Why is it that I can’t apply the teachings? After a lifetime of not remembering that I am supposed to practice them, I remain asleep.

This is a very deep question that many of us have. Oh, on some rare days of reading the teachings, I actually apply them, but they are quickly forgotten.

I ask myself again, why am I such a slow learner? That is not the problem. The problem is that I am in a state of deep hypnotism, walking and talking in my sleep.

I was led to Vernon Howard because his main way of delivery was shouting and pounding the table. His words were emphatic. “Wake up! You don’t have a separate self; you just think you do.”

He taught us to witness how asleep we are, not how awake we are. That is a big mistake that is caused by thinking. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” ~Matthew 6.

He was often funny. He wrote “The only difference in sleeping people is how they snore.”

We are struggling when we could be relaxing.

We are concerned about our reputation when we should be trying to remember God.

We all know what Ram Dass said, “Love, serve and remember.”

So deep and so hard to do. It takes humility to confess that we don’t know how to live more consciously, but it is important to know the difference between a state of sleep and a momentary state of awakening. Then we experience grace.

Vicki Woodyard