We are all everyday, garden-variety students if we are struggling to find meaning in this life. There are no quick fixes for any spiritual problem. If there were, everyone would be fixed. And the purpose of life is not to get fixed but to become who you already are. Paradox is the order of the day. One step forward, two steps back. There is no free ride, etc. and so forth.

When you have finished reading the latest article or book on how to make your life better, try handing it to someone who is in the middle of a mess. You’ll be lucky if they don’t kill you! I lived in the middle of a mess for many years. (Note alliteration, ha ha!) And it was a miserable mess, a morass of a mess, a magnificent mess. (Somebody stop me before I alliterate again.) But you know where I am coming from.

All advice is worthless advice if it comes to you from the outside.

Once you begin listening to other people tell you what to do, you have lost your own way.

I am at the point where mercy is what matters. I know myself so well that I can pronounce myself hopeless and helpless. Angels are reading as I type this. My better angels, you might say. The ones that know when I am being sincere and when I am conning myself again.

I need my own forgiveness and mercy instead of the usual self-condemnation. And I only get it when I am conscious.

So consciousness is the answer to any pain you might be in. There are no answers on the mental level. As Vernon Howard’s secretary said to me, “Never ask the mind!”

And so what do we do with our pesky little collection of brain cells? We say “Thank you very much but I am going to let my heart speak.” And your heart will have nothing to say.

Silence is our true nature, not words.

I am going to stop here before I pollute the stream yet again.

Vicki Woodyard