In this life, everything stands for something else. We are perpetually confused about what is going on beneath the surface. So what does society do? Instead of explaining that, it tells us to believe what we see. A table is a table, so a father must be a father, right? Wrong. In my case, my father represented cruelty and confusion to me. And so my mother represented everything right. And I became polarized about them. I now took my mother’s side and believed my father to be evil. But a table remained a table.

At puberty I became as neurotic as my mother, fearing everything and feeling all men must be bad like my father. I had my first panic attack before turning 13 and became socially anxious to the extent I feared vomiting before attending any event. I was in pure hell. Intellectually I was quick, but emotionally I was damaged by subconscious confusion.

I took the way of avoidance as my path in the world. My intelligence took second place to my need to flee. I turned away from majoring in psychology because I was suffering from agoraphobia. No one called it that back then. It was my shameful secret.

I married a man who was the opposite of my father. But guess what? I had learned to react negatively to all men, so I made life difficult for my husband. He didn’t understand women, because he had no sisters and his mother was as retiring as I was. But a table was still a table.

Now I am growing old and wise. I see clearly that a table never was a table. Nothing is what it appears to be. Everything is an appearance in consciousness.

I never fit into this crazy world. No one ever can. Thank God I had a teacher, Vernon Howard, that taught his students to see clearly that there is only one “I” and we are all it.

Knowing this, I still forget and begin to think that people are what they appear to be. I must be inferior to the beautiful, popular people. I must believe in my frailties if I am to survive this cruel world.

No, I must believe nothing. Only then can I come to know.

Vicki Woodyard