The Most Important Question of All

The most important question of all cannot be answered; it must be lived. I was born to the path but didn’t know it consciously until tragedy entered my life. A little girl receiving chemo, her brother being negatively impacted by watching her suffer. A father pulling it together to care for us all. And me, who didn’t do anything but experience horrific emotions. They, too, had to be harnessed to see to it that the household kept running. Expenses mounted up and what was once a fairly happy life turned into hell.

I had not met Vernon Howard yet. I had been reading Yogananda and Joel Goldsmith, but only in a curious way. I would be forced to my knees again and again, but not to pray.

Now I have lived most of my life. I continue to study, but mostly Vernon Howard and my own ego. Everyone’s ego keeps them from God; there are no exceptions. Pride goeth before a fall. I saw examples of this as a neighbor’s husband betrayed her in spite of their Christian household. They talked the talk but could not walk the walk. And we are in the same boat. We just fall from grace in different ways.

Grace doesn’t happen until the walls of your castle have fallen. You sit in the rubble, not knowing what is true anymore. You are seeing more and more every day. Human love is weak and fallible. Only the grace of God allows you to see this.

My husband and I both ran across the writings of Vernon Howard at the same time. He met him through a book and I met him through a recording of him speaking. I knew I had to meet him in person and so I did. But it was not the meeting that the ego would have preferred. It was a matter of sitting in a class and listening to what he had to say.

In this, his first talk, he thundered: “Never blame the con man!” And this is playing out today as a con man rules our nation with a tyrannical fist. I must blame myself if I am taken in by him and I am not. The witness is above the fray and not a part of it.

I have studied the words of other teachers as well. Ramana Maharshi was a great teacher for me, as he was for my friend Peter. I study the words of Jesus and they align with all of the eastern teachers who advocated the question, “Who am I?”

Now I live in silence as the question itself dies out. No social life, no false duties, nothing but self-remembering. “Who am I” is indeed the most important question, no matter who is asking.

Just for today, or maybe even this weekend, ask yourself that question and do not answer it! Let the silence speak inside your heart. Give thanks and face the living truth of that question.

Vicki Woodyard