All the world’s a stage and the players keep changing. How confusing life is, how heartbreaking, how daunting. You see, you are the One but so is everyone else. Few know this, but that doesn’t make it any the less true.

I read books for decades about Oneness, but when you get your first strong taste of “I am,” you know it is not about others. It is only about you. But don’t freak out; that won’t do you any good. I started freaking out at the age of twelve or thirteen. I begin to have panic attacks, social anxiety and agoraphobia. I did not know the “why” of it. I just knew the terror of it.

The world is a stage because the truth is verboten while we are in human incarnations. So we hear the story of Jesus and how He was both God and man. Come to find out, so are we. How tragic it is to live and die without knowing this.

I have been given the job of being a scribe of sorts. I am a solitary. No matter how hard I try, I remain the One. I am the watcher, the spectator, the loneliest one in town. But then, so is everyone else.

Since my husband’s death fifteen years ago, this Oneness has become more and more obvious to me. Love is who I am and yet I cannot feel it because I am it. I play my part on stage as a widow. I still feel like a homemaker, so I enjoy grocery shopping, going to the library and the mall. But I am always alone.

You don’t have to feel it to know it. But you can’t accept that you are the One until you are good and ready to do so. And even if you do come to know it, you will keep forgetting it. That is what keeps the play going. The actors and actresses are reading memorized lines. The outcome of the play is known. The outcome of the life of Jesus was known. But that doesn’t keep it from being the greatest story ever told.

You are One among many other Ones and yet you must not betray the other actors. You must try and play your part consciously. That itself will herald miracles in your life. When you play your part consciously, all sorts of good things begin to happen to you and through you. My own miracle is this keyboard that never fails to let me type essays like this.

Well, it is getting late here and I must say goodnight to all of you other players in this cast of billions. We are grains of sand on the beach, newborn stars in the sky, every good man and woman that ever lived. Yet we remain the One. It cannot be otherwise.

Vicki Woodyard