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#4553 – Thursday, March 29, 2012 – Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights


“Very seldom can one recommend a book before reading it, but this is the
one! I was already an avid reader back when Swami Z stories first appeared
some years ago on Vicki’s website. While many profound truths are wryly or
sarcastically uttered as humor, Swami Z just happens to be the most lovable
curmudgeon of a guru you’ll ever meet. When baking cookies for his kitchen
table satsangs with mostly complaining and questioning disciples, a group
that includes a grown man with his stick pony, hilarious conversations take
place that somehow magically convey to you all the comfort and delight of a
warm cookie fresh from the oven. Treat yourself!”

Authored by Vicki Woodyard

Vicki Woodyard wrote A GURU IN THE GUEST ROOM as a blend of fantasy
and wisdom about awakening. In this book, she introduces the reader to
Swami Z and his disciples; a motley crew of characters that spring up
around him to learn that they are the Self. If you want to have an
awakened wink, this book is for you!

When Bob was undergoing his first chemo in the hospital, he had a psychotic break caused by a severe reaction to high doses of one of the drugs. The end result was an unbelievable high. I write about it in Life With A Hole In It. He fell in love with life. He didn’t know anything but joy. He lay there ruined by his fatal disease grinning from ear to ear.

The cheer cart stopped in the hall outside of his room and I went to see what they had to offer. I bought him a tiny soft brown puppy and paid five dollars for it. I gave it to him and the flood gates of light opened even further. Bob, an executive male of his generation, an alpha dog if there ever was one, now looked on this gift as God Himself. That is what happens in hell when you have accidentally slipped its bonds and gone directly to Heaven.

He would spend days so in love that he couldn’t smell his own shit. And it was considerable. I gagged when I found him sitting in it happily. He tried to leave the hospital so he could walk home to see me. He found it necessary to rip all of his lines out that were delivering him various and sundry medications.

You can imagine how I was reacting to all of this. He was in heaven and I was in hell. Both of us were out of it. He lived a little over four years after he left the hospital. I am still here, still pounding out essays that shock and awe me with their residual feelings.

I feel that he is watching over me. The little brown dog is in a drawer in my kitchen hutch. The memory is in my heart. Often we forget which is more important, things or people. We forget that light can penetrate the darkest night, but only when there is no more human hope. Human hope is a deadly disease, deadlier than cancer. We should be hoping to transcend it and rise into the light of God’s will. In His Will is our peace.

A Guru in the Guest Room will be out very soon. It is built from bits and pieces of light that managed to work their way through the darkness. Swami Z knew what he was about when he moved in with me. He knew that Vicki needed a break. Truer words were never spoken.

I begin this week with anticipation, for A Guru in the Guest Room will be in my hot little hands by midweek. I stand at the crossroads of possibility. All I have to do is let go. Put one foot in front of the other.

Many of you have known me for years. You have stood with me as I buried Bob and began my new life, ready or not. You were patient while I grieved, turning sorrow into essays and hitting the Send button. You rejoiced with me as I stood firm in the act of being true to myself.

Just as Life With A Hole In It was written then, so was A Guru in the Guest Room. These are companion books, whether they seem like it or not. They were both gifts at a time when I had nothing to give but what God gave me—my love of writing. It has served me well even though I have certainly not sold many books.

Swami Z arose from deep within the subconscious. He is, of course, a fictional character, but one I know how to write very well. He is the embodiment of a love that never dares to make sense. He never adds up; neither does he bear up under scrutiny. I adore that about him. His cuteness factor is off the charts.

Not only that, but his character will lead some of you into a surprising direction. Let me know if that happens. He just walked into the room and is standing right behind me. “Swami,” I say, “would you be so kind as to share a pearl of wisdom about your book?”

“Vicki,” he said, “I am about to launch you in a different direction and knowing you, it will be another kicking, screaming journey. Personally, I hope you fall on your butt for as many times as it takes. Think of it as Senior Night at the Roller Derby. Just get up and skate on.”

I am sorry I ever gave him voice.

Vicki Woodyard
Swami’s Faithful Scribe

Dear Hearts,

I ask for your blessings and prayers today. I am finishing up A Guru in the Guest Room and it should be available for sale in the next two weeks. As a writer, this is the hardest part of the process. Writing, for me, is a joy, as I become an empty vessel for the words that pour through me. But waiting to get a proof copy in the mail raises my blood pressure. Why? Because that is the nuts and bolts part of writing. It’s like trying to put a toy train together on Christmas Eve. The stress is off the charts.

I got the proof copy yesterday but there are a few formatting issues. That means my editor has to fix them and upload the manuscript again and I have to go through the waiting process again. Once I approve it, it will be for sale immediately. But today I have to go to the grocery while waiting for the editor to get back to me. So nerve-racking I can’t even begin to tell you.

The spiritual path has its ups and downs. You would think I would have it figured out by now, but there are always new potholes waiting for us to “fall down, go boom!” Swami Z, as I have said before, is a seasoned veteran of the briny deeps, but I tend to get lost at sea. I think if I fell overboard, he would toss me a jumbo chocolate chip cookie….

Ahoy, mates. Send light.

Why Am I Here On Earth? This question could be asked by anyone and the answer would be the same. You are here to realize your oneness with the question!

Oneness with the question can only come from rising above the question and answer dichotomy.

Class dismissed.

Vicki Woodyard

The Shadow and the Light, March 19, 2012
By T. Crockett (Virginia) – See all my reviews

This review is from: LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT: That’s How the Light Gets In – The Wisdom of an Awakened Heart (Paperback)
Having read a lot of what is written under the banner of Nonduality and spirituality, I can say that this book has what so many of those books lack: life. That might be an odd thing to say about a book that is so heavy with the shadow of death, but it is true. Vicki Woodyard’s book is at times funny, angry, sweet, bitter, eloquent, messy, and all the things that real life is and which so much of contemporary spirituality tries to wrap in pink light and lavender and wish away. Waking up is not easy. Most of us don’t want to wake up. We want the appearance of having woken up. We want the enlightenment merit badge with the Nonduality decoder ring that lets us both speak pithy pronouncements and platitudes and nod our head knowingly when someone parrots the words of some sage as if it were the answer to every question a human could ask.

Real life is about pain and pleasure. We suffer when we cling to either one. Vicki Woodyard shows us that by sharing her real life as it unfolds, walking a spiritual path while living the death of her husband. Like waking up, this is not an easy book. It pulls no punches and is relentlessly honest. There is a spiritual practice in Nonduality traditions called direct inquiry. It usually means inquiring into the nature of what we take to be real in order to discover how illusory those things actually are. In this beautiful little book you see the author relentlessly and deeply asking who am I and what is this at a time when most people would put their spiritual quests on the shelf.

Honesty is, of course, an acquired taste. But if you have a taste for it, read this book.

Tom Crockett
http://www.tomcrockett.info/

I have not been spared the experience of losing a child and a mate to fatal cancers. Neither was I spared their love or the love of the Self. I keep my writing as honest as possible; that’s just how I roll. If I tried to sugarcoat my life, I would immediately lose the blessings of my lessons.

Although Bob has been gone over seven years now, I can look out the window and see spring arising and miss him. When we were in high school, he sent me a silly card that said something about missing me in spring. I also remember him going on a bus trip in high school and bringing me back a small box of divinity so hard it could have broken one of my teeth. Oh, the joys of puppy love.

As our love progressed it would be tested by such severity that would make angels wince. Bone marrow tests so grindingly painful that a roomful of nurses flinched and turned away. I became so perpetually exhausted that I walked around like a wraith. If this was eternal love, God was smacking me in the mouth with it.

I am writing a beautiful spirit with ovarian cancer. She is undergoing yet another ordeal by chemo. We tell each other the truth and that is a beautiful thing. Why gloss over our suffering when an honest admission lets in yet more light?

Joel Goldsmith has been teaching me lately via one of his books, Consciousness Unfolding. He boils love down to one essential experience, making one’s contact with God. I can do that; in fact, it is the least that I can do for anyone. If that doesn’t work, nothing else will. I rest in the arms of the Absolute and sometimes others rest with me. I like to think so.

Check out my book, LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT by clicking on the Book Page on this site.

It is important for all outer teachings to fall away. This cannot happen until it happens. Before that, there is effort, struggle and being thrown off-balance. I experienced that with Vernon Howard, a master teacher if there ever was one. To meet him was to meet your own inner darkness up close and personal. It went without saying that the light engineered the meeting!

Oh, the frustration of setting out upon the true way. Oh, the dilemma of the civil war within. The skirmishes, the woundings and the battlefield stories told around the campfire. The enemy is everywhere but within. For what the teacher says is quickly forgotten as the battle rages. He DID say that the foes are those of one’s own household, but the outer ones are so much more easily seen.

But the true student perseveres. He keeps on keeping on though the battle rages. As Vernon said, darkness is always attacking light. The brighter the light, the greater the darkness. But the light shines on.

He has been gone for twenty years and what he taught is nothing less than Self-realization. He did not use that term; he shied away from any spiritual buzz words. Instead he taught his students how much ego hated the light and how it would spend its last emotional dime to wage the war against what could save it.

Now I sit here at the keyboard knowing that the outer teachings arrive in any form they must and vanish when you least expect them to do so. What are you left with? A wordless experience, a shining forth, a blazing peace, a silent nod. A grateful amen.