With me, what you see is what you get. I have always been that way. In a family where the truth was not expressed often, I seemed to be a boat-rocker of the first water. For one thing, I dislike subterfuge. And I have never said that word out loud. Southern women are raised to “be nice.” But underneath the niceness is the usual layer of “not-nice.” You’re just not supposed to notice it.

Vernon Howard stripped the ego of its falseness right away. Anything you were hiding would be revealed simply by being in his presence. He may not have said anything, but he knew. He knew that bandaids had to be ripped off quickly instead of slowly.

So I entered the hall where he spoke just like everyone else—tense and apprehensive. He sat at his desk on a raised platform so he could see everyone. But he rarely made eye contact with students. Instead he just sat there quietly until class began. Then the tiger began to roar.

He decimated the ego. His stories were all about seeing how bad off we actually are, rather than letting us continue to dream our lives away.

The work parties made us focus on the task at hand. He didn’t like idle chatter while we worked.

As you can probably guess, many people left without a backward glance. These were the people that arrived by accident. Most of us got there by a dream or some other providential way. There are no accidents.

Vernon is long gone, but his energy remains within me. The love he shared was not of this plane, therefore it was alien to those looking for human love. His teachings hold up, but not for those looking for joy, beauty and happiness. He taught us to look for our true self rather than an imaginary state of being.

My ebook is dead in the market. He would not be surprised, nor am I. Such is life. Such is enlightenment. What is true is unwanted by the false.

Vicki Woodyard