I used to hate books like this—books that mercilessly pull the reader along on a narrative meander through the terrain of heartbreak. I’d avoid sad stories, probably for fear they would unleash a backlog of shock-grief from my own life story, where people I loved died suddenly, leaving me adrift in the sea of post traumatic loss.

But lately, ever since wholeness arrived in an overnight episode of self-realization, I love a good cry as much as a belly laugh. Good news is that Life With A Hole in It is the kind of book that serves up comic relief and penetrating wisdom, right alongside full Kleenex box heart-wrenchers. With chapter heads like Satsang with Elvis, Enlightenment in a Can and The Sky–is It Falling, of Course it Is, give you the flavor of Vicki Woodyard’s cleverly skewed and eccentric view on life.

The story? After losing her daughter to cancer at age 7, Woodyard is faced with her husband’s terminal cancer diagnosis and the bleak landscape of five years of chemotherapy, surgeries and blood transfusions to prolong the inevitable loss. In short but potent vignettes, this author brings us into close contact with what she calls the “limbo of letting go.”

As she explains, “If I told you that losing a child to cancer brought me so low that I found God, you would have no trouble believing me. If I told you that it made me no happier, would you believe that too? God is not about making you happy, He is about making you whole…wholeness means you must reconcile your abject cowardice with your most magnificent courage. You must balance your weak points with your God given talents, limboing under the broom of the opposites.”

Although the author freely uses the God word, at heart her perspective is a fresh and gritty kind of non-dualism—not one steeped in sophistry and satsang, but rather a spiritual view informed by the most ordinary of moments seen in the extraordinary light of surrender.

This type of narrative is always tricky, in that it’s too easy to slip into the maudlin or by-pass painful details with “love and light” prescriptions. Yet Woodyard’s unflinching honesty as she reports from the frontlines of grief, her willingness to reveal her own dark side in her journey to wholeness, is simply captivating. At one point she confesses, “I used to study books about enlightenment until the sky fell on my house and how there is no house at all. The sky gave me enlightenment by taking away my house and the security it afforded. Big mistake sky, big mistake. Because today I am wearing a crash helmet and you can’t touch me anymore.”

A delightful side story is her inclusion of letters from her online friend, Peter, who had “become bigger than the sky” in his own awakening through a catastrophic health crisis. In the wake of his illness and loss of self, Peter becomes a “cat juggler,” a fellow with just enough energy to sit in the sun with his feline companion and write occasional emails to friends like Vicki. Like a virtual guru, Peter’s words penetrate Vicki’s story with just the right dose of truth, and his words hit the reader with just as much power.

As she notes about Peter, “How does he transmit such wisdom with so few words? I know what he is up to. He is involving me in the paradox of peace. Shame on him. He is showing me surrender. How dare he? He is chiding me for clinging to the body. I might have known. Peter is loving me by letting me go.”

If you are ready to laugh, cry and yes, be uplifted, then Life with a Hole in It is a book that can be nibbled slowly or devoured in one gulp (I read the whole thing in 90 minutes on a plane ride to Honolulu). And more than a sweet page-turner, this book delivers a deeper gift, the glimpse of the wholeness that awaits us all on the other side of that limbo broomstick of opposites. As Vicki points out, “Letting go is easy when you realize that God is holding the broom.”

Lori Lothian

I am grateful to Lori for that outstanding review.
Order the book on amazon or get it in ebook here for a $5.00 donation to the site.

From Lori Lothian on her Facebook page:

“If you have ever lived a life, where the twists and turns take you through the terrain of heart-breaking loss, then you are the perfect reader of my friend Vicki Woodyard’s sardonic and wise book, a narrative of how grit becomes grace. Here I am, just getting my copy today, from Amazon! Woo hoo…the title is Life With A Hole In It.”

Lori is being kind enough to help get the word out about LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT.

For those of you who would like to order it in an ebook, I am selling it for $5.00. Just hit the Donate button on this site and enter $5.00 as your amount and I will email it to you ASAP. Of course, you may donate more than $5 if you are feeling generous. Pay it forward if you can.

Thanks and love to Lori and to all of you who support the site.

The world breaks everyone sooner or later. That is its agenda. Forget the puppies and kittens approach to life. It doesn’t work when the stuff hits the fan. You have to break so far open and fall so far down that no one can reach you. It feels like hell. All hope is lost.

My teacher could produce that state in his students just by walking into the room. He used to say, “You feel it but you don’t KNOW it!” Because only feeling it does you no good. You have to know you are feeling it.

His secretary wasn’t much help either. After I was dangerously ill some years ago I got up the courage to call and ask her for help. She said, “This work is not about the body. Know that you are lying on the bed and crying. Say, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.’”

That was not what I wanted to hear but it was what I needed. Face to face with my actual condition. Not sugar-coating it, not bargaining with God, not asking a loved one to take the burden off. Just being with your actual state. And if you can do that, your life will be changed. Not all at once, but over time.

You will wake up and smell the coffee. Being broken has freed you from certain things. You realize that you don’t owe anyone anything but your own inner healing. Never have, never will. Your duty is to self-awakening. First things first.

I get seriously turned off by people who advocate for the “love and light” approach to truth. If it is not undergirded with strength and toughness toward darkness, it isn’t helpful. Beware of people pushing their own agendas of “just loving everybody.” As my teacher said, “What a dangerous doctrine that is!”

I am here online to serve what I can and forget the rest. True compassion, as Vernon Howard said, is to be tough on the uncompassionate. Self-love never needs explaining to another human being. Your explaining days are over. Shine on.

Vicki Woodyard

A while ago I had a long-overdue meltdown. It was occasioned by a rude plumber, triggered by the holiday hangover of stress, but it was really an angel in disguise. The Angel of Acceptance hovers near when we are undergoing cleansing tears. “I can’t go on,” we cry out, and the angel monitors our every tear. Perhaps they gather these up and recycle them, give them to hard-hearted souls in need of self-mercy. I like to think so.

The raw reality of our failure to live up to our own standards is humbling, indeed. For those of us walking the path know how little progress we have made. Egos can only take one step forward, two steps back. The house always wins as long as we are living in the Vegas of Vanity.

All vanity and self-importance is welcomed by the house because they have you by the short hairs of the neck. Gurdjieff said that man cannot do. How right he was. The tears we shed are proof of that.

Spiritual students like to see themselves as long-suffering paragons of virtue, misunderstood and under-appreciated. These angels see us as simply going home the hard way. They hold out the lantern of love so that when every last teardrop has fallen, we can rise up and falter on.

The meltdown that I had proved to be a blessing on many different levels. I wish I could schedule them regularly but that is not how it works. Grace is operative even when we are unaware of it. It is there to catch us when we fall.

I hope all of you have an interesting weekend. Watch for signs of grace. They are there. They are there.

Please order my book.

My world shattered around me in jagged pieces. It was 2000 and I had just learned that my husband, Bob, had less than 3 years to live. I stood in the midst of a ruined life. I had nothing to give but an acknowledgement of this. I, who had already lost a daughter at age 7, was now facing the loss of my lifelong mate. The pieces of a once-satisfactory world cut fresh wounds in my heart. I was hopeless.

There would be no escape from a second sorrow and I knew it. So I begin to put one foot in front of the other. I showed up and did the best I could. Tears, chemo, caregiving, cooking, shopping, insomnia, exhaustion. One round after another. I summoned what courage I could.

A website to support my husband was born. I gave birth to what was to be my writing career. A one-woman enterprise done out of my dining room with nothing but honesty and death all around me. I gave what I had, the truth of a bad situation.

As the hard years began, Bob’s ribs would be broken by his disease, multiple myeloma—a fatal cancer of the bone marrow. We would spend endless hours in the chemo room and in the infusion center, where he received many, many units of blood. At the end he moved into hospice. He made his transition within 4 days.

I am still here, writing from the dining room. My words go out all over the world to those who stand in need. What they need and want is the truth, a certain energy of pure grace. For grace reaches down and showers out the splinters of the broken heart.

I have been walking the spiritual path for many years now. Recently I realized that I have begun to fly.

Order more of the story here:
http://www.amazon.com/LIFE-HOLE-Thats-Wisdom-Awakened/dp/1609102770/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1300842477&sr=8-1

My winter heart feels strangely calm
as if the silence were a balm applied
to every grief I ever knew when I loved
you.

And I, before I die, will bloom once more
and you will witness how it feels to watch
me spread my wings of words aloft and
soar beyond the idea of a you and I.

Vicki Woodyard
LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT

The Film Is In The Can

I am reminding myself that the film is in the can; there is no free will. Every act is an unspooling of the infinite. As long as we sleep, it feels so real. But as we awaken to the unalterable fact that there is no free will, grace begins to seep in around the edges of the crusty old ego, the old man.

Those that would debate this are coming from the mental level and not the heart. The mind does not rule the world. Never has, never will. What it does do is keep us in confusion amid the opposites.

Above the opposites freedom rings. As Leonard Cohen, the beloved musical guru says, “Ring the bells that still can ring.” And we all know he is not referring to any music notes of the head.

Inspiration is from the heart to the heart.

Namaste. Enjoy the show.

Consider ordering my book, LIFE WITH A HOLE IN IT.

I see life as a ballet of the soul. In spite of crisis, boredom, ennui, tragedy, grace of the soul is being danced across the ages. It is an eternal rhythm that is subtly experienced. Believe it or not, this dance is not done by anyone that we know ourselves to be. It is the part of us that is immanent and transcendent. It knows nothing of sweat or toil. It’s only job is to express what IT is. And what it is is grace beyond measure.

We sit at the table drinking coffee and rueing what we did or didn’t do. We go to sleep and wake with aching heads and remember bad dreams. We don’t know how we got here or when we will leave. And the dance is happening. We work and rest and act the part we have been given to play. And the dance changes step and rhythm and lifts us up over the fog and lets us see the stars.

And when the dance needs a partner it finds one. And then it may leave that partner at the altar or by some violent act. And we denounce the dance. Indeed the mystery of the dance is that it is anonymous. No one there can claim to be anything but a dancer of what is the dance of life. And all too soon a silence falls upon the floor. And then it is that the dance begins on another stage in another universe. We sigh and go on. And then once again we find ourselves taken up by a new rhythm. And the dance finds us a new partner. And so it goes.

Vicki Woodyard

Let’s face it. The Dark Side of Duality is obvious. There is the devil going down to Georgia and St. Peter pulling Guard Duty at the P. Gates. Call him P. Diddy. Anyhoo, the dark side can be fun. I like Dark Milky Ways and Dr. Jekyll is a popular literary character. I could go on, but I won’t. For there is a dark side to nonduality and I am going to shine a mini Maglite on it.

There is a certain type of neoadvaitan that I am fond of poking fun at. I have never actually met one because they don’t exist, apparently. It is always fun to poke fun at nonentities. Their dark side must be hidden under a cloak of many layers. The first layer is denial. Oh, it’s not just a river in— well, you know. “I am not the body,” true neos love to proclaim. And I’m thinking, “It’s a good thing, because I wouldn’t want to be in your body either. Just look at those love handles.”

The next layer is disassociation with reality. Maybe that’s why you see so many neos going around with tubs of popcorn. Their apparent nonexistence, being like a movie, mandates popcorn, which explains the love handles.

The third layer is that they live in the timeless state, sort of like in Vegas, where there are no clocks. They can no longer read Hickory Dickory Dock because “there is no clock. “ However, when they get to the line where it says, “The clock struck one,” they feel the need to begin parsing the meaning of one. Big sigh.

The fourth layer is that they claim to be in a state of permanent bliss. This is sometimes known as The Bliss Ninny Syndrome. You could hit ‘em with custard pies all day long. Put seltzer down their pants and repossess their smile and they would still claim total contentment.

The fifth layer is now getting closer to the truth. They claim that they are “not the doer.” Note the quote marks. They love to say this when someone is facing a difficult decision, like when to pull the plug on their cable TV, which is akin to losing a loved one. “There is no doer,” they declaim, while the owner of said TV is crying real tears over not being able to watch Entertainment Tonight. “Don’t tell ME there’s no doer,” the ET addict sobs, “Who is walking the red carpet then?!”

The neo is growing darker by the moment. He’s like a lightning bug ring some child is wearing on their finger. It’s just a matter of time until the light goes out.

The sixth layer is right at the edge of the denial. They claim to love and forgive everyone for they know that there is only the Self. Then why are they telling me to stop writing this? A mob of neoadvaitans are gathering right outside of my office. They are telling me to get offline now!

The seventh layer is where I stop. You know that recipe for Seven-layer Salad where there is a layer of lettuce, bacon, onion cheese, peas, etc.? Right underneath the seventh layer is the bare naked truth of who we really are. A big glass salad bowl. We are mere containers for layers of verbiage claiming to represent emptiness. And people who live in glass salad bowls shouldn’t throw stones. Ouch! The neos are in the house, taking me hostage. Help, help! There is not only peas on earth, they are all over my office floor. Somebody give me a fork….

Vicki Woodyard
http://www.booklocker.com/books/4931.html

Be happy in your unhappiness. Be unhappy in your happiness. The law of reverse effort is quite remarkable. Just turn around and go the other way and you will meet yourself in the middle. When you get there, give yourself a hug. You just hugged everyone on the planet. What goes around comes around.
Since there is purported to be no doer, disregard everything I just wrote. Donuts, anyone? I thought so!