Recently I had dinner with some friends. Eventually, the conversation turned to how things were going with my book. In the past few weeks, they hadn’t seen me much or heard from me. I updated them about my progress. In response, one of them suggested that, well, if not many people bought the book, at least I wrote it for myself to relive the experiences, the trauma and finally achieve closure.
I replied that my blog had been an incredible help for me on that level, to process and metabolize the events as they happened. Creating the book actually didn’t feel like I was reliving the traumatic experiences. It was, rather, the retelling of an intense tale with the natural distance of time gone by.
The Mission
From the start, my mission for creating this book has been to share the story of a woman whose life was perfect, who had a spiritual practice, who ate right, who enjoyed a healthy, loving marriage and love life, who earned her income through right livelihood, and whose motivation for her work was to make the world a better place. All was well in the realm of Lokita and Steve. Until one day, it was not.
Imagine yourself living a happy, fulfilled life, and out of the blue, everything gets ripped apart. Maybe someone you love dies suddenly, maybe you get a divorce, maybe you or a loved one get seriously ill, maybe your beloved pet passes away, maybe you have an existential crisis and it doesn’t seem that life is livable any longer. Maybe you’re depressed by the state of the world, the wars, the constant violent images flitting by your gaze in a loop on your television, your computer screen, your phone and whatever other gadgets you have.
You are bereft, uninspired, completely lost, desperate, fearful and anxious, lonely, without hope, and life has no meaning and focus other than your current situation.
You come across this book by a woman who has gone through unimaginable hardship. Who shares her tale with intensity, honesty, authenticity and love, and how she managed to transform so that the book ends on an upbeat note. And you, the reader, know that the woman is still alive today, nine years later, wrote the book and is writing this for you right now. Such a book is inspiring. Such a book gives you the strength and courage to continue.
During the course of radiation therapy, my radiology oncologist, Dr. Melanie, recommended a memoir by Joan Didion, My Year of Magical Thinking. The author’s husband died suddenly on Christmas Day as their daughter lay critically ill in ICU. It explores loss, grief and the complexities of mourning and was immensely confronting for me. Steve’s murder was only a few months behind me, yet it remained vividly present in every moment. The book ripped me open and spoke directly to my heart. I felt supported and part of the author’s feeling world. My story was still heartbreaking, yet I was no longer alone.
I hope my book will evoke that feeling in others: the feeling that they are not alone, that we are all in this life together, that we can rise above circumstances, and reclaim a sense of joy, peace, and profound acceptance. This, in turn, can infuse our lives with a new quality as we move forward.
Another book that deeply inspired me was When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. In this book, the author, a successful young neurosurgeon, is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. He shares how deeply the cancer affected his relationship with his patients and his work, and his way to be with the inevitable—death. He was asked by life to look at his own capacity for empathy, a process which I understood to have been very humbling for him. In the end, he died before the manuscript was completed, and his wife helped bring it to life posthumously.
His book filled me up with a sense that, in some way, everything is okay, even death. My death. Steve’s death. Coco’s death. Death. Period.
While I could never hope to have written a book as groundbreaking and beautiful as theirs, my wish is that my story will open its readers’ hearts, that they will feel supported and can touch into their own resilience and strength. I’m hoping that they will have AHA moments, just like many of our workshop participants did, those AHA realizations that we experience when we suddenly understand or solve a problem. These are the briefest moments of clarity or enlightenment, mental light bulbs that illuminate our way forward in our situation, whatever it may be. I wish for my readers a deeply profound, satisfying and perhaps even transformational reading experience.
In all, my book stems from a place of love: love for each one of us who is experiencing life, its challenges and celebrations, each in our unique way. Love for humanity, for we are all the same in many ways. Love for life because of the great mystery that made us all be alive in this very moment.
This is the mission for the book. And I wanted to tell the story in a contained, compact form— with a beginning, a middle and an end. Of course, the story never ends, and I will keep my readers informed here on my blog. There are some interesting facts that I will write about, for example, about the ongoing prosecution and court drama of those who killed Steve. Watch this space for more!
The Vision
Oh, and I also have a vision for the book. The mission is the motivation. The vision for me is more of a longer-term goal. My vision is that someone— it needs just one person—will read the book or hear about it and inspiration will strike them to make a movie about it.
I imagine it as the story of a heroine, of homecoming, of overcoming the greatest obstacles. Questions—like gun violence, cancer, compassion, empathy, illness, grief—all that will be addressed in one movie, and people will leave the movie theater or turn off their gadgets after watching this movie with a renewed sense of the preciousness of life, also with sadness, but overall with the courage to start the new day tomorrow, with a new perspective, and perhaps even with more love. (I imagine I would be played by German actor Sandra Hüller of recent Academy Awards fame, but Steve? Who could possibly embody him?)
I’ve put myself and my precious lifetime wholeheartedly into service of the greater mission and the greater vision of this book. Why else would I sit at the computer in paradise in Costa Rica or my favorite island in Germany and spend several years creating something if I wasn’t in service of the divine that manifests missions and visions?
After all, my spiritual name, Deva Lokita, means “in the presence of the divine.” I believe my book is a representation of that, and may you be touched by the presence of the divine as much as I have been touched by it in my life.
PS. Stay tuned! The Story of My Book: Part 3, about my audiobook adventure, is coming soon. ♥
“You become more divine as you become more creative. All the religions of the world have said God is the creator. I don’t know whether he is the creator or not, but one thing I know: the more creative you become, the more godly you become. When your creativity comes to a climax, when your whole life becomes creative, you live in God. So, he must be the creator because people who have been creative have been closest to him. Love what you do. Be meditative while you are doing it – whatsoever it is.”
© Osho, gratefully excerpted from The Book of Understanding: Creating Your Own Path to Freedom
