January 1, 2010--There is a new audio called Be There When You Happen. I will be archiving some older MP3’s. As I begin 2010, I am giving thought to what I want to do next. As most of you know, the site began around 2001 and I have been working hard at maintaining the quality since then. I have found my voice here, learned to make recordings here, shared my life as deeply as I could.

That may all be changing. Someone has been kind enough to fund the site until spring of 2010, but donations are sparse, as they probably are with all spiritual sites. I never get feedback, although I know some of you are out there reading or listening.

If you can help, scroll up to the Donate button and help spread the light. Thank you.

Love, Vicki

Dec. 31, 09--There is a new piece of poetry on Fishpond Thoughts and a new MP3 on
Audio. The MP3 talks about gathering energy. Give it a listen.

December 24, 2009--
I Belong

I belong to everyone and no one.
Husband and child lie in the cemetery
as I roam above ground with the great
mystery.

Sometimes I sit in my chair and
self-pity visits like a swarm of bees
and it hurts like hell and I try harder
to let go.

It is then that I come in here to write
about the truth that also visits me
that I belong to everyone and no one.
And that is exactly so.

But imprecision makes the world go
round and it is certainly not square.
Everything that lives is my beloved
and I can cherish it like an old Pooh bear.

My voice reverberates in silence
in islands of the lonely human heart.
I belong to everyone and no one
I simply can’t be set apart.

Vicki Woodyard
http://www.bobwoodyard.com

Note: I haven't been posting to the blog lately because of some Japanese advertiser spamming me.

Nov. 24, 09--There is a new MP3 called How to Increase Your Energy on Audio. And this morning I added Hot Nuts!

Nov. 24, 09--There is a new MP3 called How to Increase Your Energy on Audio.

And here is me being honest with myself....

I would feel better if I wasn’t having my gall bladder removed the first week in December.

If the surgery was over and was a total success.

If I got supportive emails or comments from readers.

If I got three big donations this winter.

If I felt well enough by Dec. 14 to have a Christmas lunch with my neighbor
at the Mable House.

If I wasn’t a bother to people while I am recuperating.

If I didn’t fall into feeling sorry for myself because Bob died in December and..it’s just that time of year when I feel most vulnerable.

Below is a poem I wrote this week....

Hello

Heart cold as ice
has no recollection of
what it needs
to thaw it out
and so it beats on
courageously.

And then the door opens
and a breeze of clarity
blows in saying,
“You are complete
and you are beating
life and healing.”
And the heart once
cold as ice
finds purpose again.

Mute child inside of me
what would you like to say
if no one shoved you recklessly?

Dumb graceful thing
with purple socks and
lacy dress...look in the
mirror of my eyes.
What would you love
and why?

I’d bring you joy wrapped
up in fleece and little
dogs to make you smile.
I’d catch a bird that’s winging by
and you would sigh not knowing why.

Oh, little child is breathing roses
and unconcerned with artful poses.
She sits down on the ground
and speaks one word...hello.

Vicki Woodyard--*See note

*If you can make A Donation for the Christmas Season, it would be very much appreciated. The orange Make a Donation Button is at the top of the page under my picture. For $25 or more, I will be happy to answer questions on an MP3. Just let me know......and thank you for your support.

It is so transformative to be with oneself in silence and inner grace. I was just listening to the beginning of a video where Ravi Ravendra says that the opposite force to unity is "me, me, me." How true. We are all challenged to wake up while the ego forces are wanting us to go back to sleep.

No one escapes the temptation.

To See the Temptation....

To see the temptation for what it is is to rise above it. May we all rise above it.

To see love for what it is is a miracle. May we all experience one today.

You are loved.

I just watched an eloquent video by Ravi Ravindra and Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. Ravindra said, and I paraphrase...

I have not crashed the party; I belong here. This is the family business! This removes all fear of death because if God brought me to this party, he will also bring me to another one.

Two brilliant men speaking about the simple truth that the mind must be transcended to know self-unity.

Ravindra also said that if you want to really hear another person, you must listen first to the noise inside of your own mind. When you listen, it quiets down and THEN you can hear the so-called other.

Note: I am getting ready to have my gall bladder removed sometime next week. Will return when I can.

Vicki

Oct. 15, 09--I uploaded The Guru’s Answer to Audio. Other than that, not much going on. Looking forward to hearing Leonard Cohen at the Fox Theater in Atlanta next week. Gained three pounds from eating half of a birthday cake with cream cheese icing. Ouch. It’s back to the heart-healthy drawing board for me. I knew how to eat right but I sometimes don’t. I know how to walk the path but I slip and fall there as well. But we are always forgiven and told to walk on....without a slice of birthday cake in our hand.

I Am Here....

I am here to clothe my path in words to share with those who are interested. The path is itself silent and that is the paradox to be held in wordless awareness. There is a simple energy invested in what I write. I never write with anything but the intention to let it unfold anyway it wants. I accidentally typed “funfold” and had to correct it. But funfolding oughta be a word. I say that because following your intuition is following your bliss.

The door to the collective unconscious is always wide open, but who dares enter it? The price you pay for venturing inward is often great. The void is nothing but trouble until you let it do what it wants to with you. And what it wants is mysterious and golden. The mists of your past block its cry; so you must be adamant in your intention to just discover what is.

Right now a small bird is chirping outside the window. His sound sings of the mystery. One day he will fall from the sky and no one will be the wiser. That is a teaching.

Vicki Woodyard
http://www.bobwoodyard.com

August 20, 09--I just posted The Strongest Place on Audio. Give it a listen. I am certain that the truth is to be found there.

Are you willing to keep returning again and again to where you can never leave? If so, welcome to the select few who know that the game is worth the candle. Are you willing to be a total failure when it comes to “thinking your way out’? If so, locate your “I am” and become an iron filing to its magnetic appeal. It wants you more than Uncle Sam ever did.

By the way, leave a comment...

August 14, 09--The Imminent and the Transcendent is on Fishpond Thoughts. So what is going on with me, you ask? I was talking to the bagger while he loaded the groceries into my trunk. He was giving a talk on Numbers in the Old Testament at his church. I told him I didn’t know much about it and he told me briefly some of the things he had learned. All I said was....people don’t realize that they are being challenged daily just as the Biblical figures were. When you do your inner work, you realize this....

I had to go back for a diagnostic mammogram and am scheduled for an ultrasound on Monday. This happens to me every other year or so, but it always causes anxiety. Nothing I can do about it but try and relax...which is a spiritual exercise in awareness.

New Audio For You

I just uploaded You and Me Together on the Audio Page. I don’t know if you are tuned into my energy, but if not, this is as good an MP3 as any to experience it. It is how I enter the silence every morning and at other times throughout the day. Let me know if you enjoy it.

Seldom get comments on the blog....I may hang it up and just do the homepage. For what it's worth, writer's like comments and I am not set up to do then on the website...so this is your chance to communicate :)

Love, Vicki

Living Water

I want living water. What does that mean? It means that I must bring my own consciousness to every experience that I have. Nothing less will do any longer. There comes a time on the path when the call for living water is finally understood. It means I must allow God to be in me as me. This is not without a price. It comes with the loss of everything that is keeping you dead, or half-dead to the living reality of who you are.

There are many ways to keep drinking everything but living water. There are many ways to avoid looking at Christ in our own consciousness. If we looked correctly, we would have to follow the teachings of every awakened being that ever walked the earth. Each has said, in one way or another, “You are it.”

I can no longer ignore my own divinity because someone has a degree, a class or a book. I can no longer push down my desire to serve truth. I can no longer go in disguise as someone who is not devoted to truth. No, I must stand up and be counted in my own consciousness.

The mystery must be engaged fully. A great silence forms around these words as I write them. It is the silence of completion...of claiming my own part in the puzzle of life. The last piece was me.

Vicki Woodyard, http://www.bobwoodyard.com

No Third Choice

I have uploaded a new MP3 called No Third Choice on Audio. What’s going through your mind these days? Chances are it’s negative, limited and painful. I can say that because all personal thinking is. If you doubt it, spend a day watching your thoughts as they come and go, taking you with them. They are not taking you to enlightenment but to enfrightenment.

I spend a good bit of time in the silence and believe you me, there is nothing as opposite to ego-centered thought as silence. Apparently, silence has no problems ;)

In The Sorrowful Hour
No matter how one may have felt about Michael Jackson, watching the memorial service opened one’s heart chakra to an amazing degree...not unlike the service for Princess Diana. It is easy to see why.

In the sorrowful hour that we all face sooner or later, when a loved one has left the body, we face ourselves empty and alone. Tears fall and strangely enough, we are rendered kinder than we might have thought possible. Forgiveness rains onto the hard earth of the human heart. We need this.

Our culture does not know how to mourn; there is no tribal ritual until someone as famous as a Princess Diana or a Michael Jackson or an Elvis Presley dies. Then we unite via satellite hookups to shed virtual tears together. Strangely, they plop down our living human cheeks, and this is a good thing. A good thing indeed.

I don’t know what I thought about Michael Jackson and it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I am a human living on this earth. Whoever takes us one step closer to each other is helping to heal the planet.

Our nature and our destiny are one. We are made of paradox and stardust. We rise and fall like waves and in rejoining the sea, there is somehow an exultation tied in with the tears.

Vicki Woodyard

By the Jugular

The piece below was inspired by this comment from Miriam Louisa (This Unlit Light)

“I have followed your work for some years - your writing in particular. It gets me by the jugular. I love the directness, the honesty, the humour.”

By the Jugular

The first time God got me by the jugular it was about my youngest child, my daughter. Seems He wanted me to give her back-soon. Tried for three years to keep her, but in the end it was His Call.

The second time it was about my husband, my mate of 38 years. Same vein, same reason. This time the trying went on for four and a half years, but in the end...time stood no chance against eternity.

These days I am aware that He is there with me, closer than my neck vein, as someone wrote. He wants me and He wants me now. Seems that was always what it was about. He is indeed The Hound of Heaven.

Why do I keep writing? Every now and then a vagrant wanders by and reads what I have written and it seems to make them remember something they have forgotten...that to be moved by the spirit one descends into the darkness so that he can look up at the stars.

Consider Everything as a New Beginning

Consider everything as a new beginning. Washing dishes for the first time. Sitting in silence as the world turns without any effort on your part. Do it with original mind.

You might see yourself for the first time when you look in the mirror or put on your shoes and socks. How about driving your car as if it were the first time. You would be slow and cautious more than likely. Would you be able to forget the past?

Beginner’s mind is something we have long forgotten. Try to have an empty mind.

See the world clearly with no judgement. Let it go on and on and on.

Listen to a fellow human being and let them go on and on and on.

Listen to your crazy mind and let it go on and on and on.

You are seeing and hearing it all for the first time.

Have you given up so completely that
you know you have....
that you know you are being blessed
by such surrender

The rose of awareness grows in the soil of surrendered thoughts.

There is a new MP3 called The Final Surrender on Audio.

June 13, 09--I’m uploading two more MP3s on Audio. They are Returning to I Am and Self-Damage Repair. I hope some of you are regular listeners by now. If you are, let me know.

So lately I have been going to a chiropractor for numbness in my right hand. Turns out I have thoracic outlet syndrome.That has caused me to lose some range of motion in my neck. When I am at the Mac, my hand tingles. I am hoping some exercising and time will improve it to some degree.

A feeling of lethargy has crept over me as I have spent two days a week at the chiro. I am exploring what can re-energize my creativity. I will begin with true confession. No matter how often I am advised to get out there in the world and mix it up, it ain’t gonna happen. I am happiest with my quiet life.

One question I struggle with is if I should be putting my essays into a book. But for that I would need an editor. If I could get a broom and sweep all of the essays into a neat little pile, that would help. As it is, they are strewn all over my Mac. Colorful scatter rugs of words everywhere. Macrame messages. Quilted quotes. Crewel questions. Embroidered emotions. Tapestry truths.... that's my Mac :)

A Mission Statement
Give Us What You’ve Got

“Give us what you’ve got” is the last sentence in The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”

And that is what happens on this website week in and week out. Just me at the Mac decanting stuff from my psyche to yours. I consider this sacred space and have committed myself to its continuance.

It began as a trail of tears back and forth to the chemo room when my husband
was enduring multiple myeloma. It continues as my sole experience. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it belongs to each of us. I like to think so.


June 5, 09--It All Comes Down to Energy is on Fishpond Thoughts. I said it as succinctly as I could. What I am aiming at these days is brevity with the emphasis on an energetic understanding for the reader. You can't ever go over first principles too much. "I am that" is an example. You can mine for gold in that sentence till the sacred cows come home.

While waiting for dinner, I wrote this ;)

Stew bubbling on the stove
as I type letters randomly
assigned to have meanings.
as if I knew how to make
life a savory thing by
intention.

Potatoes are a peculiar kind
of offering to the body’s god of appetite.
Every lowly bite a prayer answered.

Vicki Woodyard

Somebody leave a comment and you get dessert :)

Thanks for your time.

May 29, 09--I just posted Your Body is Prime Real Estate on Fishpond Thoughts.
Connected with that is A Fruitful Darkness on Audio.

A new MP3 entitled Fitting In is on Audio. This week was heavenly. John Fox, of Poetic Medicine, held a two-day workshop at Cancer Wellness at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. This is my community and it has taken me a while to realize that. Even though I have only been a caregiver, cancer has had me up against the wall this lifetime. When we stumble, we are held in hope. When we falter, we are lifted up. To do that isn’t easy. Unless and until you have faced death head-on and been able to summon your inner child, you haven’t really lived. Wellness is about rebirth into your essence.

The Poetry Reading with John Fox was a highlight for me. Never have I felt so warmly welcome. In that circle sat a group of extraordinary people drawn together in a common cause. Not of fighting cancer but of healing into wholeness through our very own voices.

Each voice is heard at Cancer Wellness...not only heard but honored and encouraged....to say more. Listening is an art and John Fox’s Poetic Medicine is a master class in listening.

I am so happy to be a part of the family at Cancer Wellness. Here is a poem written there:

Come surrender now and it will
prove you wrong about why it took so long.

Not because you feared it but
because you feared the consequences
of love.

For love is just another word for letting go.
You think surrendered love is dangerous,
involving loss and loss and more loss.

You are right. It is the loss of everything
holding you back from the heritage of
the heart.

I have put my young daughter into the good earth
and then again her father when his time came.
I did not surrender them because I chose to
but because I appeared to be choiceless.

There has been no compensation
but the willingness to come raw
with my words to the ones who
can appreciate the sacrifice.

Vicki Woodyard

This is a public service announcement from the universe ;)

"There is only the Self. It is present in all beings. If you don’t get the message, relax. We are sending it to you all day long.

If you do get the message and forget that you got it, not to worry. We will resend it whenever you get ready to hear it."

Love,
The Universe

On that note, how is everyone doing? I am reading through some of my old archives and came across
that timely message. And I have correctly posted The Root of Suffering on Audio. Take time to listen.

Love, Vicki

How about a comment now and then....

I deleted The Root of Suffering (an MP3) when I saw that it wasn't opening properly. I guess you will just have to wonder what I said. But then again, maybe you already know.

Morning is green and dewy here down South. There's a mossy little bird nest on the front porch and a family of woodpeckers living in the cedar siding. I just paid quite a bit for a painter to come out and replace the cedar that a pileated woodpecker had lunch on. That sentence ended with a preposition and his lunch ended up being quite expensive for me. Such is life.

May 1, 2009--I am slowly getting back to my writing and recording. Sometimes we must take a breathing spell and this has been such a time for me. Everything comes up for review after the windstorm of loss has blown some landmarks down. What next, asks the battered and weary pilgrim, what next? The MP3, A Personal Update, speaks to that.
Love, Vicki

I just uploaded The Tightrope and The Guru’s Question to Audio.
Here is a one liner that came to me recently:

Illusion is not on my side.

Even when I think otherwise, there is nothing I can think that thinks me out of fear and illusion.
(You may have to read this again ;)

Would like some reader comments on my audios now and again. Anybody up for that?

I took a slow walk today and thanked all of the azaleas, irises, etc. for their true colors. Such beauty.

I think all of us are beautiful when we manage to show our true colors. It comes with a price, doesn't it?

I have never liked the world; it has cost me far too much. There is a poem that you probably know, The Hound of Heaven. In it, it says nature can be a hideout from God. Ultimately we go to Him naked and He restores to us all we thought we had lost. However, sometimes that is just a noble sentiment. And we need to mourn our losses as regularly as we give thanks for our blessings. Maybe that is how they become the same....just a thought.

Another line of Francis Thompson that I like says something like this...
"The drift of pinions, would we harken,
beats at our own clay-shuttered doors."


Thanks and love,
Vicki

Resurrection Morning

Sometimes those two words ring hollow to the human spirit. Right now I feel as hollow as a chocolate bunny. Had a virus last week that has made me feel quite weak. This allowed the grief for my mother and husband to gang up on me. I managed to cook a balanced meal and choke it down. Only the romaine salad tasted good. Suddenly I felt the tears welling up and there was nothing I could do to hold them back. My nose, red as a cherry, now swelled to comic proportions. Tomorrow is Easter and I am in mourning for lost human love. Yes, that happens to those on the path, believe you me.

The Masters is being telecast from Augusta; my husband and son went there together for several years. They even went after Bob was diagnosed with his cancer. Gently, son took father around the course. Hard to even type the words. Beloved family, cherished memories....it’s quite all right to mourn consciously. I smile upwards and cry for light as I go on alone.

If anyone out there finds this hard to read, they have never walked away from the cemetery alone. Oh, Easter will dawn again and again and life rebuds and bursts forth continuously. But there is a gentle Jesus in each of us who weeps with us even while He knows it is only a story.

Wow, was I ever hit by a bug. This is the first time I have been sick since Bob died...well over four years. My son had a virus and I picked it up. It started as a sore throat and has now moved into my chest. Yesterday I went to the doctor for some medication. First off, she told me that my blood pressure was too high. Then she gave me a short course of antibiotics and some cough syrup. Last night I was really scared. My trachea was so itchy I wondered if I was having some kind of allergic reaction. I took a couple of Benadryl just in case and slept sitting up. This morning I had lost my voice from all of the coughing. I called my neighbor and asked her if she would go to the pharmacy and get something else my doctor had recommended to break up the cough.

She got that and it began to work immediately. She also left some soup with it, so hopefully I am on the mend. I am pondering the imponderables, as usual. Wondering what else I need to know besides the fact that I am? That is the short course taught by the universe. Just look in, look up and......look out!

Until next time...when hopefully I will have gotten my voice back....

A Bonus Piece

Life is neither linear or static; it is evanescently eternal. So much for book knowledge about who and what we are. As I find myself recuperating from a dreadful little virus, I sit at the kitchen table and sip some warm milk laced with honey. I find myself saying to the space where Bob used to sit, “I’m sorry I wasn’t always sympathetic when you were ill.” Suddenly I am alive with compassion for the no-longer-living. Is that a waste of time; I don’t think so.

Each life is art contemplated in fragments from something cut from compassion (if we are lucky). I have draped myself in my grubby little neck warmer and am waiting for bedtime. So what if I contemplate infinity while appearing both mortal and more than a little miserable. Maybe someone in deep space nine is missing me tonight. I don’t know; I just made that up. Writers can take liberty with words.

Bob and I had a pretty good marriage. It had a run of almost thirty-eight years. Many of those years were concerned with death and dying. Had I known, I probably would not have married him, but then again, we haven’t any free will. So what is must be.

I have been plodding along the spiritual path for millennia more than likely. Little progress has been made unless you can count perseverance. I have loads of that. I know what it is like to shoulder the burden of the cross only because you are choiceless. It must be done. Let’s get on with it. This is not morbidity but design. And He who writes the script also writes the score and provides the wardrobe. My neck wrap is part of the plan. And so is my sturdy blue bathrobe and my solitary life. I would trade it all for Cloud Nine, but it’s probably already taken.

April 2, 09--Take a Stand for Healing

My words don’t fall into a vacuum but into the heart of the reader. That is why I let my intuition do the work. Maybe there is someone reading this who knows what it is to lose a loved one. I try to show through the skin of my words the body of wholeness that can survive grief. Not only survive but give the gift of survival to others. For losing a part of oneself leads to the discovery that everything is connected by love.

Often, make that daily, I fall victim to my mind. It tells me that I am alone and in need. But behind the mind is a power called awareness that goes before us to make the crooked places straight. I sit in the silence to let that power predominate. And it always does. Oh, I may have to sit for half an hour, but eventually I will come again to peace.
Take a Stand for Healing

My mother died last month and all of March has been a hassle. My house is reflecting her loss by offering up rotten boards and has been visited by a pileated woodpecker. So now I have to deal with that. But life is proclaiming spring to the weary spirit. Every tree is bowing down before the principle of renewal, offering their buds to those who are suffering failure, discouragement or loss.

It is time we shared all of life as one; we do this in order to take a stand for healing. Whenever we fall into a pit of despair, somewhere a prayer is going up to heaven. I don’t say this to be corny but to reveal how far down I have sunk into the pit. The very worst was when Bob was first diagnosed. He lay in the hospital doomed to death and I became his caregiver. I didn’t do such a hot job, truth to tell. My cancer experience was an emotional one, living to tell the tale of how we went through it all together. In the end I sat and slept alone, but determined to share my passion of writing as he wanted me to do.

So we are never alone; we just feel that way. So if you are reading this and nodding your head in any way at all, good for you. You are human and that is no picnic. Once you take to the spiritual path, it becomes a crucifixion of the ego and a rebirth into unity. And it takes the rest of your life. So that is the worst of it. The best of it is that you know when someone is using you, abusing you, ignoring or not loving you. And you want more from life than that. You want to serve love. The very desire moves you into action. Each word written in this essay has been straight from the place of truth. I found it in the midst of suffering and love prevailed.

I have a set of two audios here. The titles are Neverending Story and Light in Darkness.

I am trying to get back in sync after my mother's death. But I am having to get some repair work done on the house....and you know how that is.

I usually copy my updates here, but I think I'll just share the link with you.

Updates

Got comments....would love to hear from you.

And in the meantime, have a handful of pistachio nuts....I just did :)

Love, Vicki

I uploaded The Death of Illusion on Audio. In it I reference what happened at the Marriott Courtyard. I have spoken of this before, but for readers who don’t know, I will tell the story in a nutshell. In 2004 my husband died and he was buried in Memphis, Tennessee, two days before Christmas. An ice storm hit the city during his funeral and my son and sister and cousin and I were marooned there until Christmas Day. After the funeral, I wondered outloud as we ate breakfast how we would get a Christmas Eve meal. Mary, who was a cook and server there, offered to come in and prepare and share a meal with us. So there in an empty lobby, the five of us ate a Christmas Eve dinner. It turned out that her son had also been a patient at St. Jude’s but he was alive. At that point, we all recognized the miraculous quality of the night. I think it only happened because everything had been swept away...we were in the void...and that is where miracles happen. So give it a listen...

When You are Sinking in the Sea of Samsara (or when you have the blues)

People sing the blues to achieve harmony where they feel it has been lost. They riff rough notes of discord into the blue notes that heal them. This makes perfect sense to me. I have been doing this for a long time. When my mother died at age 87, I picked up the old guitar again and begin to sing the blues....in order to heal.

We will never escape disharmony while on the earth plane; it is inevitable. But when you learn the secret of singing the blues, you are David playing his harp. You are doing what God would have you do.

So let me pluck a few notes in order to regain my sense of harmony...

Sometimes I feel like a motherless child....I checked a book out from the library called The Orphaned Adult. Sounds ridiculous, I know, but it is a book of wisdom and solace. Having come into this world via parents, we will more than likely outlive them. So as I placed my hand on my mother’s ashes, I was touching eternity.

Touching eternity, or the timeless moment, brings one into God’s time, kairos. Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment. as opposed to chronos--time which is measured by the clock and the calendar. That is one reason that people in grief lose their appetite and find they can’t fall asleep. Something is afoot that is not of their own choosing. God’s Hand has reached down and scooped up someone who gave you life. And you feel like singing the blues.

Now you are rocking yourself in the rhythm of love. You could be B. B. King or Little David playing his harp. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you come back into harmony with who you really are.

Suddenly, you know it is quite appropriate to sing the blues. When you are dancing with sorrow, the angels sing. I don’t mean clutching it to you, or carrying it too long, I am talking about wailing consciously....surrendering control in order to regain your balance. You might even take it out on the dance floor of the cosmos. Who knows...stars may give you the nod. The man in the moon might wink at you. But one thing I know....you have a right to sing the blues.

I just made and uploaded The Crawl Space on Audio. Give it a listen and let me know if it was helpful for you. I’ve got more MP3’s in the queue, but this is the one I wanted to use today. It can be played whenever you want to unwind a bit.

The Essay I Don’t Want to Write

This title may arouse your curiosity; it has mine. As I write intuitively, we are both reading it for the first time. It’s about facing yourself. Last night my son took me to hear Krishna Das. It was a lovely evening of kirtan...him leading the audience in chant and response. I had never had this experience before and it was powerful. It lasted almost three hours and at the end, as the last strains of his harmonium died away, a rich silence was felt. It rang with inner music.

The words that KD spoke were self-deprecating and far-reaching. He said he hung out at the back of the temple where his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and his disciples were. He was, he said, “at the back of the temple in his inner darkness.” He said with a soft laugh that outer darkness is nothing compared to the inner. Everyone can relate to that.

At another point in the music, he also said that all of us have to be forced to serve God.

A truth like that needs lots of space around it.

He speaks of western culture teaching us to be too hard on ourselves. We have to let go and trust ourselves and our lives. Use the letting go muscle.

I read a few articles about him today about how he knew he had to begin singing in America to people who hadn’t known him in India. He offered himself up and the rest is history.

I called this the essay I don’t want to write because I know I haven’t really done this yet.

When I do, there will be lots of space around me.

*****

My mother is in the last days of her terminal cancer. I received a powerful message
from a sage today: “Forgive the cancer.”

Sit with that and be healed.

If you want to write me, here I am.

I have added a new link. It is Randolph. Below is the link to his beautiful
video called Liberation. Believe it or not, I had this dream myself some years ago. It was a “big dream,” pointing to the ultimate freedom. Watch it and let yourself soar.

Several days ago I learned that my mother has terminal cancer. As you can imagine, I have shed some tears. At first the doctor said she had less than a month; but today he sent her back to the nursing home where she lives. He told my sister to take it one day at a time. As some of you know, it was my sister who sat with Bob as he made his transition. My mother is in good hands, as Amma is her guru and watches over us all.

I spoke with my dearest friend about whether or not I should visit my mother. It is a long fly-drive and the weather is frigid. More than that, I saw her this summer and have lovely memories of that, which will turn out to be the last time I saw her in good health. She is 87 and has been the family matriarch for a good many years.

My friend said this to me: “You ARE sitting with the dying. You sit with it every day. And then you write. And then if someone is open enough, they read it and understand. The
work you do is for those left behind. Making the unbearable bearable.”

I love you all and will continue to be here....will you?

Happy Valentine’s Day...I went to Dunkin’ Donuts for a dozen and obviously they are more popular than roses...because I ended up with the last few they had, practically. Bitterly disappointed to get only one chocolate one...and some I didn’t like especially. But then I never met a donut I didn’t like.

I didn’t see Larry and Ruin in there. It’s a sad day when you don’t see them at DD or Walmart...

I don’t have any new material this week. Visit yourself consciously instead and be your own valentine.

Love and powder sugar hugs...Vicki

Write me to request an MP3 here.

Someone asked me to talk about inner peace and the result is two new MP3’s. They are Part I: The Spiritual Snag and Part II: Mount "I Want To, But I Can't". Rather than me trying to explain them, why not just go to Audio and listen. If you have a subject you would like to hear me discuss, I want to hear from you.

I have been cooking my brains out-everything from Peanut Butter Bars to Chicken Tortilla Soup. It’s too cold to do much else. I have been reading through some old Swami Z material and I think it’s time to reprise him. So stay tuned.

Today I made Disappearing Marshmallow Brownies. I may be getting to be a better cook than Swami...

Next week is Valentine's. I love you all.

Vicki
You can send me a Valentine here :)

In Days of Great Peace is on Fishpond Thoughts and an MP3 by that name is on Audio. It's not the same copy, so give it a listen.

No one has taken me up on doing an MP3 on a subject which interests them. The invitation is an open one.....write me at Vicki.

What's going on with you readers these days....comment now!

Love, Vicki

I wrote the essay below quickly, as I do everything I write. It always feels good to let the truth speak itself, even if it is against yourself. I am glad you liked reading a new essay on Fishpond. Well, you did, didn't you :) Here is my MP3 for the week: By Her Grace (A Hershey Kiss from Heaven). It's a look back at a spiritual memory. Taste it on your tongue. Go to Audio and it will be at the top.

Experiencing Resistance

I picked up The War of Art and began reading it. I had ordered it on the suggestion of a friend who knew I was experiencing resistance in regard to my writing. In less than ten minutes I was hit by an avalanche of understanding....about every negativity I had in relation to Bob’s illness. The author had explained it all.

Not only was I devastated by the diagnosis of “incurable,” I was devastated by my own reaction to my new job as caregiver. I didn’t want to do it. I was furious, rageful and downright disgusted. Surely I would not be asked to shepherd a second family member through a fatal cancer. But I had been picked by the Ironic Selection Committee to do just that.

I felt guilty almost every day at the fact that I was mad as hell about this cancer. Sometimes I would look at my husband and vow he was making it all up just to bring me down. Really. I was that distraught.

What I read in The War of Art is how every noble endeavor arouses resistance, and being a caregiver pushed every button I had so carefully hidden. Instead of feeling guilty, I should have felt the truth of what God was asking me to do....care for a beloved spouse when his time had come.

And so I began....and in that beginning I received my true calling....to write about the very experiences I was resisting so mightily. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I chronicled our experiences with what would turn out to be almost a five-year-battle with multiple myeloma. On December 20, 2004, the cancer won. I surrendered my husband to the good earth and walked on alone.

But now I am partnered with my calling, an inexorable march into the heart of fear. For only in that will I hear God saying to me, Well done.

January 16, 2009--Finally, there is a new essay called The Bliss of Being on Fishpond. And when you have read that, I uploaded a new MP3 on Audio.
It’s called How to Forgive Yourself.

Traffic is down; don’t be a stranger...or don’t be any stranger than you already are.
Check back for more goodies or you will have to stay after class and clean my erasers.

I've been plowing through old essays and trying to get them into chronological order. This is a huge job. I changed Macs this summer and this seemed to have messed me up big time. If I ever get things straightened out, woe unto me if I let it get so sloppy again.

Who has a question they would like to hear me discuss on an MP3? Drop me a line...and throw out a subject.

Vicki

Lizelle Reymond wrote a book called To Live Within. It is the master’s job to move us into our rightful real estate, which is inside. So I consider that a true calling...to let it be known that all problems must be resolved within. Joel Goldsmith had a list of “Wisdoms,” one of which said that all conflicts must be resolved within. Where else?

Within is where it all begins. Nothing grows from outside in. Nothing. Do you remember how, as a child, you were rocked to sleep in loving arms? If you do, you know that the feeling of comfort arose within your tiny soul. If you were not loved in that way, despair could have arisen in the same place. We are the ones who know the way home. We must travel the interminable distance between head and heart. We will know when we arrive. At that point, the teachings will have born fruit and the ring will be on your finger. The father inside will have blessed you and the mother within will have reclaimed you.

This week, know that all problems arise within and therefore so do all solutions. The way is not for the faint of heart; it is for those who know what is NOT working in their lives. Knowing that is to come home to truth.

No new MP3's this week. Perhaps you have a subject you would like to hear me discuss. If so, drop me a line here.

Two subjects covered on Audio this week...

Question about Unconditional Love

Question about Attachment

I posted an MP3 that I did by request. It is Attachment on Audio.

If you have a question that you would like for me to answer on an MP3, drop me a line here.

There is an energy exchange that takes place that is very beneficial. You might call it
the teaching/learning experience....whatever it is, it lifts you into a higher state of
awareness.

Vicki