I have survived an adulthood jam-packed with grief. There were years of “nothing can be done.” Accept the diagnosis. Accept the death. Accept your life that feels forever flawed. Nothing can be done.

I was 35 when my little 7-year-old girl was buried. Sixty-two when joined my husband joined The cemetery is far from where my son and I live now. I was glad I didn’t have to visit their graves.

Now I will no longer return to Memphis, having made the conscious decision not to travel. And that was something that could be done. I could make a conscious decision.

I live a simple life and that is also a decision that I make. No pressure except self-pressure and that is what I am having to look at these days.

I have a way of thinking the worst about myself and I bet that you do, too! It is how we human beings are designed. We have one foot on earth and one in heaven—sometimes even in hell.

As I approach my eightieth year, I am looking my age. Once rather attractive, I am now rather old. On medications for neuropathy, my short-term memory is shot. I forget that I have clothes to put in the dryer. I forget that I forget!

My new smart TV is my greatest pleasure. Grace and Frankie are my new best friends. When it comes to technical matters I can’t understand, my son steps in to help me, plus he is my chauffeur.

Where is this essay going, if not in the direction of honesty? Things change; I change. I change; things change. It is wisest to let go of our pride and embrace humility. Oh, it is so hard to do that. To recognize oneself as unimportant in the overall scheme of things.

There are many blessings around me and I am awash with gratitude. I will stay in this old house as long as I can. Our next-door neighbors are loving; the rest of the neighbors I do not know well at all.

As the world grows increasingly dark and the planet groans under its own weight, we need to be mindful of our blessings. Leonard Cohen is a gift to me; he speaks of how we are all suffering and imperfect. To know that is to come into a deeper love. And a deeper love solves everything.

Vicki Woodyard

Your little friend Vicki is still in a tizzy about her hair loss. She saw the dermatologist (did I tell you that already?) and all he could recommend was minoxidil. I have no interest in that. Obviously, it ain’t gonna grow back. Since I am a senior citizen with no social life, why do I care? No woman is happy when her scalp is visible!

Then last night I got all riled up about the DOJ being so slow about indicting “He That Knows Nothing But Criming.” Since I live in Georgia, I pray that Fani Willis will be the first to convict him.

Yesterday Rob drove me to the oral surgeon and he pronounced the implant ready to be crowned by my regular dentist. He is booked solid for the next five weeks, so I have to wait on that.

What I am saying is that I am not perfect! All the years of studying and writing can still not make me feel good about my hair. And now you know.

Rob made Tortellini in Mushroom Sauce tonight and I enjoyed it. While we ate, the heavens opened up and it stormed something awful. The guy across the street had a crew breaking up his old driveway before putting a new one in. As the rain fell, I could see them hurriedly putting plastic over everything so that mud would not run down the street.

Oh, yeah, we had a lovely meal out at The OK Cafe after I saw the oral surgeon. It is such a wonderful place. I had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and lady peas and there are still leftovers. It is close to the oral surgeon’s office and attracts a well-to-do crowd. The rich look different from you and me. Even their casual dress reeks money. In the backroom while I always request to be seated (and there is a wait-time for it), there is a money tree in the middle of the room. I like it because in the front part of the restaurant the tables are closer to together, diner-style.

Nothing spiritual to share today. Just a slightly depressed almost eighty-year old jumping the track of “I am” and being impossibly herself.

Vicki Woodyard

I am going on a 3-day retreat. Yesterday Rob drove me to my dermatologist because my hair is getting thinner. I didn’t realize it until the woman that cuts my hair has told me twice. I took a mirror and put it over the top of my head. Eureka! I can see my scalp through my hair.

The dermatologist looked at it and said he saw it and all he could recommend was minoxidil. I am not going to try that because you have to use it daily and once you stop, it stops working.

This has put me in a deeply meditative mood. I opened a page of one of Vernon Howard’s books and pointed my finger with my eyes closed. The sentence I had pointed out said, “Never forget this; you are not the body!” I felt a sense of relief.

I am not my aging body with its thinning hair, slight loss of hearing, neuropathy and tremor. Then who am I if I am not this body?

The answer is found in silence. Earlier I had watched a video about a man who was deeply unhappy and forced this mood on everyone around him. One day people noticed that he had changed and he was asked how it happened. His reply was that he realized that the unhappiness was within him and not in the outer world.

So I am refocusing on my own inner happiness. It is there if I can relax long enough to notice it. What does it consist of?

Silence is the first answer and the most important one. It gives birth to inner peace and a deep acceptance of the body, which is just an instrument of the soul. The body dies; the soul lives forever.

Our world is crumbling to bits; climate change and autocracy are imperiling both the planet and its inhabitants. But the soul will always remain free.

Vicki is an invention of the mind; her soul is free now and forevermore.

Never believe in yourself or the world; both arise at the same time. Jesus said it best: “My kingdom is not of this world.” Amen.

Vicki WoodyardT

No one man knows the complete truth. It is that simple. Ever wondered why you suffer so much? Because you only know bits and pieces of the truth when you live from your ego.

That is the situation, as Vernon Howard used to say, but what is the solution? According to him, the ego must be seen through and that is a very difficult thing for the ego to do. (Insert knowing smile).

As a writer, I try and tell my own version of the truth. It is not everyone’s cup of tea, mainly because it is not sweet enough.

I suffer throughout my limited life here on earth. I numb the pain by eating sugar and watching TV and working crossword puzzles.

In spite of that, nothing works to relieve my pain.

I used to think that self-realization would do the trick, but that is not true, either.

I am left with my suffering and its inevitable affect on others in my orbit.

If you are still reading, I am about to go in a different direction, so bear with me.

I have to know that I am wrong. Nothing else will work to lift the pain. I cannot be right because that will make me smug and useless. Everyone hates a know-it-all.

Once I confess that I am wrong about everything, a glimmer of hope arises.

Now I am accepting the mystery of life with its inevitable ups and downs.

You are the witness of these ups and downs.

You see with your own eyes and feel with your own heart.

The great mystery of life is hidden for a reason.

Love conquers all. Love conquers the opposites in which there was a me and a you.

No more suffering.

No more you.

Vicki Woodyard

Up before dawn this morning; I never sleep well on Sunday nights. For me, there is too much weekend in the week! I try to eat well, but Saturday and Sunday find me overindulging in sugar and anything tempting. I had strange dreams last night, but they are now just beyond reach. In case you haven’t noticed, I harp on the same things….

I am still suffering and imperfect.
I am anxious and deluded.
Although I have studied truth for decades, I remain unfed.

Those bullet items apply to all of us.

So what is wrong? The answer is simple. The ego never learns; it can’t because it is unreal.

“From the unreal, lead me to the real.” I forget who said that, but that sentence has been around forever.

So I am unreal seeking the real. Jesus said, “Seek and ye shall find.” So why haven’t I found?

Oh, I have periods of inner peace but the ego is still intent on destroying the little I have.
“From the unreal, lead me to the real.”

I write as I am led to write and it never grows old; I was born to do this for the few. The many are still deaf to the possibility of awakening.

So what is awakening if suffering remains? Suffering is a purification if you take it as such.

So go ahead and suffer; it is inescapable. Use it, do it, live and breathe it.

Your true life demands a sacrifice, which is your suffering Die daily. Forget. Die again. Rise again. This is the true way. There is no such thing as an ego becoming spiritual. Never forget that. Don’t be a hypocrite. In due time, time will be demolished and only the real will remain.

Vicki Woodyard

Facebook asks “What is on your mind,” while we should be asking
What is on your heart?” They are not on the same level, not at all. The heart knows its own, while the mind is ever-engaged in protecting the persona. The persona rules in this world.

Justice is concerned with the mind; the heart remains silent.

The mind speaks legalese while the heart looks on and says nothing.

Our political scene is mental.

Our hearts know the truth.

The heart is what motivates us; the mind is what betrays us.

Society is an illusion.

It is best to leave it alone with its lies and conspiracies. Elections are popularity contests. And the good know this. The world is crumbling and the Age of Dissension is upon us. I, too, am guilty of wanting worldly justice for the guilty, but worldly justice is an impossibility. It cannot uphold the heart’s innocence. Only God can do this.

Government can never reign over the heart.

Vicki Woodyard

There is a time in life when it is necessary to come clean, at least to yourself. (And the Self is all there is.)

You must admit that you are afraid of what is going to happen when you come clean. People will fall away from you (and that is a pleasure) and you will be left alone.

These days my journey is becoming shorter and shorter. With only one good friend left, I now sit alone with myself for a good part of each day. It is empowering to do that, let me tell you!

I know that my ego is just a construct designed to prop me up and keep me going. When I no longer need it, I realize that I just thought I did.

Now life can just happen to me in any way that it wants. Everything slows down to a minimum speed. The phone doesn’t ring and my thoughts are not strong enough to pick up the phone and call anyone.

Silence is seeping through the cracks in my once-strong ego.

Rain is pounding against the sliding glass doors as I type.

I listen and keep typing to you, the reader. Has your life slowed down even a little? Do you see that friendship with the world is enmity against God? We fear seeing that, because it makes us look like a loser. But we have always been losers trying to act like winners.

Forget anything and everything but your true nature, now breaking through to you as you read these words.

Something is just now occurring to you; you need nothing but yourself—the ego became toast quite a while ago.

God is now your jam! Rock on.

Vicki Woodyard

Yesterday I sat down rereading some Vernon Howard talks given in the seventies. I was not attending class there yet, but he never changed his central message. His job was to debunk the ego and roar at us that we did not exist as we thought we did!

Such a message is decidedly difficult to hear; but his sincere students never quit trying to understand and live what he taught. His was not a message of joy and light; he left that to born-again Christians. His Christianity was that taught by G. I. Gurdjieff, the rascal teacher whose job was to shock people awake. I had known about him for years because my mother was on the path and found his work to be fascinating.

I have never taken on the mantle of any teaching, preferring to write what I am led to write in the moment. I just open up a blank page and start typing.

What I know for sure is that human beings are confused and prefer that confusion over awakening to any real clarity, for real clarity separates the sheep from the goats.

Vernon was not afraid to yell and bang his fist on the table; his students were willing to undergo conscious confusion to mechanical confusion and there is a decided difference. Conscious confusion may lead to humility and grace.

I don’t find anything comforting about surrender and like you, I fight a continuing battle with it. It demands that you confront your mechanical suffering, which takes the form of identification with the body/mind.

I have not changed much over the years. There is a huge amount of grief still in me, but it does not keep me from trying to wake up. Just over the ego’s horizon is grace unlimited. All we have to do is keep walking.

Vicki Woodyard

The day of reckoning for the ego is always here and now. That is the only time that we have (and time is an illusion.)

Yesterday, as I do everyday, I believed in my ego’s crazy thoughts. I am not yet at the point where “I die daily.” I wish I could say that, but I am as forgetful as the next person.

When I do remember, all of my problems die daily, too.

We must return again and again to the living truth inside of us, for it is our guide back home.

The many mansions are already prepared for us to live in now. They are a symbolism for what we arrive at when we remember who we are. We are not flesh and blood.

Then who are we if not the truth itself?

You do not have to believe anything that you have not proven to yourself.

Start with disproving that you are the body.

Move into your true home, the spirit.

Now is the day of your salvation, not tomorrow or yesterday.

This must be done countless times each day. The truth is ever-renewing, but we forget!

Choose life of the spirit or death by the hand of your own ego.

This is not a drill.

Vicki Woodyard

There are many broken hearts in America tonight. Just as The Supreme Court says that anyone can carry a gun, a young male opens fire on a crowd watching a Fourth of July parade. Blood everywhere, souls lost, others wounded.

I am ashamed for America, especially of how low our Supreme Court has sunk. America, no longer the Beautiful, is wearing a grief-stricken face.

The people no longer hold any real power; some of you may think they do, but you would be wrong. The power of the people has been hijacked by a political party that is bent on flushing America down the toilet. And it just may be too late to do anything about it.

We do have an Attorney General, but he needs to act and act now to bring Trump and his minions to justice.

Those of you in other countries may be seeing signs of autocracy where you live. In some places it is right around the corner.

I have never been a political person; I am a spiritual writer. But lines have been crossed and innocent lives taken. It is time for all of us to speak out against the evil in high places.

I can’t carry a placard but I can write what is on my heart. May God help us all.

Vicki Woodyard