By Debra Basham, on May 20, 2021 Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
A long way from home, a long way from home.
Odetta knew what LIFE can feel like.
Just yesterday — one day of LIFE holding sooooo much feeling.
A dear friend, navigating tenuous steps speaking her feelings toward her husband (related to the complications of decisions that could birth a new beginning):”This father does not want the child,” she says, speaking metaphorically, of course.
Another dear friend welcoming a companion as she was filled with trepidation reading online the results of a recent PET scan (positron emission tomography).
Sad news from our daughter that our grand-kitty, Thor, crossed the rainbow bridge. Thor, one of THOSE beings. Love oozed from Thor’s pores. Thor massaged love into your most tender spots, and his purr moved mountains of misunderstandings.
Utterances from the lips of a wife, candidly wondering aloud if they would both be better off if her husband stayed in long-term care.
“We are called beyond and empowered by the silver thread of hope that hangs by a thread below,” this expression of LIFE written by my friend in the midst of it all drapes over the feelings of the day like low-hanging clouds.
Don’t do things for personal benefit. And don’t do things to avoid personal damage. Do things to feel personal authenticity. Then your life will make sense, no matter what is going on around you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch
Today is the anniversary of my mom’s “rebirth” day on May 20, 2003.
May 20 is also the rebirth day of the woman who owned and lived in this tiny home for 33 years before we purchased it in 2017. Ursel had actually purchased the home on May 20 – 33 years prior.
According to the teachings of the Buddha, emotions are a fundamental part of who you are — an expression of our basic intelligence and creative energy. “When you can connect with the essence of your emotions, you can respond without preconceptions and judgments.”
Experiences are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
We tend to grasp after the pleasant feelings, try to avoid unpleasant feelings, and miss the neutral feelings much of the time.
Thought for Today
Breathing in, I am aware of you, of your suffering. Breathing out, I hold space for your suffering. Breathing in, I am aware of my suffering. Breathing out, I hold space for my suffering. Your suffering and my suffering, the same.
~ Aaron
By Debra Basham, on May 17, 2021 If it happens, it needs to occur.
~ Neale Donald Walsch
Jerry Ashmore, senior dharma teacher at Empty Circle Zen center in Hobart, Indiana, said simply, “If we don’t clear our stuff how can we help others?”
But how do we know what our stuff is? We can pay attention to the tendency we have to “perseverate” — meaning when we repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased.
We have an interaction that triggers something. Thoughts pop into mind over and over and over again. For example, guilt or resentment might arise because we are looking at past actions not recognizing the experience as a moment of unconsciousness. (We don’t need to personalize it.)
Forgiveness is when we bring presence (consciousness) to the thought as it pops into our mind yet again. We can notice that something has not yet been undone.
This is not a new idea. Epictetus, a Greek Philosopher who was born in 50 AD and died in 135 AD, said: “Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events whichever way they happen: This is the path to peace.”
Suffering is simply arguing with the way things are. Sokukoji Buddhist Monastery broadcast a dharma talk with a very interesting phrase: Path of Zen starts at the mountain top and goes up.
Grandson, Adam, while he was in Europe.
Jerry Ashmore went on to say that all practice starts by releasing tension in the body. He said, “We can be OK. Don’t discount OKness… the more you experience things as they are rather than how you want them to be, you are on your path.”
Yesterday, The Mother (channeled by Barbara Brodsky) spoke this Darshan (blessing) to me:
Dear Friend, you are making a difference. Let go of the ten thousand (this is a reference to the person tossing stranded starfish back into the ocean) and stay focused on whatever is present in front of you and let your heart sing with joy for the difference you have been able to make in that presence.
Will you try to do that? And if the mind goes to the ten thousand, just, “Shhhh…. Stop.”
Contracting.
Fear.
Ahhh…
Right there with fear is the heart of love. And the heart of love must be allowed to be free to continue making the difference.
Today, I took a friend for cataract surgery and received such a lovely confirmation in her thank you card:
The opening quotation by Neale Donald Walsch concludes with this comment about path: “Whatever experiences the universe brings your feet are a part of your path, inviting you to consciously engage in a process of becoming the highest version of you.”
By Debra Basham, on May 13, 2021 The definition of complaining is the expression of dissatisfaction or annoyance about something.
A popular phrase is to speak of an undesired state (for example, complaining) as your eating rat poison expecting the rat to die. It is not always obvious, but our emotional state has myriad influences on US.
Often, John and I remind one another of the valuable awareness to not waste our creative energy complaining about what is. Any moron can do that.
Real wisdom arises as you devote your creative energy to what else is.
This morning, a short poem came through which articulates this so well:
What Else Is
Stewing or fuming
about what is
such a waste
of energy
Open heart
open mind
open up to
what else is
Debra Basham 05-13-2021
Sometimes it is helpful to be willing to see in what ways what is might be protecting you from what else is. Feeling anger might protect you from feeling powerlessness. Feeling impatience might protect you from feeling worry. Feeling boredom might protect you from feeling discouragement. A handy way to explore all of this is to be aware of an emotional guidance scale, such as the one described by Abraham-Hicks:
1. Joy/Appreciation/Empowerment/Freedom/Love
2. Passion
3. Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
4. Positive Expectation/Belief
5. Optimism
6. Hopefulness
7. Contentment
8. Boredom
9. Pessimism
10. Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
11. Overwhelment (feeling overwhelmed)
12. Disappointment
13. Doubt
14. Worry
15. Blame
16. Discouragement
17. Anger
18. Revenge
19. Hatred/Rage
20. Jealousy
21. Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
22. Fear/Grief/Desperation/Despair/Powerlessness
Thought for Today
Sometimes you repeatedly find yourself faced with an unpleasant situation, until the mind begins to obsess with it. You may begin to ask the question, why am I so attracted to this obsession? It’s not a conceptual question. One begins then to investigate the nature of obsession itself.
Different of you have different patterns of obsession. For example, some go into old stories, casting blame on others or on yourself. Others may look for a way to solve it, planning. Others of you may just feel anger and helplessness and move into a state of depression.
You each have your own patterns. This is part of understanding the nature of obsession, to understand the habitual patterning with obsession. When mind becomes obsessive, what do you gain?
~ Aaron
Aaron, as channeled by Barbara Brodsky, refers to emotions as “aggregates.” Aggregates are non-self. Aggregates are impermanent. Aggregates arise because of the senses, triggered by smell, touch, taste, sight and hearing.
Aggregates rise up out from the sense experience and subside when the sense experience of our life changes. We feel worry when a person we care about is experiencing a health challenge. But worry (each emotion) is an aggregate, so YOU are not that worry.
In fact, the one who is aware of worry is not worried. That one is aware.
This is not about trying to not worry. In fact, as our friend, Yoda, says, “Do or Do Not. There is No Try.”
Hmmmmm, if there is just do or do not that makes me really appreciate what else is….
By Debra Basham, on May 10, 2021 Forgiveness is the fragrance
that the violet sheds
on the heel that has crushed it.
~ Mark Twain
Barbara Brodsky and Aaron say you learn a lot by noticing what you are still getting caught by:
Remember that you are not separate, that whatever you see is simply yourself reflecting back to you. When you see the beauty in another, you are seeing the beauty and radiance in the self. When you see the shadow side of another, you are seeing the shadow in yourself. If you relate to it as separate, it’s easy to move into a contracted place that wants to fix or blame. Cease to see it as separate and simply remember, ‘The negativity I am experiencing here is simply the mirror of that negativity in myself that I have not fully attended to. In this moment, can I smile and hold this fear and negativity within the self with love?’
“Conditions” give rise to negativity. Negativity does not just jump on you out of the shrubs….
Over the winter “conditions” of negativity had been painfully present with a Michigan friend.
As John and I were out walking Friday morning, I said I would really like to understand what that was all about for me.
The “conditions” would be that my friend and I would have an agreed upon time to do something (during covid, this was admittedly virtually either on Zoom or Facetime or the phone) and she would cancel last minute.
This pattern quickly became a relational habit. My friend had started dating a man.
I would get up and be ready for our 9:00 a.m. agreed upon time and then open a text at 8:45 saying, “He was over until after midnight. I am going to crawl back into bed to get some more sleep.”
I told her it was not working for me. I needed to not make plans she could not keep. She admitted anything we planned would be canceled if something came up with him.
So a very l-o-n-g silence between us ensued. Occasionally over the next few months one or the other of us would initiate a brief text message exchange, but that was it.
John and I had been home from Florida for a month when I sent a text message offering to return a book she had loaned me. “I will drop the book off tomorrow on our way to dinner with my sister and brother-in-law,” I offered.
She replied, “Sounds good! I’ll be home.”
We are both fully vaccinated.
I curled my hair. It is quite long now.
I used mouthwash and freshened my lipstick.
I felt nervous.
I sent a text message letting her know we were leaving our house. I did not receive a reply, and as we turned into her neighborhood, I was pretty sure I saw her in a vehicle with a man!
“I just saw her in that vehicle,” I told John. “Go ahead, go by her house. I can leave the book in the door.”
I slipped the book into a Ziplock bag, left it behind the storm at her front door, and got back into the van. That familiar heavy-hearted feeling… Those darn “conditions” were present again.
I sent a text message saying I had seen them heading out as we were coming in and I had left the book in the door.
“We were at his son’s house for dinner. I found the book! Thank you!”
The following morning I could see clearly how I had treated John this way for years while I was involved with SCS. The adventure and the fun of that life was obvious to anyone who looked. I was always going off somewhere doing something that excited me and excluded him. I saw how I had been taking our relationship for granted.
Interestingly, this is the exact story line of the book I was returning!
“As comforting as a mug of chamomile tea on a rainy Sunday.”
(New York Times Book Review)
When John woke up Sunday morning I shared all of this with him and asked his forgiveness and told him how grateful I am that he remained faithful and kept his heart open… I never intended to hurt him. He was not even in my radar.
Aha! That is exactly what I had been feeling: I was not even in her radar.
I don’t think she has any idea how this felt.
I certainly did not.
I do now.
And I am so grateful for the way life (karma) remains sticky until it brings us full circle.
By Debra Basham, on May 2, 2021
This world deserves a kiss on both cheeks
on the way out of the door
and you have to let people see you do it.
Failure to do so becomes —
you are just another advocate
but not much of a practitioner.
~ Stephen Jenkinson
Since arriving home in Michigan one month ago, the yet-unanswered questions include: am I going to reopen my practice and if (or when) I will see a friend who went from a daily contact to essentially a lack of contact over this past winter.
Of course, there is a much deeper structure than the surface of these (and all) questions.
It has taken me days to be able to listen to the entire conversation with Terry Patten and Stephen Jenkinson — an episode titled: “Overwhelming Beauty — and Being OK, Dying.”
On his 70th birthday, Terry was informed that there is a probably metastatic cancer in his lungs.
The talk is available on the State of Emergence podcast now.
Shortly after listening, a dear friend who is losing her hair in the current process of cancer treatment included this in her recent post about her hair loss: I made a common error…..I didn’t let my painful feelings have any air time. I shifted so quickly that there was no recognition that this particular development has impact. I’m aware where it ranks in the big picture ….. but it’s not meaningless.
I notice where the questions about my practice or the change in my relationship ranks in the big picture…. but they are not meaningless.
I appreciate my willingness to stay with the listening and to feel the painful feelings that were evoked by this podcast. To stay with the listening was not easy. The subject matter is not light. It was not pleasurable.
But it is meaningful and as I stay with the listening, I notice a bit more about what I found intolerable with my friend over this past year.
As I stay with the listening, Stephen’s words suddenly stimulate a whiff of clarity that sweeps into my being:
She is still selling comfort as the place to get to….
If you’re lucky, there are a few people who tend to your silence without asking you to break it….
I suspect it’s like war, in the following way. You come back from war, and there’s nothing to say for one of two reasons. Either the language has not yet caught up with the realities of war and so explicitly there is nothing to say that doesn’t digress. Or, there is nothing to say to anyone because they weren’t there and there’s no way to bring them closer to it, and if they were there, you’re not talking about it anyway….
The mother of gratitude is grief. It doesn’t come from being spared….
If you don’t die of this now, you will die of that then….
Terry’s stark honesty and his transparency of his not knowing pulls me back so I can stay with the listening:
We all have the terminal diagnosis. We don’t know the time or the contours….
The beauty of this life — the thing I don’t want to kiss goodbye — has made itself especially vivid and the fact that I am totally not in control makes everything poignant, tender, full of vibrancy….
You can’t kiss that goodbye except with tears and they’re not “unhappy.” They’re deeply felt, they are hardly knowable….
Jenkinson is the author of Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life – (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002).
By Debra Basham, on April 27, 2021 I woke up this morning thinking about a beautiful woman, who happens to be the daughter of a dear friend of mine. A remarkable feat of love — her going this past weekend to visit her biological father on his deathbed to assure him of forgiveness for his abuse.
That same woman is undergoing surgery today.
This is how I came to ponder the life cycle of a butterfly.
Amazing words leapt off the page as I read under the heading: Do butterflies remember being caterpillars?
The study showed that memory, and therefore the nervous system, stays during the complex transformation from the caterpillar to the adult moth.
So while a moth or butterfly may not remember being a caterpillar, it can remember experiences it learned as a caterpillar
This woman’s life cycle as a daughter is no less remarkable. While her nervous system has stayed during the complex transformation — so she remembers the experiences she learned — she is definitely no longer the victim of abuse.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
Just like the butterfly, we can remember our experiences and benefit from the learning even as we are being transformed. My meditation teacher speaks a lot about our collective transformation (from negative polarity to positive polarity) and assures us we are moving to a stage of consciousness where we not only learn from our own experience, but we are truly transformed by the collective learning.
Becoming a Teacher to Others
When you begin to work with other people as a teacher, that is a very dangerous point. Unless you are willing to learn from students—unless you regard yourself as a student and the students as your teacher—you cease to be a true teacher. You only impart your experience of what you’ve been taught, a package deal. And having done that, there’s no more to say—unless you repeat yourself again and again.
Excerpted from: “The Bardo of Meditation” in Transcending Madness: The Experience of the Six Bardos, by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (page 63)
Last evening, her mother and I were talking about how hard it is for all those facing surgeries during the pandemic. I had been to my primary care physician for the first time since the pandemic earlier in the day. EVERYTHING is so much harder.
People are dropped off at the door.
Family has to wait elsewhere.
When notified, they pick up the patient.
I was remembering ALL of the support I received when I had the abdominal mass removed in November, 2012. A friend came with John and me. She stayed with him until the mother of this remarkable woman arrived to relieve them. I had a revolving door of caregivers.
It was not just easier on me. Every act of support and care provided to me by this “care team” was support for those employed to care for me.
My heart was filled to overflowing as I watched the extra effort everyone at the doctor’s office had to take to make sure we are all safe. My doctor’s husband is an ER doc. She expressed her hope that humanity will pull together so we will all be able to enjoy communal life again. She said, “I am so looking forward to being able to hug you when I walk you out.”
This admitted “white-coat syndrome” sufferer had a blood pressure reading of 122/70 in that atmosphere of love. That, too, is no easy feat.
Today, I bow to each beautiful specimen of transformation.
By Debra Basham, on April 22, 2021 “Wisdom tells me I am nothing.
Love tells me I am everything.
And between the two my life flows.”
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
I am still in a lot of process, triggered again and again by the teachings and the practice on the 8-day Emerald Ilse retreat, a process fueled by an intention to wake up to wisdom. The process, and the practice, is not done for a personal self, it is housed in the concept that there is no personal “I” and all is done in service to all beings. The goal is literally to wake up the collective consciousness called humanity.
My poetry writers group (Southern Circle) has been such a staggering catalyst for practice. After a strong triggering while I was still in Florida, (See: 3 Faces of Happiness) I have not been in attendance due to preparing to return home, traveling home, arriving and settling in, and then attending the retreat. Last evening when a text came through asking who was able to attend Southern Circle Poetry Group this morning, I chose not to respond.
This morning I did more process — inner asking about whether or not I am to attend.
You know there is no running away from anything.
Wherever you go, there you are….
“What is true about my attending Southern Circle?” II – The Inner Voice
There are times in our lives when too many voices seem to be pulling us in this way and that. Our very confusion in such situations is a reminder to seek silence and centering within. Only then are we able to hear our truth.
“What is true about my not attending Southern Circle?” King of Water – Healing
Be aware of your wound. Don’t help it to grow, let it be healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the roots. The less the head, the more the wound will heal; with no head there is no wound. Live a headless life.
As I was preparing to draw the two cards from the Osho Zen Tarot deck, I heard that I was also to draw one single card from the Angelic Messenger deck. This message would be true regardless of attending or not.
A Rejuvenation Card, number 35 “Change” was the card was from Angelic Messenger Cards: A Divination System for Self-Discovery.
Whatever comes to you can be a significant opportunity for spiritual growth, whether it was intended as that or not. Your larger life goal is to grow in grace and to find union with the divine Presence through love.
After reading all three of these cards, I used the “library angel” process of just randomly opening a book and seeing what guidance or message is being divinely sent to you. The Daily Word randomly opened to May 21 (one month from today). FYI- I do not have the March/April edition because those do not get forwarded while we are in Florida.
Sometimes I may become so immersed in dispiriting practices and behaviors that I become blind to the blessings and beauty in front of me. When I engage the world with love instead of fear, I more easily behold the Christ within myself and all others.
At the retreat, we received Darshan with “The Mother” (See: Remembering Wholeness/Darshan With the Mother). Each individual receives a message of divine wisdom. The message that came for me was an expansion of the previous message to a dear friend, Dorothyann.
Dorothyann:
So much light and love pouring out of your radiant heart. You are getting much better at not getting caught in the story of “not good enough.” It still comes, of course it still comes.
This week when that story arises, would you just bow to it and say, “I do not accept that, no thank you. Shhhhh….”
Don’t try to drown it out, just, “No thank you.”
Right here along with the one who still has some belief about not good enough, where is the radiant one? Can you touch that radiant, open-hearted aspect of yourself — and know this is the true self.
I love you and I am helping you.
Debra:
I love you. Here I am going to have an opportunity to spare a few words because you heard what I said to Dorothyann.
“Shhhhh…. Thank you, Teacher, but no thank you. I am not taking that into me.”
Remember who you are. Remember your light and loving heart. That’s all you need to know.
I love you and I am helping you.
By Debra Basham, on April 13, 2021 With all that takes place in our lives,
it can sometimes be easy to overlook the fact that
we’re part of something greater than ourselves —
a collective consciousness, the Universe, a greater cause.
~ Daily Om
The March 2021 skies over Pine Island, near Ft. Myers, in Southwest Florida (winter home of this snowbird) demonstrate a very important fact: light is present within darkness.
During the past few weeks of “the season,” instead of the usual blue skies, the horizon was often dotted with dark, billowy, ominous-looking bumps of clouds with amazing streams of light simultaneously peeking out. Some clear, some bright, some pinkish-orange enough to resemble remnants of a dwindling campfire…. Those glowing embers that you only see late, late—late enough that you think you should give up and go to bed. Despite the chill, you are drawn to sit where you are as a witness to what is dying.
For the past three years I have been in a study group looking at the spiritual phenomena of light within the darkness.
I am attending and helping Zoom host a meditation retreat this week.
As I was doing walking meditation early, I saw a black stone on the sidewalk. I noticed it but did not pick it up. Continuing, about half a block up, also on the sidewalk, I found a white stone. Neither of these were located with anything similar nearby. Seeing the white stone, I looped back and also picked up the black one. Light in the darkness.
((Confession, this is an article scheduled for publication in May. But the time for me to share it with you is NOW.))
Every religion, Western and Eastern philosophy, and each individual artistic world view provides commentary on this subject of light in the darkness.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5
Look at how a single candle can both defy and define the darkness. Anne Frank
I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars. Og Mandino
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. Plato
Don’t fight darkness – bring the light, and darkness will disappear. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
In an audio presentation, Living and Dying, Ram Dass says about his work with people as they were dying: I watch some people who are able to open to the new stage and say, “Ah, so….” and those people don’t suffer. And then I watch somebody who looks at the shoes in the closet that they’ll never wear again and sits around feeling sorry because they can’t wear the shoes anymore. They’re holding onto the model of who they were a moment ago. A moment ago, they were somebody wearing those shoes, and now they are not wearing those shoes.
I have been wondering about a similar phenomenon related to the pandemic. It is undeniable that the coronavirus has brough considerable darkness. (Another of our friends passed the day I was writing this article, in Florida, and then a 42-year-old relative, father-of-five, in Michigan.)
Have you also been able to see the light this global pandemic has brought to you over this last year?
My online search of “benefits of the pandemic” produced a lot of evidence of light within the darkness. Reduction of the carbon foot print made every list I read. Improved health and cost-savings from less eating out and more home-cooked meals was another. Parents spending more time with children; partners having more time together; time for reflection and opportunity to reevaluate your life. Within each of these is both light and darkness.
It has been said about picking up a stick: you pick up both ends.
What Buddhism calls wisdom mind is the recognition that only light has ultimate reality. Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, says you do not go into a room and look for a “dark” switch. The switch you are searching for is the “light” switch. Of course, with that switch you are either turning the light on or off….
Ram Dass wrote of a friend’s passing.
“Well, you know what I know. Probably I won’t see you again in this body, so, stay conscious.” And I left.
Her husband called me the next morning at 7:30, and said she died during the night.
And he said her dying was just like ink being poured into water. It was just expanding outward. He said, “I came away from her death with one of the deepest experiences of peace I’d ever had in my life.”
We are a collective witness to the dark and the light, to what is being born and what is dying.
Some individuals have hated working from home. Some students have been miserable with online schooling. Some of us have grown calmer, others catastrophically chaotic. Attitudes reflect the moment-by-moment position of the light switch.
Less and less frequently do I hear people yearning for things to get back to normal, but often people express specifics of what they are eager to resume. I made up a set of rules for “distant dominoes” with good friends that live down the street from us in Michigan and also winter on the same street in Florida.
While in Florida, the four of us drove across the state to receive our first (and second) vaccines. We expressed excitement to once again safely play dominoes by the original Basham house rules, sitting around a table touching the tiles. We agreed we will all likely needed a refresher….
This snowbird gleefully anticipated being able to meet our great-grandson, Jackson (born December 28), on our trek north. I could almost smell his baby breath. Almost feel the weight of him. Almost hear his coo….
*Note – It was exquisite!
Awareness of the collective “benefit” of our collective glee, relief, appreciation, and joy almost takes my breath away….
Just as those clouds on the Florida horizon revealed the truth of light within the darkness, we are a collective witness to the dying of what was and the collective welcoming of what is.
We have no need to fret over an unworn pair of shoes.
We can join together and blissfully walk barefoot hand-in-hand on the beach….
By Debra Basham, on March 30, 2021
You CAN attend to these things — to the blizzard, to the hurricane, to the forest fire, to the automobile accident, to the volcanic eruption, to the political hate-throwing — with an open heart. You can respond to these with a consciousness that refuses to be drawn in with fear, but instead comes forth to attend. It’s very helpful to remember, as it’s often said: ‘This too shall pass.’ But you cannot hide yourself and say, ‘Well, it will pass, so I don’t have to pay any attention to it.’ It will pass, and it still must be attended to. ~ Aaron
Sweeping under beds, cleaning beneath cushions, emptying the jar with a half-teaspoon of salsa…. I am mindfully paying attention to pre-packing and cleaning in preparation for our heading home. Always mixed feelings about leaving Florida, but before the pandemic these snowbirds’ twinges of leave-taking were tempered by the lovingly longing to be with family in Tennessee and visiting with friends over breakfast or lunch in Indy.
The Beatles long ago named a song (In My Life) after the title of this blog post. Here is the opening:
There are places I’ll remember
All my life though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
April, 2020, John and I drove straight through from Florida to Michigan, and did not even stop in Tennessee.
November, 2021, we stopped for one overnight but stayed in a hotel. Our brief time together was somewhat stressful. Only the cats seemed unaware of the unspoken perspectives that separated us more than the safe-distancing and masks.
John and I are now 9-days post our second vaccine, and we will be just under the recommended two-week wait time when we get to Smyrna on Saturday.
We are so excited that when we get home on Monday, we will be able to come together safely with others we love who are also fully vaccinated. Look out Janis and Larry. It is going to be one heck of a hug-fest!
Yesterday morning as I placed puzzle pieces and sipped tea, a “stream-of-consciousness” came through. I shared it with John, and with Linda B/G, who said, “Maybe it is important to share this now. Last year, lots of people were speaking up about this. Not so much right now, but it needs to be said.”
As she spoke, my iPhone popped in with a “notification” of the federal government having to consider a mask mandate. People are ignoring the guidelines, refusing to avoid non-essential travel. Continuing to gather in large numbers without safe-distancing or masks, and the numbers of covid-19 cases sadly are increasing again.
This is what came through:
Open letter to my friends, family, neighbors, and total strangers who have chosen not to mask, safe-distance and/or be vaccinated to help curtain the spread of this coronavirus.
I am a 71 year old woman enjoying an amazing quality of life given how I began. My mother had syphilis when I was in utero. She spent her entire pregnancy with me fearful of any damage this sexually transmitted disease might do to me, a result of my father’s indiscretion.
When I was five years old, I was hospitalized and treated for polio. Never having spent one night away from my mother previously, I was placed in the pediatric unit at the hospital in isolation. When my mom would come, she was on the other side of the glass wall. At the ripe old age of 71 years, I can still feel my spindly legs holding me up as my urchin thin arms reached toward her devastated face.
A serious auto accident at age 12, resulted in months on crutches, and I still wear the scars from the stitches necessary to reattach the flesh to my forehead.
At age 62, a 22 cm ovarian mass was removed, along with all of my feminine parts. I spent some time in the cardiac intensive care unit, what I call the high rent district, a result of aFib, most serious of the post-surgical complications.
My blood pressure can spike and my pulse will routinely be well over 100 at just a routine doctor visit.
Am I afraid of dying? I don’t think so. Do I have PTSD around medical processes? Obviously…
I have spent the past 12 months doing everything I can to avoid “getting or giving” this novel virus that has killed so many, left many others with life-limiting complications, and wreaked havoc with our global economy, but my investment in living a long and healthy life didn’t begin in 2020.
I have spent 71 years, 72 if you count the time I was in my mothers womb, choosing life.
This may be the first time in my life I’ve ever asked you to help take care of me. I know the masks are hot. I know the bands pull on my ears. I know voices are muffled, and deaf people can’t read lips.
I know we can’t see one another smile.
But this morning I got to see the moon and the sun in the sky together. I got to wake up with my husband of 55 years lying in bed next to me snoring.
I know I won’t stay in this body forever, but I really don’t want someone’s political view or stubborn independent streak, or aversion to temporary discomfort to end my life unnecessarily. And I don’t want to end someone else’s life unnecessarily.
Is it my destiny to have you give me a deadly virus? Perhaps…
Or perhaps it’s my destiny to ask you not to….
All these places have their moments
With lovers and friends I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life I’ve loved them all
Some are dead from this virus…. including my dear friend, Bonnie, the first casualty in my life. And Fred, the second. Patty’s mom. Four high-school classmates (all in one week in December). And Jackson’s Paw Paw…
Perhaps it was their destiny to die of something preventable.
Some are living….
In my life I’ve loved them all.
By Debra Basham, on March 27, 2021 “No matter how someone is acting,
they want to be happy.”
~ Lion’s Roar
Jerry Ashmore, senior teacher at Empty Circle Zen group shared this opening quote in his dharma talk this morning. As an aside, if you are looking for a wonderful Zen sitting with teachings, this group meets on Zoom twice per week: Tuesday evening and Saturday morning. I have really been grateful for this addition to my practice.
Following Jerry’s talk, my search for “happiness quotes” showed 734,000,000 hits.
This is a very important reminder. More meaningful in my personal experience this week that most.
I sent a text message to my poetry writing group. “I am going to go for a bike ride instead of writing this morning. I need some grounding.” I shared some of the details (not pretty) about what was going on, and assured them I would log on in time for the update of an important project one of the women is currently working on. Her project is huge, and we all qualify as midwives….
Lots of people find balance by exercising. Many find their center when they can get out in nature. For me, biking is a blessed bonus of both….
Logging on after my ride, I was surprised to see one of the women in the group on line that had sent word earlier saying that she would not be there.
“Deb, tell us how you are, and how things are with your _____ _____.” (She named the stressful situation. One of the other women in the group told me later that she had filled this woman in since she had not been expected to attend and, therefore, had not been included in my earlier text message.)
As I began sharing, the woman who had asked me to share interrupted, “Deb, just the short version. We know you are grieving.”
Now, admittedly, I have had some triggers with this group before.
Whereever I go, there I am.
“There is no short version,” I responded, and muted my mic.
Humans can’t touch unconditional love sufficiently to extend it fully to all all of the time.
Jerry said this morning, “That is where getting to non-hate is the wisdom practice.”
I did more than get to non-hate. I have been so focused on something else that I offered a pretense to presence. As I forgave myself, I was able to not take her action as a personal attack.
I was also able to do more than get to non-hate with the situation I had been challenged with for the past several weeks. The word that falls from my lips about the others involved most easily is: unskillful.
Empathy does not show up for me in my top five in the Clifton Strengths Assessment. People who are really strong in empathy “feel what others are feeling as though their feelings are your own. Intuitively, you are able to see the world through the others’ eyes and share their perspectives.”
I have come closer to a heart of compassion through decades of mindfulness (Vipassana) practice.
To be mindful means to be aware. It’s the energy that knows what is happening in the present moment. Lifting our arms and knowing that we’re lifting our arms—that’s mindfulness, mindfulness of our action.
When we breathe in and we know we’re breathing in, that’s mindfulness.
When we make a step and we know that the steps are taking place, we are mindful of the steps. Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something.
It’s the energy that helps us be aware of what is happening right now and right here—in our body, in our feelings, in our perceptions, and around us. ~ 5 Practices for Nurturing Happineess
Her comment was unskillful, but my response was unskillful as well. The unskilled volley left us all raw. Hell, I was already raw. For all I know, so was she…
That is the trick, isn’t it?
Not even a person Clifton says is endowed with empathy truly sees the world through another person’s eyes. The stressful situation has been stressful precisely because we don’t see the situation the same way.
Jerry asked us to ponder some questions about happiness:
What is happiness? What does happiness mean for me? Is happiness just pleasure? Is it joy? Can I be happy without a sense of well-being? Is that possible? Can I be happy without a sense of purpose in life?
We cannot truly speak about happiness in the Buddhist way without a nod to suffering.
Being able to enjoy happiness doesn’t require that we have zero suffering. In fact, the art of happiness is also the art of suffering well. When we learn to acknowledge, embrace, and understand our suffering, we suffer much less. Not only that, but we’re also able to go further and transform our suffering into understanding, compassion, and joy for ourselves and for others.
One of the most difficult things for us to accept is that there is no realm where there’s only happiness and there’s no suffering.
I am not sure what the 3 faces of happiness are.
Perhaps to forgive again, and again, and again….
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