Choosing Easy World : A Guide to Opting Out of Struggle and Strife and Living in the Amazing Realm Where Everything Is Easy

by Rogers Hamrick, Julia

• ISBN13: 9780312623630
• ISBN10: 0312623631
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-03
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

The author of "Recreating Eden" delivers a guide to opting out of struggle and strife and living in the amazing realm where everything is easy. She provides readers with inspiration, instructions, and support for doing so themselves.

Author Biography

JULIA ROGERS HAMRICK, author of Recreating Eden: The Exquisitely Simple, Divinely Ordained Plan for Transforming Your Life and Your Planet, has been a spiritual-growth facilitator since the early 1980s. She lives with her husband, Rick, and their two dachshunds.

Table of Contents

1

Rediscovering Easy World
Wake up! Wake up! I have exciting news! It’s time to return to Easy World at last!
Long ago, you fell asleep and found yourself in Difficult World and forgot you had the choice to be in the world in which your life is easy and joy-filled. You’ve been spending the majority of your life in the realm of struggle, strife, and worry, not realizing it was unnecessary. But now it’s time to rediscover the remarkable world of your origins and to remember that you can choose to be there once more.
Even though you—and the rest of humanity—have pretty much forgotten about it, the reality called “Easy World” is eternal. It exists as it has since before the dawn of human existence and is as vital and powerful as ever. It has been perpetually available and accessible to every single human being at any time (and yes, that includes you), but because you forgot about it and didn’t know to choose it, it may as well not have existed except for those times when you slipped back into it unawares.
Basically, it never went away—you did!
But however long you’ve been away, Easy World is waiting for you to remember it. And because the more of us who choose Easy World, the more harmonious and joyful life on Planet Earth will be, I believe we’re getting extra help now in remembering. As you will see when you read my personal story of re-discovering Easy World, which I’m going to share with you in this chapter, Easy World is so ready for our return, it apparently has invisible PR agents, intent on helping us remember it!
I certainly needed help. I’d like to assure you from the outset that my being the one to bring you the word about Easy World is not because I am the extremely rare human being who has managed to stay in Easy World her whole life, never losing touch with it. Not at all. I think I was simply ripe to return to it, and Divine Intelligence knew I was someone who would never keep quiet about such an amazing discovery!
Just as I’m sure you have, I have spent a large share of my life outside of Easy World. In all honesty, I still find myself in Difficult World more than I’d like to, though far less often than before I was reawakened to an awareness of Easy World and my choice to be there! In fact, it was my unconscious insistence on being in Difficult World at a particular time that seemed to beckon the remembrance of Easy World.
I’m going to share my own story of rediscovering Easy World with you now so you can see how quickly and easily one can move out of Difficult World and into Easy World again, even after a long, long absence—and even when there is every reason to believe that things are so complicated, they surely have to be difficult!
A DIVINE WHISPER
I was reminded of Easy World, appropriately, at the easiest possible time for me to be receptive to it: when I was way, way outside of it. It was about 4:20 in the morning—you know, that time when you wake up and start thinking about the pile of things facing you but it’s too early (sane people are still sleeping) to take practical steps to deal with what ever you’re worried about, so you just lie there stewing. I bet you’ve been there before.
My husband, Rick, and I had just the evening before clinched our decision to install an Endless Pool, a small swimming pool with a current you swim against, in our garage. We had met with the installer, figured out the logistics, and set a time line. While this was cause for celebration—a dream coming true after my having wanted the pool for almost twenty years, and now needing one because of knee problems—it was going to require a whole lot more than just setting up a small pool in the garage!
I won’t name all the items on the mile-long list of tasks that needed orchestrating, and stuff that had to be moved, excavated, cleaned, built, installed, and paid for. It was a mammoth-seeming undertaking, requiring multiple tradespeople, including concrete contractors, building contractors, electrical contractors, and so on. And all of this had to be perfectly coordinated to get everything done by the time the pool arrived to be installed, with a substantial financial penalty for not being ready. No pressure there!
There was a whole pile of additional factors, too, including harsh winter weather (this was Denver, Colorado, at the end of January 2007, with frozen ground covered by feet-deep, frozen-solid snow) and the timing of other home improvement projects that had already been scheduled. Oh, and I can’t fail to mention that the garage was housing a couple dozen cartons of books, our larger-than-average collection of lawn and garden equipment and supplies, and years’ worth of miscellaneous junk that we had stuck there when we didn’t know what else to do with it.
Talk about overwhelming—where was all this stuff going to go? With my mobility issues and Rick’s work commitments, how were we going to get it all cleaned out and moved so the contractors could get started? And speaking of contractors, how would we find the right ones?
My past experience with contractors had been that not many were interested in small jobs, so I deeply dreaded trying to get anyone to say he’d be willing to do the work, not to mention interviewing a bunch of contractors to try to find the best price for the best quality, and orchestrate it all so it got done in the right sequence and on time. Consider my anxiety about coordinating all this, combined with my perfectionistic need to get it all exactly right, and you’ll have some sense of my state of mind upon retiring that night.
I went to bed in a knot of concern, but not before I filled out a few requests with an Internet company I had received a promotional e-mail about earlier that week that matches you with prescreened contractors in your area. I didn’t have much confidence in it, but at least it was a way to feel I was doing something, even though it was late at night. I planned to start the uncomfortable task of getting out the phone book and making cold calls the next day.
As is my habit as a night owl, I went to bed at around two A.M., and when I woke up at 4:20, all of this was on my mind. As I lay there, mind churning, desperately trying to figure out how in the world I was going to make this all happen the way it needed to, I heard a gentle, loving, yet firm inner whisper that said what I now know were some of the most profound words I’d ever heard: “Julia, you could just choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy.”
Easy World? It sounded like a refreshing oasis in the midst of a vast desert, and something deep inside said, “Yes!”
Too mentally exhausted from all the worry and lack of sleep to question or ponder what I’d heard, I realized I might as well let go, since I seemed to be getting nowhere anyway. “What the heck?” I thought. There seemed to be nothing to lose.
And then I said, “Okay. I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy.” I rolled over, relaxed, promptly fell asleep, and slumbered in complete peace.
AWAKENING TO A WHOLE NEW WORLD
By the time I woke up mid-morning and got to my desk, I had forgotten about Easy World. Remarkably, however, I had e-mails and calls from multiple contractors for each job that needed doing. While I had forgotten about Easy World, it, apparently, had not forgotten about me! Things fell into place with an ease that was simply unprecedented in my experience, and it was obvious something very different was going on.
I didn’t have to beat the bushes for people willing to do the work; I had an abundance of people lined up to do it! We met with the first contractor who had contacted us about doing the concrete work, and not only did we feel very comfortable with him, but he and his crew were also itching to start immediately. And, though he had answered our request for concrete work, he was a general contractor.
Except for the electrical work, his crew could do everything we needed to have done, including all the carpentry. Perhaps most amazing of all, they were so eager to start that in order to expedite things, the contractor volunteered his guys to clear all the stuff out of our garage—no small feat with books that needed to be relocated to the basement—at no charge just so they could go ahead and get to work! On their first day, they accomplished the emptying of the garage in thirty minutes flat and hardly broke a sweat.
Easy World? I was catching on!
While I was on the phone that day with my webmaster, Easy World magic struck again. I had asked him to add something to my Web site—something a little out of the ordinary. He wasn’t sure how to do it, and I could tell he was anticipating that it would be difficult, so I told him about Easy World and invited him in.
When I finished talking, I was met with dead silence. I thought he either had not been listening or had blown off what I had said. But after a few seconds, he said, somewhat incredulously, “What do you know? I found the script to do it and it’s done! How easy was that?!” He had accepted my invitation into Easy World. I was thrilled. I loved discovering that it wasn’t something that only I was able to tune in to.
That afternoon at rush hour, I went to my favorite natural-foods grocery store, located on a high-traffic main thoroughfare. There is a “No left turn” sign as you exit the parking lot, and left is the direction I need to go to get home from there. My usual course is to turn right out of the parking lot, take the first right after that, which leads up a steep hill, then make the next right, which takes me on a neighborhood street to the main road I turn right on to get home—a little out of the way, but normally not much of a problem.
We’d had a particularly harsh winter in Denver, however, and many neighborhood roads had not been plowed after multiple snows, making them rutted and icy. We’d had snow just the night before, too, so I knew my normal route up and around the block would be treacherous. I found myself beginning to worry and immediately caught myself. I said, “I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy. Getting home will be a piece of cake!”
Once I was inside the store, the shopping was pleasant and easy. At checkout time, the total of my purchases was $88.88. I love master numbers, and took this as a little wink from Spirit. As I left the store, I was prepared to find an alternate route home through the traffic and icy roads. But as I was exiting the parking lot, I looked both ways and there was not a single car in sight! At 5:30 P.M. on a usually clogged seven-lane road in a major metropolitan area at rush hour, there was no traffic at all.
This was completely unprecedented in my experience, and definitely otherworldly. Clearly, I was in another world, indeed! So I did what I figured anyone being presented with such a gift would do and, though it was discouraged (but not illegal) in Difficult World, I made what was clearly an Easy World– sanctioned left turn, and made it home in record time with no problems whatsoever.
I was beginning to feel right at home in Easy World.
A UNIVERSAL SOLUTION TO ALL PROBLEMS
As I remembered to invoke Easy World over the ensuing days and weeks, I began to see that choosing Easy World worked for everything, and that the ideal was to live life entirely in Easy World. But the habit of Difficult World was ingrained, and so I needed to keep choosing Easy World whenever I recognized that I had fallen out of it, which was frequently.
However frustrating it was each time to realize I was back in Difficult World, I was grateful that I now at least knew I had a choice! As I exercised that choice more and more, my overall experience of life began to be more harmonious, more joyful, and . . . easier!
Things that had felt stuck before seemed to be on the move again. My creativity was greatly increasing, and when I remembered to invoke Easy World, I found myself reveling in my writing, teaching, and other creative projects instead of struggling with them, and I saw that they were making a greater difference in the lives of others. It seemed that a lot of energy was freed up by my relaxing more and worrying less. And worrying was definitely a habit.
Not long after I first rediscovered Easy World and experienced its magic to arrange things to support ease and joy and alleviate worry, the two youngest of my beloved stepdaughters were in our charge. The younger of the two, Claire, who did not yet drive, had gone to an activity at the high school, and the next-to-youngest, Wendy, who’d had her license for just under a year, was hanging out at our house.
Claire was supposed to call when she needed to be picked up, and since Wendy would already be going out around that time to go home to their mom’s house, where they lived, she had agreed to pick up Claire and drive them both home when the time came so that Rick wouldn’t have to make a special trip out.
The roads were still icy, and I was a little concerned about her driving on them beyond the short distance home, but this is a girl who had grown up in Colorado and had taken a driving course that provided instruction and experience in extreme driving conditions, so I tried to reassure myself with that and relax about it. I’d like to say I was cool with the situation, but that would be an exaggeration.
Then, Claire didn’t call when I thought she’d be calling, and I became more concerned. Adding to that, seeing that Wendy was napping as she waited, I worried even more about sending the groggy teen off into the night on dicey roads to fetch her sister.
Just as I was about to insist that Rick go to the high school to check on Claire and pick her up, I caught myself spinning problems out of thin air and remembered Easy World. I told myself to chill out. “I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy,” I said to myself, and, feeling better immediately, I settled in for the EW solution to present itself.
Within a few minutes, the phone rang and it was Claire. “Please tell Dad he doesn’t need to come get me. Mom is here and she’s taking me home.”
Easy World.
IT’S YOUR TURN TO CHOOSE EASY WORLD!
From orchestrating major projects and sorting out impossible-seeming problems to dealing with the most ordinary, everyday stuff such as safety issues, general worries, and simple matters of convenience, it was made clear to me that choosing to be in Easy World was absolutely the way to go. And it gets clearer every day.
 
Excerpted from Choosing Easy World by Julia Rogers Hamrick.
Copyright © 2010 by Julia Rogers Hamrick.
Published in August 2010 by St. Martin’s Press.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.

Excerpts

1

Rediscovering Easy World
Wake up! Wake up! I have exciting news! It’s time to return to Easy World at last!
Long ago, you fell asleep and found yourself in Difficult World and forgot you had the choice to be in the world in which your life is easy and joy-filled. You’ve been spending the majority of your life in the realm of struggle, strife, and worry, not realizing it was unnecessary. But now it’s time to rediscover the remarkable world of your origins and to remember that you can choose to be there once more.
Even though you—and the rest of humanity—have pretty much forgotten about it, the reality called “Easy World” is eternal. It exists as it has since before the dawn of human existence and is as vital and powerful as ever. It has been perpetually available and accessible to every single human being at any time (and yes, that includes you), but because you forgot about it and didn’t know to choose it, it may as well not have existed except for those times when you slipped back into it unawares.
Basically, it never went away—you did!
But however long you’ve been away, Easy World is waiting for you to remember it. And because the more of us who choose Easy World, the more harmonious and joyful life on Planet Earth will be, I believe we’re getting extra help now in remembering. As you will see when you read my personal story of re-discovering Easy World, which I’m going to share with you in this chapter, Easy World is so ready for our return, it apparently has invisible PR agents, intent on helping us remember it!
I certainly needed help. I’d like to assure you from the outset that my being the one to bring you the word about Easy World is not because I am the extremely rare human being who has managed to stay in Easy World her whole life, never losing touch with it. Not at all. I think I was simply ripe to return to it, and Divine Intelligence knew I was someone who would never keep quiet about such an amazing discovery!
Just as I’m sure you have, I have spent a large share of my life outside of Easy World. In all honesty, I still find myself in Difficult World more than I’d like to, though far less often than before I was reawakened to an awareness of Easy World and my choice to be there! In fact, it was my unconscious insistence on being in Difficult World at a particular time that seemed to beckon the remembrance of Easy World.
I’m going to share my own story of rediscovering Easy World with you now so you can see how quickly and easily one can move out of Difficult World and into Easy World again, even after a long, long absence—and even when there is every reason to believe that things are so complicated, they surely have to be difficult!
A DIVINE WHISPER
I was reminded of Easy World, appropriately, at the easiest possible time for me to be receptive to it: when I was way, way outside of it. It was about 4:20 in the morning—you know, that time when you wake up and start thinking about the pile of things facing you but it’s too early (sane people are still sleeping) to take practical steps to deal with what ever you’re worried about, so you just lie there stewing. I bet you’ve been there before.
My husband, Rick, and I had just the evening before clinched our decision to install an Endless Pool, a small swimming pool with a current you swim against, in our garage. We had met with the installer, figured out the logistics, and set a time line. While this was cause for celebration—a dream coming true after my having wanted the pool for almost twenty years, and now needing one because of knee problems—it was going to require a whole lot more than just setting up a small pool in the garage!
I won’t name all the items on the mile-long list of tasks that needed orchestrating, and stuff that had to be moved, excavated, cleaned, built, installed, and paid for. It was a mammoth-seeming undertaking, requiring multiple tradespeople, including concrete contractors, building contractors, electrical contractors, and so on. And all of this had to be perfectly coordinated to get everything done by the time the pool arrived to be installed, with a substantial financial penalty for not being ready. No pressure there!
There was a whole pile of additional factors, too, including harsh winter weather (this was Denver, Colorado, at the end of January 2007, with frozen ground covered by feet-deep, frozen-solid snow) and the timing of other home improvement projects that had already been scheduled. Oh, and I can’t fail to mention that the garage was housing a couple dozen cartons of books, our larger-than-average collection of lawn and garden equipment and supplies, and years’ worth of miscellaneous junk that we had stuck there when we didn’t know what else to do with it.
Talk about overwhelming—where was all this stuff going to go? With my mobility issues and Rick’s work commitments, how were we going to get it all cleaned out and moved so the contractors could get started? And speaking of contractors, how would we find the right ones?
My past experience with contractors had been that not many were interested in small jobs, so I deeply dreaded trying to get anyone to say he’d be willing to do the work, not to mention interviewing a bunch of contractors to try to find the best price for the best quality, and orchestrate it all so it got done in the right sequence and on time. Consider my anxiety about coordinating all this, combined with my perfectionistic need to get it all exactly right, and you’ll have some sense of my state of mind upon retiring that night.
I went to bed in a knot of concern, but not before I filled out a few requests with an Internet company I had received a promotional e-mail about earlier that week that matches you with prescreened contractors in your area. I didn’t have much confidence in it, but at least it was a way to feel I was doing something, even though it was late at night. I planned to start the uncomfortable task of getting out the phone book and making cold calls the next day.
As is my habit as a night owl, I went to bed at around two A.M., and when I woke up at 4:20, all of this was on my mind. As I lay there, mind churning, desperately trying to figure out how in the world I was going to make this all happen the way it needed to, I heard a gentle, loving, yet firm inner whisper that said what I now know were some of the most profound words I’d ever heard: “Julia, you could just choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy.”
Easy World? It sounded like a refreshing oasis in the midst of a vast desert, and something deep inside said, “Yes!”
Too mentally exhausted from all the worry and lack of sleep to question or ponder what I’d heard, I realized I might as well let go, since I seemed to be getting nowhere anyway. “What the heck?” I thought. There seemed to be nothing to lose.
And then I said, “Okay. I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy.” I rolled over, relaxed, promptly fell asleep, and slumbered in complete peace.
AWAKENING TO A WHOLE NEW WORLD
By the time I woke up mid-morning and got to my desk, I had forgotten about Easy World. Remarkably, however, I had e-mails and calls from multiple contractors for each job that needed doing. While I had forgotten about Easy World, it, apparently, had not forgotten about me! Things fell into place with an ease that was simply unprecedented in my experience, and it was obvious something very different was going on.
I didn’t have to beat the bushes for people willing to do the work; I had an abundance of people lined up to do it! We met with the first contractor who had contacted us about doing the concrete work, and not only did we feel very comfortable with him, but he and his crew were also itching to start immediately. And, though he had answered our request for concrete work, he was a general contractor.
Except for the electrical work, his crew could do everything we needed to have done, including all the carpentry. Perhaps most amazing of all, they were so eager to start that in order to expedite things, the contractor volunteered his guys to clear all the stuff out of our garage—no small feat with books that needed to be relocated to the basement—at no charge just so they could go ahead and get to work! On their first day, they accomplished the emptying of the garage in thirty minutes flat and hardly broke a sweat.
Easy World? I was catching on!
While I was on the phone that day with my webmaster, Easy World magic struck again. I had asked him to add something to my Web site—something a little out of the ordinary. He wasn’t sure how to do it, and I could tell he was anticipating that it would be difficult, so I told him about Easy World and invited him in.
When I finished talking, I was met with dead silence. I thought he either had not been listening or had blown off what I had said. But after a few seconds, he said, somewhat incredulously, “What do you know? I found the script to do it and it’s done! How easy was that?!” He had accepted my invitation into Easy World. I was thrilled. I loved discovering that it wasn’t something that only I was able to tune in to.
That afternoon at rush hour, I went to my favorite natural-foods grocery store, located on a high-traffic main thoroughfare. There is a “No left turn” sign as you exit the parking lot, and left is the direction I need to go to get home from there. My usual course is to turn right out of the parking lot, take the first right after that, which leads up a steep hill, then make the next right, which takes me on a neighborhood street to the main road I turn right on to get home—a little out of the way, but normally not much of a problem.
We’d had a particularly harsh winter in Denver, however, and many neighborhood roads had not been plowed after multiple snows, making them rutted and icy. We’d had snow just the night before, too, so I knew my normal route up and around the block would be treacherous. I found myself beginning to worry and immediately caught myself. I said, “I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy. Getting home will be a piece of cake!”
Once I was inside the store, the shopping was pleasant and easy. At checkout time, the total of my purchases was $88.88. I love master numbers, and took this as a little wink from Spirit. As I left the store, I was prepared to find an alternate route home through the traffic and icy roads. But as I was exiting the parking lot, I looked both ways and there was not a single car in sight! At 5:30 P.M. on a usually clogged seven-lane road in a major metropolitan area at rush hour, there was no traffic at all.
This was completely unprecedented in my experience, and definitely otherworldly. Clearly, I was in another world, indeed! So I did what I figured anyone being presented with such a gift would do and, though it was discouraged (but not illegal) in Difficult World, I made what was clearly an Easy World– sanctioned left turn, and made it home in record time with no problems whatsoever.
I was beginning to feel right at home in Easy World.
A UNIVERSAL SOLUTION TO ALL PROBLEMS
As I remembered to invoke Easy World over the ensuing days and weeks, I began to see that choosing Easy World worked for everything, and that the ideal was to live life entirely in Easy World. But the habit of Difficult World was ingrained, and so I needed to keep choosing Easy World whenever I recognized that I had fallen out of it, which was frequently.
However frustrating it was each time to realize I was back in Difficult World, I was grateful that I now at least knew I had a choice! As I exercised that choice more and more, my overall experience of life began to be more harmonious, more joyful, and . . . easier!
Things that had felt stuck before seemed to be on the move again. My creativity was greatly increasing, and when I remembered to invoke Easy World, I found myself reveling in my writing, teaching, and other creative projects instead of struggling with them, and I saw that they were making a greater difference in the lives of others. It seemed that a lot of energy was freed up by my relaxing more and worrying less. And worrying was definitely a habit.
Not long after I first rediscovered Easy World and experienced its magic to arrange things to support ease and joy and alleviate worry, the two youngest of my beloved stepdaughters were in our charge. The younger of the two, Claire, who did not yet drive, had gone to an activity at the high school, and the next-to-youngest, Wendy, who’d had her license for just under a year, was hanging out at our house.
Claire was supposed to call when she needed to be picked up, and since Wendy would already be going out around that time to go home to their mom’s house, where they lived, she had agreed to pick up Claire and drive them both home when the time came so that Rick wouldn’t have to make a special trip out.
The roads were still icy, and I was a little concerned about her driving on them beyond the short distance home, but this is a girl who had grown up in Colorado and had taken a driving course that provided instruction and experience in extreme driving conditions, so I tried to reassure myself with that and relax about it. I’d like to say I was cool with the situation, but that would be an exaggeration.
Then, Claire didn’t call when I thought she’d be calling, and I became more concerned. Adding to that, seeing that Wendy was napping as she waited, I worried even more about sending the groggy teen off into the night on dicey roads to fetch her sister.
Just as I was about to insist that Rick go to the high school to check on Claire and pick her up, I caught myself spinning problems out of thin air and remembered Easy World. I told myself to chill out. “I choose to live in Easy World, where everything is easy,” I said to myself, and, feeling better immediately, I settled in for the EW solution to present itself.
Within a few minutes, the phone rang and it was Claire. “Please tell Dad he doesn’t need to come get me. Mom is here and she’s taking me home.”
Easy World.
IT’S YOUR TURN TO CHOOSE EASY WORLD!
From orchestrating major projects and sorting out impossible-seeming problems to dealing with the most ordinary, everyday stuff such as safety issues, general worries, and simple matters of convenience, it was made clear to me that choosing to be in Easy World was absolutely the way to go. And it gets clearer every day.
 
Excerpted from Choosing Easy World by Julia Rogers Hamrick.
Copyright © 2010 by Julia Rogers Hamrick.
Published in August 2010 by St. Martin’s Press.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.