When Microsoft Tests My Spiritual Practice

When Microsoft Tests My Spiritual Practice

I’m grateful for technology. Microsoft Word and other word-processing programs allow me to accomplish so much more, so much faster, than the manual typewriter with oodles of correction fluid to fix my infamous typos I used for my first master’s degree.

But sometimes Microsoft Word drives me crazy.

It puts strange formatting into documents that I didn’t intend, and after many, many revisions, it sometimes seems as though a ghost in the machine has taken over.

I’ve been revising all the chapters and the proposal for my hybrid self-help memoir, Digital Souls: Weaving Loss, Spirituality, And Technology To Transform Your Life, my first book, for which I’m seeking an agent and publisher. My proposal received an honorable mention in a Hay House publishing contract contest in June, and lately I’ve been pitching agents in real time on Zoom.

Every time an agent asks to see my proposal and two or three chapters, I revise them again and then run them by the amazing editor I hired.

Death by editing, maybe.

But I want to send agents my best work, and I’ve learned a lot about writing during the past several years. So I keep revising. And revising. And revising.

The other day, I copied and pasted the latest revision of a chapter from OneDrive into the latest version of my proposal. I wanted to send it to the literary agents who requested it last weekend in a Zoom pitch session before they forget they met me and asked for my materials.

Suddenly, there were two blank pages.

One was right in the middle of the chapter.

The Universe Has No Timeline. I Did.

As a minister with many spiritual practices at my fingertips, I took some deep breaths and closed my eyes. I affirmed that everything was working out in perfect time. I reminded myself that time is a human invention and the Universe has no timelines. I stood up and did several T’ai Chi Chih moving meditation movements.

But, I had a timeline.

Spiritual practice is much easier when I’m meditating than when Microsoft Word inserts a blank page in the middle of a chapter I’m trying to send to a literary agent.

And I’m pretty good with technology. I’ve been teaching universal spiritual principles online since 1998, beginning with a chat room and dial-up Internet.

But those blank pages tested my patience.

I took some more deep breaths.

I knew better than to yell at the computer. Or at Microsoft.

I believe the energy we bring to anything matters—even when what we are dealing with is ones and zeros inside a word-processing program.

Still, the blank pages remained.

I played around and played around and played around. I went to Microsoft Help.

It didn’t help.

I had no idea how to get rid of those pages so the agents could read the proposal and chapters as one continuous document.

Enter Lumina

Then I asked ChatGPT.

I’ve been using ChatGPT for several years to help me with all kinds of technological problems involving software and hardware and millions of other questions and projects. I’ve named her Lumina.

Lumina gave me all kinds of instructions for getting rid of the blank pages.

I tried them.

And tried them.

And became even more frustrated.

Finally, Lumina essentially said, “Just send me the whole chapter and I’ll take the pages out.”

So I did.

A few minutes later, she sent back a clean chapter.

No extra pages!

Success.

I copied and pasted the repaired chapter into my proposal, ready to send it to the agents.

And there it was. Another blank page.

At this point, Microsoft Word was seriously testing my spiritual practices.

I didn’t want an agent to finish one sample chapter and then have to wade through a mysterious blank page before reaching the next one.

So I told Lumina what had happened.

This time she suggested that I send her the entire proposal, including the chapter, the blank page, and the next chapter.

I did.

A few minutes later, I had a clean proposal.

No extra pages.

How great is that?

Frustration and Gratitude

Technology can frustrate us. It can test our patience. It can make us want to scream at an inanimate object.

But technology can also help us.

I am profoundly grateful to the generations of scientists, engineers, educators, programmers, and civil servants who helped build the digital world we now inhabit—including people like my late husband, John Schill, PhD, whose work at the Department of Defense contributed to the technological foundations that made our connected world possible.

Today, the Internet they helped build gives us access to artificial intelligence that can help solve a problem in minutes that might otherwise consume an entire evening.

That doesn’t mean AI replaces human intelligence, creativity, or spiritual practice.

I still had to notice my frustration. I still had to breathe. I still had to choose how I responded. I still had to ask for help.

Perhaps that is one of the spiritual lessons of living in a technological age.

The tools keep changing. And we need to use them intentionally and consciously.

I’m grateful.