Note #1500

The other 1,4999 weren’t bad. (Excuse me while I pat myself on the back and type with one hand.) They started out on a much more somber note. Hopefully, I am a lot wholer now than I was then. See, I can’t resist a good joke. Spellcheck is smart enough not to recognize that as a word.

I now know how to write an essay without letting my mind get in the way. I type too fast for it to function. That way, improv happens. That’s one way to trick “old monkey mind.” Go ahead of it.

I remember a woman minister say that she found it helpful to speak only when the spirit moved her. That meant she was silent a lot. It saved vital energy and made her words more meaningful. I like that idea a lot. Here is a reprise of an essay posted on the website I began back in 2001.

Pouring

“What you don’t experience positively you will experience negatively.”
Joseph Campbell

Right now I am sitting at my Mac wondering what it is going to say or do next.  That doesn’t make any sense, but neither do my random, compulsive movements to find grace and structure inside the mind.

Suffering can be decanted into the silence without spilling a drop. The water of suffering is changed into the wine of acceptance…but how? That we shall never know. I pour myself gently into the invisible, giving myself permission to watch the process.

At some point, I have poured myself into the void, into the absolute. I am now better able to see the liquid sorrow of my soul, as it shimmers in front of me. That is the secret—that my sorrow be kept in front of me. As soon as I turn my back on it, I begin to suffer all over again.

I am the vessel holding all that I am.  My life is littered with mistakes, miscues and downright sorrow.  Isn’t that the stuff of transformation? If it isn’t, I don’t know what is.

Vicki Woodyard