Yes, today I have decided to have it all. To do this, I have to enter the willing suspension of disbelief. So I washed my hair and had a cup of coffee and a Pepperidge Farm Sugar Cookie. I sat in the great room and pretended that Bob had come back just for today. I spoke to him inwardly, asking if he liked the new decor. I told him we would have wild tantric sex. I smiled. We never had wild tantric sex when he was alive, but who knows what can happen on a day when you decide to have it all?

Today I am a best-selling author who, unbelievably, never has to appear in public. I just sit home and receive royalty checks and have great tantric sex.

Today I will not gain a pound, in spite of eating that P. Farm cookie and going to a party called Chocolate and the Arts. This evening I will look as good as I have ever looked in my life, in spite of being a mature woman. I will glow. I will find something so aesthetically pleasing that I will buy it, even if it is just a bar of scented soap. I will wash my hands in deep gratitude for being alive.

I will also wash my hands of regret, guilt, suspicion, comparison and self-denial. I will do the hoochy coochy. Are you guys laughing yet? For today I have decided to be shocking and funny despite my age. Bob, that wild spirit, is really getting off on the new me. Suddenly I begin to cry, to sob, to tear my hair, knowing that he will be leaving at the end of this magical day.

To have it all, apparently I must also give it all back. To the earth, to the sky, to whatever brought me here. Rumi I ain’t but darned if he hasn’t been with me on this most magical of days. Shams, Shams, can we ever have it all or should we remain in a state of longing? A bird is systematically drilling holes into my cedar siding as I type these words. Being in a state of love is like being in a state of disrepair. Helpless and hopeless I am beautiful. I am free.

There is always something new to be discovered about your essence, about who you really are. We are all the “I am” awareness but configured differently to learn our lessons, to share our gifts, to grow as human beings. So far our culture has it all wrong. It says “We must be up and doing.” I say we should get down to being. Being ourselves.

It may have taken tragedy to fully learn this lesson, but it has made a difficult journey bearable. And hopefully, it is also bearing fruit. It has given my bearing dignity and the ability to rest in my essence. My mother used to remind me that everyone is given certain grace notes in their sometimes jarring lives. One of mine has been a lifelong love affair with truth. I delight in it on so many different levels. That very love of truth makes life hard, or at least it used to. These days I am able to be uninvolved with the social loops and tangles of the community. For community is taking different forms in these technocentric times.

I don’t use a cell phone except for emergencies and I don’t have an iPod, iPad or a digital camera. What I do have and use all day long is my iMac. It is there that I gave birth to Swami Z; there that I begin sharing my life with readers. I began writing essays for Jerry Katz’ Yahoo list on his website, the Nonduality Salon. That delighted me no end and the suffering that I was undergoing became alchemically altered by the very process of writing.

I built a website from scratch and just kept writing and writing and writing. I am a writer by nature, an essayist and a sometimes poet and humorist as well. These are my natural gifts. I was behind the door when God doled out reading maps, driving, measuring things, drawing or painting. But I had a natural ear for the written word.

I also had a hearty dislike of socializing. There was a deep fear connected with it which was possibly carried over from another lifetime. Who knows? Here is what I know now. I like people, just in small doses and when I can be true to myself. That is what happens on Facebook. I am pounding away at the keyboard sensing that some of you know exactly how much I enjoy it because you do, too. We don’t have to look presentable, talk nonsense or look at anyone’s pictures unless we want to.

I am a free spirit trapped in a very conventional body and personality. What God gave me is lots of space in which to explore the inner life. I behold the vistas of silence and the mountains of truth and that is all I seem to need or want. Behold the hermit come to Facebook or her website only to return to the cave until the next note flutters to the ground. Enjoy.


P.S. Somebody click on my book page. Maybe you will be interested enough to order it 🙂

Awaiting Transportation

Vernon Howard gave a talk with the title “Transfer Island.” It was about a place where people went until the boat came to take them to the other shore. He was speaking about the inner journey, but this is also applicable to our mortal one.

Today we learned that Bill Lindley’s transfer came. In his last message he said that he was awaiting transportation, having been diagnosed with late-stage cancer. We all hoped to hear from him again.

Let us sit here together in a communal silence, bathing in the beatitude of Bill. Go ahead and let your eyes moisten and your heart soften. Nothing wrong with that. And then let us be “up and doing,” whatever it is that we do best. That is the way to keep love alive.



I am getting some treatment for my neck with Ara, a young chiropractor. When I first began going to him, he was just starting his practice. That was a couple of years ago. I hadn’t been to a chiro before, but my doctor suggested an alternative remedy. Ara saw that I had an extra cervical rib, which limits the range of motion in my neck. I go in whenever I start losing too much mobility.

He has gotten married since I saw him last and we visited while he was putting me through some adjustments. He told me about his 92 year-old grandfather that had almost died recently. He was in the hospital, gravely ill. The family was gathered and according to Ara, he looked like death had its hand on him for sure. But suddenly his grandfather began to get his color back and his vitals improved. He got to go home. He told the family that “people on the other side” worked on him and said he had a few years left, and then he came back.

Ara said, “He wanted to stop by and get a treatment from me before he did anything else.” He got his phone and showed me this image. His grandfather is Armenian, he said, and lives with Ara’s mother. His wife is still alive, although frail. “She insisted on staying with him while he was in the hospital,” Ara said.

Today he said that his mother is very tuned in to the other side. “I asked not to have that gift this lifetime,” I said, but I am always being put in touch with people that are. They assure me that the spirit world is right alongside of us. I believe that. We are always commingling with them. Enjoy the beautiful image.

Nothing is ever anyone’s fault.

Projections arise from within and claim

to be seen without.

When you see that there is neither

within or without

Your hands are empty.

Cup-shaped and holding everything and nothing.

Vicki Woodyard

My life without Facebook is generic. No one is commenting on what I do or say. I am free to roam about the cabin freely unless the captain turns on the seatbelt sign. I always do what the captain says because believe you me, I have flown through some turbulence. Have used the bag in the seat in front of me, have had my ears pop and my stomach lurch when the plane suddenly descended. Is this a metaphor? You bet your sweet bippie.

I accidentally left out the “e” in plane and it read “when the plan suddenly descended.” The captain is in charge of my life’s plan. I am speaking now as the Vicki personality, built up strictly to keep her protected from life’s sudden descents. The captain is a metaphor for the oversoul, or the “I am” awareness. See how simple this all is when it’s written?

I am learning to ease into the third act of my life. It is so simple I can’t believe it. I know I have guides that are protecting me and yet I am still prone to complicate my life. How? By taking thought. I take way too much thought, as if I were a compulsive eater at a smorgasbord. “Shall I have seconds on worry? That envy looks tasty.” And soon I am shoveling emotions down like there was no tomorrow.

Every day the thought runs through my mind that I might as well put my dishes in the dishwasher now because no one is coming along behind me to do it. And that applies to every aspect of my life. No one is coming along to clean up behind me psychologically. If I litter my mind with worry, I am the one who has to clean it up. I do that by frequent emptying of the mental trash. I sit in silence and click on the icon “Empty Trash.” Amazing how quickly I reach my natural state of being.

There are few things I need or want that I cannot get. I don’t need or want much; that is the great secret. I have become a real author and the daily discipline of writing is something that feels very solid to me. I can trust what comes through my fingers. That is how I connect to the world and how it connects to me. I lead a generic life as a generic human being. I have to jump through the hoops of insurance payments, grocery lists, etc. That is called being a good householder. There is a certain satisfaction in that.

The only real joy to be had is in awareness of what is happening when it is happening. No comments are necessary. Everything can be lived instead of elived.

Vicki Woodyard

Author, LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT: That’s How The Light Gets In
Click on Vicki’s book page to order.

There are things I would not do. I would not go shopping for a new bathroom scale. I would not do anything that felt even one percent off, for I would remain true to myself. I would spend it alone. For inside of me lies my greatest power and outside of me lies.

I would finally accept the gifts that God has given me and they are all interior ones.

I would tell myself the truth, that my greatest joy lies in connecting with only people that God draws to me. They are a mere handful, but my two hands clap in joy over them.

These are not social friends but friends God has planted deep into my heart. Some of them I will never meet and others I may never see but a few times.

God put me here to communicate with like-minded beings. He gave me the gift of words. He gave me the gift of tenacity. He gave me the gift of a private life.

The guilt and shame I have given myself.

So today is a day for me to acknowledge my deep connection with spirit. To know that even as I type, someone is reading and nodding, “Yes, that is how I feel, too.”

Family and friends can be and are taken away. What endures beyond loss? That is a central question of my life.

What endures is the only thing that can endure.

The Holy Spirit, which cannot be accepted when you think you will live forever, that you can remain false to yourself, that you can dabble in the world as you wish.

Once you see that, your vision becomes true and the false falls away.

It’s not about time. It’s about my own eternal spirit. And my last day is ongoing.

Here is one of the great reviews my book has gotten. Please visit amazon.com and read more. If you can order a copy or make a donation to the website, that would greatly help me stay in the writing business. I have to pay publication costs and for the maintenance of the site. Do a good deed. Help a writer today…it will be much appreciated. And talk the book up online if you have read it and liked it. Send me an email!

“I read Vicki’s book a couple of days ago – and I’m still thinking about it. It’s the sort of book that will stay with this reader for a long time. Vicki writes from the naked, beating heart of it all – and her honesty, fierce intelligence and humour combine with an absolute refusal to paper over the cracks. Life’s fullness – it’s harshness, its tenderness, its raw vibrancy – all are here. And resolutely embraced, even when it hurt. If you want to know what a warrior spirit is like, meet one in these pages. Highly recommended.” H. C. Starke

God came to me and said, “Vicki, I’m gonna pull out all the stops. I know you bore up under the loss of your daughter, but it’s been over twenty years now, and well, it’s time I called Bob home.”

I wanted to bust His Chops. I really did. I was no Job.

“Why on Your Green Earth would you put me through the eye of the needle AGAIN?”

God was silent. But when I turned around Bob was gone.

I was alone in a world where it seemed I would have to do everything myself. I would have no one lying next to me in bed at night. Would have no Christmas gifts from him under the tree. It was pretty frickin’ sad.

I didn’t turn against God. I began to work very, very hard. There was lots to do. Clean the basement. Sell his tools and car. Give his clothes away.

I cried but I learned from my daughter’s death that a deep, deep loss did not have to find me going off the deep end. I could float. And so I floated through many a long wintry day. I floated through Easter and summer and long hours of solitude.

And then I began to write. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. And the more I wrote, the more I could float.

Float above the question “Why?” Float above the slow ticking of the clock. And float above the knowledge that my life would never be the same.

I am a survivor. Don’t approach me with your theories of how God works. I know how He works. In mysterious ways.

Don’t offer me any plastic sympathy; I am stronger than that.

Just be there in your own authentic way.

However that manifests.

Let the complications go.

Let the words go.

Be silent and look within your very own heart.

I did and one day I understood that we are all on our way home.

From birth we have been going home. Some just stick around longer than others.