I have been running after perfection since I was old enough to have an idea of what that would look like. At times I felt I had achieved it. When I got all A’s on my report card and when I won a prize for my dancing. When I failed geometry and didn’t win a prize for dancing the next year, I felt imperfect.

I have been running after enlightenment as well. This interest runs in my family. I caught the bug from my mother and loved the places it lead me, at least in books. I am a natural student and never tire of reading about esoteric matters.

But as I get older, I am allowing enlightenment to run after me. My legs are getting tired and I know some of the books backwards and forwards. And let me tell you, there is no prize.

I studied with Vernon Howard, who looked decidedly unlike an exalted spiritual teacher. His hair was wild and his clothes unflattering. He scorned the wearing of suits and ties and favored eating at hole-in-the-wall cafes, as he called them. He said to eat at fancy restaurants was to lose your soul.

I loved him from Day One and saw through his act right away. His was not the traditional way of teaching, but a Fourth Way approach. Like Gurdjieff he excelled at reducing his students to their basic nothingness. He said that so far none of us had been enlightened and that was very true.

I saw students doing awful things to each other and when I visited there, I was given the cold shoulder by the majority of his students. He never interfered, although on occasion he would counsel the older students to be quit being so hard on the newcomers. This was not Sunday School.

I showed up there after the loss of a child, but when I visited Vernon’s school, that was the least of my problems, for he put the spotlight on what was happening in the living moment. And we were all alike; we just looked different.

What we all had in common was our suffering. His plaque over the door said, “When the pain gets too bad, come back.” We all knew what he meant because he brought our suffering to our immediate attention. I don’t know how he did it, but he made us hang on his every word.

He never lied and that in itself was unusual. His light, when it shone through his voice, was turned on our actual condition rather than the usual social behaviors that had failed us so dismally.

He has been gone many years now but the teachings are alive inside of me, as is my ego fighting for its life. But it just doesn’t fight as hard any more. It is able to sit back and let a little natural light come in. This in itself is amazing. To let the natural light of your soul shine in the window of your darkness. I will be doing this until I die.

Vicki Woodyard