Sometimes I know how deeply I hurt; most of the time I don’t. It is like a small animal in a cage. I feed it and love it, but I am too cowardly to let it out and let it become seen as powerful and beautiful, this lost breath I have refused to take.

Instead I write about waking up, about the spiritual path, about principles that can help us. And the whole time the soul is caged up in its sorrow. The cell is small and the call for freedom is huge.

You see, we are not allowed to grow so strong that we knock people over with the wisdom of the broken heart. We want to patch it up, to keep it caged. But let no one be deceived by my show of strength; I broke a long time ago.

Out of this patched up life I have written beautiful paragraphs destined for the dust heap, for the waste basket, for the Trash icon. You get the picture. These paragraphs are my way of feeding the animal, so small and undefended.

There is a thin veneer of teachings that leave me absolutely cold. They are the teachings that speak of enlightenment as something doable. What a joke. That a man or woman could reach the heights without descending into the depths.

I no longer wish to emerge from the depths but to speak ever more deeply about them. Some of you know. You know you have been abandoned, bewildered and ignored in the middle of the teachings. They don’t work. Nothing works.

Take this small caged animal and set it free from social teachings about improving the planet and its inhabitants. It can’t be done. It shouldn’t be done. Because the people trying to make this world a better place cannot remember the words of the Christ. “My kingdom is not of this world.”

If you haven’t read my book,“Bigger Than The Sky,” you should. It is not about me. It is about a man that transcended social teachings and descended so fully into his sorrow that he flew away. He landed right where he had always been. In the sunlight with his cats. And that is how it should be. He needed a teacher no more. May we all be so blessed.

Vicki Woodyard