“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”

That sentence is from Surajit Basak, who is no longer available to me via Facebook. Elvis has left the building, so to speak, but so has God. Anyhoo, we find ourselves in a very fine mess, as Ollie said to Stan (or maybe Stan said to Ollie) They were before my time and I never found them funny.

I have quite a few pages of our conversations and go back and read them from time to time. He told me that my suffering was enlightenment. Just so.

What has this suffering yielded but an ongoing search for truth?

We seek reality in an unreal world. What craziness!

I used to feel guilty for not cultivating a social circle. Might as well grow yams on Mars.

I had agoraphobia for years and years and years. It has fallen away and in its place is peace.

This peace cannot be understood, only experienced in bits and pieces.

I woke up before dawn this morning, excited that today I would get out of the house and let Rob drive me to do a few errands and then grab a meal somewhere.

We used to war against each other; now we both see “the terror of the situation,” as Gurdjieff put it. Rob refuses to talk about spiritual matters. Having grown up with both parents committed to the path, I am sure he just grew tired of the subject. He rides his bike daily and stays in good shape.

Both his grandfather and father died of the same cancer at the same age, even at the same time of year. And he is named after them. Neither of us speak of that. When I die, he will have no family in town.

But we are all wanderers on this journey back to the Self, which thrives on solitude.

Suffering is a speciality of mine, so I guess you could say that I am enlightened. You could say that, but you would be lying. All I know is that you can run away from suffering for just so long.

One fine day you let it happen in spite of your efforts to avoid it. You suffer wisely instead of stupidly and mechanically. You sit in silence and breathe. Not in a class on breathing but by yourself. End of essay.

Vicki Woodyard