Time is an illusion, but so is everything else. That is why it is hard to live even 60 seconds consciously.

Rob’s kidney stone removal this month will entail him being admitted to the hospital, which is not close. My sister is driving down from PA and that is a godsend for us both.

Every day is a nightmare here in America, where democracy is dying. But elsewhere there is famine and wars aplenty.

My solution is to simplify everything in my life. And I will repeat what I just began with: time is an illusion. I still wear a wristwatch when everyone else uses their phone for a clock. Most people are late whatever they use to show up for appointments.

Wow. This essay is crumbling as I write it. It’s like water running uphill to remember yourself even for a moment. The rest of the time we are in the Nightmare Land where we know things are bad and don’t have any solutions.

All we can do is work on ourselves. The world is none of our business; we just think it is.

Need anymore helpful hints? Oh, yeah, right, we are so sound asleep that we think we are awake.

I have a gazillion things to remind me to wake up and they are all inside my mind. The problem with that is that the mind is an illusion, too.

We need self-compassion more than anything. And it doesn’t come in a box with a secret decoder ring.

Vicki Woodyard

It is March already and I am writing to tell you the situation. I get few readers these days, so the thought occurs to me to quit, or not post but once a week. I am going to any book on my shelf and see if I get some “random guidance” on the subject.

The Life and Letters of The Tofu Roshi by Susan Ichi Su Moon

“Dear Tofu Roshi,

How many Zen Masters does it take to change a light bulb?—Plum Blossom

“Dear Plum Blossom,

Two. One to change it and one to not change it.”

Laughter brings us closer to God, do you not think so? If not for laughter, our grief would kill us.

I write from my gut, quickly and often I am saying the same thing in different words, which is allowed in the area of enlightenment. But I no longer believe in enlightenment. If someone should tell me that they are I would laugh, thus coming closer to God.

Tears wipe the windshield of the heart and we wouldn’t want to be an emotional wreck. So venting is good therapy.

DONATE TO VICK’S WEBSITE HERE.

I have noticed that my cup runneth over when it comes to head knowledge. And I don’t have enough paper towels to mop it up, either. That would be a futile enterprise. Oh, I know, I have been quite disgruntled with online non-duality teachings for a long time. Some judge me for that, but so be it. I am just telling it like it is for me and for no one else.

My book, Bigger Than The Sky, goes into the story of my friend Peter and what brought him to the state of “no mind, I am the Self.” Due to a series of strokes, he lost his feeling of “me” and became bigger than the sky. Those were his words and he shared them with many people.

Peter and I were quite intimate with suffering. I was nursing a dying husband and Peter himself was dying a slow death. Each day brought its challenges to him and yet he still reached out to me. “For what it’s worth,” he wrote, “I hold your hand in this.”

The “this” was life itself, unfurling itself in a certain direction whether we liked it or not. Peter had found his peace before we connected via Jerry Katz’ Yahoo list (The Nonduality Salon). He was therefore able to share deeply with me. Since so few people could relate to my degree of suffering, I was grateful for his connecting with me so easily.

We did not talk about suffering as much as we skipped over it. He wrote of his cats, especially Alex. He sent me her picture at one point and I use it on my website every now and then. I only have one photo of Peter and in it, he is wearing a baseball cap. I don’t have it on my Mac, just a printed version of it. And that not even in color.

But back to the subject at hand. Too much book knowledge is an invitation to simply notice what is going on around you. Oh, true enough. My husband was getting transfusions and chemo. Peter was falling down on a regular schedule. I was crying my eyes out while working harder than I had worked in a long time.

But our minds were so in synch that they leapt the gap and found themselves in the No Man’s Land of the Heart. And there we remain, for the heart is timeless. I could go on, writing a few more paragraphs, but I hit pay dirt as I typed “they leapt the gap.” I know enough to quit while I’m not in the head.

Love,
Vicki

There is too much going on in my world. Been getting in touch with a painter and trying to find an electrician to replace our smoke alarm. Plus other small jobs that keep a big house going.

I find that my first resort is chocolate. Yesterday I asked Rob to drive me to Walgreens and CVS to buy some Valentine chocolates on sale. We were a little late—the shelves were almost bare, but I did buy a few bags and begin eating from them right away.

Rob’s kidney stone surgery is on March 14, so I have been trying to get a few odd jobs done beforehand.

Off and on I sit in silence, sometimes picking up a favorite book to read. The late Robert Rabbin’s “The Sacred Hub” is one of my all-time favorites. I open pages of it at random to soak in the silence. Works every time.

The older one gets, the less important words are in settling the soul. I profit more from sitting silently and breathing consciously.

“Don’t try and find a purpose. Just enter the stream of life.” ~Robert Rabbin..

I like that quote because it settles me down and I sit quietly on and off throughout the day.

Rest in peace, beloved Robert. You gave us so much.

Vicki Woodyard

We believe in this world because we were indoctrinated into it by our parents. It seems so real because that is our experience!

At some point, if we are lucky, we begin to see how much we are suffering from the thought that we are in the world and have to make the best of it.

My mother was on the path, so when I grew up, I developed an interest in it. She was in an
Edgar Cayce study group that met for many years and I absorbed bits and pieces of things she believed.

In my forties, I “met” Vernon Howard through a destined coincidence. I found a tape of his and my husband found one of his books at the same time. To this day I have not met a more powerful teacher.

After Vernon, I begin to live a more conscious life and that is when I began to study the world rather than react to it. But my sleep is deep and I am constantly forgetting that who I am is not of this world.

There is nothing new under the sun, so knowledge is okay, but it is not helpful in awakening.

In awakening, you know that you are asleep. As Patricia Sun said, “Paradox is the point of power.” Amen.

Vicki Woodyard

 

A handyman is coming this Sunday and I am making a list and checking it twice. There are so many things wrong with an old house, not the least of which is shifting!

Our country could be compared with an old house; there are many things wrong in our legal system. We have been led down a primrose path when it comes to the two-party system. Only one party is playing by the rules. There are dark times ahead.

I, too, am shifting on my foundations, mentally and physically. What once was up is now down; thake that how you will. I am easily confused about what used to be simple things.Rest is the main spackle for me, when cracks appear in my state of mind or my mood.

I still take pleasure in writing to you all, since I am, at least, honest and even funny at times.
I do my best to keep on keeping on.

Rob continues to delight me with his cooking of the evening meal. I never was a good cook, but he is.

We go out to eat several times a month and that is a treat for both of us. We don’t spend a lot of money and just go to local places.

Adding the two maids has been working out, although I only have them once a month.

As far as my spiritual studies, they are ongoing. They include notes to myself about staying awake. That just refers to my early bedtime; the real notes are magically erased from my mind. The mind has no place in the higher realms and that is deeply comforting to me. The question “Who am I” is always changing if answered by the mind. Let the spirit roam the vast emptiness looking for itself. It just might be endlessness itself.

Vicki Woodyard

Read the Blank Pages

 

Read the blank pages and you will realize the Self. ~Vicki Woodyard

 

Ramana: “Water cannot be made dry water. Seek the Self; the mind will be destroyed.”

 

Rob is away for several days on vacation. This morning I went upstairs to see what needed to be done before my sister comes in a month or so while Rob has his kidney stone surgery. I noted that there were no pillows on the guest room bed and the blanket needed to be put back on.

Then before I knew it, I was sitting on the closet floor looking at old photos of us when there were four of us instead of two. The heartache is something that my son and I carry daily, seldom talking about it. Oh, we reminisce briefly in bits and pieces, but it remains, nevertheless.

The tears are against my eyelids as I page through several albums of when Rob and his little sister, Laurie, were very young. We had no idea that she would be dead at the age of seven. By the time I got to the album of her seventh birthday party, the tears were tuning up. However, I saw how illuminated she was, how joyous. She was dead in two months and she knew she was dying on the day the photos were taken.

Weeks later she would go on oxygen and then in July she was gone. And now the albums live on. I give her away to you over and over again, do I not? I have never shied away from writing about her or my broken heart. But hearts mend in time and life goes on.

But what about her older brother, Rob? He, like me, does a whole lot of suppressing and I totally understand why. No one talks about their dead child or only sibling. It just isn’t good form. So I give you these essays by way of keeping our family of four alive.

She and her father were the outgoing ones; Rob and I the introverted ones. It makes no difference whether anyone understands or not. At a counseling session that Bob and I had once, he said that Laurie was our spark plug. Truer words were never spoken.

I hate knowing that Rob will be the only survivor and left to deal with these losses alone at some point. Life can come down on you very hard. The scars are permanent and he has never wanted a family due to the medical history. I don’t blame him.

He and I are much alike, taking things one day at a time, one holiday at a time, until we will all one day just be memories in a scrapbook. Society discourages such sentences, but Rob and I have lived them.

But as I type, I also bear witness to the joy that little Laurie had. She scattered it in so many hearts while she was here on earth and that joy of hers also comes through my writing, just in a quiet way. I am a believer in love, no matter how long it may last or how briefly it comes to stay.

Vicki Woodyard

 

Jesus said, “ He that hath ears to hear; let him hear.” And for an instant I saw the inner meaning of this. When I listen intently to my inner being, I hear….the Silence, the music of the spheres, the permission to simply be myself by myself.

Tuning into the silence is the highest work that we can do as human beings and it is so simple.
Sit down and shut up!

Actual realization is had of the simple fact that silence IS golden.

Never mind if you fail to hear it. Silence never runs out. Keep listening to it.

Breathe silence in and out listening to its healing minimalism.

Drop all teachings in words and just listen and you will hear a symphony of silence.

Vicki Woodyard

What if we could love the characters that we play as much as God loves us? What if we could step outside of our personas and watch them act their asses off? Because that is what we are doing!

Yes, you are permitted to smile; the storyboard has you doing such selfish things and you always go along with it. All ads have storyboards and yours is no different than anyone else’s. It shows you meeting people, eating meals, buying stuff, all while you are in a state of psychic sleep. And the plot is always thickening (even sickening.)

You say you want to wake up, but how is that possible if you are just on a storyboard?

I see Vicki all day long and actually forget that I am just playing a role as her.

The rare flash of awareness occurs and Vicki disappears, but it never lasts long. Human beings are shrouded in the sleep of the Ages. We come and go, never doing much that matters.

I have made little progress in realizing that I am a dreamed-up character. Why is that? I think it is because everyone else is as asleep as I am.

Oh, we have studied truth in depth, but we have never been able to kill off the main character. Yes, you may giggle.

The catch is that we fear looking foolish when we are acting our roles. We are chewing the scenery all day long and we seldom get called out for it. “You’re bad at playing the role of Vicki. I’m losing interest in the plot of your story.” So we watch TV to see actors playing roles, while we are doing the same damned thing.

I could continue this rant but it is starting to make sense to me and that might ruin my life as a dreamed character.

Vicki Woodyard

P. S. We are all playing roles. It is a little sloppy, but the gist is that we all know that all the world’s a stage, yet we refuse to admit it. Our personas are old and stale but the show must go on.