How a plagiarised book answered my prayer
Sep 03, 2021
By Dr Shuna Marr
Want to know how a plagiarised book answered my prayer?
Well, let me give you a bit of background context and then I'll explain how it happened.
In July, I finished creating the final videos for my online course Ok I'm Awakening - What Happens Now?
.... and immediately afterwards I felt myself sink down into a fallow ebb time, as I decompressed and rested during July.
August brought me a period of deep introspection, evaluating all aspects of my business and deciding what I wanted to take forward with me into my new cycle.
And now, as September dawns, I am ready to begin giving more energy to bringing my course to the attention of people who would be helped by it - and so I've been looking for some marketing help.
When you're looking - you see!
A lot of adverts about marketing courses have been presented to me via Facebook - because once you show you are open to a topic, the algorithm kicks in and more and more adverts come, until you find your newsfeed flooded with them.
And I'm not blaming the Facebook algorithm because I was indeed clicking through and watching so many of these - and I found loads of really useful information ....
but I've also seen advert after advert tell me how my message/ business/ website/ strategy is broken and how their offering is THE one that will fix me in my brokenness.
I was being consistently told that making $10k months or ‘5,6 or 7 figures’ is the ultimate measure of my success.
And even some of the ones that talked about ‘magnetising’ clients were still really coming from a very 3D perspective and giving lip-service to 'awakened buzzwords'.
I fell into a dark place
After being sucked into it all for the last couple of weeks, I found myself unhappily sitting in a field of fear and self doubt, feeling confused and struggling to get back to my centre.
It felt a really dark and uncomfortable field to be in.
Thankfully, I’ve now lifted myself free of this energy and have reconnected with my own inner guidance to what aligns with me.
But going through something like that is really useful experience to go through for many reasons...
As always, I know that I've not been a victim of this experience - none of this was happening 'TO' me, but FOR me.
So what has it shown me?
Firstly, it's been a while since I immersed myself in the field of mass consciousness for so long and it's useful to remind myself how people feel when they are in it - it's not pleasant and I know I can help people move out of it.
When you are coming up against something that's not in alignment for you, you recognise that your body feels a lot of internal discomfort, and there was so much of what I was reading that made my body feel 'yucky'.
Our bodies offer guidance
Our bodies are a great part of our internal guidance and if something isn't feeling good - pay attention! It's giving you a warning that this is out of alignment with your highest good.
I know my head was certainly being seduced by a lot of it and I found myself wandering about the land of feeling I 'should' be following some of these business models...
by the way, let me just clarify here that none of the offerings were 'wrong or bad' - even the ones that were heavily into what's often called 'bro-marketing' based on fear and lack and somewhat manipulative methods.
Each one of these people making their offering believes in their offering and is a 'perfect fit' for someone else who's looking for exactly that
- and the perfect fit will depend on each person's unique path, what stage they are on their journey and what life lessons they are here to experience.
So I'm not making judgement on them per se - just on recognising what didn't feel right for ME.
Thankfully, I know that when you get all the internal discomfort I need to pause and do nothing until I felt I could move forward in flow with the choice that felt right for me.
And this is when I sent up a prayer asking the Universe to guide me to the perfect fit - and a couple of days ago I finally chose a business mentor who really aligns with my values and I'm feeling great again.
But what about the plagiarised book?
I haven't forgotten...
What happened is that a couple of days ago, just as the tide was turning for me, I ordered two books from Amazon that were based on marketing with ethics and integrity.
I received them today - and although they had different titles, authors and covers - inside they were the exact same book! Word for word - page for page - diagram for diagram. Someone had taken a digital copy of the original book and published it under a different name and title.
As a former Academic Misconduct Officer at University I was easily able to spot the marks of authenticity that showed which was the original author/book and the other not only had all the giveaways that it was plagiarised, but its energy felt very 'off'.
I contacted the genuine author and Amazon to tell them. I got my money back and it's been passed on to the Amazon plagiarism team.
But the original author - and I'll tell you her name is Sarah Santacroce and the book is called Marketing Like We're Human - after I sent her an email telling her, she took the time to create a small video personally thanking me.
I was very impressed and I followed through to her website and found a huge number of resources that can help me and I signed up for her mail list.
There are no mistakes, and I feel that the Universe has brought me more fully into the sphere of this lady than I would have done than if I'd just bought her book - and in return I was able to help her identify this plagiarism and stop her losing further sales.
She also said it had alerted her to a key word that she needed to add to her description to help the search terms.
So it was a win-win for both of us.
And just in case you are wondering, the plagiarised book was titled 'Ethical Marketing' - a bit of irony, eh?
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