I added some Bonus MP3's to the Audio page. They are recordings I did not immediately post, for
whatever reason. Unless you are a devoted listener, you might want to skip them, but Helpless
is one I especially like.

Life After Death
The Final Surrender
Helpless

Got a request? Drop me a line here.
Vicki

There is little that excites me outside of walking the path. Without the way, where would we be? But the path is difficult and exacting, until the moment that spiritual relief occurs. And this cannot be manipulated or artificially attained. Grace ushers us into the presence of God in its own sweet time. And we are trained to wait patiently rather than storming heaven.

I am impatient by nature, so this lifetime has been one of testing for me. I have to slow down, breathe and call on higher awareness to rescue me when I have bungled yet again.

Bob was an engineer and hated to hang pictures on bare clean walls. But my mother was a water colorist, so there were always pictures she had given us to frame and hang. He measured and marked and frowned as he went about the tedious job of hanging them just right. Now me, I take a pushpin and plunge it into the wallpaper to hang a calendar. And every month I make another sloppy hole. It doesn’t bother
me a bit. Vive la difference.

When I write, it is quickly and intuitively. I trust the voice I have come to recognize as “mine.” I always say it is God’s little joke on me that I tell everything when I write. That is because I am a very private Scorpio in every other way. I was born grown-up, according to my mother and was called Miss Priss. But I also have a wickedly funny side I inherited from my father. I wrote some pretty naughty lines back in my comedy-writing days.

But back to this website and its purpose. It began to support Bob when he was dying. It soon turned me into a writer driven by my passion. I hope you will come back to share life with me as I write and speak. I guarantee it will be genuine if nothing else.

I want you to come with me into the now. It is a dynamically healing place.

On the Audio Page you will find the first MP3's of 2009. They are

Become a Regular

The Kwan Yin Vow

Handcuffed

A Foot in the Door

I have archived the Updates and Audio pages for 2008. That means they have gone away. I am always reluctant to do this, but the old must give way to the new.

The updates are done frequently, so at the end of each year there is rich treasure trove of essays and new recordings. I hope you have enjoyed them all.

Each audio is an adventure into the tao. I hope you will come along with me as I record them this year.

I appreciate regular small donations to the site, as this keeps my operating expenses in line....so give what you can when you can! Thank you for being here for me as I am for you. I love you all.
Vicki

December 27, 08

I have been at work all morning. I have archived most of the MP3's on Audio and also most of my updates for 2008. Should you care to download these MP3's, they will be onsite until January 1, 2009, so act fast! You might consider a small donation if you decide to do that. (Go to Audio to donate and download.)

Donations help me buy batteries for the recorder and defray the costs of the website. What are they?

The price of a digital recorder.
Batteries for it.
Monthly website costs
Annual renewal for the website names...bobwoodyard.com and vickiwoodyard.com

Miscellaneous expenses involved in being a writer. They add up.

The work I do in writing and speaking is free and voluntary.

What a deal!

I wish each of you a happy new year.

This will be the beginning of my fifth year without Bob. I owe the website to him. His charge for me before he died was to find my passion. I live it daily and am grateful to all of my readers and listeners.

Love, Vicki

Here is a bonus MP3 called A Question From a Reader. Click on Audio and then on the title.

I like getting questions and sometimes I don't "hear" the answer until I let it arrive into the recorder.

I refuse to get the Christmas Crazies this year. I may get fat, but not crazy. I made some white fudge with pistachios and Craisins yesterday. Before that, I made spiced pecans and sugar cookies.

I was talking to a friend today who is on my wavelength. She was exhausted from the frenetic vibes of the season. Tis the season to be overworked, underpaid with notes of guilt, loneliness and angst. I think I will create a fragrance about that called Noel, Hell no.

If that offended anyone, you are just not being honest with yourself. The true noel is an inner chord struck by the Master. To that I say Heavens, yes.

Love, Vicki

This just in: Part II of A Christmas Box is on Audio. It's called Why I Share.
Give it a listen and submit a comment.

Dec. 12, 2008--It’s time to sink into a nice hot bath....to soak in the Self that you are. To absorb right energy, conscious energy. You owe it to yourself to rest and relax. As Pamela Wilson says, “Rest and rapture....what else is there?”

Listen to this MP3 called A Nice Hot Bath on Audio. Be sure and dry off or you will be all wet...

Holidays take energy from us as rapidly as casinos take money. You can bet on it.

What can you do to put some nice fresh energy back into yourself? Listen to Into Wholeness Now on Audio and find out. I give you three energy statements to play with. Write them down and try them out.

I vow to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings.

I am in God’s presence now.

I choose to love myself.

Today is Bob Woodyard's birthday. May he rest in peace..

This is the companion to A Christmas Box. When you unwrap the box, it's me ;)
Go to Audio and click on Why I Share.
It's right under A Christmas Box!

Love, Vicki

I just uploaded A Christmas Box to Audio. What I want you to do is sit down and relax for a few minutes as you listen. There is nothing new or different being said; it is the state of peace being communicated.

I am still hoping for a few more Christmas donations. I have two...can you make it three?

Most of you know me by now. What I do is simple. I write about beingness as the solution to everything.

Thanks for dropping by. I welcome your emails and comments.

Write me here and suggest a topic for me to discuss. Thanks!
Vicki

Watching Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison on PBS...weeping when Johnny Cash speaks of home. Writing this:

You are one thought away from enlightenment. What is the thought? It doesn’t matter. It could be about the greatest love of your life or your big toe. It just doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you know this. That you know it so thoroughly that you enter the vacuum of darkness that removing it brings.

Can you bear the darkness of living without that one thought?

This is not a Zen koan but an honest question. Can you experience the answer right now. And if you can’t, why not?

 Simple goodness resides in that darkness; something so primitive that it has never spoken the first word.

Can you be that basic? Can you tend to your needs as they arise. Can you stop lying to yourself by way of thought so that you can know what darkness really is?

Mike asked me to talk about selflessness and giving....so here 'tis. Click on Audio and then click on the MP3
entitled Selfless Giving....

I just posted The Thread of Truth on my Audio Page.

I would appreciate your comments and feedback. Also....what would you like to hear me talk about....I am open to most anything.

Vicki

Thanksgiving has come and gone. So has thought. Thought doesn't know; only awareness does. But we have to pay a price for being in a state of awareness. It is not dependent on the economy but on our intention to awaken.

Here is a wonderful exercise. The next time you are having a meal in a restaurant, let your gaze slowly travel around the room. Then say to yourself, "Everyone in here is unhappy." The energy in those words is powerful. That sentence breaks the spell of the ego trying to be happy. You see, the mind is unhappy and discontent by nature. The one saying the words, "Everyone in here is unhappy" is your awareness.

You are not sentenced to a sleeping life when you use sentences like that.

I am going to be experimenting with using this as my Updates Page.

Traffic is down on my site, as I have shared with you. Change is coming and may it be a good one for us all. But that can only happen as we try to be as awake as possible at any given moment.

If you do fall through the trap door of suffering, knowing you did begins to erase the unease of that suffering.

May the force of awakening be with you.

Love, Vicki

So yesterday I was deleting files and managed to get rid of one that I vitally needed to make MP3's. And I can't get it back. So now I am going back to Square One. I will have to find out if Garageband can handle my Audacity files or if I will have to go out and buy new recording equipment. Such is life.

My a/c went out yesterday. This morning I found out it needed a new blower motor. That is now installed. No point in wasting energy over this. I am just grateful for being cool again.

I want to get back into a weekly posting schedule. Right now summer is keeping readers away, as is the Olympic coverage. But before long, the days will be getting shorter and people will gradually return to their computers to read. I'll be there.

I have been in the salt mines all day. My word-processing program is no longer supported by Apple and it's an Apple program. Now I shall have to buy and learn a new program.

In the meantime I uploaded three new audios. Even they had to be transferred to a new program.

If there is a spiritual parallel, I am not sure what it is. Maybe that change is a constant.

I made peanut butter fudge last night and it was as grainy as an old TV picture. But good.

I hope this suffices for an update for the regular update readers. Send me some comments....how'bout it...

I am still over here at the blog. Come on in...the door's open. Sit down and take a load off. I'll tell you about my day. I went to Writing for Recovery at Cancer Wellness. My good friend, Carolyn Helmer, is its director. Bob and I met her when she was running The Wellness Community. As a former support person for someone with cancer, I am welcome there.

So there were seven of us around the table. We journalled our hearts out. Angela, the leader, shared some poetry with us and some ideas for us to write about.

After it was over, we wandered into the kitchen. Gillian was in the process of making a chicken salad with leftover chicken from a luncheon given there. It was scrumptious, so I got to stay and visit for a while.

For dinner Rob and I went out for a burger and fries and that kicks off my big weekend. Doing what, you ask? Not much, she replied. "She" is sitting at the keyboard of this new Mac, bumfuzzled about her webpages. The old way of uploading them vanished with the old Mac. I must now find a new way to get info to my readers. In the meantime, listen to some audios.

If someone out there is Mac-savvy, email me with some possibilities for making webpages with a wysiwyg composer.

I miss all of you. I hope you miss me. But remember, I am here. Send me a postcard :)

Love, Vicki

Okay, here's the deal. I got my new Mac last night and I am having lots of problems on its shakedown cruise. So why not come on over here to the blog until I get things figured out. I am not a techie; hence the big mess. I used Netscape Navigator for my homepages. It crashed on me bigtime and I cannot upload a version that works for me. That is why, if you notice, the copy on Updates goes back three years. Actually, that was when I got a new Mac, too.

I think the universe wants me to take a trip. As I said, maybe become a wandering mendicant. Just me in a pair of shorts and shirt and a begging bowl. Sometimes I think it is awful to be so "on" that when things break down, you find yourself up a creek.

Now I shall put my spiritual writer's hat on and say this:

Nothing can be nailed down. Not even Christ.

So take nothing literally. Everything rises.

I love you all. And pray that I find a way to undork the website soon. I have a neckache from trying to figure it all out.

I was just thinking about blogspace and how to use it. In the past I have stopped and started blogging. Bogged down blogging.

Here's the odd part. We meet here as is; whereas in the world we meet as if. We are realer here and yet are invisible.

I read energy easily, though. So be nice. Bring chocolate and we'll get along fine.

I went to a Life is a Beach Party at Cancer Wellness. There was a cover band, dancing and food prepared in their wonderful kitchen. Jerk chicken, rice dishes, guacamole. The best part was a huge swath of sugar that looked like sand. In the sugar were mint buttercream sea shells and chocolate dipped pretzel (cattails, supposedly).

A bartender was mixing margaritas, slushies, etc.

Most of us there were dressed as though we were in the islands right in downtown Atlanta.

I love people I met during Bob's cancer years. I am truly connected to them and feel joy in seeing them again.

The Dog Days

The Dog Days cause us to pant and drool as we sit on our couches in air-cooled rooms. If we are lucky. I have been so frustrated with my Mac. It froze and I had to take it in to the Apple Store, where it had almost a week's vacation. Then I picked it up and it hadn't been properly fixed. So I shared my elevated blood pressure with the store manager. "You're lucky. You hit me at the right time. I'm gonna give you a new one." Thanks, I think. But that means I have to haul the old one back into the store and wait while they transfer the old data onto the new one. Then I have to learn how to use the new one.

Reminds me of incarnation and how it works. You get a new life. But first they transfer your old data into the new one. That is called karma, I believe. And learning how to use the new life involves diapers and drool. As at the beginning, so at the end.

We are a funny species. Mired in brain cells, we are still unable to learn our lessons. Brains, like computers, break down, and we are left with lots of unfinished business.

Anybody feel like making a comment?

I want you to listen to The Thin Places MP3 on the Audio Page of http://www.vickiwoodyard.com

It was healing for me to record it and listen to it play back to me. The call is unmistakeable. How to answer it is a mystery.

We are all being called to awaken. The way God engineers the circumstances are astounding. Put two women doing lunch and mix it with a voice from the past and a man dreaming of an email he got before he gets it....welcome to The Thin Places.

Being true is very demanding and often discouraging. But anything less than truth is eating sawdust when a banquet is spread before you.

February is about over. What a relief. I posted Words for Billy on the Updates Page. I hope you listen.

Got some new glasses on Tuesday and felt like a drunken sailor when I wore them. So today I had them adjusted and now I am born again....seems one of the lenses was a tad off. It affected everything I did. Now I can see the words on the screen as I type.

I closed my Cafe Press Shop but will do another CD down the road.

I have also decided to do more intuitive writings for people. Here is one I recently did for someone:

This is your mission in life...
to voice your suffering transmuted
into the jewels of joy you have discovered
through your trials.

As you awaken to more suffering,
you awaken to deeper joy.
If you have ever asked "why me?"
it is because your mission is encoded
in every cell of your body.
As they learn to wake up and sing,
you strengthen love to an amazing degree.

Our missions are right in front of us
like balanced meals served on a beautiful
white china plate. Color life with your
service. Every now and then you will
break a dish and call it an accident.
But there are no accidents.
Only the Potter knows that.

The Potter knows that the most beautiful
designs come from letting in enough light
to highlight the darkness, for that is where
we are called to serve.

If you are interested in getting one, drop me a line.

So it's a rainy night in Georgia, literally. Made more palatable by some skillet lasagna, followed by a few blocks of a giant Hershey bar with almonds.

I went to my women's group today. There were some decadent brownies sliced into small pieces. They were leftover from the Saturday conference. I sat down beside a friend and popping a bite into my mouth, proclaimed "Sweets to the Sweet." And then explained to her that since I am alone, I can do that, yea, need to do that. Of course, I was half-silly and half-serious. But here is a quote that knocked my lonely socks off:

“There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage.”

Barbara Lazear Ascher

Yes, I am lonely, and yes, I am quite all right. Something in me knows that we are all in a universe that is perfectly designed and, as my friend John Ramsey says, is "idiot-proof."

So I was at the grocery this morning and struck up a conversation with a woman who was beside me fondling lettuces. "Looks like you're eating healthy," I said, peering into her cart. It was running over with blueberries, strawberries, veggies and the like.

"Been watching a show on BBC," was her comment. "We should eat like the monkeys, basically."

I did my part by buying bananas. Do monkeys eat garlic?

Spiritual thought for the day:

Whenever you catch yourself suffering mechanically, vow to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. The first part arises from monkey mind. The vow arises from wholeness. The difference is quite dramatic.

Swami and I are pooped out. There are boxes everywhere and neither one of us is in the mood to cook. Living with a guru is strangely exciting, though. He is apt to conjure up a fireside dinner of soy burgers, fries and coffee. Even though he gets physically tired, his spiritual energy is through the roof.

He thinks that the blog needs a new roof and wants to invite everyone over for cookies and hot chocolate. Of course, they will be delicious, but he may hand you a hammer and nails for dessert. I'm just sayin...

I have decided to change blog homes, simply because Wordpress proved too confusing. So here I am, living in the old brick ranch of blogspot! I hope some of you will come by, read and leave comments on the front door or stick them in the mailbox. I should say that the mailbox is on the front porch and sometimes Swami Z gets the mail in the afternoons. If that should happen, not to worry. He will see that I get it. And he, too, enjoys getting mail.

So don't be a stranger. You're strange enough already....

It'll take a while to unpack the cartons in the kitchen, but as soon as I do, we'll have tea and cookies with you-know-who. He is reading over my shoulder. Since he is shorter than I am, this is not an easy task for him.