The answer to the secret of life is being life itself. Letting the motor hum and vibrate knowingly. Letting the mind muck up the works. Letting the body fall into disgrace, moon around eating plates of fudge that clog the arteries. Knowing that grace abounds and that you are teeming with grace.

You, the Ganges and the mighty Mississippi. You the Andes and the Rockies. You, the rivers and the oceans. You, the turmoil of the ages. You are the answer to the secret of life. Now, me I am sluggish and anxiety-ridden. I am the devil’s advocate. I am thought masquerading as life.

Thought has brought down the life-force to a barely perceptible hum. What happened to AUM! Boom! Boom! Nothing. It is still there running in the background like a computer program. We have just blocked access to it, as if it were spam.

What can be done to solve the riddles of the mind, the plaque of emotions clogging the universal heart? Nothing need or can be done. Only a knowing Self can join the throbbing, pulsing universal peace that wants to reign.

Kick out the demonic forces of negativity. Force them out. Burn their huts. Push them over the cliffs into the sea of blood.

I am at the end of this tirade. I am a seventy-year-old widow and bereaved parent. If I might allow myself this slight diversion, I ROCK!

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It

I am seeing someone begin to announce himself as a spiritual teacher. I have lived long enough to know a few things. When we see someone who is “up” and enthusiastic about spreading a teaching, it will not be genuine and sustainable unless that person is a genuinely empty vessel. We see this all the time in the entertainment industry, and spiritual teachers are often in that category, like it or no. Someone is telegenic or charismatic, so their brand becomes highly sought after. But if they are not empty, they will quickly become filled with another kind of empty. The kind of empty that causes them to fill up with sex partners, adulation, false advertising, etc. By their fruits ye shall know them.

We don’t like for people to write paragraphs like the above because as I paint that picture, you see yourself in it. For I am actually speaking about everyday people engaged in pursuing their dreams of success. Whether it be on Facebook, church or at a local bar. We are all one and the same.

Jesus got cranky when He talked about the pharisees. I can see why.

I turn my thoughts to a vacation and my stress level rises. I feel no pleasure but a tightening of my shoulders. I feel my age, my aches and pains and my deep desire to seek shelter within my own heart. Why seek it elsewhere?

I am trying to turn over a new leaf but it is not quite time. It is still adhering strongly to the tree. Oh, you know what I mean. You know you have gone stale and afraid, but the future seems worse.

I listen to Leonard Cohen and feel better and better. For he is the wizard of our times. He beckons us to come along on his journey of old age. Better than those celebs who have had so many facelifts they are unrecognizable. I love Leonard, along with many thousands of others. He is flowing us all along with him on his journey of inevitability. He is putting us in touch with our suppressed fears about being only “the brief elaboration of a tube.”

So I feel my shoulders tensely bent over the future. He skips on and off stage. “I’ve seen the future. And it’s murder.” But I relax into the arms of his arrangements. This is what true healers do.

I may not leave home until the time is right. It feels stressful with the house still unpainted. My muscles are tense and I feel up against the iron wall of zen. Actually there is no better place to be. When you reach the end of your rope, you can listen to some Leonard and rejoin the celestial harmonies once more.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It

“I’d love to stumble into a cafe one day and find the treasure that is you.

Your words are the same beautiful balm. I read you and feel that warmth fanning the soft red coal within my heavy heart.

I come here more than you know, for a shot of beauty.

I sit at your bar with a lemon and a shot glass, the salt is upon my wound, and your words are the pain killer. Salut….”

That comment made my day.

Vicki

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Sometimes you just gotta yell “Stop it!” at God.
And His Mercy hears and smiles.
And whatever is happening in your life resolves
into a pile of pure gold.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, A Guru in the Guest Room

March 28, 2013

Easter weekend looms. Someone has called our current weather “Marchuary.” That sounds like the word “mortuary.” This is when we meditate on our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection. It is a time of inner renewal. We slough off the dead cells of thought and glow with whatever inner being we have managed to bring forth.

I once had a dream in which I was attending my own funeral. A woman testified that I had been crucified and had arisen. That was my own Hallelujah dream. Since then I have returned to the tomb time and time again, for this is an earth school. My sense is that I did arise on a higher plane but that I must continue to serve down here as long as my body lasts.

My life is quite simple and yet I manage to complicate it with regularity. Such is the nature of life among the roses and thorns of this world. I got to hear Leonard Cohen perform recently. Now I sit here with tight sore shoulder and neck muscles, for that is where the tension came home to roost.

His line about “that’s how the light gets in” became the subtitle of my book, Life With A Hole In It. His performance on the world stage is awe-inspiring. He has the knack of reducing everything to a minimum so everything extraneous falls away. He wastes no word or gesture so that the light may pour forth at its maximum. This is grace of the Self and for it Cohen has paid the price.

There is a Work expression that says “Take what you want and pay for it.” This is not complicated. We all do this every single day of our lives. If we want inner peace, the price we pay is to surrender everything in us that is not peaceful. And so it goes. But it goes with ever-increasing grace. And that, too, is how the light gets in.

*Leonard Cohen: “As I understand it, into the heart of every Christian, Christ comes, and Christ goes. When, by his Grace, the landscape of the heart becomes vast and deep and limitless, then Christ makes His abode in that graceful heart, and His Will prevails. The experience is recognized as Peace. In the absence of this experience much activity arises, divisions of every sort.
 
Outside of the organizational enterprise, which some applaud and some mistrust, stands the figure of Jesus, nailed to a human predicament, summoning the heart to comprehend its own suffering by dissolving itself in a radical confession of hospitality.”

Vicki Woodyard
Life With A Hole In It

In my heart there is room for mystery and grace.
Not so for hard-looking happy people with
sensible shoes and stock smiles.

In my heart the loopholes of the lost are
laced with golden harp strings
playing daily in the ballroom where
dance the lonely ones.

Shimmering, moldering loves arise
to meet me face-to-face.
Grace-to-grace.
I’ve come unlaced.

Things are not how they seem but otherwise.
Come let us sing and play the songs we
love so much.
Perhaps the heart will grace us with its
tattered song.
The heart with no companion
is the sweetest note….

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It

Leonard Cohen at the Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia, 2013

“Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak. Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever. Now come into my arms. You are the image of my beauty.” ~Leonard Cohen, Death of a Lady’s Man.

What I witnessed for over three and a half hours was a man and his touring company hard at work to deliver the goods impeccably.

We sat close enough that we could see the guys waiting in the wings to hand off instruments, etc. to the musicians. As I follow the online journey of Leif Bodnarchuk, a backline tech, that was interesting to see.

Leonard himself has gone beyond the need of reviews. The man is a legend. He is, in a sense, a blue-collar worker. Just like a delivery man might come into a bar with a box of 24 glasses and say, “Here’s your delivery,” —thus did Leonard take center stage and humbly deliver his body of work. He’s your man. He’s Everyman.

Some were seeing Leonard for the first time. Others follow him as often as they can. No one could fault one moment of this show. When they took their last bows, they were well-deserved.

The crew begin tearing down and loading out the equipment as if in a race against time. My son and I stood at the stage door for ten minutes or so. We saw Javier Mas talking to Rafael Gayol, who was holding a styrofoam box of food. Shortly, Alexandru Bublitchi could be seen joining them. Then it began to rain and we scurried hurriedly back to our car.

Our night on the town finished, I sat in my own kitchen again. We are all alike, folks. As Leonard says we are “the brief elaboration of a tube.” And so to bed, having had a cup of hot chocolate and a cookie or two. The Master had held class and I was privileged to be one of his students for “one night only.” Leonard fed us on the loaves and fishes with baskets left over. Now that is a miracle…no waiting required.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It: That’s How The Light Gets In

The mind is an instrument of torture when used for anything but practical purposes.

Let your thoughts lie dead in the market. They are offal.

Surrender your desire to be thought of as special.

Leave off telling us about your happiness. No one wants or needs that.

Verify everything with your body. It tells you nothing but truth, whereas your mind lies.

Give up thinking that good luck is just around the corner. There is no corner.