Stillness is a gift given to the surrendered mind. Every holiday leaves us drained. We have overdone things on every level. And even if we have learned the lesson in that particular pain, it is almost impossible to avoid it completely.
I have a crunch cake and a sweet potato pie calling my name. I hear them like I hear a dog whistle and find myself opening the cupboard and getting out a plate to cut a piece. I accidentally bought the large can of whipped cream and I heap mounds of it on top of the cake. So good. I am trying to drink less coffee and have found a brand of hot beverage called Inka. It is quite like coffee, so I maybe have one cup of coffee in the evening and and Inka otherwise. Inka Dinka Doo….
Rob and I sat down to some chicken and roast potatoes with the required green bean casserole. We had tea and rolls and dessert. I grabbed the pilgrim salt and pepper shakers and put them on the table. There were only two male ones. The females were out of reach where I couldn’t get to them from that high cabinet.
Before dinner, he took a short bike ride. I spent the day on and off the Mac, hoping a few new readers would get “Life With A Hole In It” or “Bigger Than The Sky” from me. These are two books that everyone falls in love with. Why? Because my very life was being stripped from me when I wrote them; that’s why.
Now the emptiness of my life today is a fact. In it I live and move and eat my leftovers. Nothing goes to waste. Every book I ever read and every talk I ever listened to are part of my being now. My power supply is always there when I remember to connect to it when it has run low.
I read many books written by people claiming to know, when they had just scratched the surface. I prefer to read accounts of people that got KO’d by Christ just as Paul did on the road to Damascus. Suffering is essential on this plant we inhabit. So we must use it to feed our being. This is not for the masses, this true awakening. It is for those that wish to suffer consciously. This is the alchemy of awareness.
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Vicki Woodyard
I recently watched your interview with Rick Archer. It was really good. I ordered your books today, planning to read them soon.
Thank you so much, Chandra. Read “Life With A Hole In It” first! They are easy reads although they are about suffering and transcending suffering. Let me know how you like them.
Hello Vicki. I too was introduced to you through your Rick Archer interview. I really enjoyed it. I’m enjoying your YouTube videos also.
Hi Renee, glad I got up the courage to do it.
Vicki, I’m surely glad you did too. I’ve re-listened a few times now. You’re such an entertaining storyteller!
I am getting a late start, but better now than never, as they say.
I am quite new to the interview format, so thanks, Renee.
I came to the interview late, meaning it was in my inbox for some time before I listened. I immediately ordered 2 books, but from Amazon. Later I visited your website and learned your wishes…. sorry! I had also hoped for a way to email or message (hope springs eternal, until it doesn’t, lol). Having become what we are knowingly, there is still some bouncing around, the key being ‘return’, return, return. A question, if I may — When going to the heart, just being heart, sadness is unending; concurrently there is of course only what is and the rawness of the sadness lessens, but also remains. Listening to your words in the interview, picking up on your “presence” or transmission or whatever( no talent for words here), I could not but wonder if this deep sadness derives from ego, or can be seen as ‘just what is’ ?
True sorrow comes from soul. Jesus was “a man of sorrows.” The more sensitive the soul, the deeper its sorrows. It does not and cannot fit into the world of ego.
What I have learned slowly over time is that we are indeed eternal beings who have forgot themselves. Gurdjieff set his students to the task of self-remembering.
Vernon Howard taught that as well. Consciousness is our birthright but we have traded it for a mess of pottage, as the Bible put it.
The ego suffers mechanically; the soul consciously. Once you see this, you begin to suffer less and less.
Ahhhh, Blessings to the teacher. Thank you most sincerely. Truth in your gift of words is seen/felt. Yes, and once the sorrow was felt so vastly( drop to heart), and was so just ‘here’, it was seen as something to overcome, something limiting.
The word I use is “This”. Since it seems we people so often use words to communicate, a word had to be chosen and “This” held the least thinking for me and avoided word-definitions that were suddenly seen to be ladened with previous concepts. “This” is acutely here eternally and defies my attempts of worded description. 🙂
Yet (back to topic) the chattering mind said such vast sorrow should (lol) not be so. Throughout this human life there has been death after death, of beloved family and ‘fur family’ too of course, until I became the last of my kind (so to speak), so such sorrow had/has good reason for its grasp, and awakening came dressed in many clashing colors, ha, during the seeking years. Amazingly it has been found that seeking is a difficult response to let go of, which is hysterically funny!
These days there is mostly reclusiveness and daily there is the awareness of moments/thoughts/actions that limit Awareness. I reckon, grin, that my mantra, is a matter of noticing, then “Return, return, return” to and as “This”, which in truth is that which we cannot fail to be. But… to be consciously… to be… being.
Thank you for showing me that deep sorrow too is Reality/truth, and can be vaster than ever imagined. Now I knew that didn’t I? Ha. Yet, but for your ‘showing” there would have been repeated stumbling. Resistance and previous concepts of the apparent world hide very well. Boo!! And “tag, you’re it.” But no,”This” is all that ever was, is, or shall be. As I’ve typed, a thump was felt… sort of like a conscious hugging OF consciousness and sorrow. There is doubt that there is ever an end to deepening, and that’s ok.
I hear you on the reclusiveness part! I like Return, Return, Return, too. Perhaps it is time for sorrow and consciousness to shake hands.