“Anyway, Roshi and I were drinking a very good, very powerful Chinese liquor. Roshi was dozing off, and I didn’t think he was terribly interested in the recording process. But the next morning over breakfast, I asked him what he thought. He said, ‘Leonard, you should sing more sad.’ He meant for me to surrender to the emotions. To accept it.” ~Leonard Cohen

And so that is one thing I have deeply in common with Leonard. I, too, should write “more sad.” I have been pilloried for doing that, especially by the nondual community. Apparently, it is not the thing to do. But lest we forget, our emotions are God-given and channeled in the right direction, lead us directly into the light. But first we surrender to the darkness. Cohen is the master of that. He takes us, drives us, chauffeurs us, to a place of surrender so deep that the darkness is transmuted into light.

How else can I write about my life but honestly and scrupulously? Can one bury a child consciously? No, one is in a state of shock. To see a tiny body breathe no more, well, I wouldn’t recommend it to my worst enemy. To have to take the belongings of that small body home from the hospital would wreck the most sincere intention to be above it all. An unfinished bottle of root beer, a few flowers and the effluvia of the last days of a seven year old’s life. I am scarred and healed when I write of moments like this.

I blast out the words onto the blank screen, screaming at you to have some common sense about awakening, enlightenment and wisdom. Do not think these thirty-somethings can speak to your age-old experience of simply being with who and what you are in the moment. Take your courage in your hand and remain true to what is going on in your life. I dare you.

The light cannot be parcelled out in required doses called “satsang.” It offends the cosmos to think this would be remotely possible. Everything is happening to everybody at all times. Birth and death and everything in between are owned by us all. When I tell you that emotionally I have been reborn from death into life, you have no reason to believe me. We all lie.

Sometimes I sit and weep but at other times I am strong and untouched. And sometimes it doesn’t take much for me to just sit on the couch, turn on the TV and forget what a burden we human beings are asked to carry. The skeletal forms with their botoxed lips and grotesquely high heels become something to divert my attention from who I am and who I could be. A being of light, an immortal encased in the persona of a woman called Vicki.

Vicki Woodyard
Author, Life With A Hole In It