Last night I was with my women’s group, Mary & Martha’ s Place, for their fundraising event. Everyone looked wonderful, like walking palettes of art made into clothing. There was wonderful food and an artists’ market in which to indulge the senses. I bought four things. A wonderful little painting with a recycled eyeglass in the center. It says, “Keep Seeking.” On the old lens is painted a little white bird with a heart drawn in its chest. There is a leaf at each corner of the painting and two trees bearing salmon-colored leaves on the side.

The second item I bought is a handmade cloth cross that is eight inches long. It is wrapped in a variety of cloth, the overall color of the cross consisting of salmon, orange and yellow. The third item is a small handmade doll. She has brown hair, black eyes and tan skin. She wears a felted orange top and a skirt made of yellow, aqua and green.  I also bought a handmade bar of soap called Buffalo Bird Woman. It is blended with blue corn, sage and cedar. I love all of these handmade beauties.

The  little doll embodies my own creative spirit. She has a sweet red yarn smile and two shiny black bead eyes.  She is expecting miracles.

There are many ways to feed the spirit. The theme of the evening was Risk Living The Creative Life. I have been doing that for years now and it only gets better with time.

I hope you come to love reading my blog. It is a labor of love for me, always. The spirit that moves within me cherishes the small— like little dolls and crosses and bars of handmade soap.  The mind has its uses, but the child within had rather play. I have cried enough tears; it is good to make room for simple joys again.

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Jerry Katz  and I on Nonduality Street Radio. He features me on the show and does a great job of presenting my material. I chat about my work, etc.  Give it a listen.

Behind the Mind

Behind the mind lies a field of universal awareness. It is yours. Take but one step into it and you become it. Actually, you have always been it; the becoming is only seeming.

Do this. When you catch yourself trying to think your way out of the illusion, unzip your mind and take a step into awareness. That place of light that is who you really are.

Don’t let thinking fool you into suffering. Let awareness heal you instantly.

Awareness is on the spot. It is who you are and it is what breaks through the clouds of thought.

So this is the new website. Nurturing the Now has become Nonduality Now, but the meaning is the same. And it’s still me pecking away at the Mac, albeit a brand new hard drive soon to be filled up. Just like an empty stomach; it won’t take long to get some weight back on it.

Publishing the book is a new beginning for me. The old site was up almost ten years and was growing top-heavy. The new one is lighter and comments are welcome, although not necessary. I was telling someone that I have not been recording for a while. That may change if the interest is there.

The truth of life is what I write about, which includes seeing the false. Both sides of the opposites are called into play as we go about our lives. This morning I went to a Qi Gong session, something I have done only once before. It was like a physical meditation, silence portrayed in movement, awareness in the muscles and a quiet mind.

Then as I drove out of the parking lot, traffic was stopped for an accident. You could feel the tension in the air as the tao of the event tied up traffic and seemingly prevented flow. At first I was  tense, and then I remembered that it was, after all, an accident; then I sent white light to everyone and breathed a little deeper.

The little book is working its way into various and sundry hearts here and there. I hope you will consider buying a copy if you haven’t already. You can get it on amazon or if you prefer, an ebook on booklocker.com. Should you desire a signed copy, I can do that too. Just send me an email and I’ll get right on it.

See you next week,

Vicki

Here is the thing about grief. Nothing about it can be changed. That leaves you with nothing to do but see the facts that cause you such anguish.  The dead are gone and won’t return. Your mind has thoughts about their returning anyway. These thoughts cause you to cry or to clamp down tightly on yourself.  If someone is in your presence, you will act like you are quite all right, but you are not. You know better. This causes feelings of alienation from them and therefore from yourself. This is grief and how it operates.

A lot of pretending goes on as you deal with the mechanics of the death. Paperwork, sleeplessness, heartache, anger, denial. The whole nine yards of “nothing can be changed, yet I am working harder than ever when I am at my weakest and most vulnerable. I see things I never saw before. I don’t like people or want them around me. I am crying out to a God that doesn’t speak my language.” So much for religion.

When Peter was so ill from the results of having many small strokes, he was angry with doctors and spiritual teachers because they could afford him nothing. He and I could email about this with perfect understanding. My teacher had died of cancer without ever having spoken of it to his students. I was not like that. I needed language, even though I misused it during my darkest days. Bob was dying right in front of me and I was mad as hell. He looked at me as if I were a turncoat and a rebel for daring to be angry at his diagnosis. What was I to do? So I went on with the show.

It has been almost six years since that good man left the earth. Unbelievably, I am learning to care for myself at long last. To honor this woman named Vicki who has endured so much, has lost so much that can never be found. Not on this level. But up above where the eagle soars free, she flies above the storm and loss. I don’t blame her.

Vernon Howard said something so stupendous that it has taken me a lifetime to realize just how powerful one small sentence can be. As he used to say, “Take a truth and relax in front of it.” And so I pass this sentence on to you, as I have before. It has become a touchstone for me…a tool to recover my spiritual energy. Are you ready:

“Work hard gathering energy when you have no problems.”

Yes, I have quoted this before. But I want you to do with it what I have. Let it resonate, let it resound as a clarion call. It will gather you up in its arms and rock you in its rhythm. Why? Because we spend our lives giving good energy away because we are asleep dreaming we are awake. In dreams we give way to wrongnesses both within and without. The pharisee within us is alive and well as we wend our way through wrongness. Trying to impress, striving to attain, bowing to what is beneath us. Only truth can set us straight again.

When my hard drive crashed and I lost all my material, I was devastated. I paid the price in physical and emotional fatigue. So I sat with that statement again and again. And now everything is falling into place as it falls apart again and again. We will never be perfect unless it is with the perfection of awareness that bears no name or form.

Outsourced

This is about being outsourced. Yesterday I had to deal with Earthblink Customer Service. As usual, I spoke with someone in let us say, a faraway place that begins with the letter “I.”

Whoever invented the expression “It’s all fun and games” should be shot with a  gun that says ‘Bang’. Shakespeare kneweth of what he writeth when he spoke of strutting and fretting our lives upon the stage. Mostly, I fret. The strutting part is difficult to pull off when you are on hold with customer service for most of your life. And the questions these people ask! You have to say everything like this. “Yes, my name is V as in victory, i as in idiotic, c as in cantankerous, k as in kill you, i as in innocent.”  And “Keith” (read Kumar) doesn’t get the joke. And you don’t get to hang up until you succeed in pulling the answer from him as if you were performing oral surgery.

You see, I wanted to transfer my domain name to another server. To Earthblink, I was going on the map as Benedict Arnold to even think of switching service providers. So I took another Stupid Pill and propped a pillow behind my aching head to listen to “Keith” walk me through the gates of hell and back. At the end of an hour, I hung up on him. I doubt he noticed. He probably still has me on the phone in an alternate reality asking me if I would stay with Earthlink if they promised to cut the bill and give me things that are clearly illegal in certain states.

I am writing this with my tongue not only in cheek but wrapped in an ace bandage. It got that sore from speaking with Keith (not his real name). I have had it with outsourcing. Actually, I didn’t write this diatribe. Keith did. That is his way of getting back with me. He is roaring with laughter right now and starring in the Bollywood version of Outsourcing the Universe.

*No Indians were actually harmed in the writing of this piece. I have many good friends there and they know who they are. Molly, Amanda, Herbert, Oswald, Lennie…the whole gang.  They just don’t dare ask me to spell my name!

I have everything I need. Saying that consciously quiets the mind. Stops it in its tricky little tracks. Lets the dust of delusion settle. Perhaps anything said consciously does the same, for consciousness is the key. The door to infinity is open wide. And so I amble through and see what lies beyond my thoughts. I see a soft October sun, mellowing the earth and preparing it for its long winter’s nap. The sky is a pastel brushed with clouds of creamy white. And I rest in that.

The possibility of renewal is always arising; to enter into that possibility is blissful. My hard drive crashed a week or so ago and I have been embroiled in the details of getting a new one. I lost a good ten years of material that could have been turned into books. Of course, they arose from within so how can they be lost. The words remain within. So I am trying to rest with the possibility of letting it all go and reaching for the new. But who knows what will happen when? Ramesh Balsekar answered a letter of mine some years ago. I asked if everything was destined, and he said, “Yes, but it is destined for the whole, not for any individual.”

The rising sun sets and rises again. The mind throws us off its back into the swamp and when we are ready, we rise up and go on again. I have found three snake skins at my door in the last couple of months. The third one was found soon after I got the brand new hard drive back. I have to acknowledge the synchronicity of this. It is time for me to let go again, and again, and again.

Oct. 28, 2010

I write what I like. This blog is unformed as yet. When I finally saw my book into publication, I was rebirthed in the most amazing way. I had been planning on a new website for a while, but it happened suddenly. I lost my hard drive and everything on it. I found three snakeskins at my door in a two month period. I knew I was coming out of a long winter’s nap. Stretch and yawn and here I am.

I am an author now. The writer formerly known as Vicki is now Vicki Woodyard, author of LIFE WITH A  HOLE IN IT. I feel whole. As if writing had been unleashed and was running free on the dog beach and I was cavorting in the waves.

So I can’t tell you what to expect here. I called the website Nonduality Now because that is akin to Nurturing the Now, the name of the old site. There I had piled up ten years of writing and recording. All gone. I don’t feel the need to record now. Maybe later.  Let me know if you miss it.

What I want is to have a space for my writing to arise. This is it.

Sometimes we are at home but often not.
Amid the hedges of our hearts we hide.
A peering into other’s windows prevented
by the shades of something else we do not know.

Who are they when they peel their stickers off
and let us see the contents clinging to the core
and who are we on seeing them with nothing more
than curiosity?

Perhaps the vinyl shade prevents the cruel stare
of thought from coming in to the heart’s own shade.

Vicki Woodyard