Pain As Presence

At the heart of sorrow there is presence, no different than the presence at the heart of joy. Energy is energy. It is when we dissipate it by self-centered thought that we are weakened instead of strengthened. In grief, of course, there is weeping, which drains the body while it is going on. But after the tears comes the fertile ground of new energy. Someone said that I benefited from a good cry; that for me it was like preparing the soil for my writing. I understand that. There is no negativity in tears of remembrance, just a gentle letting go.

The path of presence is always right under our feet, but we flee into past and future as if they could be walked now. Returning to presence is returning to full-out healing. Energy is directed back into the flow of what is.

I am grateful for this quiet Monday morning. It is gray and rainy, the last day of January, 2011. Nothing significant has happened to me this month. There was a week of being iced in, but now that is just a memory. My heart has been iced in many times. Thaws follow. Rain comes and pale greet shoots poke up through the earth of the heart.

In Plain Sight

I am always working on my spiritual lessons. Today I am remembering how badly I failed my husband when he was ill and dying. I cannot minimize this; I was really angry and exhausted for years. The grief ran like blood through the streets of my heart. I forged ahead knowing that death would eventually outrun him. Who wouldn’t be angry?

I am now beginning my seventh year of life without him. How have I changed? It is hard for me to see or know. My friend, Tallulah, says that she has watched a great change happen in me. She sees how I have become more than a wife or more than a caregiver. I often feel stuck and powerless. I walk on.

My life is my own now. I run it well. But at night bad dreams still arise. They are usually shame-based. A childhood shame rooted in trying to please my mother, apparently. She is dead; the shame is alive in the unconscious. I circle myself with white light.

My Mac is where I find answers arising. Of course, it serves as a bridge between my heart and mind. My fingers find themselves walking peacefully and quickly over the keys. I want to share with the reader. I want to connect with them softly and in a healing way. To do this I must become vulnerable and open.

It is sad that I feel I must be a good soldier rather than one who gracefully surrenders to what is. I am still mounting a defense against my ultimate surrender. It might involve an even deeper suffering, a cleansing of everything I am clinging to.

I have been given proof that I am not alone. That I can live peacefully and meaningfully. Yet the child within does not quite believe that. She draws back from being seen and heard. She hides behind the veil of the  mind while her heart is standing there in plain sight.

Last Days Of The Mind

Can it be that the mind knows when its reign is coming to an end? Does it know that something behind its lids is stirring, wakening to a broader vision? Is it possible to take the mind to the shore and gently set it adrift on the endless sea of the heart?

Is love a shoreless ocean no longer bound by cords of conflict? Does it carry the mind gently into its cradle of caress? Will it offer the mind a cushion against the grains of sand it has worried into a great pearl at last?

Are others floating on the heart as it drifts into the cosmos, a starry soup of ecstasy? Do they wave quietly as they go past in star boats of surrender, twinkling, in love with eternity?

I only know where I am.  In contemplation of the silent journey yet to be begun. The thick slabs of misery are breaking up like icebergs in an ocean of great longing. I only know myself to be a fool.

I am no longer young, no longer longing for a person in a skin suit belonging to the orbiting of desire. Instead I ponder ecstasy of a different order. Such stillness that listening itself is a useless act. Such depth that no one can sound it. Silence invites me to the dance.

The Missing Link: Self-Love

The Missing Link: Self-Love

The missing link in the chain of spirituality is self-love. We come to this astonishing discovery only after we have tried desperately to change ourselves, fix ourselves, reinvent ourselves ad nauseum. None of it worked because there was no self-love behind it. Charity begins within.

Self-love is something that all of the great spiritual masters lived. Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within. He meant that it is within our own consciousness. Self-love cannot be bestowed by another. And the paradox is that we are all love. Love powers the universe.

When I lost my daughter to a childhood cancer at the age of seven, I was only 35 years old. I was in my early forties before I even began to heal. Grief for a child is different than for any other. You are facing not only the loss of the child, but their children’s children. The blank space not only opens up daily but also for generations. This loss set my feet firmly on the spiritual path. I began to read hundreds of books related to that subject. The Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda was given to me by my mother. It was my first taste of eastern spirituality. Yogananda loved the Christ as well as Krishna. He showed me that love is love is love….

Still I had years ahead of me to make the astonishing discovery that self-love is the linchpin of life. Without that, we are useless to others because we will project our self-loathing onto them. I certainly tried. I often made life miserable for my family in the years after my daughter died. My husband and I were left with an eleven-year-old son who had his own grieving to do. My husband tried to neatly solve the problem of grief by becoming a workaholic. His self-love was on the back burner just as mine was. Just as everyone’s is. For our culture teaches us to love our neighbor as ourself. What it doesn’t reveal is that we must love ourselves first. That is the right order.

There is a wonderful book called I Come As A Brother, by Mary Margaret Moore. That book had a sentence that leapt out at me and changed my consciousness forever. She said that WE need love ourselves. And in so many words, until that happens, we cannot give what we don’t have.

So I began the daily practice of sitting quietly in my chair first thing in the morning and saying: I choose to love myself. Five little words that took me in a different direction. The scriptures became living lessons for me now. Once I chose to love myself, I could love my neighbor, for you are your neighbor. There is no division in the world of love. Your own wholeness feeds the multitudes with baskets of loaves and fishes left over. Your own consciousness leads the way to your healing.

Joel Goldsmith of The Infinite Way and author of many books, was an extraordinary mystic. He discovered that he was the “I am that I am.” So are we all. But we must do as he did, sit in silence affirming this until it becomes second nature to us, until it clicks. You will feel your body shifting from mechanical energy to conscious energy, allowing your being to purr like a contented cat. For now, everything is in right order. You have faith that within you is the power to move mountains, within you is love itself.

So if you are serious about learning to love yourself, do this. Sit down first thing in the morning and say, “I choose to love myself. I am in God’s presence now.” That is it. All you have to do. Your energy, by law, will change for the better. Then get  up and go about your day. I like to put myself in a balloon of white light as well, asking that I  may send love to others without receiving any of their stress and tension. Try it. Change your life from a mechanical one to a conscious one. It is worth your time on earth to learn to live for eternity. And love is the building block…always.

This article can be found in Soulfulliving.com

You Have To Know

You have to know
how hard it is for caregivers
to watch their loved ones
fade away
one pain at a time.

You have to know
how hard it is to see them
do things for the last time.
To stop doing things like
making love and settle for
a pat on the shoulder.
You have to know.

You have to know how hard it is
to shop and cook and go to the chemo room
and come home to hopelessness and dread
and a life filled with “what if’s? ”

You have to know how long the road is
and how cold the empty heart is when
there is no more caregiving left to do.
When you have outlived your job and
find your hours idling on the vine.
You have to know.

You have to know that out of sorrow
comes your own rebirth.
How hard it is to watch yourself be a tiny
embryo of hope; a toddler that falls into
the coffee table and lurches into the street.
You have to know.

You have to know that hope is reborn
when you have to know… because you do.
You know that your only resource is within
and that no one will support you until you
begin to support yourself. So you begin again.
You are caregiving your own spirit now.

You have to know that God Himself is
giving you another chance. That your
loved one is within your heart and dancing
at this chance you are given.

The day you dance again is more than a pat
on the shoulder. It is an affirmation of
your own strength and courage. It is your ticket
to eternity, your own knowing how the game is played.

Not with a losing hand but with a winning spirit.
Not with self-pity but with the grace of God.
Not with hopelessness but an acceptance of
the flow. That’s all there ever was and all
there ever will be.
You have to know.

Vicki Woodyard

At Ease On The Edge

Writing gives me a safe haven for all of my problems. I dump them into the  computer and wait for God to come and pick them up. God is a trash man if the truth be known. It is a well-known saying that if you give your problems to God, He will pick them up. Truer words were never spoken.

Of course, God is also a tough taskmaster. Hannah Hurnard, who wrote Hinds’ Feet On High Places, was called to speak for Him. Partly, or perhaps solely, because she had a lisp and spit when she talked. But so strong was the calling that she did it anyway. In the process she became a much beloved writer. I often refer to this book in my essays. She has a character called Little Much Afraid who wants to follow the Good Shepherd and get to the High Places. So He tells her to hold the hands of Sorrow and Suffering and they will take her there. The allegory is simple and powerful. She gets to the High Places only to find that now she must pour herself down into the valley like a waterfall. She must serve the Low Places. But she is given a new name, Grace and Glory.

That is what writing my book, LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IN IT,  did for me. It is my journey, on paper, of going from the low places to the high places and back into the low. Only this time, I have a small light to share. I have learned how to write circles around my suffering because I know that in the center there is light. There can be ease on the edge, but only if God Himself leads you there. It is a perilous journey that not everyone is called to make.

Death is as certain as life. Life is as certain as death. Two ends of a stick. We can use it as a walking stick or beat ourselves to death with it. Sometimes the choice is clear. Sometimes the light shines and all we have to do is follow it.

If you doubt you can do it, according to Galileo, “Doubt is the father of invention.” It is okay to doubt yourself, the world and God. Just know you are and become a witness to your own ability to write circles around your pain. Let your light shine.

You are the light at the center. You are the scribe. You an describe, subscribe, unsubscribe.

Often humor is the tool I prefer to use. A good healthy rant breaks the spell of pain. And that’s what we are ultimately doing…breaking the spell of our miserable, whiny little thoughts that center around poor me. We are not poor little me’s. We are light itself. We are beacons of light, writing circles around our pain. Forget poor me. Empower yourself. Stay humble, stay centered and light will pour in from the center to the edge.

You can order my book on amazon.com.

I'll Have What Buddha's Having…

Buddha and I were seated in our usual booth at The Waffle House. He looked wise and merry at the same time. The waitress approached, pencil stuck behind her ear and pad in her pocket. She smiled at him because she couldn’t help herself and said, “What’ll it be, sir?”

He ordered scrambled eggs, waffles, bacon, sausage and grits on the side. She winked at him as she said, “All that food isn’t good for you, Buddha, sir.” She was playing their usual game, Pretend Like You Aren’t Impressed That Buddha Eats At The Waffle House. He always played along, saying this time, “Okay, I hear you. Ya got a point. Hold the scrambled…boil the eggs.” She giggled and then looked at me.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” I said, doing my part to keep the game going.

“Oh, really, look who thinks he’s the Buddha,” she retorted. “That’s your problem. You “think” you’re the Buddha. You don’t know you are.”

Buddha snickered at that. His merry eyes took in the Waffle House accoutrements of fine dining. He carefully tucked his paper napkin into his shirt—no shirt, no shoes, no service— and said, “Say no more. Say no more.” (Points for Buddha for being a Python fan).

“Anybody who thinks they can imitate the Buddha has another think coming. The bird is dead, I say. The bird is dead.” He pointed at me graciously as he said again, “The bird is dead. No bird, no buddha.” And with that the waitress disappeared to bring our orders.

When they arrived, Buddha chowed down just like everyone else in the diner. But his burp echoed throughout the cosmos. The buddha was a fat and happy camper. The Waffle House, for one brief moment, became nirvana and as we left, arm in arm, the waitress stuck her pencil back behind her ear and waited for the next buddha to arrive. She was ready.

2011

The New Year’s blank slate is now available for us all to write on. Few will let spirit do the writing as they follow along. Who wants to do that? For spirit would have us do only what brings us joy and we are unfamiliar with joy as a freedom. I am not talking about egocentric joy but about the joy that cannot be owned or controlled by said ego.

My body is tired this time of year. My mind is grumbling about the woes of holidays crammed with commercialism. But my spirit is now writing these words and knows what it is about. All I have to do is let my fingers do the talking.

These fingers are connected to the spirit bone; now hear the word of the Lord. I can say that because Vicki can’t buy a clue as to what her real purpose is. So she sits at the keyboard doing what she does best—letting words arise. If she is lucky, they will hit the mark.

I hope you come along for the ride here at nondualitynow. Perhaps you will see yourself in these pages for spirit speaks to spirit. Perhaps you will see yourself in my failures and weaknesses as well as in my desire to be used by a higher force than myself.

I wish you godspeed traveling both the super highway of the internet and of the spirit. The joy is in the journey; the fruits of the spirit are falling off the Tree of Life. Let 2011 be a garden of harvest for us all.