So I am standing in front of the Mac and holding onto to my chair as I do some stretching exercises I saw on TV. Whew. I am out of shape and my muscles tremor from head to toe. I have decided to follow along with people demonstrating simple exercises that will help you become stronger.

Then I eat a sandwich and do some sitting meditation. Last night I woke up with dry mouth because of certain medications I take. Dry mouth leads to dental problems.

It is a beautiful autumn day and the guy will come to aerate the yard and over-seed it. Rob says he will rake the leaves that have fallen since yesterday.

My body is weaker than ever, thanks to the neuropathy and tremor. I leave home to grocery shop with Rob, to Macy’s occasionally and out to eat. I see a new family doctor on Monday and we will eat out after that. Also on my plate is getting my teeth cleaned.

I am happy to stay at home except for the occasional outing. The two women we hired will come once a month to do basic cleaning. I like them; they do the neighbor’s house across from us.

Last year I had trouble getting down on the floor to wrap a few gifts. Maybe these stretching exercises will help. Neither Rob nor I get into Christmas very much. Just a meal and a few gifts. An old wreath on the door and a bow on the mailbox.

The thing I do every day is sit in silence off and on. I may open a favorite book and enjoy a few sentences.

Nisargadata on love: “When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is, and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously.”

There is no more power that is found in sitting silently. And so I sit on.

Vicki Woodyard

I have generally written almost every weekday, but that is changing as I age. I am losing interest in myself and my own thoughts and opinions about life. Life itself is rolling me up to store me in the closet! Every dog has his day, I believe the expression goes and so do writers.

I have written a lot of humor and a lot of tearjerkers. This life of mine will be remembered as a solitary one, an introverted and neurotic one. I come from a family of neurotics and it is a skill easily learned.

I can lay no claim to solving the mystery of life and for that matter why it is we are born onto this planet. By the way, the planet is dying due to man’s inhumanity to man. Money is what makes the world go round, according to the moneymakers.

Did I tell you I am also lazy? Yep! The only thing I have worked hard at has been writing, first humor and then serious stuff.

I used to have more readers. That is because several years ago I left Facebook. Why? Because I found myself becoming Pavlov’s dog. Every time I saw a Notification, I would look at it. So I focused on my blog. Now the blog gets fewer and fewer readers and so I have come back on Facebook as well as the blog.

At my age, there is a lot of pain and things I have given up doing. One day I will write my last essay. I hope it is a good one!

The calendar pages are flying off now. Mass shootings, political corruption, war breaking out individually or en masse; what has mankind become? Kind of unkind, it seems to me.

Tonight as Rob and I ate pizza at the kitchen table, I told him family stories that are funny and it was pleasant. He has gone out tonight and I have just started watching another k-drama. Probably should write a few lines to you.

Saw my neurologist a few days ago and he seemed rather absent-minded. I have him on a pedestal and he is just as human as I am. But he is such a good soul.

Rob drove me there, of course, so we had a burger at a neighborhood bar and grill. My calendar is being scrawled on as October hightails it out of here. The lawn needs to be over-seeded next week but it needs mowing first; that is, if Grant can work me into his schedule.

My life sucks so hard and yet I have much to be grateful for. For much of his life, Rob and I have not gotten along well. But now he is the Man of the Hour. He is chef, chauffeur, I could go on and on. Life can never be figured out.

I have been a perfectionist all of my life and it has gotten me nowhere, for that is an impossible standard. What I have truly wanted was to become enlightened. I know….ridiculous! Now that most of my life is in the rearview mirror, I am happy to simply get through each day and night. (Each brings its particular set of problems.)

I truly love wisdom teachings, but applying them is almost impossible. As I wrote in my first book, “enlightenment is a dirty word.”

Once the “e” word is seen through, life itself becomes your teacher, not what such and such a teacher said. Jesus is an exception, however. The Book of John rings in my heart while my head forgets everything but the minutiae of daily living.

And my sweet tooth grows as my memory fades. I can never eat enough chocolate, although Lord knows, I have always eaten my share.

I know now that we are all alike, doomed to repeat our lessons until we actually see that being teachable is a very high state of being. I can still remember how exciting the first day of school was, when you read the list of names to see what class you were in! Now everything has been tossed into the junk bin of my memory and I am lucky to remember anything.

I shall close this epistle with a line from John O’Donohue’s poem, “For The One Who Is Exhausted, a Blessing. (Thanks to Lynda Essman, who posted the poem on her Facebook Page.)

“Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.”

Hearts need to be fed just as the mind and body do. I wish you joy that can only be found when you have become a little child again.

Vicki Woodyard

Read the Boiler Plate

I have read many books about spirituality, awakening, etc. Many of them were excellent and many were a rehash of a rehash of truth.

Not only that, I read mechanically and practice little of what I have read. Enlightenment is not something that sticks.

Those six words are worth repeating: Enlightenment is not something that sticks. Actually, it is something that someone dreamed up. Throw the word in the trash icon of your mind.

What happens next is exhilarating and freeing. You settle down. That’s all. You just settle down and watch your breath go in and out.

Good things and bad things happen and you have no power over them except your attitude.

By the way, your so-called mantra has a boiler plate too small for you to read. Once you give up trying to read it, something like a moment of real silence can happen.

Life can be tragic and that is its nature.

Breath consciously and be reborn again and again and again.

Although you can’t read the boiler plate, you CAN be reborn.

Rebirth and forgiveness are freely given to yourself by yourself. And there is no boiler plate that hurts your inner eye.

All is well on the higher planes, so we must understand that silence has no boiler plate to read.

Vicki Woodyard

Drilling Down Into the Silence

I have had my dance card full of seeing the neurologist and the eye doctor, soon to be followed by the ear doctor. That is why I haven’t posted much lately. The more I have on my plate, the deeper down I drill into the silence.

The silence is warm and roomy; it is also a one-size-fits all kind of thing.

I sigh into the silence and I feel immediately quieter. The random negative thoughts cannot survive here.

The blank page of our own lives is always available to us. It has nothing to do with our worldly affairs, which are so very messy.

But there is a blank page to access where all words evaporate.

I go there to get a drink of everlasting water.

No words.

Vicki Woodyard

The ego cannot slay the ego. After a lifetime of seriously trying to do this, suddenly that first sentence made complete sense. And then there’s the verse, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust him.” And no, the ego cannot trust the God within. So it keeps on making the one mistake over and over. What is that mistake? Trying to do the impossible.

What is the alternative to trying to do the impossible? I know that you know it and also that you forget it (and so do I.) The alternative is surrendering in the moment. Why is this so hard to do? Because we are not fully conscious. We are a mishmash of ego and enlightenment. And ego cannot win OR be enlightened.

Want a moving sale? Everything must go. Differences, preferences, commands, orders, on and on and on.

Where is God? He is not under the bed. He is not standing behind some pulpit. He is not anywhere you can try to locate Him.

“Stop it! Just stop it!” Bob Newhart once told a young woman in a skit. She told him she had a bad habit (I don’t remember the exact problem) and he said, “Stop it!” And she kept telling her problem and he kept telling her to just stop it!

I flew out west to hear Vernon Howard speak. I was having trouble getting along with someone. He said “I have come to deliver the message, not discuss it! “And after class someone came up to me and said, “He gave this talk for you.”

And I still can’t stop it. Can’t stop what? Getting in my  own way! Thinking I am in charge of my life, etc. and so forth. Bob and God are right. We should just stop it!

Vicki Woodyard

I have had nothing to write lately; all the news of death and despair. This is the nature of mankind. I lived through the war of childhood cancer, which bombed our whole family. No one came out unharmed. Our daughter died in spite of her treatments, which went on for over two years. They only stopped when the cancer came back for a second time and then she died in the hospital 3 days before she ran out of oxygen. (The third time it came back in her lungs.)

Time is an illusion for bereaved parents. I am now a widow with only memories of husband and child.

What did those losses do to me? I pretended I was okay while I was grieving hour by hour. Human beings urge others to move on and we do our damndest to follow their instructions.

I have never found a solution for loss. Has it given me unappreciated blessings? Not really.

I have only been interested in transcending this fallen world with its false narratives of peace.

I turn to Jesus and my little girl, both crucified in different ways.

I reach out to others and it doesn’t work.

I reach out to God and receive the gift of silence.

It is enough and plenty. Loaves and fishes of truth.

Solitude is always healing.

Amen.

Vicki Woodyard

The true light never dies, but we human beings lack faith in that, and for good reason. Down here on Planet Earth, there is only darkness waiting to be transformed into light. The light never comes until we have exhausted our bits of darkness and have no one on earth to turn to.

In our sorrow, we flinch and struggle, sometimes for an entire lifetime. No true respite comes.

It is then that silence makes its entrance and it is nothing special, just a few moments at a time it arises and then disappears again.

Flickers of hope and eternal love amidst the bombs and the killings of the innocent..

All of this suffering has been foreseen by prophets, but that does us little good.

We ourselves must become the prophets and find rest from moment to moment.

God has not let anyone down, for this planet is not our true home. Our true home lies within.

We are home and hope whenever we remember our true nature.

Whatever happens on this tiny insignificant orb is not forever, but we are.

Our fears and tears will go on as long as this earth is at war with itself.

Find your peace within and nurture it, for nothing less will do.

Vicki Woodyard

Rob and I had a nice weekend. We met a friend of ours from across town. We caught up on each others news and that was good. And then yesterday was Rob’s birthday.

He is flying to Milwaukee to hear Bob Dylan and that will be wonderful

Meanwhile, I am straightening up my desk, which is littered with sticky notes. I am entering them on the Mac and the throwing away the “stickies.”

I had some birthday cake after breakfast because he is leaving tomorrow and it was a larger cake then we usually get. It was not a “mini” but a small and that is too big for two people. I’ll share some with our next door neighbors.

I also opened a page with notes that I need a maintenance worker to fix. I have his name written down somewhere! Electrical issues are the hardest to find anyone to come out and do them.

I will end with a Rob Rabbin quote: “Love is never absent from our lives. We do not have to find it. We are it.”

Vicki Woodyard

I woke up this morning and lay in bed for a while, suddenly able to somehow put another piece of the puzzle into place. I still cannot make out the design but one piece at a time is all that is required. And we are all working on the same puzzle. The box it came in used to be bright and beautiful.

I forget that working this puzzle is my job; I spend my energy foolishly on worry and fear of what others think of me. Why should I care? They have their own puzzle to put together.

This is an esoteric exercise in futility. I know that I will lose, yet I press on. If a piece of the puzzle doesn’t fit, I keep trying until it fits into its designed place. It is a puzzle with many pieces. I have gotten past the scenes and am now into the abstract design.

I have an inkling that when it is finished, I will just be given another one. The box is now faded and dented, but I am addicted to solving this puzzle, which is “puzzling.” (Insert a giggle.)

I cling to this old box with its many pieces. It is mine.

Sometimes I notice that I have grown tense while trying to fit a piece where it does not belong. My breathing feels anxious for no good reason.

I want to win this puzzle working contest with myself. But which self will then lose?

What is at stake here?

My life is always hard and sometimes unbearably sad and this puzzle is all that I have.

I work on it alone and that feels right to me. Solitude is a beautiful thing.

Ah, I fit another piece into place and it is called self-love.

What is your difficulty in solving the puzzle that we are all given?

Vicki Woodyard