I am taking a break from posting on the blog. It just feels like the right thing to do.

I will still be active on Facebook, though.

Real “I”

Real “I” is not a social animal. On the contrary, it likes to hide out in silence. This is a knowing silence, one that strips away all of the falseness. Vernon Howard called this “the showcase personality.”

Whenever I have to be around people, I use the unreal “I,” the ego. It is necessary to shield ourselves from all of the other unreal “I’s.” It’s not that there is anything wrong in socializing, but I am a solitary Scorpio.

My work this lifetime turns out to be my writing. I know where the horse is leading me, as Dr. Bernie Siegel once told me. And he added, “and this horse is pregnant.” I was posting my essays on his forum decades ago, and I have certainly written my way around the block!

Now that neuropathy has made its appearance, he told me to honor my limits. And you know what? I like being given permission to do just that. I also honor my writing and try to keep it real.

One of my frequent subjects is how easily we forget Real “I.” We forget it instantly when we go out into the world. It never shows up at the grocery or in a restaurant, etc. I have to remember it consciously.

I had insomnia last night and I know why. Rob and I talked a rather long time, since he is still taking it slow. So when I went to bed, I couldn’t shut myself down long enough to go to sleep. I woke up around 7:30, ate breakfast and went back to bed. When I woke up, it was almost eleven.

Human beings have always been selfish, vain and cruel. Real “I” is the witness to all of our flaws, both individually and collectively.

Real “I” flourishes in silence. Ramana Maharshi frequently referred to that.

We don’t have to get ourselves out of our own way. We just have to see that we have fallen asleep once again. And as Vernon said once, “The only difference in sleeping people is how they snore.”

Vicki Woodyard

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

Logic does not make the world go round or even go square. I was sitting on the couch watching an episode of Gilmore Girls where they are going round and round in a crazy conversation…
And then I thought, “I don’t know how all of this happened!”

One day I was young and now I forget the simplest things. Over a horrible supper of frozen Brussel sprouts and carrots and some instant potatoes…..I got up and threw the sprouts and carrots in the trash (and I was the one that bought them.)

As Rob and I were at least eating the instant potatoes (which are always good), I told him that when I talked about my father and his siblings, I never mentioned Aunt Vera, whose namesake I am. She and my father were very close. She died of breast cancer right before I was born. My mother said a baby just didn’t sound like “Vera,” and that is how Vicki came about. My initials were VCK. Stick in two “I”s and you have it.

And just as Vicki was not the best name for a baby, it is also not the best name for a senior citizen. Oh, well, I don’t know how all of this happened.

What I mean by this is that everything hinges on everything else and the damned hinges are rusty and squeaky by now.

Here in America we are coming apart at the “seems” and overseas, innocents are being slaughtered in the name of….I have no idea.

Humanity could not be less “groovy” right now. And no one knows how all of this happened. I know why I get fat if I eat a whole sack of peanut butter cups; I just don’t know why it hurts so much to be a human being. Even if you are doing well, maybe your neighbor isn’t. Logic does not explain the human heart, which is full of both evil and good.

Okay, I have said my piece now. Back to The Gilmore Girls.

Vicki Woodyard

It is a rainy Friday and I am trying to clear off my desk (the dining room table.) I stop to read some words out of a sheaf of printed copies of my friend Peter’s words to me in the fall of 2004. Me, newly widowed then, and Peter, slowing dying while in a state of complete peace.

He had begun to comfort me in the first months of my husband’s illness. A brilliant writer and thinker, he was finding it hard just to get through each day. Shall I share again some words of his to me via email?

“Alexandra (one of his cats) loves to go and watch the water bubble by a little stream here. She and her brother Maple snuggle up together and watch the waters gurgle and froth.

Most days after a hectic schedule of running and jumping between the stars, God stops by to sit with them…just soaking up the quiet and peace of their presence. There by the stream, God and Alexandra and Maple. Love and nothing else.

It is either this or suffer.

The only solace I have ever found is there by the stream, or rather, said another way here, before creation starts up. Not in this moment, which seems a silly catchword amongst the non-dual crowd—but rather before this moment. Before anything. Just sitting by the stream and watching the toss and tumble or it all. Just an easy natural quiet.

In this, all the rest, seems just various flavors of hell. Ha!”

Vicki Woodyard

Loneliness

There is an inherent loneliness in every human being. Sometimes it is unfelt, but if you are sensitive at all, you feel it. I know I do. C’mon, don’t your thoughts revolve around your perceived problems?

This inherent loneliness cannot be removed by a human being, a pet or good friends. Why? Because that is how God made us, that’s why.

Loneliness leads to depression and lack of common sense. Even if we are on the path, we feel pangs of loneliness.

This Friday I am antsy, dreading seeing my new Family Doctor next week to get prescriptions renewed. Rob has to have surgery for a hernia in the next couple of months. And the holidays, don’t get me started.

Every year I do the minimum of what is expected of me. And I never feel satisfied that I have done enough.

You are wondering why I started off this essay about our shared loneliness and then switched over to feeling antsy and guilty. Because loneliness makes everything worse.

I can buy a new item of clothing and know it is because I feel lonely on some level.

I can feel guilty because of my introversion. Are any of you still reading this? Do you, too, suffer from existential loneliness?

There is no cure, by the way, until you sit still and feel overwhelmed by your feelings of isolation and dread.

Welcome to the club. It’s called Planet Earth.

Vicki Woodyard