This will probably be my last essay of 2022. I have written several hundred and many of you have read all of them. I thank you for that. My knowing is a flowing, if you want to be poetical about it. To put it another way, Vicki is not writing these notes; the notes are arising spontaneously as I place my fingers on the keyboard and allow the words to form.

We do not think enough of how universal we all are because we are seemingly not connected to each other. We think we choose our relationships but we choose nothing. Life chooses us.

Yes, the life force inside of us is in charge of everything. And we are that life force. We have such power that we can only use a tiny portion of it at a time.

My life is winding down now and it becomes more difficult to operate in this sphere. I have no idea how long I will be writing. I see lives ending and my memory becomes less reliable.

My son is now helping me with things I used to find easier to do. He gave me a new phone for Christmas and I never got comfortable with the old one.

I want to teach him my filing system this year so that he can take care of things when the time comes.

This is not a negative essay; I am just being realistic. I know some of you intimately and others only slightly. I don’t give advice and I am happy that this is the case. Rather, I write my notes using universal intelligence coupled with my own often wacky sense of things. I cannot distinguish between the two.

If you want the notes to continue, please offer a donation from time to time. As I often say, “the workman is worthy of his hire.” This is work done in order to fulfill my dharma, at least I think so.

With your donations, I can have lunch out occasionally or buy a book I want to read. You can always find the Donate button at www.vickiwoodyard.com if you want to make a spontaneous donation. But usually I ask for them 3 or 4 times a year and the beginning of the New Year is an auspicious time to contribute to my work.

DONATE TO THE BLOG HERE.

Vicki Woodyard

https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/vickiwoodyard

If you have “The Christmas Blahs,” try and raise your hand. I know; it’s hard. The hand has taken on a life of its own, lifting chocolates, cookies, chips, nuts and other Christmas goodies. Yes, my friend, the hand is to blame. It’s not your fault. The only thing you can do is to let it have its way until every last sugary bit is gone.

The hand does not care for kale or spinach; indeed it automatically moves away from the dreaded vegetable. Christmas kale is no pleasure at all, now is it?

We must let the hand do its thing until there are no more goodies left for it to lift into your mouth. The mouth, of course, is innocent. It just chews what the hand gives it. It has been known to eat all sorts of impossible things like cookies decorated with what taste like steel balls.

If you think I don’t like Christmas, you are wrong, for Christmas lets the hand feed me anything it likes. You may be wondering what the other hand is doing; I don’t know exactly, but I am sure it’s not innocent.

Magazines feature sweet recipes that the hand pages through until it finds a winner. Then it gets out a large bowl, dumps sugar in and throws it in the oven. At my house there are humpbacked elves and misshaped stars and even the sacrilege of Santa with scoliosis.

I look in the mirror and my hand guiltily darts behind my back so as not to be seen. It is culpable, this greedy little hand. Feel no sympathy for it.

I wish you a prosperous New Year; I would shake on that, but the hand is deep into rum balls and is feeling rather tipsy.

Vicki Woodyard

December 26

I slept fitfully last night—too much Christmas in an otherwise quiet life. Rob gave me some wonderful gifts and I only gave him a few, including a check to buy what he wanted. I felt the inadequacy of my gifts to him.

He gave me a new phone, which I have needed for a long time. Today is not the day to learn how to use it, though, since I am so sleep-deprived.

I cannot explain why I am glad when Christmas has come and gone. It just feels false and ungainly to me. I was glad to clear the table of all things Christmas and look forward to simple days once again.

My inner work goes on in spite of how blue I may feel. Inner work is seeing both truth and falsehood, is it not? The falsehood happens when we exchange words that we don’t really mean with people that we don’t really know.

There really has been a bastardization of the Magi bringing gifts to the babe in the manger. Now people shop ‘till they drop and then feel empty as they contemplate their state of fatigue.

Let us wake up this December 26 with the knowledge of how off the mark the holidays have become.

Let us know in our hearts that our world is in pieces and only God can put us back together.

Everyone will be telling everyone else how wonderful their Christmas was. For the children, maybe, but not to awakening people.

Bow down knowing your lack of humility. Rejoice in the certainty that redemption is ours for the asking. Hallelujah is more than a word in the dictionary. It is our redemption as well.

Vicki Woodyard

Dear Readers and Friends,

Christmas Eve is upon us and I pray everyone is snuggled down at home. I was thrilled to hear President Zelensky speak to Congress. Ukraine is amazingly brave.

I haven’t left the house since Wednesday night, when Rob and I drove around to see Christmas lights.. Since then we’ve done nothing but hunker down.

Last night he made chili and I am not sure what we will have tonight. On Christmas Day we sleep late and eat Christmas dinner in late afternoon.

I have made peace with it being just the two of us and we make the appropriate gestures, albeit with rather makeshift emotions.

I am enjoying Netflix a lot. So I have no complaints at all. Hopefully Trump will be indicted and prosecuted in the new year.

If you are working on yourself, you will have conflicting emotions rise and fall for the next week or so. Humanity is at a turning point right now and the planet is warming at an alarming rate.

How do we pray except consciously! As we admit to being mechanical instead of conscious, a vow for 2023 is to wake up from the dream.

It may feel strange to be conscious, but it is our only hope. Love is the answer to everything and conscious love is the highest state any human being can experience. One moment of consciousness can change everything.

I wish you all a state of awakening.

Love,
Vicki

Life is bittersweet; there is no doubt about that. It is because we live between the opposites, never reaching either end but always striving towards some kind of goal.

As I type this, frigid air will be pouring into America. We have no Christmas plans, but we do hope the power will stay on.

Last night we drove around and looked at Christmas lights and then had pumpkin pie.

The next four days will be up in the air and that’s okay with me.

I saw a bit of Zelensky speaking to Congress and my heart soars whenever I see this man. Let us pray for Ukraine and for the world because evil is active everywhere now.

My mood is serious, although it shouldn’t be. But too many sad things have happened around Christmas for me to pretend to enjoy it.

I am glad I still have readers at this point, so thank you.

If you care to make a Christmas donation, here is the link to do so.

Love,
Vicki

Hang in there, folks!

Everyone is being affected by the frigid air. There is a sense of malaise this year; that’s for sure. No one is confident about anything. It is not the time for confidence. Luckily, it can, however, be a time of letting go.

My nerves are shot. I made a grocery list in case it is too cold to get out for a few days. It has been raining, but now it has stopped.

It has always been obvious to me that merriment calls for frustration and feelings of inadequacy. That is because merriment is generally faked once you grow up.
What does a good spiritual student do this time of year? A divine nothingness, if you can pull it off.

Let go and let God. Ever heard that one?

Love to all of you who struggle this time of year,

Vicki

T’was the week before Christmas and all through the house….

Cold air is moving over the earth and Silent Night will draw visible breaths.

The war in Ukraine is murderous, all thanks to Putin.

We know that cold and hungry innocents are dying every day there.

The planet is being betrayed by evil and mechanical forces.

Jesus said His Kingdom was not here. Can’t get any plainer than that.

Where is love in all of this?

It is within our very own heart.

The heart is one.

Duality is a destroyer.

Be love and you are immediately returned home.

Planets come and go.

Love does not.

Love is eternal while the bombs are not.

Weep for the night that is falling over us all.

And remember that joy comes in the morning.

Little children, remember that love is who you are.

Vicki Woodyard

Four words of truth: I am a machine. I know this because I have no free will; it just appears that I do. And appearances lie.

I know you don’t want to hear this at Christmas—neither do I. Nevertheless, it is true.

Machines are not responsible entities. If you cannot prove this to yourself, you are a bare beginner.

Machines don’t have feelings; they only have reactions.

When something bad happens, the machine reacts.

Depression hits me hard the week before Christmas. Guilt because I cannot get out and shop. Shame because I don’t look the same in the mirror.

But behind it all is a profound lack of self-love. How can a machine love? As Vernon Howard said, “How can a Cadillac love a Ford?”

For those of you in denial about what I have written, you are still lying to yourselves.

All a machine can do is act like a machine is programmed to act.

Shall I call us robots? Rock’em Sock’em Robots….

Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho….the machine is stuck in a loop. Merry Ho Ho Ho Ho Ho.

Vicki Woodyard

I am picking lint off of my keyboard; that is how frustrated I feel this morning. The words are waiting to dance an essay and they are dependent on me to get the ball rolling.

Where do I start when there is no one to give me a cue?

Sigh. Well, I am feeling the weight of holiday stress. “On the thirteenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me….increased blood pressure and a partridge just as fat as me.”

I exaggerate to make a point, but I forget what it was. The days flow into each other as the frustrations mount.

I have clumsily wrapped a few gifts, obsessed about my waist line and succumbed to a feeling of dismay. “On the fourteenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me….static electricity and hair that stood straight up and a tear that suddenly came to me.”

The dashed hopes of Christmas the reindeer brought to me and a partridge living rent-free.

So I quit counting and took a nap.

Visions of sugar plums did not dance in my head, but I did sense a case of the blues.

On the fifteenth day of Christmas, I got a new calendar. It is obvious that the current one was maddeningly inaccurate.

On the sixteenth day of Christmas, I tore up the new calendar, ate an entire figgy pudding and strangled a random elf. Too damn many of them.

Vicki Woodyard

December 16 and I find myself being increasingly tense. Confusion has set in and the chocolate eating is in full swing (by me.)

The kitchen counter is a nightmare. There is a naked stovetop glaring at me with its empty eyes. Oh, there are new ones but they have yet to be installed. The first new ones did not fit, just as I will soon not fit into any of my pants!

I slept poorly last night, owing to stress and a neck ache. I think I caught a few winks around sun-up and now I am feeling every last holiday twinge of guilt. I ask myself, “Why do you buy these things thinking that you can give them to other people?”

I live the life of a hermit these days. Even so, I am able to do double duty as criminal and prosecutor both. Here’s how it goes. I buy something for someone only to realize it is not at all appropriate, so I decide to either keep it or give it to someone else.

After a few rounds of this game, my head is spinning and I am reaching for more chocolate. I have no idea anymore of who likes what and why I bought things they will probably hate.

I sit on the floor to awkwardly wrap a few presents, building a nest around me of wrapping paper, tissue, tape, scissors and gift tags.

Of course I have trouble getting up off the floor. I bet the elves don’t sit on the floor to do their work!

Oh, the verdict has just come in. I am going to be prosecuted to the nth degree for littering in a monastery (I did just say that I am a hermit, did I not?)

I can’t be bothered to defend myself. It would be awkward to accuse and convict myself of criminal confusion and questionable judgement. It is way past trial and already moving into pondering jail time.

I know that all of you are experiencing the same emotions to a greater or lesser degree. If you are not, I imagine that people secretly hate you.

I shall wrap this essay up in order to avoid wrapping actual presents up.

Have a holly jolly Christmas topped off with a free guilt trip up until December 25. After that, you’re on your own.

Vicki Woodyard