My 6 Month Anniversary on Substack: How I Overcame All Obstacles And Finally Became A Published Writer
After writing prolifically for 60 years, and never being able to publish…I overcame severe painful internal obstacles through prayer and perseverance and launched my Substack six months ago.
THE DAWNING LIGHT # 291 Thursday June 22, 2023
Photo Credit: Pixabay
CELEBRATING OUR FIRST SIX MONTHS OF ‘“DAWNING LIGHT” ON SUBSTACK
It has been 6 months now since we launched “The Dawning Light” back in December 22, 2022…
I am reposting this article from earlier this year as a kind of celebration of reaching this major anniversary that is so important to me.
I set myself a high bar to accomplish—that of publishing a new “Dawning Light” story every single morning from now on.
And in the past 6 months I have accomplished this goal! Our library of posts now has 290 stories covering a wide range of subjects that I believe our readers have found to be well written and helpful to them.
We now have a growing number of readers who report that they love our stories and that “The Dawning Light” has become an important part of their morning routine.
For me, realizing this dream of serving others through my writing talent is extremely heartening and satisfying. I am grateful to every reader to be given this opportunity and have many ideas and plans in place for constantly improving this newsletter.
Because of your encouragement, I am inspired to dream bigger dreams and my commitment to this work has deepened and broadened.
We now publish two issues a day…The main “Dawning Light” which is inspirational stories and articles and the “Journey of the Heart” Section which is a daily dose of “Transformational Poetry For The Soul”, which now has 160 issues of its own!
We have recently added a “Special Song and Video For You” Section to every post we publish as my way of sharing very special music and videos from around the world that I have been seeking out and curating into playlists for the past 10 years.
So, this morning please celebrate this milestone with me by responding to these questions in the comments section:
Dear Reader, what do you like about “The Dawning Light” and How has it helped or inspired you in your daily life?
Your ideas or suggestions on how we can improve, what subjects you’d like to see more of or written about. We would love to hear any and all feedback from you!
THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE WITH US…Everyone of you is important to me and you are the reason we are focusing most of the hours of our days and nights on creating, editing and publishing this newsletter!!
The best is yet ahead, for there are many more mountains to climb and oceans to cross together on this great journey of life that we are sharing together!
Now back to the original story….
I can honestly say that it has been an intense time of training and transformation from the first time I pressed “publish” and sent a story out into the world.
INTENSE INTERNAL OBSTACLES AND LACK OF SUPPORT BLOCKED ME FROM PUBLISHING
Even though I have been writing prolifically since I had a dramatic and sudden spiritual breakthrough in 1964, when I was still a teenager…
even though I knew at a soul level that I was given this talent of writing as my way of serving the world…
even though I have filled hundreds of workbooks with poetry, stories, journals and spiritual insights…
and recorded hundreds of tapes and videos…all with the knowing they were part of my god given mission to help others who are, like me, seeking to find the purpose and meaning of their lives…
few people beyond my family knew of this daily journey of writing for a higher purpose and nothing was published.
Yes, I did make various attempts over the years, as the inner guidance continuously called for me to move beyond writing and become published, but each attempt was like a ship hitting underwater rocks and sinking.
I continued writing every day, because at a soul level, writing is as essential to me as breathing.
Inside myself, the need and inner desire to write meant that I was filling 100 page notebooks every month for year after year that were stored as they were finished.
Photo Credit: Simon McGraw
THE BATTLE OF THE STRUGGLE TO PUBLISH
Finally, the call to publish and complete the circle became a steady and ever louder drum beat which I was driven to answer.
For at least three years, I studied with online mentors about writing and publishing, bought expensive courses, and sought to find the perfect platform to be my highway to the world.
I set up writing studios, and invested many days and months working in them, as I strained against internal obstacles as high as the Himalayas, and yet it was as if I were paralyzed and could not make the break into actually publishing.
Even after I discovered Substack and set up “The Dawning Light” here on this sweet platform in June of 2022 that I now call home and dearly love, I still had many months of painful struggle in which the internal obstacles completely stopped me from launching by publishing the first story.
Finally, I asked for help in prayer that I be shown what these invisible glass fences were that kept me from taking the vital steps of publishing my writing that my heart was crying out for.
Photo Credit: Nyima Fitzmaurice
BECOMING A WRITER CAUSED TERRIBLE PROBLEMS WITH MY DAD
I saw that before my major spiritual awakening as a teenager, which had completely shifted my orientation from my long-held goal of becoming a scientist, my dad had completely and proudly backed me to the nth degree.
My dad did everything in his power to support this goal, even to the point of using his influence to get me into the best college and arranged for me to study with mentors in my field of interest after graduating high school.
But when I lost all interest in my lab, my science books and future directions…
when I locked up my lab that he had helped me build and never returned to it…
as the intense need to write took over every moment of my waking hours, my Dad was shocked and disappointed.
It was the beginning of a very hard period in our relationship, which got worse and worse until I ran away from home for a few months at 16, and got worse still until terrible things happened which caused me to flee the island where we lived to escape his anger.
After I announced to my Dad that I was going to be a writer, his reaction was so severe that it was shattering.
Gone was any support from him as he very angrily told me that I was going to waste my life, that I would not ever be able to make a living from writing and end up as a derelict drunk.
After I left our island, I did try to work through our differences, but he was so upset with me that he said “You are no longer my son or part of this family. You are disowned. Never contact us again for any reason.”
Photo Credit: Nyima Fitzmaurice
OVERCOMING THE PAINFUL CONSEQUENCES OF BECOMING A WRITER
In prayer, I saw that this overlay of painful consequences to my dedication to writing was a source of my internal obstacles, along with other painful feedback from teachers, professors and other people I had looked to for support.
As soon as I had this understanding, I also knew that I could not allow it’s invisible blocking influence to control me.
Even so, writing and publishing that very first post was like climbing a mountain in a blizzard.
I kept climbing even as the winds howled and the storms of past influences rose up against me.
I prevailed because I knew it was now or never, that the quality of the rest of my life depended on pushing through all obstacles and becoming a published writer at last.
I made an absolute dedication to myself that after launching that first story, that I would publish a new story every day after, and keep on keeping on towards realizing my dream, no matter what.
Photo Credit: Nyima Fitzmaurice
AFTER SIX MONTHS ON SUBSTACK As A Published Writer
Now, six months later, I have kept that promise.
I am grateful for having found Substack, and for all the amazing support that this amazing platform provides that has allowed me to create and publish “The Dawning Light” every day since that first story.
I am grateful for the support of fellow writers here, who have encouraged me and appreciated my work.
How wonderful it is to be able to say— “I am a published writer” with hundreds of views per day and thousands of views since launching.
There are now about 290 published stories in our library.
I have a life now where Ani and my family are fully behind this work, where I have a beautiful pathway to publishing new stories and a place to edit and publish from the vast treasury of already created work from those hundreds of workbooks from the 1970’s until the present day.
Now Is My Time—As Long As We Still Live, It Is Never Too Late To Realize Our Dreams
I began this journey of writing when I was 14 in 1964 and have written prolifically ever since.
I am now in my 70s, and now understand that there is no time for regrets over the past.
Instead, I know I will continue writing and publishing until my last breath…because, truly, this is what I was born to do!
Photo Credit: Chinmayan “Peaceful Blue Skies Over Still Mountain”
Original Revelations Poem and Calligraphy by Chinmayan
Image Credit: Still Mountain Meditation Center
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Congratulations, Chinmayan, on your achievements! 💜