I am challenging myself to write an essay. This morning I determined to keep telling myself that awareness lies far above thought.

This can be experienced as a clear image of the problem of the moment (and there is always a problem).

For example, I see myself spreading butter on a waffle, or I just put butter on a waffle.

See how simple it is.

The issue is that to keep being aware for more than 30 seconds is a challenge for a sleeping human being.

I go back and study the words of Jesus as he talked to the few. “Take no thought for tomorrow.”

His teachings were warnings and we are in a desperate time of warnings right now.

We must have compassion for the world while knowing that awareness that we are asleep is far more important.

Being is above doing, but we have been brainwashed to think the opposite. To return to Jesus, He said that the poor we will always have with us. So don’t put things in reverse order.

I, of course, am talking to myself. The problem is that she doesn’t listen.

Vicki Woodyard

Password-itis

I feel rather blank today and this is a rare challenge for me, your friendly essayist. January will go away soon enough and I have little doubt about February coming next. I also have no doubt that any resolutions I have made will fail ASAP.

My desktop is cluttered, and I find that confusing. Who does this while I am sleeping? Is it like Santa Claus putting coal in my stocking?

I have lots of little yellow notebooks with passwords. At some point I have to make new ones, so much of the passwords are ridiculous and at some point incorrect.

Oh, well, I can always make new ones, she said hopefully. Maybe I can use that as a password. You might think it would be helpful if I told you how easily confused I am these days. It’s certainly not helpful to me!

Spiritual students are always halfway in and halfway out of the world. They do their best to keep on keeping on, but the trail is littered with little yellow notebooks and good intentions.

I was always a good child and a good student, but I always lacked confidence and was frequently disturbed by watching the grownups do childish things. Now I understand, since I am one.

Jesus told us to put away childish things. He knew everything and didn’t live long enough to become forgetful.

Being forgetful is to be human and the older we get the more human we become. We need wisdom now more than ever. AI is taking over the world and I am not sure even Jesus can overcome that.

Emily Dickinson said that hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul. AI will never replace Emily Dickinson. This I know!

If you need me, you can find me down at the Password Bar ordering a tall glass of nouns, verbs, symbols and I forget…. That is the purpose of the Password Bar. It is there to forget that you only have so many passwords in you. And that F**k1234xyz!

Vicki Woodyard

The Last Time We Saw a Powerful Tsunami

We buried my husband in Memphis, Tennessee in 2004. On that Christmas Day, Rob, my sister and I then flew back to Atlanta. I had had a dream of two elephants walking up a gang plank. It was a precognitive one, because elephants at Amma’s compound were walked up a gang plank to higher ground to protect them and I saw the photo and it was just like my dream had foretold.

We got home and the three of us sat in the dining room on the floor. We had a few presents to open and soon my sister flew back to her home in Pennsylvania.

There were two of us left to start a new life without Bob. I had started a website to write about his journey through multiple myeloma. Now I turned to it and begin to write regular posts about this strange new life without him.

This was twenty years ago and my idle hands found comfort in writing almost daily. That is true today as well.

Welcome, 2024. You will be a challenge for the entire world to handle. Things are happening beyond anyone’s control. But since we occupy a dream world, nothing happens by chance or accident. We are all playing a role, call it destiny if you will.

If we are trying to stay awake, we notice that things go better if we avoid the walking dream state. The majority of people have no idea that they don’t have free will. As the Work says, “Everything happens in the only way it can happen.” As someone said, “Resistance is futile.”

All great teachers know that life is too big for human beings to control. Man is a sleepwalker and nothing can wake him up as long as he tries to control life to work in his favor.

I have studied so hard to come to the simple realization that it is okay for me to relax and let go. And that when I do, my reactions to the dream of life become manageable.

Happy New Year, Happy New You

Vicki Woodyard

This is the last day of the old year. And most of us are glad to let it go.

Plunge into the cold waters of reality; it is your only choice if you are trying to wake up, as I am.

There is no such thing as good or bad; there is only letting go.

There must be no questions about HOW to take the plunge.

Other people are in as much suffering as you are, so don’t ask them.

Don’t think, just sink!

Ah, this is what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

He died to his body/mind and rose the third day.

This is what eastern teachings tell us as well as western ones.

We cannot look to anyone to explain to us how miserable we are.

Just remember, they are suffering just like you are.

Your plunge into your own ego-death, what will it do for you?

It is of some consolation that you cannot die prematurely for destiny is in your own hands.

You will learn how to dive into cold, icy water again and again.

Hallelujah! Something survives, but it is not you.

Vicki Woodyard

Oh, my, I am my usual depressed self this time of year. Sitting here in my robe at almost noon.

I can’t wait for every scrap of Christmas to be put away and the last sugary treat eaten. Until then, I stay busy popping them into my mouth.

Rob and I had to go to the bank and then we had a lovely meal out at a neighborhood restaurant.

We talked about him having surgery for a kidney stone. While we talked, he got a phone call from the surgeon’s office saying he was booked for such and such a date in February. I asked him to wait at least until March. He wants to take a trip before he has the surgery.

I also told him I would be of little help to him, but he knows that. He has taken over the cooking and driving duties and other everyday stuff I used to do.

Bah, humbug!

RIP.

Lee Sun-Kyun, star of “My Mister”

Love to all,
Vicki

Our parents do not tell us to call ourselves “I.” We instinctively know it. For social convenience, every “I” is given a name to which they respond. They are responding to so-called “you’s.”

Once you see that you are not a you, but that you are an I, everything changes.

How does it change? You regain your original stature as a child of God.

The original sin was violating God’s commandment to not eat the apply. Once eaten, everything became divided and chaos ensued.

Oh, some folks knew there had to be an answer to the riddle of life . Here in the U.S., many of us flocked to Asian philosophers and teachers and felt a silly sort of pride in doing so.

It didn’t work. Only truth you see for yourself can work.

And after two sleepless nights in a row, I begin to muse as I lay in bed. I do not call myself “you.” I call myself “I.” In the short explanation of all religions, every human being calls itself “I.” Since that makes the other human beings a “you,” nothing ever changes.

Since this is the second day of the birth of the Biblical “Jesus,” that is a good place for me to start all over explaining esoteric teachings to myself.

I will soon forget again.

Vicki Woodyard

My son said to me about Christmas Eve, “It’s just another day.” And at first I did not see the wisdom of  his words. No expectations that it must be “done right.”

Leap into the reality of your own helplessness.

That is a Buddhist teaching, resting in nothingness.

Become a zero, not a hero.

Do not rise up, fall down deeper and deeper and deeper.

Ignore the world that you have created out of your ego. It hurts like hell to live there.

What’s next?

Falling into the grace of helplessness.As Gurdjieff said: “Man cannot do.”

That is the beginning of wisdom.

Vicki Woodyard

I woke up shaky and in fear of the future. I sat down to meditate and this is what I want to share

with anyone feeling every negative emotion in the book. Let me know if you find it helpful.

NO EXCUSES

NO GUILT

REMAIN AS YOU ARE.

I HAVE FOUND THE SWEET SPOT AND IT IS SURRENDER.

MY BREATHING CHANGES AND I FEEL THE SHIFT.

GRATITUDE.

Love, Vicki

I didn’t sleep at all last night. I have had breakfast and now the day stretches ahead of me. I am heartened to know that for many of you, the old ways of celebrating Christmas have been packed away. There used to be a nativity scene, a glorious Frazier Fir hung with ornaments and lots of packages on the tree. After I had put away all of it, I would go to bed with a bad back.

Now Rob and I open our few gifts to each other on Christmas afternoon. He will cook and I will do nothing but rest.

Today he will find out how the urologist wants to treat his kidney stones. We watched the Elvis show coming from Graceland and then watched that wonderful tribute to Dick Van Dyke.

For me, rest is job one. In other words, keep it simple, stupid!

The maids made their monthly visit and I love how clean the house feels. Gratitude.

Most of you have finally given up on the idea of enlightenment. Oh, I know that there are lots of groups discussing this and that about it. Let me say this once again; keep it simple, stupid.

Silence is where wisdom resides.

The storm clouds are growing all over the earth and our part is to see clearly that nothing happens by chance. Our lives are planned by higher forces than our egos.

As we make small surrenders, we see small changes. But they never come without the price of surrender. And that is how it should be. Being rational cannot take you through the eye of the needle. And if you eat too much chocolate, you can’t fit!

You will hear more epistles from me if I manage to stay calm and poised on the edge of letting go. Who knows? One day I may fall to my ego’s death, but there will be no one left to write about it.

Paradox can be paradise, you know.

Merry Love to all of you,
Vicki Woodyard

We are all broken people living in a broken world. We hide our suffering or sometimes dramatize it by hurting our loved ones but try to keep hiding it from the world.

Society is not worth our time because it is where we hide our brokenness and put on a happy face.

We have tried every possible method to become better people than we are. And nothing ever changes. Our faults are our faults and everybody can see them. Vernon Howard urged us to give up.

I have left society and do not miss it at all. My broken heart is happiest here online with congenial people who want the truth above all else. With people drowning and clinging to their own piece of wreckage, as Leonard Cohen put it.

My essays form within me as I type them, but typing is becoming harder. My voice is weaker as well. And the holidays, don’t get me started.

I just want you to know that you are not alone and you don’t have to pretend in the effort to get love from people who are just as broken as you are.

Love is love is love is love.

And love is what binds the wounds and heals the aching heart. This love of which I speak is found by going within and listening to the silence. I do it on and off throughout the day.

Vicki is a broken-down heap who can still manage to hear the truth coming from her very own heart. And it says, “Peace, be still.”

Vicki Woodyard