Nothing big is required of us; it is just that the Work spreads over a lifetime and we keep forgetting our True Nature. All spiritual teachings refer to that human forgetfulness. That is why we must keep on keeping on.

I sit in a blessed silence and a rain of words begins to hit my face. To be honest, I have never seen my original face because it is eternally unseen.

None of us exist in a vacuum, so what we do affects us all. Dare we to say that we matter and that we are matter? And that it doesn’t matter. All that matters is invisible.

“The Little Prince” is a gem of literature and it has been ages since I read it. What I remember is that he loved a little rose and that mattered to him a great deal.

The ending was poignant, as all human endings are. We are dogged by our personal lives to the extent that we forget to love our own little rose.

The world looms over us while God looks down on us. All we can do is play our parts knowingly.

We must sit down and drink in the silence until we feel that all is well within in.

The winds have been wild here and our yard is littered with branches from trees. If we do not clean them up, the grass will not grow.

Meditation happens when you sit with yourself until you melt away, like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of oz. It is then that the silence shines down upon you.

The silence is eternal, whereas human beings are not. We come and go and the silence remains.

Vicki Woodyard

From an old blog….

“I am happy to be at my blog making words turn into pixels. Sometimes someone says, “I can relate,” and then I know we are all totally human despite our deep interest in enlightenment. By the way, enlightenment is something fashioned out of something so ethereal as to be non-human. Although some claim it, others know better and deeper than that.”~Vicki Woodyard

Quoting myself just means that the pump needs to be primed or my writing will come out all rusty and everything…

No matter how hard you try, you cannot escape from your own grasp! Are your muscles tight and your emotions painfully blocked?  If so, it is time to let go.

Letting go is our main job; most people forget that. Instead, they cling to what they feel that they are losing. I am eighty-one now, so I have a lot of things to let go of: a tremor, an ache, leftover sorrow, daily struggles; the list is long.

I have been suffering from writer’s block lately. I thought I was in a dry spell and then I got into a talk with someone in the neighborhood. We spoke of the world and how it keeps us obsessed with it it. Then I realized that my writer’s block had disappeared.

Man is a war-like creature. How do I know this? Because I have looked within myself and can affirm that. All of us are at war with ourselves, never mind anyone else.

My writing forte is brevity and clarity, yet Vicki herself is a mess on every level. Oh, she tries to keep herself in some kind of shape. These days a walk around the block is a big event.

Many of you have been reading me for way too long, haven’t you? Oh, come on, now, give us a smile. It’s free and it’s also healthy for you!

Silly is as silly does and it helps me to write rings around my writer’s block, so I am grateful to watch my fingers walk around the keyboard again. Whew!

P.S.

Are you still reading me after all of these years? If so, I thank you.

Vicki Woodyard

I was talking to a friend on Facebook and realized that my reply to her was turning into an essay. But guess what? I forgot to save it and so I start all over again in learning humility.

Aging takes a lot of time. (I like that line a lot.) You can’t rush it or control it. It is what it is and you are what you are.

You know that you don’t know. And the list of “Don’t Knows” is getting longer.

Don’t know jack. Don’t know shit. Don’t know how to fill out papers anymore, etc.

Do know where to draw the line. Well, except when it is with an eyebrow pencil and shaky hands.

Do know how lonely it is on this crowded old merry-go-round called “incarnation.”
How does it work, anyway? I picture a new baby queuing up in a line to be born. It is slapped and then it screams like hell and the new mother feels like it!

Time goes on, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. You dislike your body and you try to change it a bit. Slimmer, stronger, more appealing, etc. Don’t know jack about it.

The Giving Up Days have now begun in dead earnest. And as my mother always added, “Poor dead Earnest.”

I look in the mirror. I have the inherited droopy eyelids of a Bassett Hound. I am still at a good weight but the distribution of fat is all wrong.

I have been a spiritual writer for decades now and a long-time student of The Work. What the Work teaches you is that everything just happens as a gift to you. All of your suffering is grist for the mill. No, not the pepper mill, you dope (mumbling that to myself.)

So come sit beside me in cyberspace, where there are no crumbs on the floor, but conspiracy theories spread like wildfire. (And so does my belly—spread like wildfire. Enabled by a box of chocolate donuts and all the time in the world.)

Time is no longer a burden on you, although you still put on a wristwatch, which is useless to a younger generation. You are easily made to feel guilty because you have left the world to its own devices. There are no more attempts to fit in. Good thing that life is not a jigsaw puzzle and that forgetting stuff comes with the territory.

I am done with my screed. Or am I?

P.S. The photo is of a friend’s living room. I really like it.

I Didn’t Sleep a Wink

I didn’t sleep a wink last night and that showed me that the neuropathy “burn” is in my arms and legs now. Of course I am dismayed.

As I lay there around five a.m. I begin to have a lot of insights that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The phrase “rooted and grounded in our being” was one of them. I understand what this means now. I suppose it is different for everyone, but for me, it means faithfulness to what in me is real.

Vernon Howard was a true teacher and therefore, he “rooted out” the falseness in us by his sternness. What was left was exhaustion and despair. All of his students underwent the same strip down. He took our vanity and our false hopes that we could “get it.” None of us did.

You see, truth does the impossible. “My kingdom is not of this world.”

Truth crucifies the ego, but it is a slow and painful death for most. We like to think that we can have it both ways, but we can’t.

Awakening is about loss and how you respond to it.

Vernon saw to it that our pockets were turned inside out. He robbed us—not of our money, but of our paper-thin defenses.

I try to mirror that when I write these essays.

If you are responding to what I write, please make a quarterly donation; I feel that is a fair thing to ask. Self-respect demands that I ask.

Vicki Woodyard

paypal.com/paypalme/vickiwoodyard

Papa Jeff Belyea and I communicating via my blog. For those of you who didn’t know Jeff, he died suddenly at the age of 70 and left all of us weeping. The artwork is “Bird of Paradise” by Jeff Belyea

This humor was between Jeff and I on my old blog. I am no longer sure who said what to whom, but apparently he was playing the role of someone in Customer Service, which will be able to track us all the way to hell and back. Enjoy!

“Jeff: OK. Troot is, I’m from Brooklyn and we use this rouse to con youse outta your smack. How’s that for a mocha twist, sis? Which, speaking of dough, BTFW, you had enough to pick up an iMac I hear trough the grapevine. Good you youse.

Vicki: If this is your idea of pleasure, perhaps you should book a cruise to Siberia and enjoy cavorting there naked in the snow and later follow that up with a massage by a local bear. Put that in your ISP and smoke it, Kumar. The bliss of being your friend is only exceeded by the torture of knowing you don’t understand a word I say, idiomatically speaking. And yet you ARE an idiomath on some level in a world where friendliness is only surpassed by idiocy. Ciao, Kumar. Enjoy your chai. Btw, may I call you my Customer Service Fiend?

Jeff: Also, I am cavorting with laughter. Most regrettably, my bliss burst came at a most unfortunate time, as my lips were happily engaged in the consumption of Chai tea. The spray badly soaked my keyboard, precipitating a hard drive nose dive crash. Sadly, not only were your files lost, the most extravagant cost of repairs will be added to your charges. I am most pleased to be your customer service friend.”

There is more of this mystical silliness to be shared….

Dear Readers,

“It’s a time for setting some rules and boundaries for yourself and enjoying the feeling that by structuring your life, you’re moving forward. Orderliness has become an empowering state for you, and paying closer attention to deadlines, details, and rules can be challenging but rewarding. Your dreams become more realizable and within reach.” ~From a daily horoscope for Scorpio

I had my second day in a row of frustration and anger and then, as my friend Tami, tells me,
“Wait for the shift.”

The shift was that I went back to my WordPress site, feeling that, as usual, I would not be able to fix the problem. I looked over to the left column and there it was, I can tick the box to Read Comments when people leave them! Oh, frabjous day, coulee coulee. That is from The Jabberwocky, and I misspelled the last two words.

I am now feeling how important your comments are, how they buoy me up during difficult days. I need you the reader to be able to comment on what I write. Readers make me a better writer. If you are among the people that made comments, I think I can actually read and approve the comments now. I am grateful that someone made me aware of the problem.

I feel a real sense of connection with my readers and my appreciation and affection for you is deep. I just didn’t know that you were commenting and I was not reading them. I feel like a kid at Christmas or Sally Field saying, “You like me, you really, really like me.”

P.S.
You can also reach me via my email, vw9633@gmail.com

The spiritual life is forged in the fires of failure, dismay and downright self-righteousness. We can all be assholes, even nuns and priests.

I have written about my sorrow; tonight I am writing about my anger. It is a real thing.

Too long we have sought peace and never found it to be a lasting situation.

I am old now and have two separate nerve conditions, as you all know.

I just can’t stand a lot of pressure.

But tonight I blew up and there are probably pieces of me on the ceiling.

Nothing is easy; everything takes place on the hell of this earth we call home.

Our politicians have wrecked the country and it is going to get worse.

I have known sorrow but have never written about how Scorpios have a menacing side; well, they do. At some point we stand up and roar.

I just want you to know that my writing comes from the depths of hell and every now and then, something in me goes berserk on the emotional level.

I feel better now. You know you have been in just this situation many times over and you just have to ride out the storm.

I am fine now that I have vented my spleen. I remain a spiritual student, just temporarily having forgotten how complicated life on earth is.

Vicki Woodyard

Dear One

I was just sitting quietly in a chair with a book in my lap and I shall open a page at random to quote from:

“Our mindset is the jailer and our world-view is the jail. But you can’t break out of this prison by attacking them directly. In fact you don’t need to attack them at all; just be aware of them and continue to observe them. Simple attention is the way to reality, freedom and rest. Under continual observation your illusions will expose themselves and simply dissolve away like the Wicked Witch of the West.”

From “What I am” by Galen Sharp.

Love and thanks, (for a donation)
Vicki

“It is my pleasure Vicki. I feel gratitude for your presence, friendship and for what you generously share with everyone. Your words have great power and often are just what I needed to see. Like this random quote you opened up to.

I pray Rob can have his successful surgery and put this chapter behind him. Loving embrace for you both. We are all one and when I feel that my heart aches with compassion and love.

Vicki: Be a love bug and let me share my letter to you and yours to me. Together they constitute an essay (and I am lazy.) I will not even use your initials!

“You can use whatever and do whatever Vicki.”

P.S. Someone told me that the Comments part of my website is broken. That is a shame and I do not know how to fix it. This was from an email. So I am flying blind on a dark and stormy night as far as my website is concerned. Few readers these days; most comments are on Facebook.

Love,
Vicki