It is time we punctured the non-dual balloon instead of propping it up and letting people claim to be teachers. People that don’t reveal their faults and failures lest they lose their audience. And yes, an audience is what it is. You cannot follow these folks into their private lives because their online lives are covering them up.

I used to belong to non-dual groups but I quit that long ago. In these groups people pontificate and the loudest ones win. They also do damage to sensitive souls who truly believe they are less than others in the forums.

I have suffered from anxiety all of my life and have been shattered into pieces by sorrow. When I was in forums, young men would almost sneer at me for having emotions. It was pure insanity. Some men do nothing but hang out online all day claiming not to feel things anymore.

Leonard Cohen struggled with depression for most of his life; yet he produced an astounding body of work in spite of it. I am suggesting that the non-dual outlook is anti-artistic in some sense. Its clinical and cold intellectual approach leaves us unfed by the true spiritual source. What is that? I think you know. It is the heart.

So here I am, slogging away at doing what I do. The anxiety does not keep me from doing it, but I think I am okay. When I see Don Theo, he assures me that I look wonderful and he is seeing things beyond my sight.

Do not let yourself be bullied by your mind or the mind of others online. Trolls are rife. No one bothers me when I post on my blog and if they do on Facebook, the get Unfriended. I have no problem with that.

This is your life. Don’t let idiots tell you any different. The prism of the personality makes us all look sometimes good and sometimes bad. Awakening is not about the persona. I know one guy online that people find funny, so they flock to his kind of non-duality. It is clear to me that he does not practice what he preaches, but then neither do I. None of us do. Read that again. None of us do. We all fall short of the glory of God. Nevertheless, we stumble forward, hopefully landing in the arms of the All.

Vicki Woodyard