I have slipped out of fashion and it is so comfortable. Traveling incognito is traveling light. As I sat in silence just now, this essay begin to take shape and so I write. It has ever been thus. Fifteen years of writing into the ether online, feeding hungry ghosts and forgetting to feed myself.

The last lesson is about self-love. Nothing else matters. Because if I do not feed myself, the universe will starve. That is just how it goes. You can burn all the books but this one. Love yourself and the world will continue to spin straw into gold. Hate yourself and evil will continue.

I have a friend who counsels me to love myself. “Stop giving yourself away,” he writes. And he tells me to drown in love. And I am not able to do this. I think it is because I am using effort and effort never works. So here I am, typing the letters of fire.

One must be able to blow up every plan you have for getting ahead. One must focus on self-love rather than knowledge.

Coming to love is coming to death.

We are addicted to seeing how we appear in the Ether of the Other and so Facebook is made for that. But others are mirrors. And mirrors never lie.

Something is happening for many of us. We are awakening from the dream of being separate from ourselves. Being separate from yourself is the cosmic joke and the rim shot is heard round the world when you get the punchline.

I love you all. I really do. But I love myself more.

Vicki Woodyard