On Giving Yourself Away

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It is so easy to give yourself away in all of the wrong ways. The world forces you into such an act of false submission. It wants the fake version of you and it is so easy to comply. You smile, you fawn, you knuckle under to all of the wrong things. And you hate yourself as a consequence. High school is where this reaches its miserable zenith. Zits and all, you give in to the wrong things. You had no idea everyone else was a mirror image of you. That they, too, were fawning before a crowd of misfits hoping to gain acceptance.

That is why I was led to a true teacher. A man that disallowed phoniness. He spotted it coming a mile away and forced your nose into it. To your dismay, you discovered that was all you had to give him. Of course he knew that and said nothing to reward you. Instead he sneered at your falseness and mocked at your discombobulation.

His class was high school and we were all ninth graders. There were no remarkable students. We were all failing in every aspect. And we wanted to be different. He knew the only way we could be different was to see ourselves for what we were, hypocrites and fools.

No, he was not a popularizer, not at all. He toed the line of The Fourth Way, the school of being in the world but not of it. He drew us to him by dint of his higher consciousness. He knew who was ready to endure the fire in order to find the light. And he did not make it easy.

So what did I get from Vernon Howard but myself reflected back in a million pools? I have no idea. He took the words and left me with confusion. He took my confidence and left me with nothing but the shakes. He took my stubbornness and gave me the void magnified a million times over.

I should stop now before I alienate the false friends gathered to read this. If you are not a false friend, you are just nodding your head in recognition, for you are beginning to find yourself out. And it’s about time.

Vicki Woodyard

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