Bob Woodyard is looking at his earth life. Now he is out of his body and able to  speak from his purified heart:

“Oh, God, my life on earth was so difficult. The last five years were hell; they were my crucifixion. I see my wife, Vicki, and how hard she worked to keep me in the body. How broken and angry and defeated she was.  What she didn’t see was this huge angel that was with her at all times. She didn’t see how well she would do after I left her. She thought I was unaware of how impossible her task was. She feared every day that she would not want to live after I died. But she is not only living, she is flying above any storms that may touch her now. I love her now more than I did while on earth.

The first few years after my death I watched over her so tenderly, in awe at her ability to keep on keeping on. I watched her clean all of my mess out of the garage, sell my tools and my beloved car. Watched her tote stacks and stacks of my old magazines from the basement. I should have done that myself.

I saw her probate my will, driving to the courthouse with our attorney, silently putting her signature on papers as they pointed out the appropriate place. I saw her come home and collapse in tears. But she went on. She managed to get a new roof put on the house and a new kitchen floor installed. She made her energies predominate in the house because her friend and advisor, John Logan, told her it would be helpful. “Get rid of any medical equipment, too,” John said. So I watched the walker and other items be donated to the Salvation Army. The house was beginning to feel lighter. But not Vicki’s heart. She would still cry almost every day. It is difficult for a spirit to watch this process. I prayed mightily for her. And she, of course, kept writing about all of it.

Her pleasures were simple and she was learning to set nice, clean boundaries around herself. She didn’t know it, but taking care of me so faithfully had shown her how to take care of herself. She couldn’t see it, but I could see her coming back to life after the first year without me.

After the first three years of watching over her, I felt she was strong enough for me to go on my own mission up here. I had to use what I learned from my own years of suffering. So now I just “touch in” when she really needs me. I came to her in a dream more than once, but she seldom remembered. When I came and showed her my diary and said, “Your prayers are written daily on the wall of my heart” she was deeply moved. She lay there in bed afraid to move lest she break the mood of the dream. Yes, she cried, but it was a good, healing cry.

Some of you may think Vicki is making this all up. She is. God has seen to it that her way of writing is her way of healing. I stand behind this piece of fiction as I stand behind everything she does. She is one helluva lady and as she says to me on occasion, “More today than yesterday, less than tomorrow.” As she spends each day on earth trying to shine more light on her darkness, I know the truth. The light is all there is. Our love is one magnificent experience and yes, when she crosses over, I will be the first person she sees. The beloved, the one who was the wind beneath my wings. Now I have a pretty big set and she will have some, too.

Sceptics and cynics are just people whose hearts have not been broken wide enough open yet. I was glad when she added the subtitle to her book. That’s how the light gets in. I wouldn’t want her to think that her life had been in vain. She had her faults and her weaknesses. I always, always loved her in spite of them. She was my earth angel, she was.

 

There is a way to outgrow your fear. Become established in the field of everything happening at once. It is also the field of which Rumi speaks, that field out beyond right and wrong.

Fear is nothing more than a profound sense of separateness. Once that is gone, everything falls into place, whirls into place.

I can hear you asking, “How do I see that everything is happening at once?’

How can you not?

If you have seen the movie, Whalerider, you know that there is a scene where the young girl climbs upon the back of a beached whale and rides it back into the sea. “I am not afraid to die,” she says (or words to that effect). As she goes underwater, you fear that she will, but she survives and becomes the leader of her tribe.

“The true you emerges when there is no attempt to prove anything to anyone.”

(Vernon Kitabu Turner, Soul Sword)

We are a puny bunch of people these days, are we not? Riding whales into the oceanic depths is only something that people do in the movies. I have a hard time driving in traffic. But this story moved me. It is a call to spiritual warriorship. Turner writes compellingly about warriorship. “There are many ways to flow with the wind. One way is to trust yourself to be yourself.”

Spirituality is that in us which is undivided; the mind cannot go beyond its element. We must trust the process of surrender if we are to go beneath the waves of sorrow and resurface with our spirit intact. I have only begun to make this journey of riding my soul back to its native home. My mind encourages me to postpone the journey. To stay and argue with people about rules and regulations, about insurance and appointments shown on the calendar. I do not have to die to honor these commitments. I can continue living a plastic life, compartmentalized and sane. But underneath the sea rages.

I have a CD by Herding Cats that I like. There is a line in one song about where the black waters roll. I can almost physically feel these black waters in my body as the song plays. I know these waters well. Don’t we all? Where is our courage on any given day? Bob had to get five vials of blood drawn yesterday when he exited the trial drug study that he was on. The nurse who was drawing his blood had great difficulty in getting enough blood to come out. There were four people watching and we were all cringing. I asked him twice if he was okay, and he said that he was. Once we got home, I was able to let my hair down and feel the accumulated stress in my body.

Today we sat and meditated for a while. We talked about regaining our spirit during the next three weeks that he has off before resuming chemo once again. We have been violated by a society that values knowledge above spirit and answers above the process of questioning. It is time for us to ride the whale back into the sea.

I feel so alone in all of this. The past three years since Bob’s diagnosis have been difficult. But it cannot be otherwise. This is a spiritual journey as well as a physical one. Only spirit can prove strong enough to endure what lies ahead.

*Excerpted from Vicki’s book,LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT: That’s How The Light Gets In.

Prayers of the heart are written in true ink. True tears become true ink when they are given over to the Supreme. I have cried so many tears that I have bottles and bottles of true ink. It comes in many colors, from red to black to gold to white. I use all of it, for that is how I discover myself and come to grace.

Every day now I write from the heart to the heart. There is no difference. The words issue forth from source and they are all good. Typos are accepted as well as perfect copy, for God knows that error is ultimately wiped away.

I write from what used to be a sense of loss and now is a sense of peace. What I have lost cannot be restored; it can be hallowed and connected to in a very real way. Those I love who have passed beyond the veil are reading everything that my heart writes.

Bob came to me in a dream and said, “Your prayers are written on the wall of my heart everyday.” True ink.  True ink. The ink of emptiness has become full.

You may order Vicki’s book here on the website.

Jerry Katz of Nonduality.com says: “As good as Vicki’s individual essays are, when organized into a book they come across with even greater power and grace.”

 

Loving God is a mystery, since we are That. Colossians says, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” That is inscribed on our daughter’s gravestone. There she lay at age seven, me age thirty-five. A lifetime of sorrow stretched before me.

Flash forward twenty plus years and I am standing by the grave of my husband. He lies next to our daughter. I know I have to go on. I also know that he asked me to find my passion before he died and this is it.

I write and write and write, as I walk and walk and walk the path back home to the heart. The path IS the heart, of that I have no doubt. But the journey is a spiral one for us all. Have compassion for you never know who is about to break under a heavy load, who is carrying their cross and thirsting.

How do you slake another’s thirst? There is only one way that I have discovered. You can give them living water collected drop by drop from the cistern that has become your heart. You do it by being it. You are it; you have just forgotten it. Once you remember, the water gushes forth of its own power and you are just the witness.

 

 

I took off my earth suit and carefully draped it over the back of the chair. Such an encumbrance. Whew. It had been a long incarnation and it still wasn’t over. I wanted to have a few Hershey Kisses but realized that my mouth came off with the suit. Chocolate would have to wait. Now I wanted to reflect on something deeply.

What was I missing? Where had I taken such a wrong turn? Did answers exist when the questions themselves were so nebulous? I looked carefully at the suit. It looked like me; whether it sounded like me I would never know. Without me in it, it was soundless. The eyes were expressionless. I feared touching it. The very idea made my skin crawl, but I was skinless at the moment.

Also, and this may strike you as odd, the feelings I had about the suit weren’t coming out in words because the brain remained inside. Now I was hypersentient and reality clearly had nothing to do with the brain. The good thing was I didn’t need to go to the bathroom; I had plenty of time to experience life outside the suit.

I looked at the suit, neatly inanimate, waiting for….what? The suit was dressed in a pair of black slacks and a rose colored shirt. Around its neck was a medallion made of carved stone. The hair was mostly silver; obviously it had been dark brown at some point in its travails on earth. No, I didn’t say travels, but travails. For my sensate Self knew this woman more intimately now that it was no longer wearing “her.”

It knew her sorrows and her shortcomings, her persistence, her agonies in the Garden, the brief respites from the burdens she had chosen to carry. It wanted her to know that no matter what she did or didn’t do, she was loved.

I now stepped back from the earth suit and begin seeing images of myself wearing it.  I saw myself standing before an open grave as my daughter’s small casket was lowered into the ground. Brave I was and barely able to tolerate breathing. It happens again. I stand during an ice storm as my husband’s coffin is lowered into the same space from her, just inches away. Now they are together. My son and I are strong. What choice do we have but to breathe?

I see her writing a book, night after night spent at the keyboard, healing herself by her own hand. Carefully recording what will be her rebirth. The earth suit will remain the same although it will continue to age. I think there must be a number on it somewhere because I get the sense she has been running a race. I slowly approach the suit, turning it over to see what number she was, but there is no number. Puzzled, I stepped back into the position of witness. Oh, how I longed to communicate to her that winning or surviving was not why she wore the suit. She could drop every idea she had ever had about proving that she was strong enough to endure unto the end. There was no trophy; there was no victory. There was only dropping the suit.

I knew I had to put it back on, just as I knew that one day I would be finished with it. Before I did, though, I sent strong messages to her. “The only thing you need to do is love yourself while wearing this earth suit. Nothing else matters. You are entirely safe. If you can remember, try and let others know the greatest secret on earth. The only reason to wear the suit is to learn to love yourself. Everything else falls into place.

I stepped gently back into the suit. I was quickly forgetting all about this suspension of disbelief; that is how it goes. All I ever had to do was love myself.

 

It is time to stand up and be counted. You are one. Nothing could be simpler and more confusing. “If I am one, why do I feel so conflicted?” could be your next question. There is no answer to that but awareness.

It is time to say to questions, “Begone!” Curiosity killed the cat and earned Zen pupils a whack with the ugly stick. Does a dog have buddha nature? Does a pig oink? Does a nondualist parse? Just sit there in your self-unity. Don’t move a mental muscle.

Every morning I sit in meditation before having breakfast. If I questioned each flake of oatmeal and pondered how it could be one, I would just be a fool. The universe was named that for a reason. The whole kit and kaboodle is one.

The next time you are asked to stand up and be counted, be the first in line to Say One. The next person will say he is Two, but we know better, don’t we?