When Thieves Break In and Steal

Honoring the Practice as a Victim of Theft

By William K. Ferro

I’m a strong believer in synchronicity. Groundbreaking psychotherapist Carl Jung defined the phenomenon as “an acausal connecting principle.” We’ve all experienced it: we sit in meditation with a particular issue—generosity, for example—and immediately receive a record number of requests for support from various charities we care about. Or we create and write up a new, healthier diet for ourselves, and the next day receive a call from a family member saying they've been diagnosed with a medical condition and needs to modify their diet.

That’s synchronicity.

It just happened to me—again! My most recent post (for a client's blog) was entitled Writing as a Spiritual Practice; in that article, I talked about how we spiritual bloggers “put our souls on paper—or into cyberspace—for the world to see.” The next day, I came across a blog that had reproduced one of my posts without acknowledging its author. I wasn’t overly concerned; such occasional “borrowing” is par for the course when you write for the web. However, going further back on that blog, I discovered that every post I’d written for the past year appeared there! Not only the text—written under my name with copyright information clearly displayed; but the graphics, too—which I had to pay for to use legally.

I’m sure other authors out there who’ve experienced plagiarism will agree with me: it’s almost precisely like coming home to discover your house broken into, and your most cherished possessions stolen. There’s an overwhelming sense of violation; someone has taken the carefully-crafted expressions of your soul and casually duplicated them without notice or acknowledgement. Fortunately, there’s a specific, well-established recourse available for those who are plagiarized on the web. For present purposes, however, I’d like to look specifically at how to honor your spiritual practice if you should find yourself in such a circumstance.

(To be continued)

Cheers (and Namaste),


WKF

Copyright 2012 by William K. Ferro
All rights under copyright reserved.