There is a concrete truck across the street at my neighbor’s house. He is having some swimming pool damage repaired. I am sitting at the table drinking coffee and eating a blueberry bar. I woke up with a tight neck and a sense of dread.

I interpret the waking dream. The concrete is always in need of repair; it is the ephemeral equivalent of the ego. The ego loves to think it is concrete, that it is real. It isn’t. I said recently that Vicki never learns. That is because she is a false front for the spirit residing within her.

I have lived in this neighborhood for over forty years and have seen a tornado take out all of the trees in our backyard. I have seen my husband die. I have watched myself deal with issues that should be left to the spirit. Things that happen are in the Tao. Reasonless, they go on without anyone interfering.

But I never learn and neither do you. You can sit in church and sing hymns and it won’t do you a whit of good. Everything is a false construct created by man.

Vernon Howard put his students on a hard rough road that was unpaved. Filled with boulders and dangerous enemies as it was, he told us to keep walking. He said that the easy way becomes the hard way and the hard way becomes the easy way.

So this morning I know I do not have a move in me. I have urged myself to put the house on the market, but fear always wins the day. Now it isn’t fear but the sure knowledge that some hard days lie ahead of me and I prefer the habitual path that my soul walks down. The ego and the soul are operating on parallel tracks. You can forget all the rubbish about self-improvement. It should be self-erasure. Here is the ultimate irony. God knows all about us and loves us anyway.

Vicki Woodyard