Thoughts are not reality, although to our mind they seem so. God was brilliant in planning His Big Show of Consciousness. He made sure that human delusion kept the imaginary world spinning while hiding the Real in plain sight.

There is clearly no way out by The Route of Thought and yet we travel it from morning to night. And weary pilgrims that we are, we leave messages along the way. “Get out while you still have a chance. It will get steeper and stonier. You will only be meeting others with the same problems that you have. There are no answers here.” And so on and so forth.

But it feels like the mind is all we have and there are so many problems. No one tells us that the problems and the solutions are all on the same monotonous level. They don’t tell us that we are circling the foot of the mountain, either.

We start out by reading books on how to find God. Surely if we are serious enough, we will make progress on the intellectual level. We go to seminars and take notes. We try to leave the world but we can’t because it is inside of us.

When tragedy hits, we double our efforts, only to find that our emotions are now clouding our eyes and this keeps us from reading. We lie on our beds and know we are defeated, at least for the moment. Hope is still arising from the ashes of our broken hearts.

The worst thing we discover is that we have no allies inside the mind, for the mind is Enemy Territory. And our emotions keep us exhausted and alienated from our fellow man.

Actually, we are the only person on the planet we can call “I.” This is a profound shock. Everyone outside of us is an “other.” We are playing to an audience of one and the lines are blurted out in anger, terror and confusion.

To know this is a major breakthrough. Vernon Howard was the initial way shower for me. He spoke so clearly about The Dilemma of the Doer that I heard him through my rage and futility. I wanted to find a direct way up the mountain.

The catch was that I had to quit thinking and just be. Since this is an impossible task, I had to call for higher help. And when none seemed to come, I nevertheless had to keep calling.

And every note I write is a calling.

Vicki Woodyard