By Debra Basham, on June 13, 2022 Every child is an artist.
The problem is
how to remain an artist
when you grow up.
~ Pablo Picasso
Yesterday was very busy. I did the grocery shopping and had everything put away before John got up. I worked right up to the Sunday morning meditation at 11:00 and was back online at 1:30 for the last Remembering Wholeness until fall.
Part of the busy was preparing the ingredients for stir fry. Note* It was delicious!
I don’t just mean the finished product of the stir fry was delicious, although it was. I am saying the moments of my day were delicious. And like the pork and the veggies in the stir fry, delicious and tender.
One friend was given this darshan – darshan is seeing a holy person or the image of a deity and being seen and given a blessing. Late last evening my friend asked if I had the otter transcript of the darshan he had been given. I had grabbed the otter notes just in case when Barbara Brodsky was having some challenge saving it, and I was so honored to transcribe it for my friend. I think you will agree that although my friend’s circumstance may be unique, the darshan is universal.
I know that you are what in this world would be called very sick. Looking at the issues of what it is to live or to die.
Right now, you are alive.
There’s more life to come.
But for everybody here in this world, eventually there will be a passing from this life.
My Friend, you can live what remains of this life — whether it is weeks, months, years, or decades — you can live it more fully if you can relax and trust that when the end does come, it is soulful. You are held in love and the transition can be a very beautiful and smooth transition.
Remembering there is nothing to fear about that, you can then bring the attention back to, “So, now, how can I live this life with as much joy and presence as I can, however much time that is.
How can I live through this year of 2022, next year of 2023, with a full heart of love, not looking ahead with fear, knowing each day to be a natural transition to the next day and making the choice to invite the highest health possible for the physical body as this spiritual body moves through its process and opens more and more to the light.
I know there is pain, and discomfort, and, of course, as I just said, fear. This is natural.
Allow yourself to be where you are. If there’s discomfort, you can acknowledge that discomfort. You don’t have to be stoic and say, no, there’s no discomfort. There is. The physical body will have discomfort.
And if there is fear, allow the experience of fear without getting caught in the story. You understand? I know you do understand what I am saying.
In this way you can live each hour, each day, each year as fully and joyfully as possible and spread your energy here. Finish doing the high, loving work you came to do, where you have demonstrated the power of love for your wife, for your friends, for your sangha.
You are a great inspiration to others.
But you may become tired of doing that and say, “I’ve had enough of being an inspiration and I need to let it go.” That’s okay, too.
Know how much you are loved, and that everyone in this circle (and many more) hold you in their hearts.
Today at 3:00 I go back to my doctor. My blood pressure is still not where we would like it to be but I am more often allowing the experience of fear without getting caught in the story. It is my highest intention to live each hour, each, day, each year as fully and joyfully as possible.
John is in a sciatica flare. It came on early last week while I was attending the intensive. He had to cancel the 24 hour “ambulatory” blood pressure study on Thursday because he was not able to be ambulatory. On Saturday I mowed our lawn. Possibly the first time I have mowed in close to 40 years. I had never used a self-propelled mower, and one hummingbird feeder was sacrificed in my learning curve.
I was enjoying the last morsels of the stir fry when my phone rang. It was a woman I met on Friday at her rummage sale. I left my phone number, sharing that I have a friend who is making “Purposeful Purses.” She got the idea from another friend. Into these purses go bottled water, toiletries, a pair of socks, and a few non-perishable food items. These purses stay in her vehicle and are presented to a homeless person at a stop light or at the park or wherever she encounters them.The woman was calling to say 4 purses had not sold and she welcomed the opportunity to be part of this purposeful purse project. I thanked her and said I would finish my dinner and ride over and pick them up.
It was such a gorgeous day, and I had been indoors online for about five hours, so on my way home I turned at the corner and gave myself the gift of a little longer ride. Just as I was coming up to the entry of our park, I saw a coyote pup in the field across the street! I pulled to the side of the road and stopped and we looked deeply at one another. He pulled away first but I continued to watch as he gingerly picked his way to the church parking lot and out of my view. This morning I looked up Coyote Symbolism & Meaning:
Have you been under a lot of stress lately? The coyote symbolism might give you a boost to laugh at yourself or even play a trick on you.
The general symbolic meaning is a jokester, playfulness, adaptability, seeing the truth behind it, a complex and cunning personality, wisdom, and cleverness.
It often represents two sides of the same coin, being a troublesome creature, but a good fortune sign.
The coyote will bring hidden emotions and thoughts to the surface, making you uncomfortable but healing you.
The coyote animal totem is for those that want to forget about their worries and live in the present moment alongside the most important people in your life, your family.
Children will suddenly approach you as they love your joyful nature and energy. Being so full of life, you will feel even more refreshed around them.
Aaron’s Thought for Today reinforces the message:
Gain and loss, pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, light and dark — these are seeming opposites, but nothing is truly an opposite but always part of everything else. What would joy be without sorrow? How would you recognize joy? How would you recognize the light if there were no sense of darkness? How would you know spaciousness if there were never contraction? But we must recognize the distinction between ultimate reality and those mundane objects that arise from conditions and pass away. Reflect on the beauty of light and love as ultimate realities, and how darkness and contraction arise out of conditions and pass away. ~ Aaron
Over the weekend my nephew, David, enjoyed a visit with our daughter, Stacey, in Tennessee. Our great-grandson, Jackson, was visiting with Stacey (G-Ma) and David said Jackson was stuck on him like glue. I can understand that totally as David, having spent many years incarcerated, is now keenly aware of and thriving on the gift of his freedom.
Bees dance amidst the flowers outside my window and I savor the pleasant, cool, low-humidity days because I know they are going to be replaced with heat and humidity before nightfall. That is the point, isn’t it….
By Debra Basham, on June 9, 2022 We are so brief.
A one-day dandelion.
A seedpod skittering across the ice.
We are a feather falling from the wing of a bird.
I don’t know why it is given to us to be so mortal
and to feel so much. It is a cruel trick, and glorious.
~ Louise Eldrich
We looked at sacred darkness and emptiness a LOT over the five-day intensive that finished about dinner time yesterday. During those five-days humans were living this. Joan was with Bob at the hospital. Pneumonia. His dementia complicates things further. He would be going to a care facility rather than coming home. For how long? Virginia had Paul to ER. Bleeding. Awaiting emergency surgery for a massively enlarged prostate. Barbara Brodsky‘s carefully selected caregiver for her husband, Hal, had to call off when his young daughter tested positive for Covid. The second had to call off when his wife was hospitalized and he was in charge of their 18-month old. John is in a sciatica flare, and we have to cancel the 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure study he was scheduled to start this morning because he cannot ambulate right now.
The opening line from Aaron this morning: “People seek safety, and they believe that safety is in stability and no change.”
During this intensive we were encouraged to let ourselves go into the darkness and learn to be the light. Profound sadness washed over me as I had total cellular memory of surgery in 1992 to correct my having been born tongue-tied. A lingual frenectomy removes a band of tissue that connects the underside of the tongue with the bottom of the mouth. At birth, this is a relatively simple procedure. I was forty-two years old….
I felt the depth of the trauma from the point of view of the tongue. It was traumatized by the surgery. Then it was lost. It was not able to get back to the familiar. It did not feel like it belonged and it did not know what to do. Thirty years later, I am noticing the stress in my jaw and the pull to the side of my neck, aware now that this has been a chronic situation.
I cried, reporting all of this to my dharma family in Group 2. I heard the words and I recognized the correlation to the human incarnation. Even the simple shift from living in the fluid world of the womb to the instability of the room is traumatic. Sounds are startling, light is harsh, energies feel like an assault.
Aaron quoted from Dante’s Inferno: In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear.
Humans see and feel so much, often it appears too much to process, and, yes, it can feel like a cruel trick.
One beloved introduced us to Jeff Foster’s “Guru of Darkness” on his Facebook post. Jeff’s writing was woven into our intensive with the skill of a world-class weaver.
…we are not here to destroy, eradicate, fix, transcend, or even ‘heal’ our darkness — the grief, the terror, the anger, the shame, those deep feelings of guilt from childhood. For these are just places in ourselves that we haven’t been willing or able to illumine yet. They are not inherently evil, sinful or dangerous. (www.lifewithoutacentre.com)
Another beloved suggested speaking to the contraction of the self where there is suffering, “I feel you. I love you. I care, and this is important.” I have begun speaking this to my tongue and jaw and neck. I can be patient since we have thirty years of my ignorance to soften the impact from.
“I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do.” ~ Edward Everett Hale, American Author
“To see myself as on a journey through the universe is delusional. To come to know myself as the universe journeying is awakening.” ~ Falling into Grace by Adyashanti
Letting my heart open to the pain and loss that had been pushed away or ignored or deflected led me right to the heart of SCS, which has not been active since 2012 following the surgery I had to remove the ovarian mass. The Osho Zen Tarot card (8 of Water Letting Go) so direct: A recognition that something is finished, something is completing, whatever it is — a job, a relationship, a home you have loved, anything that might have helped define who you are — it is time to let go of it, allowing any sadness but not trying to hold on.
SCS was all of that: a job, a relationship, a home I have loved (and the cats I have loved), and my identity.
The Osho card continues, You are past the point of no return now, and gravity is doing its work. Go with it — it represents liberation.
We were guided in the meditation by Aaron: “There is nothing you can hold onto forever except the essence of your being, and you do not hold onto that, you simply are that. This is your truth; this is what you are. I move ahead of my own free will, with the intention of releasing suffering in this universe, of helping beings wake up — including myself…. This is my intention to support release of suffering, an increase of happiness for all sentient beings.”
OMG – All semester I have thought of Aaron’s teaching the SCS material Joel and Debra developed from Steven Karpman’s Drama Triangle. I write in my journal: It’s not Aaron teaching Debra’s material, Debra has been teaching the dharma as Aaron does!
I look down at my Fitbit and it shows 9,999 steps. I don’t want to move but I have to move to reach my goal…. I dig out a CD and listen to Everlasting Peace, my own voice telling me “Circumstances have changed and it is time now to look to new directions to learn how to fly once more….”
The last morning of the five-day intensive, Barbara shares that the mother of the caregiver who had been pulling the weight of the week as Barbara was teaching the intensive fell overnight and broke her hip….
As Barbara says, “There is always going to be something. If it needs to slide away; let it slide away.” Barbara begins to share her process of coming back to the light right there in the darkness. Although deaf and off tune, we listen to her chant:
Hari Om, Dear One,
Sat Nam, holy name
When I call on the Light in my Heart,
I come home
Mary Magdelene incorporates and notices Barbara’s voice is hoarse from so much teaching time this week. Mary takes a sip of water, then tells us there is never any hurry. She quotes a poem by Karen Weber: I am the place where god shines through, where god and I are one not two. Mary tells us that our beloved teacher, Aaron, was so helpful because he was not yet fully awake but he knew how to not get caught up in negativity. To see the negative story as it is, and to know that right there with fear there is love. Hari Om. When I call on the love in my heart, I come home. Mary tells us to just keep coming home. To remember why you have come. To hold the darkness as a sacred energy. There is nothing more powerful than love.
My closing sharing was to see that what is in the way is the way. I mentioned Jana Stanfield’s song If I Were Brave and how we know we are all brave became we came! Someone quoted Nelson Mandela’s quoting Marianne Williamson:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
I do a drawing from the question, “What is released as we fully manifest the true self?”
I can’t find the beginning and wonder if that mean none exists.
I write Mary’s last question to us: “At the end of attaining, what remains?”
An answer comes, “The tapestry of attending to without giving it substance.”
I title the drawing from the Heart Sutra: for there is nothing to attain.
By Debra Basham, on June 5, 2022 From my journal:
Friday, June 3, 2022
Dear Holy Spirit,
I am listening to a podcast by Ram Dass. (Ep. 199: The Continuity of Consciousness)
“Somewhere between not enough and more seems to be enough.”
At least a few moments go by before i have a thought about Joel — that’s progress. I have heard nothing from him since last Sunday evening when he sent email saying he was on the floor in his bedroom and could not get up.
Ram says the concept ‘I am meditating’ is still “rush collecting.” He continues:
You have been born many times and many times you have died and each time you have died you have struggled against death. You have said: “Why me? Save me. Heal me! Do whatever you need to do, doctor: Transplant, freeze, do whatever needs to be done. Cut. Mend. But keep me here.”
And you hold desperately to the bed sheets and you struggle against it. And then you’re dead. And then a voice says to you, “Hello.”
And then you say, “I guess I didn’t die.”
And the voice says, “Oh, to the contrary, you are quite dead.”
Time and time again, death after death, you have rejected that voice, and stayed in what the Christians called purgatory. You stayed in a state of confusion between births.
(Ram Dass uses the term ‘veil of illusion’ — I’ve never heard that. I’ve heard the other side of the veil but I’ve not heard it said that it is the veil of illusion.)
2/5 of the population of America have had transcendent, mystical experiences. That is 40 million people. Of those 40 million people, a sampling shows that 85% said, “It was the most powerful experience of my life and I never want to have another one.”
For only some of the people, when they see through that veil, they are able to utilize that new awareness… And when you are really ripe, that one millisecond changes your whole life from now on — that lifetime. And when you are really ready, that one moment makes you say, “From here on all I wish to do now is to get free.”
Now, when you have started to awaken in a particular lifetime, and then you die, you say, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die,” and then you are dead and somebody says welcome and you say I guess I didn’t die and they say yes you did and you are confused and then that moment of that previous birth when you awakened comes to you and you say, “Ah, right, this is what that was about.”
(I have the awareness that suffering is grace.)
Up until that time, you’ve been seeking to optimize pleasure.
A birth is like a process of getting you straight or cleaning you up or awakening you…. You are part of a far more interesting game which you begin to be aware of in terms of your own identity….
The meaning of every act in life starts to change. You look at all of it as process for awakening, for cleaning up your game. You don’t begrudge your history — no matter how neurotic it has been — for it has in it the stuff which has created the space you are in at this moment which allows you to hear right now.
(I notice that I am trying too hard as I am chopping vegetables for quiche and then I hear, “Let the tool do the work.”)
That may be the lesson of the power washer. No amount of stress or strain enhances the work. I hear that the central message again and again as I continue. No amount of effort forces sleep. No amount of worry produces peace. No amount of effort produces clarity. One cannot TRY oneself to anything.
My mind recognizes that we can aim. A – I – M. Already is (or always is) mentality.
Peace already is like the sun is always shining. Peace always is. Love always is. Light always is. Nothing we can do “makes” it.
I realize consciousness is also a tool. I feel fluttering in my heart as I write this sentence.
My blood pressure continues to be quite high, although I have had two readings over the past week and a half that would be considered normal.
I am on Zoom attending the year-end “intensive” right now. Perhaps additional insight is to emerge during these five days. This morning’s Thought for Today from Aaron is quite interesting for me:
Whatever it is that you’re praying for, be it health or well-being of yourself or for a loved one or whatever the prayer-intention may be, that innate perfection is always there. If you approach it from a place of fear, you keep manifesting the distortion. When you come back to the place of love, you center yourself in love and invite others to take hold of the strands with you and pray with you from that same place of love. Energetically they’re weaving together with you, weaving together a tapestry of healing with you, of growth, of love, of joy. So this is the power of prayer.
I find it fascinating that I had just written the string about always there. Plus, when I first started my practice in Healing Touch, I named my business “Tapestry” with the tag line weaving together the threads of body, mind, and spirit. Also on the card: For when you are ready.
I am ready.
From my journal:
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Dear Holy Spirit,
Very much aware of anticipatory stress. I am willing. I ask Alexa to play Karen Drucker’s “Morning Prayer: I will surrender to my greatest highest good.”
As I listen, I am aware of a sensation in my left jaw and my right thumb. I look up the Louise Hay meaning of thumb and it is about intellect and worry. The affirmation is “my mind is at peace.”
I look online and find the five hindrances. One is restlessness and worry. Uddhacca, defined as a mental factor characterized by disquietude, like water whipped by the wind.
I imagine my body as a wide container where the energy is allowed to bounce around freely like a pinball machine. As I am sitting with the sensations and allowing them to bounce around, the sensations settle on their own.
Joan is online from the hospital, where her husband, Bob, is in very serious condition. I have the precious memory of John’s and my experience of being held in this sangha’s awakened heart while he was in the hospital with the TIA during the Emerald Isle retreat in April. A profound awareness washes over me that if one was to complete the transition back to non-physical, this is an ideal place to do that.
From Gratefulness.org: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. (Mary Oliver)
Perhaps a perfect image to remind me is Midnite’s purple petunia plant. Every one of these variations arise from one plant.
By Debra Basham, on June 2, 2022 What happens in your heart when you simply state: “I am Light.”?
You are not trying to convince yourself,
but to invite yourself home,
to remember your deepest truth:
“I am Light!”
Yet, sometimes the mind is so contracted with fear, doubt, anger or greed that the words seem hollow. Then it may be helpful to choose to recall to mind something beautiful—something that will draw attention back to the Light that exists right there with the darkness, the spaciousness that is right there with the contracted and solid. You may look at a flower, hear laughter, offer a smile to a friend, remember a moment of kindness offered to you or to another.
Right there with darkness,
with sadness, fear or anger,
where is lovingkindness?
Where is joy?
Right there with contraction,
where is spaciousness?
Use no force; be patient with yourself. Light is ALWAYS there with the darkness. ~ Aaron Thought for Today
Yesterday, last evening, and this morning my blood pressure numbers were high. I have the freshman psych 101 syndrome where I think I have everything wrong with me that John does. Fortunately, I know better than try to wrestle myself into well-being. This line is spoken by The Borg in the TV show Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994): resistance is futile.
From my journal:
Dear Holy Spirit,
My blood pressure has not come down. In addition, I have been having morning headache, pain in my jaw, and some shortness of breath. Wondering if I should go on anti-anxiety medication.
My inner voice reminds me of ascension flu, a term used when you are awakening on a deeper soul level. What is happening is that your whole body from the cells to the chemistry in your body is changing and shifting at rapid speeds. It feels like you are dying or there is something seriously wrong with you.
I am willing to awaken to a deeper soul level. I surrender. This is not a decision to try and “fix” something but to welcome the best support for all — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. I am inviting awareness.
I realized this morning that I had forgotten to pay our lot rental that was due on June first. I just scheduled a reminder to go off on my phone two days before the first of the month from now on and I will set up auto pay when the new credit cards come. This is kindness.
I bear witness to the panic pattern: It’s all up to me and it is dangerous. What if I do it wrong?
Spirit, this poisonous terror of doing it wrong has served its time. I am reminded of the 3D image on the Magic Eye Calendar. Janis and I flipped to June yesterday. The 3-D scene is a ball player sliding into home plate. The catcher is over the plate, gloved-hand stretched as far forward as physically possible, almost touching the ball. The runner is on the ground sliding toward the bag. Only one word could be used to describe what is happening in the game: SAFE!!!
A mnemonic pops spontaneously onto the page: SURRENDER ATTACHMENT; FREEDOM EMERGES.
I am guided to listen to Freedom from Fear, Anxiety, and Panic Attacks, an old SCS audio production. I dig through stuff and find an old CD. I get the pillows that for years were on the massage table in my office and I stretch out on the yoga mat, covered with a cozy blanket. It was a bit otherworldly to allow myself to surrender to my own voice. Appreciating anew the musical masterpiece Christina Beushausen created.
As the audio ends, I remember this quote by Ajahn Chah:
If you let go a little you will have a little peace;
if you let go completely you will have complete peace.
Another mnemonic comes forth: SIMPLE ACCEPTANCE FREES EVERYTHING.
By Debra Basham, on June 1, 2022 There will be something,
anguish or elation,
that is peculiar to this day alone.
I rise from sleep, and say:
Hail to the morning!
Come down to me, my beautiful unknown.
~ Jessica Powers Word for the Day (gratefulness.org)
Today’s journal entry:
Wednesday, June 1, 2022
Dear Holy Spirit,
During the night I woke up with worry about Joel. This morning I know it will be helpful to do a drawing, but I’m guided to first do a three-card spread asking why, with all the release I’ve been doing, does that happen. As I’m reaching in the closet to get the cards, I hear, “You are with John, so you are constantly worried about him. Because you are not with Joel, the worry pops into awareness and you notice that. Let’s look at the seed of that worry; the manifestation of it; and the path through it. Then we will do the drawing.
Seed of Worry – 8 of Fire Traveling
Everybody is trying to have some destination in life. But the implications…. You were hurrying so hard, and you were worrying so hard, and this is the outcome.
Manifestation of Worry – 4 of Fire Participation
We are behaving almost like blind people. In such a beautiful world we are living in a small pond of our own misery. You could not have dreamed of a better universe.
Path Through Worry – 14 Transformation
The conflict is in man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else…. The politics is within you, it Is between two parts of the mind.
A very small bridge exists.
If this bridge is strengthened these two minds become one, the meeting of the male and female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of the left and right, the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle.
This all reminds me of a poem I’ve used many times at funerals. Note* Today at 11:00 we will attend the Celebration of Life of the father of a friend.
THE STATION
By Robert J. Hastings
Tucked away in our subconscious minds is an idyllic vision in which we see ourselves on a long journey that spans an entire continent. We’re traveling by train and, from the windows, we drink in the passing scenes of cars on nearby highways, of children waving at crossings, of cattle grazing in distant pastures, of smoke pouring from power plants, of row upon row upon row of cotton and corn and wheat, of flatlands and valleys, of city skylines and village halls.
But uppermost in our conscious minds is our final destination–for at a certain hour and on a given day, our train will finally pull into the Station with bells ringing, flags waving, and bands playing. And once that day comes, so many wonderful dreams will come true. So restlessly, we pace the aisles and count the miles, peering ahead, waiting, waiting, waiting for the Station.
“Yes, when we reach the Station, that will be it!” we promise ourselves. “When we’re eighteen. . . win that promotion. . . put the last kid through college. . . buy that 450SL Mercedes-Benz. . . have a nest egg for retirement!” From that day on we will all live happily ever after.
Sooner or later, however, we must realize there is no Station in this life, no one earthly place to arrive at once and for all. The journey is the joy. The Station is an illusion–it constantly outdistances us. Yesterday’s a memory, tomorrow’s a dream. Yesterday belongs to a history, tomorrow belongs to God. Yesterday’s a fading sunset, tomorrow’s a faint sunrise. Only today is there light enough to love and live.
So, gently close the door on yesterday and throw the key away. It isn’t the burdens of today that drive men mad, but rather the regret over yesterday and the fear of tomorrow. Regret and fear are twin thieves who would rob us of today.
“Relish the moment” is a good motto, especially when coupled with Psalm 118:24, “This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”
So stop pacing the aisles and counting the miles. Instead, swim more rivers, climb more mountains, kiss more babies, count more stars. Laugh more and cry less. Go barefoot oftener. Eat more ice cream. Ride more merry-go-rounds. Watch more sunsets. Life must be lived as we go along. The Station will come soon enough.
The drawing on my page today is a spiral. From the upper right to the lower left the ink dances across the page. From birth to death, our lives unfold.
The words are about the teaching on emptiness from the Heart Sutra – Śūnyatā is the Pali word.
This “self” we cherish so devotedly is nothing more than a temporary coming together of various aggregates: form, sensations, perceptions, mental activity or formations, and consciousness. It is EMPTY. Suffering ends with the recognition of its origin – grasping, clinging, aversion.
I title the drawing: The End of Suffering.
By Debra Basham, on May 30, 2022 Yesterday morning I received a text message from Joel, simply, “Not well.”
This was the first news from him since Thursday morning, May 19, when a staff member came in and swabbed his nose, testing him for Covid while we were on FaceTime. After that he did not answer text messages, or return calls. I heard nothing…. nothing at all…. nothing for t-e-n days.
I assured him when he feels up to it, we can FaceTime, and I encouraged him to, “Just rest, as best as you can.”
At 5:37 pm, he sent email: I need your help. I am on the floor in my bedroom and I can’t get up.
At 6:03 pm, he sent the same message again.
I had been watching text messages, in case he reached out for support. I did not check email as he had not sent email for over a month.
At 6:39 pm I forwarded the message to his son and daughter-in-law.
At 7:02 pm, when I called his cell phone he answered, briefly, before a female voice said he was being taken to the hospital to be checked out.
This morning I could again feel the attachment to outcome; the familiar habit energy of wanting to fix; trying to control; desperate to care for my friend. A steady stream of largely unskillful conversations (called ruminations) with his son and daughter-in-law were flowing inside my head. I knew I needed to draw and write again.
I draw a wall or fence that divides the page. On the right side is a broken heart and a face with tears. A hand holds a flower. No one or nothing is on the other side.
Here is the writing:
Dear Debra,
Can you see on the drawing that you are the only one in the picture? What are the thoughts, feelings, impulses that produce the broken heart? You don’t have to list them, just be aware.
Nothing is other than it is.
Somewhere at your center is the deeper wisdom of the universe. Perhaps “the one who knows” is just on the other side of that wall. Perhaps the way over the wall is through “don’t know mind.”
What will allow you to realize you do not know what gifts Joel is offering to his son and family?
What might be the kindness and compassion “energy” you truly wish to bring?
I can see that at some level I have the perception it would be easier if I had access to information.
“Is that so?”
Remember the four pillars of freedom:
1. I could be happy if I had access to information
2. I could be miserable if I had access to information
3. I could be happy if I had no access to information
4. I could be miserable if I had no access to information
Truly, having access or not is out of my control.
What image comforts me?
The memory of Joel with his cats and his nature (the beggar squirrel — the opossum — the fawn) at his home.
Barbara Brodsky’s asking me, “Debra, does the tree still live in your heart?” when I was so upset at the beautiful old (only) tree in our yard being cut down.
You are remembering how comforted John was to imagine that his brother’s consciousness might not be in his body suffering after he had the abdominal aortic aneurysm; perhaps Jerry was actually hanging out with Brother Jim and (son) Scotty.
I am drawn back to Iyanla Vanzant’s tapping prayer on TRUST. Jessica Ortner was told by Louise Hay to trust life. Iyanla says trust is:
T-trust
R-respect
U-understanding
S-surrender
T-timing
I listen to Karen Drucker singing “The Healing Song” and I add a stanza with TRUST.
Trust fills every cell in my body,
every cell is alive with trust.
I relax into the healing process,
I allow spirit to do what it does.
I sing for a while and then I title the drawing: It’s Not a Wall…. It’s Only a Mirror.
We had a Flicker visit our yard this morning. We often have Red-bellied or Downy woodpeckers, but not a Flicker. I look up the totem meaning of Flicker.
Flicker enters your life is when you are out of balance. You might feel you’re in a whirlwind and about to lose all sense of sanity. Flicker Spirit Animal teaches you how to use your “feet,” stand your ground, and weather the storm.
Flicker, as a Spirit Animal, encourages you to be more flexible. The Bird’s message suggests you go with the flow present in your life, and not to let your ego impede what could be something amazing. Humility goes a long way. Being modest doesn’t mean losing yourself to another person’s vision, but being willing to compromise to gain the rewards of cooperative effort.
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. ~ Wayne Dyer
Old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. (2 Corinthians 5:17)
This afternoon I gave my faded red bicycle wind feature a much needed facelift.
P.S. Sharing this response that came from Barbara Brodsky:
Thank you for today’s post, Debra. Joel is in my prayers.
On Thursday I found myself with some sadness, thinking about so many wonderful Memorial Day weekends at the lake, Thursday evening packing up to go as soon as Hal was home from work, first long weekend of the summer, so welcomed. I went out to the deck asking myself, what is there to cherish here, right now. Enough health to stroll (with walker) around my pretty yard, stopping to sit where something lovely caught my eye. The tall spruces, flowers, many birds, green meadow, deer in the orchard…Then some gardening, sitting on the deck with Hal, reading, playing a game… So clear I cannot enjoy the gifts of today if I’m caught up craving the gifts of yesterday. So it’s been a peaceful weekend. Mind does go to craving the lake, a swim, kayaking at dawn, meditating in the forest on my screened deck. I’m giving thanks for those gifts. And yes, I do miss them. But I have so many gifts right here if I will pay attention. So it has been a bittersweet weekend, but mostly sweet.
Love. Barbara
By Debra Basham, on May 29, 2022 It has been quite the week…. my blood pressure numbers had continued to be high…. lines of poems kept coming forth to carry me through, like a flower cannot be opened with a hammer….
On Friday morning I saw a Titmouse at the bird bath — the first I have seen here at this house. The totem meaning is very significant: when this bird visits you, it asks you to step away from the past and to worry less about the future. And a friend gave me the image of a young child learning to walk and how the adult will reach down and take the child’s little hand, giving confidence. Her guidance was that we cannot do this deep of integration on our own as humans, it has to come with help from above. That image of reaching up to one who can help steady us was the perfect image for me because Stacey recently sent a video of her walking with Jackson, our now 17 month old great grandson.
From my journal on Friday, May 27, 2022:
Dear Holy Spirit,
Listening to an audio with Nick Ortner on tapping to release the emotional charge from events that happened in the past.
I tapped on “Leaving the Garden” – the past life when I was pregnant for Joel. I saw myself slip out of the gate. (This is another of those points that deserves its own post.) I spent some time confidently living off the land in the forest. I was in perfect harmony with the experience.
When the man (Joel’s former wife in this lifetime) who found me in the forest took me to his home, I went willingly to teach him how to love his experience too.
Memories of him molesting me merged with the distaste of a tongue in my mouth in this lifetime, merged with the panic at weight on my body, distaste of sex and distrust of my own body.
Memories of escaping “out the gate” again, this time from his home, and returning to the forest.
He found me because he knew where I had been before. This time he took me to his home against my will.
(As I wrote this last sentence, I heard a ‘ceiling walker’ as confirmation from spirit.)
Entering a New Garden
Seeing the parallel of having cut my wrists and having bled to death, resulting in the death of the fetus as well, and my cleaning up a friend’s blood after he intentionally cut his wrist following his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. (Significant – but not sure how – my friend’s friend helped me with the clean-up.)
A friend phoned just as the audio ended. I told her about the song “If I Could Only Fly” by Blaise Foley and the title of Merle Haggard’s album by that same name, in which Haggard is clearly channeling and expressing grief. Almost felt you touching me just now / I wish I knew which way to turn and go…. “Why Merle Haggard’s If I Could Only Fly is his masterpiece (by Noah Berlatsky, Wed 6 Apr 2016, in The Guardian): …remains the last great Merle Haggard album in part because it looks ahead with such clear eyes to this moment when we know there won’t be anymore.
This journey is right at the core of impermanence.
Saturday, May 28, 2022
Dear Holy Spirit,
Listening to a talk by Ram Dass (BEHERENOWNETWORK.COM). A caller said his brother had been given a mantra when their mother had died but the brother had forgotten the tune so Ram Dass sang it for the guy. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ram-dass-here-and-now/id518366323?i=1000562049355
Listen, listen, listen to my heart song
Listen, listen, listen to my heart song
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you
Listen, listen, listen to my heart song
The next caller was a young-sounding man who asked Dass what his view was on abortion. Dass kept asking the young man for clarity, what was he really asking. Finally, the young man confessed that a woman had carried his child for a while and then she could not do it any more, and she had an abortion, and they were both in a lot of pain.
Dass said he had once been talking to a very spiritually awake being who had told him no being leaves a moment too soon or a moment too late. Dass went on to say there is a kind of deeper wisdom in the universe that if that child – if that being – was to come into life and come into form, you wouldn’t have been able to abort that child, no matter what you did. Its soul would demand manifestation. And I see it as the relationship among the three souls: you, and the woman who was carrying the fetus, and the fetus. And all of them have some kind of contract with one another – and sometimes beings just have to come in to fetal form to finish whatever they have to do and then they can go on beyond that.
What I also feel is that the more conscious you become the less likely you are to call forth a being by procreating that you are not ready to carry through and embrace and support. So, because your life changes with a pregnancy, as you become more conscious, you say, “Alright, new moment. My life has changed. Now what will I do with this new moment. So, I think what I can say to you is that I can understand your pain and all of the feelings you are feeling, but I –think that there is a deeper wisdom in the whole situation and that you should just listen to hear that and let the pain of all of this deepen your compassion so that your actions in the future are ones that – so that you can have the legacy from this being who came briefly to be with you and let that legacy be one of increasing wisdom and compassion in the way you live your life.
It would be terrible if the fetus sacrificed its life and all it left you with was guilt and incrimination. That would seem to be an unfortunate legacy so I invite you to have that and then get on with it. Okay.
Young Man: “Yeah, that would be the best way to heal.”
Dass: That’s the way I would do it.
Young Man: “Yeah, she is having a lot of trouble with it, you know.”
Dass: And all you can do is just love her and be present with her and just you keep your heart as open and be strong and keep your faith in the deeper wisdom of the universe. That’s one of the things you can do that can be very helpful to her. But just keep your heart open with hers as much as you can. But you can’t take away her suffering, she’s got to do her suffering until she’s done doing it.
Young Man: “Yeah, suffering….”
Dass: Okay?
Young Man, “Yeah, okay.”
Dass: Okay. (Dass laughs gently.)
Young Man: “Happy New Year.”
Dass. Oh, Happy New Year to you, my dear. Happy New Year. I hope it is a happy new year for her too. Will you send her my love?
Young Man: “Yeah, I’ve told her quite a bit about you.”
Dass: Good. Well, tell her that I’m thinking about her and I’m holding her deeply in my heart and I just hope she can come through all of this quickly and realize the joy and the beauty of her life and now take it and live it as richly and happily as possible. Thanks.
The colleague who did EMDR with me reached out. I heard myself admit I’m afraid I’m going to have a stroke. The voice within says, “You are not going to have a stroke, Debra. You are going to have a stroke of insight.”
She sent a release exercise, saying, “It’s a powerful process to get to the unconscious. Perhaps asking your blood pressure to tell you without words sometimes why it is so high. What is causing this pressure still ….”
Sit quietly for a bit, maybe 10 minutes, with a blank pad of paper and markers, crayons, or oil pastels in front of you. Then pick up what moves you and draw whatever comes — not artistically but from your insides. Then look at it and write whatever comes. Name the drawing.
Yesterday the damn broke and my blood pressure numbers are coming down.
Today I had the first news from Joel, a text saying, “Not well.”
Grateful, grateful, grateful.
By Debra Basham, on May 25, 2022 When I saw my primary on Monday she said I needed Zoloft or a therapist, maybe both. I had been overwhelmed with the stress of everything John has been going through, complicated mightily by the situation with Joel. For those new to YBR, Joel has been my co-author for over twenty years. He has developed dementia, and after being hospitalized in March for a medical issue, deemed unable to return to his home. He is now in a memory care facility near his son in Tennessee. On Wednesday his voice sounded raspy, and on Thursday morning a staff member swabbed his nose while we were on FaceTime with another friend. He has not answered text or a FaceTime call since.
It is said one can handle work stress or home stress but not both at the same time.
The story is more complex than appropriate to share in a single blog (would likely make a best-selling book), but what is important for this post is to recognize there is a distinction between pain and suffering.
I have a lot of pain about Joel’s son not answering my email asking about his dad. It is almost incomprehensible the seeming lack of compassion the son has for those of us who have been with his dad. Several of us have been supporting him, caring for him, assisting him in meeting his stated desire to live out his life in his own home. Suffering comes when I go into resistance and blame about the choices the son is making. Suffering rides in on the shame that I participated in Joel’s current conditions by getting the paperwork in place that gave the son the legal right to make decisions for his dad. Shame also arises when I face how little compassion there has been for how difficult it is to supervise someone’s care from out of state.
Yesterday’s news of yet another school shooting. Incomprehensible. At least 19 children and two teachers were killed yesterday when a gunman opened fire in a Texas elementary school. Incomprehensible. Many on social media speak of the heart-wrenching pain of this horrendous violence to innocent children. I was touched profoundly by one sharing that added wisdom to the mix.
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news my mother would say to me, “LOOK FOR THE HELPERS. YOU WILL ALWAYS FIND PEOPLE WHO ARE HELPING.” To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers, so many caring people in the world. ~ Mr. Rogers
Yesterday I had an EMDR session with a very special colleague. I am grateful she was available to assist my finding some equanimity. I have been suffering. There was A LOT OF pain released with the emotion. As follow up to our time together, she suggested I write a letter to the former me.
May 24, 2022
Dear Former Me,
I knew you would appreciate the special paper. You were such a loving creature and your heart wanted to do the right thing. You could not see all that was involved. It was not just about that time and place. It was as much about this time and place. That now and this now are one and the same, just as “you” and “I” are one and the same.
You have done everything within your power. This is true for me, too. Fortunately for both of us, there is a higher power.
We have neither had a childhood. It is time for us to have that chance. Children deserve to wake up in the morning and feel excited for their day. They do not thrive in the fields of constant vigilance.
Do you remember the joy you felt in the gardens? You remembered it at the aviary at the zoo in Battle Creek. Your entire being was bliss. That is what you remember when I listen to the mockingbirds in Florida. We don’t have birds singing to us every moment but we have an experience of “ALL IS WELL” in our sweet bodies.
I want you to do something for us. I want you to let go of your part. Let go of the feeling responsible for Joel. Let go of doing something wrong that hurt him.
I’ll let go of my part, too.
While neither of us carries all of the emotions, we both have carried the imprint – and the imprint has created a distortion.
Can you see how the words on the page are now gradually going uphill? Things are looking up for us. Joel lives. I live. You live on, too. All endings are really new beginnings. May is going to be memorable for us. Our new beginning.
I love you. Thank you. Please forgive me. I forgive you.
By Debra Basham, on May 19, 2022 Lately, almost EVERYTHING I read or see or hear or feel reminds me of The Drama Triangle Revisited, one of the more infamous SCS/NLP offerings.
A key awareness of Healing with Language is built on the Drama Triangle, developed by Steve Karpman. The main roles of the Drama Triangle—Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer—are well-known, but not everyone is familiar with either the Cognitive Triangle or the Transrational Pyramid.
For more information, see “The Drama Triangle Revisited” (a free download in PDF format).
It will help you identify the various roles and allow you and your friends, family, and clients to move away from the drama of life and gain a sense of awareness, clarity, and harmony available from the Transrational Pyramid (Healing with Language, 2008, Bowman and Basham).
For example, on Sunday, the blessing of Darshan with The Mother was clearly related to John’s medical process: You can hold your own aspirations and choices with love and offer them out for him to receive, but the highest aspiration always needs to be for that which is for the highest good for him and for yourself. Because you are straining yourself trying to carry him. And you cannot carry him. I will not help you carry him, but I will help you hold a field of love around him, around each other.
At Tuesday’s Evening with Aaron, we were encouraged to move beyond any old fix-it habit energies. While Aaron did not use the term Drama Triangle, the message was clear: Fix-it energy helps to hold in place those two roles of victim and victimizer. What if you step out of that idea, holding space for both of them, seeing how they’re constantly pushing at each other. You can instead say, “I will not play with this whole cycle anymore. I step back out of it. You are responsible for finding the power in yourself to cease being the victim or victimizing others. And I will support your doing that in wholesome ways.”
That is precisely what The Mother had told me about John! “I will not help you carry him….”
Aaron went on to explain that the role of the fixer assumes there is something broken, and if something is broken, then something needs to be fixed. It is a never-ending cycle — until you stop being victimized by it. And you can. ONLY you can. Only YOU can. Only again and again.
I have been invited as guest pastor at St. John United Church of Christ on June 19, which is Father’s Day. The theme of our time together will be observing your masculine teacher (for most of us our father). I am excited about the music for the day: Father’s Eyes by Amy Grant, and Father I Adore You, and Our Father (The Lord’s Prayer). I was looking for a wonderful piece of work from The Celestine Prophecy: An Experiential Guidebook on a flash drive holding the remnants of my previous PC that crossed the rainbow bridge.
While searching for that, I came upon some old notes from a self-retreat at Still Waters. The notes were from a book by SARK. Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, check out her amazing work. I am sorry that I do not know what book this saying is from, but I know the page number is 217.
I am willing to live by this saying, “I don’t know why this has happened, but since it has, I must have helped cause it.” ~ SARK
SARK made an important distinction: this is different from belief that an experience is happening to me because I need to develop such and such a characteristic. This is awareness we are co-creators.
John and I are certainly experiencing awareness through all of this. A dear friend wrote today, “I continue to admire your wisdom, insights, courage and perseverance as I read your blog posts. It sounds like a long difficult passage, but with many blessings along the way.”
I responded,”Like birth! And incarnation!!!!”
While Joel P. Bowman and I were developing the body of materials we called SCS/NLP, he was triggered by a reference I made to a shared office space as”my office.” My comment, or perhaps more clearly his response to my comment, set of a chain-reaction and weeks of stress. Working together for over twenty years, we came to say we had fights so fierce we named them. This one was named: my office.
During the “my office” drama, John and I were in the car on our way to Grand Rapids to have dinner with a friend. I was again and again hashing over the event when John asked simply, “What are you and Joel working on right now?”
“The Drama Triangle,” I responded before continuing, “Why do you ask?”
“Because you are always living the material,” was John’s wise reply.
Joel and I recognized the third “triangle” in the human psyche is actually not a triangle at all. It is a pyramid. The Transrational Pyramid is centered in the heart chakra, and it is transrational in the sense we are able to be with our experiences beyond our personality. We live in a meta state throughout which Awareness is aware of the conditions or context; aware of our personal issues, and aware of the thoughts and feelings of the others affected.
Aaron is fond of saying there is nothing needing to be fixed. From transrational awareness, we simply bring loving attention to what ever needs it. Transrational Awareness combines with Clarity and Peace to produce a sense of Harmony within self, with the other, and with the universe as a whole.
Ah…. Transrational awareness. One of the many blessings along the way of this long difficult passage called life….
By Debra Basham, on May 10, 2022 Those who are awake live in a constant state of amazement. ~ Jack Kornfield
This day’s dawn comes on the heels of a dark night. Actually, every day’s dawn does.
Last evening we took John to my primary. She agreed with the medicine list. She encouraged patience and confidence in the specialists he will be working with, along with his primary. I was almost in a heap when we left. I was in search of relief.
Aaron’s thought for today from Deep Spring Center for Meditation expresses it this way: Each of you is walking right now through dark valleys, unable to see what the future will hold. But your heart controls that future. Hold that dream of love, of an earth in which all beings cherish every other sentient being and the earth itself, knowing we are one and we love. We love, and we are love.
Awareness sees so many gifts in all of this, not the least of which is how John is navigating the perfect catalyst for my overcoming habit energy of fear around medical stuff. It is not easy, but it is rich with opportunity.
The Empty Circle Zen Group’s Mindful Moment for today refers to the raw truth — Everyone we cherish will, someday, get sick and die. If we don’t practice the meditation on emptiness, when those things happen, we will be overwhelmed. Concentration on emptiness is a way of staying in touch with life as it is, but it has to be practiced and not just talked about as connectedness.
For example, while Stacey and I were working on the jigsaw puzzle a couple of days ago, waves of emotion would wash over me. I would swallow the threatening tears and observe the thought. After several close encounters, clear seeing allowed me to notice the delusion. Once stable with it, I was able to speak to Stacey, starting with the caveat I did not even believe it. I said, “You have always been closer to your dad more than to me. If one of us had to get sick and die, I wish it could have been me so you would still have your dad.”
As Stacey’s initial loving heart instantly began assuring me that isn’t true, I interjected immediately, “I am sharing this with you because I absolutely agree it is not true.”
Waking reality does not exist in as concrete a manner as people might think.
Following my foray into the darkness last evening, on this day’s dawn Stacey sent me some wonderful words of wisdom:
If you don’t feel your best today, allow yourself that space. This is hard. You don’t have to process this all at once.
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