The entwining of Self with the ego takes place before we know what hit us. Some people never know because they are simply not interested. Others of us spend our entire adult lives trying to figure out how to escape from our emotional pain and woundings. Can it be done?

Vernon Howard had a sign over his lecture hall that said: “When the pain gets too bad, come back.” We thought he meant to his class. And he DID mean that, but so much more. To this day, I forget that the only way out of pain is to come back to mere awareness of it.

Vernon died in 1992 and the imprint he left on many of us is still being felt. Once you are given the truth, you will not be able to forget it. It will draw you back again and again and again. You will recognize it in many different places and times. You will want to capture it and it will resist you.

You will try to teach it and it will turn into gibberish. You will try to unite with it and it will laugh at you. You will turn away from it and it will turn away from you.

These notes of mine are signposts to where we are all headed if we have any sense. They come from a place beyond words and fly high above the mental static we keep tuning into.

All of life is suffering waiting to be redeemed. No one wants to hear that. It is nothing that we can do. Understand that well. It is who we are and if we are wise, we will surrender to the mystery of conscious redemption.

Vernon Howard threw us into the fire again and again. He never promised we would make it. I wonder why? Could it be that there is nothing to do but wait on God? If so, why is there something called The Work? I don’t know. I have tried to escape from both my pain and from the Work. Both of them are bigger than I am. Somehow I feel better for writing this.

Vicki Woodyard