellectual results get caught in polarity, and don’t give me a peaceful heart.

Try an experiment with me. Spend a whole day thinking with your heart. The process is: have your thought, then check in with your heart. Does that particular thought support the ideals that you hold most dear? If so, good. If not, think again.

Vote for, or Hush

I watched Bill Maher’s latest Real Time over the weekend and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) made a huge impression on me. He calls himself a Social Democrat. His words made a great deal of sense.

So I started thinking about my own voting record. It’s stellar, really, in that whenever I have a chance to vote, I do. I take it as a civic duty and a privilege. I have even voted when I don’t know the candidates; I vote the party line.

But this election has changed the vote for me because I’ve realized that in many presidential elections, since I was old enough to vote, I’ve voted against a candidate not for one. Because of my deep commitment to creating peace on this planet, I can’t vote against any more.

Later I was reading This Week in Peace History (which is much more about war than peace) and came across this quote from labor leader Eugene V. Debs (1865-1926), “I’d rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don’t want, and get it.”

So I took my usual trek to the OED and looked up the verb to vote. Words are amazing. Vote comes from Medieval Latin roots meaning to vow to devote. When we vote, we make a vow, a vow to devote ourselves to communicating with those we elect so that they can actually, truly represent us.

My friend Donna Henes posted a wonderful essay on her MySpace page today called, “Say Something.” In it, one sentence struck me right in the third eye, “Silence forgives violence.” Of course, I loved the rhyme, but more, I loved what it says about our electoral process. If we aren’t saying something to our elected representatives, how can we possibly expect them to represent us?

I’ve added my senators and my representative to my address book in my cellphone. I have their email addresses in my email address book now too. I even know their snail mail addresses if I need them. Do you know yours?

I don’t need to tell you that the presidential election is just around the corner, but I do need to remind you that a vote for what you want is a powerful message. Unless you’re voting for, hush—and let the rest of us get on with the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Unknown Blessings

Seeds X, 42

Seed: Unknown Blessings

I can’t remember where I read these words, on beliefnet maybe. Regardless, indigenous wisdom reminds us: Give thanks for unknown blessings already on their way.

We all know about the giving thanks thing already. Robert Schuller coined it as an “attitude of gratitude,” and we know that gratitude is the energy that greases the wheels of our personal cosmos.

The thing that caught me this time was Unknown Blessings. Reflect a moment, if you would. Have you ever had a blessing arrive in your life unexpectedly? Maybe one of those famous blessings in disguise?

These words made me think of gazillions of blessings I’ve received that I had no idea were coming. It asks a far deeper question:

Do you believe the Universe is benevolent? If you do, then giving thanks for unknown blessings even when you can’t see them will feel natural to you. If you don’t, unknown will equate to scary for you.

The thing is, the Unknown we have always with us. Benevolent is up to you.

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my website www.susancorso.com and my blogs
Ode Magazine. and The Huffington Post.

Blog Action Day: Poverty

Today is Blog Catalogue’s annual bloganza and this year’s subject is poverty. I want to address it from the place I return to over and over again in my life experience: the mirror.

It is a basic principle of metaphysics that whatever I perceive, I do so because that whatever is in my consciousness. Another way to say this is: everything is our mirror. Everything. No exceptions.

This means that the hate video I saw on a friend’s blog this morning showed me my own inner hate. (Ouch!) This also means that the meeting I had at noon which turned out so well showed me my own inner gladness. It’s ALL a mirror. All, all, all, all, all. (Do I need to be clearer?)

When Blog Catalogue proposed poverty as a subject, I groaned a little. Of course what they wanted was to bring poverty to the foreground of consciousness, to have us all remember that we see poverty. There was a homeless man outside the restaurant where we went for my birthday dinner on Sunday night asking for leftovers. Yet another mirror.

So what are you and I to do about poverty when we see it?

First, acknowledge it. Ignoring it isn’t going to make it disappear.

Second, know that it’s reflecting some sort of poverty in yourself. Your poverty doesn’t have to LOOK LIKE the next person’s. It is, however, still poverty.

Third, ask within yourself if there is some action that you are to take in the face of this particular poverty. You will be guided. Sometimes, there’s action and sometimes there’s not. Ask, be still, listen. If it’s yours to do something about, it will be made clear. For the homeless man asking for leftovers, we stopped, really looked at him and apologized. It was what we were guided to do, and he thanked us.

Fourth, add the poverty in the world, all over the world, into your everyday prayers. The metaphysicians of old would have said, “If there is any one who is poor, then all are poor.” On varying levels, it’s true.

Give of your abundance, whatever form it may take, and that abundance will grow. The fastest cure for poverty on earth is a consciousness of abundant supply for everyone—no exceptions.

Steve Pavlina: Personal Development for Smart People: The Practices

I know I promised to review the second half of Steve Pavlina’s ever-better book, Personal Development for Smart People, a week ago or so but it’s so jammed packed that in order to do it justice, I had to slow down.

In fact, if I have any criticism for this wonderful self-development system, it’s for Steve’s publisher. I know many of us are used to reading online, and that means faster than fast, but reading a good old-fashioned book ought to be a sensory experience. This book needed a serif typeface. Serif type slows the eye, giving it little places of rest, and assimilation time.

This book is so full of clear and practicable ideas that I couldn’t hurry through its second half, and do it or myself justice. It’s the second half of this book that makes it outstanding. Haven’t you read plenty of self-help books wherein the theories are terrific, and the practices that make them useful aren’t so hot? I sure have.

Pavlina is first and foremost his own guinea pig. His sincerity and his experience beam off the pages. I’d venture to say that if he hasn’t tried it, whatever it is, it isn’t in the book. That’s a great way to test the efficacy of any practice. Test it yourself!

What I especially like about Pavlina’s personal development system is that, even though his final chapter is on spirituality, he doesn’t require that God be in anyone’s personal mix. I, a minister, saying that! (I know, I’m weird.) Truth is, I think if a person needs God (and I do) that one will find a God that works for him or her. Personal growth and development aren’t always about God. They’re about persons.

I so appreciated the application of the seven principles to major life areas: habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality. This is where the elegance and the simplicity of his personal development system shine. In his closing, Steve talks about values systems and how they must be universal in order to be efficacious. He’s done his homework, and thought through every detail before writing this book.

Toward the end, he speaks to the driving light of my own life mission.

“Only when we all learn to align ourselves with truth, love, and power at the individual level will we be able to achieve peace at the global level.”

It’s so nice to know there is another conscious peaceworker on planet earth. Thanks, Steve Pavlina!

I’ll close with Steve’s solid reminder: Live consciously.

P.S. For Part One, go to http://seedsforsanctuary.blogspot.com/2008/09/steve-pavlina-personal-development-for.html.

If You Could Have It Any Way

Seeds X, 41

Seed: If You Could Have It Any Way

A client comes to see me as many have come to see me for 25 years. I usually start with a question like, How may I serve you? Then comes the deep listening part of our time together. Occasionally, I ask for clarification, but mostly I listen.

Then I ask the $64,000 question. If you could have your life be any way you wanted it, how would it be? In 25 years, I’ve had one client who could answer me immediately. One! I can’t, of course, reveal one in how many clients, but you can imagine that in 25 years the number is plenty high.

Strange, isn’t that? Very. Especially given that the only task here, the ONLY one, is to envision our lives the way we want them to be, and then act as guided.

You can have it any way you want it, IF you’ll dream it and then do what’s in front of you.

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

To Know or Not To Know

Very similar to Hamlet’s $64,000 question, no? So I’m copping to it right now. There are some things I don’t want to know. No, that’s not right. Not don’t want to know, but don’t care whether I know or not.

Take plumbing. There are wizards who do plumbing in our homes. They know how sinks, toilets, disposals, dishwashers, washing machines, showers work. Bless them, I’m thrilled that there are people who know these things, but do I want to know them? Nope, not really, unless or until the day comes when the shower doesn’t turn on or the toilet won’t flush or I can’t wash my clothes when I want to wash them. Then, I’m fascinated, but otherwise not.

I used to feel terribly guilty about this. Information is power, right? Anything can be fascinating so I should want to know everything. Well, at 50, dear heart, I don’t want to know everything. What I want is to know deeply what I know and to let others have their own expertise.

A friend of mine held my hand and coached me through figuring out how to make live Amazon Affiliates links recently. This added another layer to my experience of knowledge. In that case, I didn’t feel like learning how to do it, I wanted just to magically know how. That particular byte of information was one I needed to know. But, truth to tell, I don’t know how Amazon’s Affiliate program works, and it doesn’t really matter whether I do or not.

Now lest you are worried that I don’t know enough, believe me when I tell you that I know tons of information that I’ll never use, and I’m fascinated by all things related to the human spirit which encompasses a great many things. Still, asking me about your plumbing probably isn’t wise. On the other hand, I can help you decide whether or not to take a loved one off life support quite easily.

So here’s what I’ve learned about knowing and not knowing. It isn’t mine to know everything. Just not mine to do. Plain. Simple. That’s it. What’s mine to know is about things of the human spirit. What’s also mine to know is that when I don’t know something, someone somewhere not only knows that thing I need, but loves knowing it.

If I am an expert in my field, am I not blessed by engaging and using the expertise of others in their fields? Absolutely. It makes my plumbing run smoothly.

Sue Katz: Sarah Palin's Maverick Biographer

I know Sue Katz. She’s what my grandmother would have called a pistol. Bright, funny, passionate, argumentative, rabidly political, one of the best ballroom dancers alive on this planet and a gifted, generous writer.

This weekend I set myself the task of reading her first book, Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin. It gave me chills. No, I mean it. I had to plug in and lean against a heating pad for most of the afternoon because Katz’ prose made me shiver in my Uggs. So, let me cop to the fact that I love the way she writes. I subscribe to her blog, Consenting Adult, and if you’re an adult over 50 interested in all things, or anything sexual, then you should too, but back to Sarah Palin.

Beloved, Sarah Palin scares me because of how she understands and relates to God, and that’s saying something because mostly God things of any kind thrill me. She truly believes that a Kenyan pastor who has been praying for her to “go national” is responsible for this nomination to the Vice Presidency.

Sarah’s god isn’t mine at all, and that means, as a committed omnifaith person, that I need to check hers out lest I be caught in the same kind of judgment that dear Sarah is. She thinks the war in Iraq is God’s war. No really. I suppose, on some level, it is, but it has to do with Islam, and I’m pretty sure Sarah’s God has nothing to do with Islam in her book.

I’m appalled that this woman has been nominated for the second highest post in the land, and Katz’s book only increased that feeling. Despite her own democratic leanings, Katz searched source after source both nationally and internationally to find the facts for her book, written in just four weeks. She reports the facts, ma’am, and for the ma’ams who are reading this post, we have to look out!

If we live in Alaska, we have to pay for our own rape test kits!
If we live anywhere in America, we will not be entitled to have an abortion.
Or marry whom we love, unless we are one man and one woman.
Or expect our schools to teach sex education.
Or count on the support of our government against violence against women.

We’ll have to put up with creationism in schools.
We might have to suffer her arbitrary edit of our school library shelves.
We might have a loved one who loses a job because he or she offends the new veep.
We might have to live with a Vice President who is more Vice than Virtue because she lies and considers it cute, folksy, allowable!

Katz ends her Palin whirlwind with a chapter called “Mavericks to Nowhere.” If you’ve read my God’s Dictionary, you know that another way to look at the word nowhere is now + here. Well, Beloved, look at where our country is now and here. Do you want it to stay that way? I sure don’t.

This is why everyone who even mentions politics in discussion between now and November 4th ought to read Sue Katz’s trenchant, chilling book.

Get it here: http://palinvoterguide.blogspot.com/ or at Amazon.com’s Kindle.

The Gift of Contentment

Seeds X, 40

Seed: The Gift of Contentment

Another Seed inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. Have you gifted yourself with this book yet?

I’ve been a student of contentment for thirty years. In my twenties, I realized that striving was good but that contentment was better. To me, and someday I’ll write that book I’ve worked on for so long called Secrets of Contentment, contentment means I am at peace with what I am and that I have a dream which calls more to me.

Ms. Gilbert writes, “The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world.” Wow. Wow. Wow.

Ever thought of contentment that way? Of course it’s self-preserving and self-benefiting, but a gift to the world? That makes sense to me.

If I am content, I will radiate it to others, and contentment is virally contagious. Just think, what a world we would have if each one of us made the search for and FOUND contentment. (Consider this year’s Seeds sign off below.)

Be content,

Susan Corso

Dr. Susan Corso

Seeds are remarkable gifts. Sown in consciousness, they bring you to the most important part of your being—your Divine Spark.

When you have friends you would like added to the Seeds e-mail list, send their addresses to me at SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net and please visit my blogs Ode Magazine, and The Huffington Post.

Complaint Department

Well, well, have I had a rollercoaster with Amazon.com. My website was just about ready to launch save the e-commerce part of it when I realized that I needed to get on the horn to Amazon about selling my ebook and my audiobook.

Great, I thought, Amazon has amazing customer service—this ought to be a piece of cake. Au contraire!

In between emails to their Digital Services Department that went unanswered (not even so much as an autoreply) for three weeks, calls to their Help Line which took me to Seattle and India and all sorts of places in between, as well as all sorts of Customer Service workers who really did try to help me despite their ignorance of their own systems, I ended up exactly nowhere on the e-commerce front with Amazon.

So I did what I always do when Customer Service is a nightmare. I wrote a letter. It appears below.

Sanctuary
101 School Street, Suite Three
Somerville, MA 02143
617-764-0344
SeedsDrCorso@comcast.net



26th September 2008



Mr. Steve Kessel, Senior Vice President
Amazon Digital Services
605 Fifth Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98104

Dear Mr. Kessel,

I write to tell you how thoroughly dismayed I am at the alleged digital service that Amazon has, in fact, not provided to me in the past three weeks. It has been so unlike the Amazon I know and repeatedly patronize that when I, by some miracle, landed upon your address, I decided I had to write to you.

Given my usually stellar experience with Amazon Customer Service of any kind, when it came time for me to publish and distribute my new e-book, Dr. Susan Corso’s Seeds I-X, and my new audiobook, Oklahoma! Hex, I thought immediately and first of Amazon. Isn’t that what you want? I should think so.

After climbing around on Amazon’s Seller pages, and becoming thoroughly bamboozled (truthfully, unless one already knows how to sell on Amazon, there’s no finding it out from your Seller pages), I hired someone far more techno-adept than I to figure out how to sell my ebook and my audiobook.

Over three weeks ago, Mary van den Berg wrote to digitalrights@amazon.com in my behalf to inquire as to how to sell both projects on Amazon. Then she wrote again three days after hearing nothing from the first inquiry. Three days after that, I wrote to the same address. I also called Seller Support, spoke to a terrific young woman named Krystal who went to her team leader Tony to find out why I had heard nothing from digital rights, not even so much as an auto-response. Whilst they couldn’t answer that, they did provide me with the information that ebooks needed to go through a new Amazon company called Mobipocket. Great, I thought, I can start the process myself! Her email is included herein. {Give the woman a raise for excellent customer service!}

Little could I know. Mobipocket is unnavigable without prior knowledge of how it works. There is appreciably no tech support whatsoever. Their forums page bears a note stating that we may ask our questions in the fora, and that they “will do [thei]r best” to answer our queries within a week. A week is a lifetime in technology, and you know it! Furthermore, there is no phone support at all, so even if I did want to invest my valuable time in figuring out the time difference and calling France, I couldn’t.

It is no mistake that their homepage lists “affiliates” who do the work of converting any format of ebook into Amazon’s ONLY ebook format, Mobipocket. (Not only is it the only format, but it cannot duplicate exactly the intent of the author because any desired layout or formatting is not available whatsoever!) When I finally hired someone to do what I couldn’t do, I asked her for guidance on how I could learn to do the process myself. She told me, “Oh, it’s way too complicated to bother teaching you.”

This is not the kind of Customer Service I have grown to respect and rely on from Amazon, not by a long shot. What’s happened?

Wait, it gets even better. Determined as I am to have my books on Amazon.com, I tried Seller Support once again to see if I could get anywhere with Digital Rights. An earlier call with a team member whose name I did not capture told me that Digital Rights only deals with finding out IF one has the digital rights. I know I do because I wrote the books. But never mind. A responsible team leader named Jenny H. spoke to me and agreed that waiting thirteen days for a response to an email from any Amazon department was deplorable. She volunteered to find out what she could for me, and to email me back within 24 hours.

After two further calls to make sure things were progressing, I finally received an email from Jenny H. in the nick of the 24-hour time period. Her email to me is attached. The gist is that Digital Rights is no longer accepting digital content. It sounded a little odd to me, but who am I to argue with Jenny who got the answer from inside?

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Digital Rights three days later telling me how delighted Digital Rights is to welcome my ebook to their catalogue. This email is also attached. I faxed them the form they asked for immediately but have heard nothing further.

Then a techno-savvy friend turned me on to Create Space for the audiobook. Excellent, I thought, I can do that. I registered, but the form wouldn’t let me upload a zipfile for the audiobook. I wrote to Customer Support because, once again, there is no phone support. To be honest, I think it’s ridiculous. Anyway, no answer for two days. Then I got the bright idea of writing to Create Space on their query form. Sure enough, even though I asked for a telephone call, I got an email within 24 hours expressing excitement that I wanted to do an audiobook with them and informing me that they are not able to assist me.

Mr. Kessel, who is able to assist me to sell my digital content at Amazon?

If you were in my position, what would you do? Would you give up on Amazon Digital Services? I don’t want to do this. Would you do as I have had to do and find another way to sell your digital content? I didn’t want to, but had to, do this.

So, here is what I’m asking you, the Senior Vice President of Digital Services for Amazon.com, because, quite frankly, sir, if you can’t get this done, then no one can.

Would you please assign a special, gifted, gentle, kind, knowledgeable troubleshooting wizard with a lot of patience and a sense of humor, and a direct dial telephone number and an email that both receives and responds to the needs of your customer, to hold my very pretty hand and enable me throughout the entire, unintelligible, A-to-Z process to sell my digital content at Amazon?

I know I’ll be glad you did, and I’m sure you will be too since you won’t get another letter like this one from me or, hopefully, anyone else.

If you got this far, thanks for reading this.

Yours most sincerely,

Dr. Susan Corso

Enclosures:
Emails from Krystal P.
Jenny H.
Digital Rights
Create Space

e-cc: Jeffrey P. Bezos
Roxy Caraway
Suzanne Rhodes

Imagine my total delight when I got up this morning to find a letter from the CEO (!) of Mobipocket—Amazon’s new ebook partner. Mr. Martin Gorner answered each and every question, and gave value-added service. He understands his own product.

Turns out that unless one knows HTML one oughtn’t to know how to use Mobipocket!

Further delight? Oh yes, I got an email from a David Keyes in Amazon’s Executive Customer Relations Department. I’ll write him back in a little bit. He’s willing to solve my every problem with Amazon.

I have yet to hear from the poor senior vice president to whom I sent the snail mail letter, but I will. Why? Look carefully at the e-ccs I sent. I included the Chairman of Amazon, Jeffrey P. Bezos, and Mr. Bezos, or his staff, have a Forward Button in their email program.

Voila! Solutions. Amazon Customer Service falling all over itself to assist me.

It’s the same principle one uses to stop a swinging pendulum, or a severe problem in one’s life. Grab the pendulum from the top to stop the momentum! For a severe problem, go to the topmost point of what you know about it and make the change from there. At the very least, the momentum will slow. At best, you’ll end up with your ebook on Amazon.

Ask, blessed one, and you shall receive.