Yesterday I saw my neurologist for my six-month checkup, which takes all of fifteen minutes! When I walked into the waiting room, there were only a few people and I got called back quite soon. I adore this doctor. He said he had just been to a conference on neurological “stuff”and there is nothing new for neuropathy. He did up my sleeping med so I can get a decent night’s sleep.

Then Rob and I went to Yakitori JinBei, a Korean/Japanese restaurant. Rob had read about it from Guy Fiera and we had been meaning to try it. It was almost 3:00 when we got there. It is a tiny place in a shopping center but we had a good server that let us make up our minds what we wanted. In the end we ordered Korean Fried Chicken and a side of rice. We took home enough for a meal today.

Guy’s Review:

“Chef Jae Choi grew up in Chicago in a traditional Korean household. After practicing for a few years as an optometrist, he gave it up to open a test kitchen that was so popular it turned into a real deal restaurant. At Yakitori Jinbei, he takes traditional Korean recipes and adds his own touch, for instance, he adds curry to his Katsu Curry Ramen and his Korean Fried Chicken. Guy loved his unique approach and the restaurant’s dive-feel, “It’s definitely what we look for on DDD.”

I am learning how to use my new phone and I will include two photos of us there.

Laugh at the mind!

We always forget that we are not our mind. This leads to being too serious. On the outside we use fake smiles while inside we are worried sick about almost everything.

The greatest teachers in the world have not been able to save us from overthinking ourselves to death.

We love their wisdom but we forget to apply it.

We are indoctrinated into misery as soon as we begin to think.

As Sonny and Cher sang, “and the beat goes on.”

Everyone has their thoughts that they fear to express; society frowns on actually telling the truth.

I left society a long time ago and it hasn’t missed me! That tells me that only liars enjoy the company of other liars.

Yes, social lies are what imprison us.

They look innocent but we are their captives.

If anyone thinks that forgetting who we are does not lead to misery, see me after class. Giggle.

Vicki Woodyard

The Crucifixion

I have been living the crucifixion for many years now. Not quite dead but not quite alive, either. Lest that sound unreal to you, you simply have not gone deep enough into esoteric teachings. In them, there is no sunshine. Just an empty tomb and no savior to be found.

Call me dramatic, but I am just telling you my truth.

Once I started studying esotericism, I never quit because it fit the bill for one like me. I began to study the New Testament as the ultimate treatise on esotericism (for me, anyway,)

Yes, Jesus sounds like a positive thinker, but He had ditched his mind for His Father’s. Now they were one and the true message always involves death before rebirth.

Having been in deep grief for decades, all the while studying truth as the only living food for me, I was drawn deeper and deeper into death and resurrection. You can’t have one without the other.

I have not been to the cemetery where my daughter and husband are interred. I will be cremated when my time comes, and I am told I will live a long life.

I live in pain a great deal of the time, and that forces me deeper into solitude and reflection.

The church is an antiquated institution, period. And because this is so, people that attend church are “against” the living truth, the manna of the moment. They prefer platitudes and preaching while the individual bound to the cross is beyond sermons and service.

Human beings must die into their surrendered essence and this is an impossible task. Having said that, what happens when an attempt at this is being lived?

What happens is that the superficial self is dying off one small cell at a time. It is suffering unnecessarily but it can’t be told this yet.

There were years and years of study for me, buying books and making notes. But still I didn’t change.

I still haven’t changed and yet I know the truth which continues to set me free.

Vernon Howard was a teacher for me although I didn’t talk to him personally. When I met a shaman, he relieved me of a massive amount of grief by working on my body.

Now I am left with mind with all of its puny excuses for forgetting what is important.

And on and on I go, upward and downward, for this is a spiral path.

“Die before you die” is the true route back home, but there are endless byways that we choose to delay our true death.

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting….”
~William Wordsworth

But words are not the thing. Only the thing is the thing. (Humor is a great salve for the human beings that we all are.) At least until we meet our Maker and remember everything we thought we had lost. Until then, we are wise to eat our humble pie and give thanks for it!

Vicki Woodyard

I have always loved wisdom teachings, especially brief ones that can actually be remembered. I go to Elsa Joy’s Facebook Page daily to bask in the light of all the beautiful images and words found there. I am grateful to her.

As I sat in meditation, silence was all there was (for about a second!)

Then the worries begin shuffling in. Decrepit and powerless, I nevertheless believed them when they said that I needed to fear this and that.

I sat in silence again half a minute when my health begin to urge me to think about it. And useless though it is, I nevertheless fell into the ditch of depression. The old fears did not give a whit about my health. Their only purpose was to stay alive. They were too weak to dance to “Stayin’ Alive, thank God.

I sat silent again.

My breath deepened a bit and some relief was felt. Why is silence so hard to achieve? To the restless mind, it feels boring and to the emotions it feels threatening. Don’t I need to worry endlessly and powerlessly?

Above the mind all of our thoughts die away and there is only what is. (And don’t let your mind tell you what is!)

“Isness” is God’s business! Spellcheck says there is no such word as “isness.” “Isness” is when thoughts and feelings fall away.

I plan to spend today in Paradise, in between bits and pieces of unreality. Selah!

Vicki Woodyard

“Just once, tame the wild chorus of mind, and let the syllables of silence admit that there is nothing more to say.

Let silence be your new ability to be out in the world of Unknown.

Counting waves, sitting alone at the shore of an ocean is better than sterile intellectualism.”

Surajit Basak

How can it be otherwise?
In spite of all the why’s
And sighs….
How can it be otherwise?

If we could choose to
Be otherwise,
Would we not be
In Paradise?

All of us are just one “I”
How can it be otherwise?

Once the “I” begins to see
That there is not a “you and me.”
We will all come to agree
That we are One and
Always free.

Vicki Woodyard

“Grief is not a task to finish and move on, but an element of yourself—an altering of your being.”~Gwen Flowers

The above quote is deeply true. Somehow society caters to lies and deception, from small to large. I noticed, after my daughter died, that I didn’t want to associate with people. My grief was an internal raging fire that I would honor as best I could. Large chunks of my life were falling away.

No more pink frills for little girls. No more little girl. And her brother was almost mute. We got a dog and that diverted our attention because who doesn’t like puppies?

We didn’t talk about our grief inside our family of three. In between crying, I packed up lots of her toys and clothes. My sister, a librarian, packed up her books and they stayed with us.

People say you should talk about your dead child. Those are the people that have not lost children. My grandmother lost two boys a few years apart and she never spoke of them.

And other people fear bringing up their names, so that gate is shut as well. Our grieving little family was pulverized into pieces.

It has now been 44 years since she left this earth and our memories of her are ever-young. Her dad died 18 years ago, so my son and I carry the loss, because as Gwen Flowers wrote, “Grief is not a task to finish and move on, but an element of yourself—an altering of your being.”

Death is a constant companion of us all. Those readers who have suffered their own losses acknowledge this. The hole in your heart, if you have the courage, can be filled temporarily, but not permanently.

On my last day on earth, I will remember how the youngest and then the oldest of the four of us died. The two that are left are scarred.

Rob and I know the brevity of life. He cycles almost every day and I write almost every day as well. These are two healthy things that we can do in solitude. He plays Trivia with his friends, but I have no distraction.

I did not sleep last night, not from grief, but from insomnia. I got up and ate a bowl of oatmeal and had a cup of tea and then came in here to write. Writing keeps me busy and perhaps comforts a few and they know who they are. And they know that grief is their lifelong companion. And that is as it should be, as life and death are partners.

Vicki Woodyard

I have experienced profound grief twice in my life, so I recognize the truth of grief when I read it. These words came from Gwen Flowers and they are worth keeping.

“I had my own notion of grief. I thought it was the sad time that followed the death of someone you love.

And you have to push through it to get to the other side. But I am learning that there is no
other side.

There is no pushing through. But rather, there is absorption. Adjustment. Acceptance.

And grief is not something you complete, but rather, you endure.

Grief is not a task to finish and move on, but an element of yourself—an altering of your being.

A new way of seeing.

A new definition of self.” ~ Gwen Flowers

It is night and morning on Planet Earth. Some are waking up while others sleep soundly. Some have plenty while others have nothing. This is life here on earth, folks. The opposites continue to teach us that while we experience life differently, we are all governed by the turning of the wheel.

Minds are the same way. Some are rich and fertile while others have nothing but a blank space between the ears.

Bodies are rarely identical but thoughts never are.

Some folks are religious while others are spiritual.

Many are foolhardy while others never take chances.

Some get the picture while others keep staring into what seems like a fuzzy, distorted scene.

To get personal for a moment, I love chocolate but I hate asparagus, which I used to enjoy.

I am easily confused and forgetful while there are certain grudges I cannot let go of.

To know all this is to know what is called the Tao.

Sometimes we succeed and other times we fail.

The Tao is unimpressed by anything that the ego does.

The Tao is impartial; therefore can never be called political.

Jesus died and then He arose as Christ.

Bodies die but spirits never do.

Choose to love what happens to you; that is the rule of the game.

After that, awakening!

And some sleep on.

Vicki Woodyard

It’s a gorgeous spring day and I took a walk. On the way home, I spotted this beautiful white bush and I was puzzled. I had no idea that it was in my yard! But as I got closer to home, I could see that yes, it is in our yard. Standing there in all of its majesty, it greeted me.

I called for Rob to come downstairs so I could show it to him. I took my new phone and he took photos of it. Neither one of us could remember it ever blooming. To see it, we had to walk around to the side yard because it is hidden from our front yard.

A couple of years ago, I was telling my next-door neighbor about our Mountain Laurel. Bob and I had gone to the North Georgia mountains for a day trip. We stopped at a nursery that sold plants grown in the mountains. And so we bought a Mountain Laurel and another bush and planted them in the side yard. We also planted Solomon’s Shields that bloom every spring.

“You need to cut them back,” she insisted to me. She even did a bit of the pruning herself. And then I forgot all about it until today.

Earlier, Rob and I had been at the kitchen table as he showed me how to use my new phone. “You can even make videos and upload them,” he said. And I got excited. I quit making videos a while back. I had done them for five years and few ever saw them. But now, with the new phone, I will try making one again.

There is a parallel to this and it is that we are seldom allowed to see if we are in bloom or not. We generally feel decidedly unshowy and strive to put our best feet forward. But now I match the color of the Mountain Laurel’s bloom and I am so okay with that. I am blooming where I am planted with my feet in front of this gorgeous mountain lady. Rock on, ye rock of ages, rock on!