“The kind of work I like is the evidence of life lived, rather than some kind of abstracted conclusion of how things might be. I see a song as the ashes of existence, and if there is a light there, and you can warm yourself by it. It isn’t an intellectual construction — its more like a footprint that you can stick your own foot in. Or a spike on which you can impale yourself.” ~Leonard Cohen (Found on cohencentric.com)

I love this quote, for this is how I write. I began writing online around 2001 when my husband was actively fighting multiple myeloma. I saw I had a knack for honesty and immediacy and so I continued in that vein and it fit me like a glove.

You can read over two thousand of my notes on Facebook, which served me well for a time. But my original writing was posted on Yahoo lists, especially Jerry Katz’ Nonduality Salon. Much water has gone over the bridge since that time, but I remain true to my original form.

I am not interested in reading accounts of awakening, for words are meaningless in that department. It is too easy a way out. I learned what I learned while I was up against the ropes gasping for air.

I wrote after the decimation of my energy and the destruction of anything called a normal life. I was writing from the trenches.
Now I am learning to write from pure silence while having nothing new or different to say. Not that I have completed the course; no one ever does. But I am in a resting phase, or so it would seem. But the resting is from something so devastating that had I taken a different path, I would have not survived. My suffering was that total. Out of total suffering a peace arises.

Vicki Woodyard