It’s December 26, the flimsiest day of the year. You can see right through it. And you don’t like what you see. A day that follows the most overhyped day ever. The fall into the 26th is always the same. You look around the house with a dull eye, a fat belly and greasy hair. You do mental penance for overeating the day before. You may possibly have overspent and your fondest dreams did not come true. Thank God this is a flimsy day. You are lucky if you are not coughing or sneezing. Lucky if you slept well Christmas night. I was born with a healthy mistrust of superficially induced feelings. Ah, I feel better for having expressed that.

Now I can get back to what I was born to do. Overcome doing and just be. December 26th should be named National Beingness Day. All wacky outfits, including those on cars, should be  banned. No fruitcakes shall be eaten. Nothing shall be returned but thanks and everything will be seen exactly as it is.

The postman won’t be bringing bills until Monday; the house won’t be cleaned until…whenever. And I shall be here clearing my sinuses and my head of what is called the most wonderful day of  the year. That slot is still waiting to be filled.

I would like to thank all of you who have bought my book and supported me in the journey of writing from the heart. Because of you, my black little heart is sometimes almost beatific.

December 25, 2010

It’s Christmas morning and the house is dark and still. I made myself a cup of tea and ate half of a cranberry white chocolate scone that came in a gift box from my birthday in November. I had been saving it in the freezer. My son and I no longer celebrate the holidays; it is not in the nature of either one of us, so we have quietly gone about doing what we are happiest doing. We were invited to our next-door neighbor’s house last night and that was pleasant. Then we had dinner at our favorite local restaurant. It was quiet there, the people eating were either worn out from the holiday preparations or were like us, strangers to the ways of this world.

When I woke up this morning, Rob had filled my stocking and left it on my chair. He won’t get up until afternoon since he works nights. So I will have all day to reflect on the Real. Not such a bad Christmas day. Snow is expected tonight.

Lately my thoughts are revolving around what I want for next year. I want to dwell in some key thoughts. “My kingdom is not of this world.” “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils.”  “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.” I string these words together like pearls on a strand. If the words of Christ seem archaic, substitute the word “awareness” for “I” and “my.” The Christ consciousness equals awareness.  As the mystic Sunyata said, “I am is the way, the truth and the life.” And Joel Goldsmith said, “Know ye no man after the flesh.”

That is how we who are intent on discovering the mysteries of the kingdom understand our work. We are to put our faith in awareness rather than in dwelling on the negative. Some of you are familiar with the way I write. I do not shy away from honesty and what may seem like the negative; but it isn’t negative to explore the nature of reality. In this world I did lose a child and mate. In this world I do have challenges and sorrows. “Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world.”

I have a few wishes for the coming year and they are essentially the same as for every year. I wish to understand more deeply why I am here and what I should be serving. Of course the answers are obvious to the spirit but the flesh is weak and forgetful. None of us is perfect; every guru has toilet paper trailing from his shoe.

I hope my writing blesses those who are open to it. It is mercurial and covers what is wrong as well as what is right. The baby in the  manger should not be thrown out with the bath water. The savior he grew up to be was murdered by a consciousness that slept. But even the beloved disciples slept and died painful deaths. So don’t talk to me about how wonderful this sleeping world is. Get up off your bed and be what you are created to be. A broken thing capable of service if you let the light shine in. God bless us everyone.

I have a few books at my house just waiting to be autographed and mailed to you ASAP. The cost is $20.00. Just email me your snail mail address and it will be speeding on its way to you.  There’s nothing like a first edition with a signature, ay? But seriously, this book is flying off the shelves of my mind. Don’t count on there being one left for you 😉 Don’t miss out on this opportunity to email the author personally. Double 🙂 🙂 Oh, yeah, it’s worth it. Ask Jerry Katz or Scott Kiloby, to namedrop a bit.

And if you don’t want one of my autographed copies, don’t tell me you even read this. It might hurt my feelings. And that would keep me from writing another book. And you wouldn’t want that kind of karma 🙂

Happy Holidays,

Vicki

Trailer Park Christmas –Dec. 25, 2010

It had to happen sooner or later.  Larry insisted that the satsang gang come to his house on Christmas Day.  If you can imagine Barbra Streisand meets Porky Pig, you have some idea of how it registered on the tacky scale.  I loved it.

To begin with, Larry had been cooking for the past week.  But he had eaten it all!  So we feasted on hot dogs, Bush’s Baked Beans, Make Your Own Smores and Jelly Bellies.  Of course there was the obligatory onion dip and ruffled potato chips.  Ruin seemed embarrassed by the lack of homemade holiday foods–his long-lashed eyes were cast down as he ate foie gras from Rose’s purse on the q.t.

Jim had brought some good whiskey and I had put together a variety of my favorite things. (And I am making this up so it is calorie-free).  I had a plate of homemade fruitcake basted lovingly in rum for the last month, bourbon balls rolled in powdered sugar, peanut butter fudge, Martha Washington candies, spiced pecans, pumpkin pie, a sacher torte and a parakeet in a pear sauce…or was that a partridge in a pear tree?  Oh, we feasted all day long.

Swami sat in the middle of our complicated life as he now sat smack in the middle of our little trailer.   How we loved our old Saint Nicholas. His tiny little feet were wearing red socks that Myra had made for him and his shiny little pate was covered by a stocking cap.

“Tell you what,” said our little wise man, “I’m gonna tell you the bottom line of why I came to live with Vicki.”

“Oh, please do, please do,” everyone begged.  It was, by now, an apocryphal tale beloved by all.

“I came to live with Vicki because she opened the door!”

“She opened the door.  She opened the door!”  There were hallelujahs and praises ringing to the starry sky.  I felt humbled to have been the one to have brought Swami to life.

But all that was about to change.  There was a sudden knock on the door.  It seems someone had reported us to the police for being rowdy.  Were we too loud when we had paraded around the trailer park bearing Swami on our shoulders.  Did we yell, “Go, Swami, go, Swami” too loud? Or did they just have it in for Larry and were waiting to get back at him?

Whatever the reason, Swami now found himself at the receiving end of a pointing finger held by a police officer.  He obviously did not know the power of one.

Swami smiled at the officer until he could motion for Larry to bring Ruin to him PDQ.  When Larry put Ruin into Swami’s hand, it was all over but the shoutin’.

“Look what I got for Christmas!” said Swami with this manipulatively goofy grin.  It’s a stick pony that eats.  Here, feed him some cranberry sauce.”

The officer took the dish of cranberry sauce and cautiously offered it to Ruin, who promptly snarfed up the whole thing.  A Christmas miracle if you ask me.   The officer looked on in amazement.  He called his deputy to come in and asked if the deputy could feed him some baked beans. Ruin ate the whole can.  Holy honkin’ humanity.  Our stick pony had stuck it to the law.

After we got rid of the cops, we sat at Swami’s red-clad feet and sang carols and told each other our own version of the  Christmas Story.  He was born in an iMac so the story goes…on and on and on.

Much love from Vicki Woodyard

Swami’s Scribe this Christmas Season

*If you have enjoyed the site this year, please consider a donation to keep it up and running. Just scroll up to the Winter Pledge Drive button to your right and put something in the website stocking 🙂

Six years ago today I was sitting beside Bob’s bed in hospice. I was well aware that he was dying and that I was already in shock and he was halfway on the other side. But you keep going for the sake of the whole. You simply do not go to pieces when someone is dying, it’s Christmas and you know you will have to travel to a funeral and come back without your mate.

You hang on tight to the rope that you don’t know exists. You don’t hang on with your mind but your nerve, your guts, your psyche running in overdrive. You have already turned yourself inside out with complications arising from what happens when someone is leaving their body. You have pulled the plug on your ordinary life and walked away from it. You don’t know what else you can do.

I am not the only one who has experienced severe losses nor will I be the last. I just happen to be someone who has a website and trusts the intuition of spirit to guide her. I am feeling pretty rotten right now. It feels as if others are completing shopping, sitting by cozy fires, etc., while I sit here and make letters fall into place on a white screen.

I wonder if you relate to me or if you think I am being maudlin. I will cry but it will not destroy me. I will go on and it will not be the first time I have. I will get past the holidays and live to enter the new year, pay my taxes and continue to write. But it isn’t always easy.

I have a small favor to ask you. If this site matters to you, leave a comment. Let me know what I am doing is meaningful to you. That would be far better than a Christmas card for me. I know Bob would be happy that I am connecting with readers who vibrate on the same level that I do. He worried about leaving me down here without him. The strange thing is that I am quite capable of going on. But it isn’t always a piece of cake.

The site is called nondualitynow.com because I write from a place of wholeness about being broken. Paradox is a happening place. Nothing else describes my life as well. I believe in the paradox of enlightenment while being destroyed, being healed while being pulled apart and coming to terms with what is beyond anyone’s ability to handle. We are all in the same boat on a boundless ocean. Should it sink for anyone of us tonight, it sinks for us all. The mercy of heaven is happening all around us, but sometimes it feels like morning won’t come. That is when miracles happen. I have witnessed that. I have sat at a Christmas Eve table the night after Bob was buried and felt connected to the greater whole. I have wept at the grave and felt the resurrection after years of suffering. Life is good but not always bearable. The ark we sail in is the body, as The Book of Mirdad says. “God is your captain, sail, my Ark!” Mikhail Naimy

Order LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT by clicking on the link to the right. You won’t be sorry you did!

Vicki Woodyard

The holiday hush is upon us online. Outwardly we are frantically over-programmed at this time of year. At least most are; I am one of the few that relishes a quiet mind during this frenetic period. I had time to make some chicken, squash and salad for dinner and write for a bit. What I wrote about was waiting.

Waiting on what we really want is worthwhile; and we don’t have to know what it is. I know what I don’t want; whatever makes my pulse race or insomnia take over. I’ve had enough of that. Much better to sit alone and watch the winter rain create a miasma right outside the door.

So those who are usually online are out shopping or sitting on the couch poring over their lists and menus. My aloneness is compounded this time of year; but so is my interest in the inner world. The outer world has worn itself out for me; it has little to offer except as a mirror.

I don’t know how my little book is selling. I ran into a neighbor at the grocery who had bought a copy. She said she and her husband took turns reading it out loud while they drove home from a trip. “Did it make you laugh?” I asked her. “Both,” she said. “Both.” Life is like that, inevitably. For me there have been more tears than laughter but I know how to make others laugh. I love doing that.

The Winter Donation Drive has garnered two donations. I am hoping for a wee bit more. If you value your time spent here with me, chip in a few bucks to help me spread the word. As Solomon Burke sings in the old song says, “None of us are free. If one of us is chained, none of us are free.” Amen.  The Donate Button is to your right. Noel, noel and all that good stuff.

Love, Vicki

Swami Z is holding midnight satsang every night until Christmas.  It’s a beautiful thing.  Larry and Ruin,  Rose and Jim and I make the trip to the satsang room bearing gifts for the baby Jesus, which is being played by Rose’s purse.  It was the only thing that proved to be exactly the right size to fit into the impromptu creche that Swami built.  “It is an irony,” he proclaimed, “that something no bigger than a breadbox should BE a breadbox–and an acceptable baby Jesus.  We beheld the pocketbook in dutiful awe, not wanting to acknowledge the emperor had no clothes, so to speak.  We knew a dirty little secret.  There was a tuna fish sandwich in the baby Jesus.

And there was the wondrous sight of Swami himself, bedecked in bathrobe and cookie crumbs, proclaiming that all souls are one, including Larry’s.  I was hoping against hope that Larry would come down with the flu or something, but no such luck.  He is a part of the living nativity.  He is Mary…so the mullet finally paid off.

Rose and Jim are the two wisepersons…short one member but politically correct.  After all, this is not a perfect world.  I, thankfully, do not have to take part in the Living Nativity because I am the director.  I am expecting a call from Spielberg or at least Stephen Colbert, because who knew Christmas could be so edgy.  I am reminiscent of Penny Marshall with a megaphone as I holler at Ruin to hang in there.

Ruin, you see, is the star.  I have hung him from the pot rack at just the right angle and I patiently point a flashlight at him the whole time.  He could just as well be Rudolph because Larry fed him cherry pie in hopes that the comparison would be noted.  In that case, we are both a holy and a secular celebration.

What does this have to do with anything?  Everything, if you ask me.  My little ragtag crew wishes you Happy Holidays.  I promise not to keep Swami stuck in the iMac for so long as last time.  He is too good to keep to myself.

He will pay us a visit on Christmas Eve, so be sure to stop by.

Love, Vicki

Do Me A Solid….

My book, LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT: That’s How The Light Gets In,  has been voted Best Spiritual Autobiography of the Year in Spiritual Enlightenment Magazine-December 2010 issue.

It  has a chance to be the Overall Winner if enough of you vote. It would make this writer very happy. Here is the link where you go to vote for LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT as the Best Overall Winner. And let me know if you do. If you all don’t vote, the book won’t have a chance.

www.enlightenmagazine.com/home/awards

Someone who has also suffered severe losses says that shame accompanies the losses. Because society is into deep denial about grief. It wants to us quickly achieve a new normal and shut up about our feelings. I don’t discuss loss with my friends; I save it for my writing. Here I can open my heart to what is true for me. I have loved and lost and will not ever see those dear lost ones again. Why shouldn’t I grieve them?

The holidays in our culture are ninety-nine percent commercially driven. It is not a matter of realization of what the Christ-consciousness is. For me, the Christ-consciousness was never closer to me than when I was in deep grief. The compassion of God is all-consuming. He bends down to those of us who cry to him. And often He gives us something to do. In my case, you are reading it.

In case you wonder, I also have a good life, albeit a quiet one. I devote myself to truth, to being kind to myself and simplifying my life. I say no a good deal when something isn’t right for me. A holy no that leads to a holy yes.  So don’t feel sorry for me. I do that enough myself. Then I cry and feel better and write some more. And crack wise and say outrageous things that lead me to know one thing. I am actually enough to bridge the gap between yesterday and tomorrow. I am the Self in all its glory, bending down and rising up again and again.

I know that there is a school of thought that says awakening is becoming permanently blissful. Proponents of it would have us be happy 24/7. Not.

For I have compassion and it bids me speak the truth. I will not lie about my life any longer. For me, life is the space in which awakening may or may not happen. It is the space that counts. I go to Cancer Wellness at the hospital where my late husband was treated for his cancer. At the time, it did not exist and we went to The Wellness Community, which has now merged with Gilda’s Place. Titles come and go; the space remains.

I go there because, unlike church, it espouses no doctrine; it is all inclusive. The space doesn’t care what happens in it. I walk through the doors of the building and am welcomed into a compassionate place.

My favorite activity there is Writing for Recovery. We sit around a table and write for two hours. This is as sacred as it gets. If we want to read what we have written, we do. If not, not. It is a glassed-in room that looks out on both freeway and suburbia, so there are trees and concrete in equal measure. But I am up on the seventh floor and it doesn’t matter whether tree or concrete wins. What matters is the emptiness that it fills.

Space is the place in which awakening arises, or not. It wears no labels and beckons me to enter. Once inside, I find what I am seeking. I may have to sort through boxes of old thoughts and meander among the debris of “me,” but sooner or later the space overtakes all thought.

There are other things to do in this community. There is art, meditation, cooking classes, xi gong…all juicy stuff for the beleaguered cancer patient or caregiver. I joined this community at a low point in my life; I stay because it is a high point in my life now. The cancer patients that I know come there for the same reason that I do. To experience the spaciousness of grace.

Bob may look down from a cloud occasionally and beam on me for staying close to the source. For us, our journey through cancer together ended on Dec. 20, 2004. I continue on.

Opening To The Journey

The  more I open up to writing about my inner journey, the more people I reach. What I mean is, everyone is tired of the generic stuff written about the “I am” awareness. Attention to one’s own consciousness on a continual basis is vital. How else can we catch the wolf of mechanicalness waiting to eat our pacific little sheep?

So I sit daily, looking within. Moods I may not have noticed are seen as the beginnings of a full-fledged attack of unconscious forces. The holidays bring these marauders and it happens like this. I watch something on TV and a Hallmark-type commercial comes on. Loving families are portrayed. My emotion is drawn into the scene,  but my memories are unique to me. I buried my husband two days before Christmas. I remember a tiny little tree sitting on a hospice dresser and me, his wife, staring at it with unseeing eyes. I let myself know that. And I get up and make a cup of instant coffee and eat a cookie. Silently I bless myself and thereby bless the world. “I vow to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings,” and this is one way to do it. Show mercy to yourself. You have suffered enough without adding self-blame to the mixture.

Eternal love is big enough to hold us all. But the garden variety love will fail to heal your inner hunger for wholeness. I loved my husband poorly at times on the human level and he failed me as well. He is on the other side now and I love him eternally, for ego is out of the picture. I used to get mad at him for not telling me I looked nice. Now there is no possibility of a compliment from him. There is only the Self that he is and I am finding that is a bittersweet “enough.” I have loved and been loved. I can look in a million mirrors and never see myself. Beauty is beyond the mirror; how beautiful is that?

Talking About Loss

Why do I talk so much about my losses? They were sustained over a long period of time, for one thing. My daughter lived for three years after her diagnosis and my husband for  about four and a half. That was almost eight years of caregiving a loved one with no hope of healing. All I could do was take care of business one day at a time. We had family in town, my sister and her husband, when our daughter was dying. But when Bob was diagnosed, there was only he and I and our son.

I had weeks and months that turned into years of grief work to do. I did it alone. I turned inward to spiritual teachings that consumed my interest. I lost myself in truth and I learned to breathe that way. The outer world held no attraction for me; I merely went through the motions. I was a good soldier, albeit sometimes an angry one. Oh, yes, I cursed a world that had no room for mothers of children who had died. People turned away from me carrying a bald-headed child and  once again when my arms were empty. Who wouldn’t feel betrayed?

But it is good to be betrayed by the world for then you turn within. As the Sufis say, “You are the outermost out and the innermost in.” And one day all will be well. Today, all is well, but the sufferer is unaware of that. And so compassion is built alongside the grief. And you continue on, getting through seasons of hell and seasons of melancholy and seasons of “ so what.” Life goes on, but it must go on in a renewed way.

My writing voice is what I use these days. Taking the ship a little deeper into the waters of remembrance. Healing myself as I confess and share my life with a few readers here and there. I also use humor and utter frankness to bust open the prison doors. If any of you are imprisoned, I give you, not a crust of bread, but a loaf of “Let it be.” And you shall be fed by an inner source…your own compassion.