By Debra Basham, on January 30, 2021
“Whether we have happiness or not depends on the seeds in our consciousness. If our seeds of compassion, understanding, and love are strong, those qualities will be able to manifest in us. If the seeds of anger, hostility and sadness in us are strong, then we will experience much suffering. To understand someone, we have to be aware of the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. And we need to remember that his is not solely responsible for those seeds. His ancestors, parents, and society are co-responsible for the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. When we understand this, we are able to feel compassion for that person. With understanding and love, we will know how to water our own beautiful seeds and those of others, and we will recognize seeds of suffering and find ways to transform them.”
― Thích Nhất Hạnh, Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh: 365 days of practical, powerful teachings from the beloved Zen teacher
These words from Nhất Hạnh opened our practice this morning, January 30, 2021. What a powerful lesson to remember on the birthday of two people I love. One (a woman) is younger than I, and the other (a man) is slightly my elder. I cannot say for sure how I will be when I am his age, but I am old enough already to have compassion for the aging process.
One of the members of Deep Spring Sangha lost his grandfather this week. One of the members of the Zen Empty Circle sangha lost his sister this week as well. Since the practice today was dedicated to her, Jerry Ashmore’s dharma talk began, “We don’t know for sure what happens after we die. At least I don’t. That’s absolutely the don’t know mind. The question I often ask myself is how can we make their death meaningful when a loved one passes?”
Jerry continued with the following story:
A student asks how to prepare for death.
“When you die, and you are reborn, how can you be reborn in a good place, into a positive rebirth?” the Buddha asks the student.
“Well,” the student replies, “I have to live a life of wisdom and compassion.”
“Yes,” the Buddha agrees, “if you live a life of wisdom and compassion, you will have a favorable rebirth. Now, what if there is no rebirth, what will you do? What can you do to live a happy life?”
“Well, I have to live a life of wisdom and compassion….”
Jerry’s conclusion from this story is if we live a life of wisdom and compassion the afterlife will take care of itself.
The sangha member who had just lost his sister wished she could have seen herself through the eyes of those who benefited from her life. She had been sober for 30 years. One person called to offer condolences saying because of his sister, she herself had been sober for 28 years!
While we may have some moments of missed opportunities for living life with wisdom and compassion, our lives are filled with lasting moments of wisdom and compassion. Any missed opportunity is simply another invitation.
Birthday Candles
It’s a happy ritual
meant to remind us that
all we hope to have and be
begins with a little
wishing.
~ Meanings of Life – A Cardthartic Experience
May all beings have a happy life, many happy birthdays, and many happy returns!
By Debra Basham, on January 25, 2021 This post might be considered “The High Road Part 2.”
I learned to think of re-spect as the willing to look again and again.
I am not attending an eight-day workshop Healing and the Everhealed with Barbara Brodsky (January 23-30). It was very odd to not be guided to attend, especially given that my life’s work is just this.
In fact, it was more a matter of my having been guided not to attend.
I watched the mind games: “I will miss out,” or “I already know this stuff,” or “I should attend to support others,” and even, “This is all just ego.”
Fortunately, I have the privilege of sending out the audio recordings from the workshop, so I am benefiting by the teachings!
Even the introductions of those attending the workshop was humbling. It is an amazing group of individuals with such diverse experience in the healing arts. Great love and sincere commitment to path. I bow to each….
Perhaps this “birds-eye-view” of the workshop is allowing just the right space for integration. Meanwhile, notice the amazing synchronicities!
Aaron’s Daily Quote the opening day of the workshop was, “Remember that at the deepest level there is nothing to heal. The ever-perfect is always there. We move through the distortion, to reveal the ever-perfect. In another articulation, the human uncovers the light body template for the ever-perfect and shines it into the body, asking the etheric and physical bodies to pick up that image, and to replicate it. All the healer is doing is holding the mirror.”
Note* Aaron’s Daily Quotes are selected randomly by a computer program from a pre-loaded field of hundreds. No human being has the ability to select from that field.
Yesterday morning I had a phone conversation with John’s cousin. I asked about her brother following a stressful interaction we had with him about masks (conspiracy) before we left home. She and her husband will be vacationing on Sanibel Island in a few weeks and wanted to know also about Pine Island for some friends. I had to admit to her I am not a good one to ask because it does not yet seem wise to live life as though there is no coronavirus.
Aaron’s Daily Quote for today:
Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
If you get into a situation with somebody where there’s a lot of anger and verbal clashing, and you start to hear a little voice inside that says, ‘But he’s wrong and I’m right!’ do you think that voice is just from you? A lot of it’s from you. And then there’s your negative polarity cheering team that says, ‘Ooo, here’s a place to wreak havoc. We can make a mess here!’ So it’s egging you on, ‘Yeah, you’re right and he’s wrong! Tell him!’
~ Aaron
And then I open today’s teaching from Neale Donald Walsch:
On this day of your life Debra, I believe God wants you to know …
… that negative passions may run high, but they do not
have to rule you.
Your inner peace, and the sanctity of your being, are
not worth trashing because of some negative feeling
you have about something. Just let it go, and return to
the knowing and experiencing of who you really are.
Try not to abandon the self. Try very hard. In the end,
your soul will be so grateful.
A subtle cue that I am releasing some long-held cherished ego position and integrating awareness is how EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS SAYING THE SAME THING.
Also from this morning’s inbox:
Respect toward yourself is more significant than any respect from others because you know yourself better. When you practice patience, for example, you must know why you’re doing it and how it benefits you. If you value self-respect and do virtuous things that are unknown to others, you will naturally gain self-confidence, strength, and freedom from your neuroses. You will feel more and more inspired to develop your tsewa and shed the eight worldly concerns because of the benefit and freedom you personally experience by doing so. Your heart will be at peace, and eventually others will respect you as a person who has truly been transformed.
~ Peaceful Heart
The Buddhist Practice of Patience
by Dzigar Kongtrul, Edited by Joseph Waxman, page 39
* Vihiṃsā (Sanskrit; Tibetan phonetic: nampar tsewa) is a Buddhist term translated as “malice”, “hostility”, or “cruelty”. It is identified as one of the twenty subsidiary unwholesome mental factors within the Mahayana Abhidharma teachings.
Over and over and over in this workshop comes the gentle reminder there is nothing to fix. Trying to fix anything thwarts availability to have every thought, word, and action guided by the open loving heart.
Abraham Hicks joins the integration today:
Making Peace with My Today Will Improve My Future…
It may sound odd, but the fastest way to get to a new-and-improved situation is to make peace with your current situation. By making lists of the most positive aspects you can find about your current situation, you then release your resistance to the improvements that are waiting for you. But if you rail against the injustices of your current situation, you hold yourself in Vibrational alignment with what you do not want, and you cannot then move in the direction of improvement. It defies Law. In every particle of the Universe, there is that which is wanted – and the lack of it.
Excerpted from The Vortex on 8/31/09
Our Love
Esther (Abraham and Jerry)
And just one more synchronicity from my inbox: They may not deserve forgiveness, but I do. ~ Anne P.
Now, this is R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
By Debra Basham, on January 21, 2021 This morning a daily message suggested we ask ourselves, “Am I living according to spiritual principles?” The message continued with the principles are constant, encouraging us to ask our Higher Power how to best apply these principles today.
I had received a five-hour Zoom link for meditation and inspiration envisioning a peaceful inauguration day, so yesterday morning early I went online to check out the schedule of the inauguration day’s events. The first entry I saw was “7:45 a.m. President and Mrs. Trump will leave the White House for the final time. He will not attend the inauguration.”
Donald Trump was the first president not to attend his successor’s inauguration since Andrew Johnson in 1869.
Later in the day I asked John his sense of that choice. He said he did not have any feelings about it. Asking him further though, he expressed a perception that the choice was justified because of election fraud. He also reminded me I had written that voting is sacred.
“Even if there was voter fraud, two wrongs don’t make a right,” I said quietly.
But this post is not about Donald Trump, or John — it is about ME and YOU and the high road.
A few minutes later, I said aloud to John, “Intuitive yes or no.” (FYI – He is VERY good at being able to access an intuitive answer, and I often just call out to him to do so.)
“No,” came his answer.
I simply stated aloud the question I had held in mind for his asking this time: “Was there more fraud in this election than others.”
Deep Spring CenterThought for Today
Those of you who understand positive polarity are called upon to be models of positive polarity in every way possible. But it’s also how you respond when you’re alone outdoors shoveling snow, your back hurts a little, and your fingers are freezing. At that point do you start cursing at the snow or just take a deep breath and pause, saying, ‘Maybe it’s time to go in and get a cup of hot tea, look outside and see the real beauty of this snow, rest for a bit, make sure my energy field is uncontracted before I come back out and shovel, so I am not fighting with the snow but co-creating a clear path, and asking the snow to participate with me in moving aside.’ ~ Aaron
In a rather lively conversation with friends earlier today, the question of whether or not values are universal, and what universal values might be came up. I said, “Most would rather be nourished than starving, prefer to be comfortable rather than too hot or too cold, and safe rather than in harms’ way. Perhaps we don’t all use the same words, but we do know the state.”
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Amanda Gorman began writing at only a few years of age. At age 22, the nation’s first-ever youth poet laureate — and the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history — read “The Hill We Climb” during the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
I cannot swear she was looking at the exact “hill” but I can promise you, every human does know what the high road is.
John agreed with me that Donald Trump had missed an opportunity to take the high road.
Christians are familiar with the teaching of granting forgiveness seventy times seven, and Chapter 5 of the Epistle to the Galatians: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”
In Buddhism, the “active moment” is that point in awareness (like the baby emerging from the womb) when you know what is happening and you see the possibility of lifetimes of potentiality just beginning.
You and I are all too familiar with how habit energy has grabbed minds and run down the dark alley of fear hundreds of times over lifetime after lifetime in the past. Perhaps habit energy will do so again at some time in the future.
But right now, at this moment in human history, you and I can applaud the the possibility of lifetime after lifetime of potentiality and set our intention to be able to say at the end of each day, “I choose the high road.”
By Debra Basham, on January 19, 2021
Keep a watchful eye for spiritual materialism.
Don’t look for a goal,
but practice meditation nevertheless.
Don’t try to push your ideas,
don’t dictate,
and don’t edit the dharma,
the truth and the teachings.
The dharma is yours,
so you could relate to the dharma very simply.
Let dharma come to you.
If there is a conflict between you and dharma,
if I may say so,
it is your conflict.
Dharma has no conflict.
~ Excerpted from: Milarepa: Lessons from the Life and Songs of Tibet’s Great Yogi,
by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, pages 115–116
My hair is getting so long!
My hair brought to mind for John and me “Rapunzel,” the fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. I had to look it up to remind myself of the details, so you might enjoy at least a refresher of the end.
For two years the poor blind prince wandered the world, looking for Rapunzel. From morning to night he called for her, but it was no use. At last, he reached a desert. One day, he heard a beautiful voice singing. “Oh!” he thought. “I know that voice!” It was his dear Rapunzel! He went closer and closer to the voice he knew so well.
“My prince!” called Rapunzel when she saw him. The two of them hugged tight. Two tears of joy fell into the eyes of the prince. All at once, he could see again!
The opening quotation from Milarepa sits at a very hollow home in my heart, especially the phrase: “Don’t try to push your ideas, don’t dictate…”
And that last line: “Dharma has no conflict.”
I feel the subtle grasping to have our country and my world be free of conflict.
That longing for freedom from conflict is amplified as we winter here in Florida where political signs continue to swing in the tropical breezes and the doors to restaurants and bars are wide open even as Covid cases continue to rise.
Of course, these conditions are impermanent.
This, too, shall pass.
For those who are not inclined to click on the link to read the entire story of Rapunzel’s long hair, here is the end:
And what happened next, well, I’m sure you can guess! The prince and Rapunzel went back to the kingdom where the prince lived. They were married as soon as they could. The prince became king of the land and Rapunzel became queen. The two of them lived happily ever after.
Today, I will let the dharma come to me.
Hair grows.
By Debra Basham, on January 11, 2021 It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
~Antoine de St. Exupéry
Yesterday afternoon I attended Remembering Wholeness with The Mother, a divine feminine being channeled by Barbara Brodsky. The opening comments tied right in with a previous evening’s conversation about some ongoing pain. I had asked my friend to identify any way she has not befriended her body. She spoke right away: pushing her body when it was trying to get her to stop.
Interestingly, the message I received from The Mother addressed the same dynamic for me on the emotional level.
What is there in your heart that you have pushed aside feeling it may prevent you from coping; feeling it may diminish your strength if you hear this or that?
The evening my dad died I went to my client’s home and did an art show.
The afternoon my mom died I went back to Holistic Alliance and saw clients.
The Mother closed her words to me with this phrase: It’s perfect. Perhaps not always pleasant, but perfect.
She reminded me that nothing the heart speaks is good or bad. It is all simply movements of the heart — some more grounded in fear, some more grounded in love. “Unless you hear it all, there is not wholeness.”
She offered encouragement: There is still some confusion that’s coming out of not deeply listening to and trusting your heart — your heart’s love, your heart’s wisdom.
Even quoting lyrics from a Walt Whitman poem, “I Celebrate Myself, and Sing Myself,” over and over, person after person, the theme of the day was the importance of learning to cherish yourself, hear yourself, love yourself.
As I walked alone in the dark last evening, I allowed tears to flow, saying to my heart over and over, “It’s perfect. Perhaps not always pleasant, but perfect.”
Today, it is great-grandson, Jackson, who has my heart singing Karen Drucker’s “Gentle With Myself.”
I will be gentle with myself
I will be gentle with myself
And I will hold myself like a newborn baby child
I will be tender with my heart
I will be tender with my heart
And I will hold my heart like a newborn baby child
And I will only go as fast
As the slowest part of me feels safe to go
I will be easy on myself
I will be easy on myself
And I love myself like a new born baby child
And I will only go as fast
As the slowest part of me feels safe to go
I am gentle with myself
I am gentle with myself
And I hold myself like a new born baby child
And I rock myself like a newborn baby child
And I hold myself like a newborn baby child
And I love myself like a newborn baby child
By Debra Basham, on January 6, 2021 We are all volunteers, come to awaken ourselves and all human beings. ~ Aaron
A pithy line from the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors in the Hebrew Old Testament has been working on my heart. The story is familiar to many: Joseph, the youngest son and his father’s favorite, was given the special coat that had been (according to patriarchal tradition) owed to the eldest son. Joseph’s brothers were insulted, enraged, and vengeful. They sold Joseph into slavery and told their father Joseph had been killed.
The karmic wheel is always turning.
Joseph won favor with the Egyptian Pharaoh, and was put in charge of all of the stores of food. Years later, Joseph’s brothers came to Egypt desiring to buy food because of the famine. Imagine their shock to see the brother they had abused be the one in charge!
Joseph could have justifiably responded in myriad ways, but Joseph responded from AWARENESS: As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today. ~ Genesis 50:20
In my awareness, Joseph’s story was related to yet another covid death. Two days after our granddaughter, Courtney Ross, gave birth to our great-grandson, Jackson, her other great-grandfather died from covid-related pneumonia. RIP: George Ross.
The mask and safe-distancing polarization…. Knowing many in that family continue to gather without precautions. I saw those as the “You meant evil.” I could also see the perfection of the timing – just a couple of days after Jackson’s birth. Many ancient cultures recognize the perfection of the coming in and passing on which happens in families.
I could also see a gift that—being so soon after Jackson’s birth—his mom would not go to be with the extended family and take him, possibly exposing herself or him to the virus. I have been easy to tears about everything.
Joy without sorrow would be hollow: having without losing. ~ Aaron
My friend, Patty, recently lost her mother to covid-related heart failure. Her brother (an anti-masker) exposed Alma. Yes, she was 97, and Courtney’s grandfather was 90 — but both were fully engaged in life, both vital at those ages. Patty’s pain continued as her family was split in how to celebrate their mother’s life. Patty and some of her siblings not seeing it as responsible, made the difficult choice not to attend a large public gathering insisted on by other siblings.
The karmic wheel of action was different for each.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” ~ Romans 8:28
It is possible to see the good/gift/perfection without denying the responsibility of an unwholesome action, as spoken recently in the dharma teachings: That was the first time I recognized my choices had repercussions in the world: I had the power to do good or to do harm.
A Buddhist articulation of life describes Sila, or moral awareness, as “right view” (Eight-Fold Path): the seeing of things just as they are.
It is said that in Hindi India the idea, “Oh, the gods willed it,” holds a lot of devotion, but not much responsibility. Regardless of what else is there, you are responsible for your choices as each choice has repercussions….
My choice is to not give or get the coronavirus, if I can help it. Their are repercussions to every choice, such as my friend missing her mom’s funeral.
The shadow is no less an aspect of the divine than the light.
By Debra Basham, on December 31, 2020 Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
December 31, 2020
So often beings have a
limited view of spiritual life
that creates a duality in themselves,
so that they only see themselves
as ‘being spiritual’
when they’re being kind and loving.
When painful emotions arise,
then they think,
‘I am no longer being spiritual.
I should fix or get rid of these emotions
and come back to kindness and
then I will be spiritual.’
But this dualistic thinking only
enhances the fragmentation of the self and
enhances negativity and suffering.
To open the heart to the self,
just as it is in this moment,
is the true spiritual path.
~ Aaron
As we turn the page on our calendar to 2021 at midnight tonight where ever you are, hindsight will be 2020. New Years has held a nostalgic space in my heart and mind for as long as I can remember, but just as 2021 offers unlimited possibilities, tomorrow is also just another day.
What will you remember most from the past year? High on my list is the consistent kindness and generosity of our friends, Linda and Larry, consistently doing our grocery shopping for us. First, using InstaCart, and then going to the grocery store, just so we could limit our exposure to the coronavirus.
I will remember the blessing of Zoom bringing the meditation hall into my home.
I will also feel the sting of not going to Tennessee to visit Stacey’s family on our way home in April. Or having to tell Melody I could not do an in-person ceremony for her mom, my friend and colleague, who contracted COVID-19 while in the hospital with acute pancreatitis. Bonnie passed without Melody or Dan, Bonnie’s husband, having opportunity to be with her.
No service of celebration of life for Fred Gibby yet either. They say it will be an ultimate hug-fest when the time is right. and Fred loves that idea!
It is otherworldly to not have gotten to Kalamazoo to see Joel and the kitties; and very hollow that I did not unpack the office when contents were moved to the beautiful new space at Lakeshore Acupuncture.
Immense gratitude for Barbara Brodsky and John Orr and Aaron and Jeshua (and all who help me remember who I really am) seeps deeply into every day.
The take-out dinners and dominoes by Zoom.
And now, Jackson Taylor Yarber, born December 28, 2020, has joined our family, and I am loving my first great-grandchild fully from Southwest Florida as he is in Tennessee. Fingers crossed it will be safe to hold him and smell him on our way back home in the spring.
In the spring — the spring of 2021!
It feels otherworldly to say that…
2020 is ending.
2021 is beginning.
Suddenly, I am hearing a song from the musical Godspell in my head: Where are you going? Where are you going? Can you take me with you?
Last December I was fixated on accessing a Magic Eye Wall Calendar! When I found one, I decided to gift a bunch of folks! Janis and I have ritualized the turning of the page on the first day of each month, letting the image come into view, noticing how some are very easy and others quite challenging.
Interestingly, there will not be a Magic Eye Wall Calendar for 2021, as announced on the website: Our calendar publisher has asked us to wait until next year to publish a Magic Eye 2022 wall calendar, as printing, shipping and distribution channels have all been disrupted by Covid-19. We will not be releasing a Magic Eye 2021 wall calendar. Wishing everyone a happy & safe year!
Janis and I have agreed to go back through each month of the 2020 Magic Eye Wall Calendar, enjoying again in 2021 what we learned in 2020.
The missing and longing, and seeing and being. It has all been here all along.
Here’s to 2021, a true spiritual path. It, too, has been there all along….
“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” ~ Joseph Campbell
By Debra Basham, on December 25, 2020 I am grateful John and I had a practice run at not being physically with Stacey and her family for Christmas in 2019.
Last year we attended a Christmas Day potluck at Pine Island Cove with Michigan friends, Linda and Fred, who also winter here in Florida.
This year, John and I share our day with all of you in our hearts.
Our hearts are uplifted by the truth: “We isolate this year so that when we can meet again next year no one will be missing.”
Today, our home-away-from-home may be empty of friends and family, but my heart is full of love for each of you!
Our hearts are filled with memories!
Our hearts are warmed by Christmases past.
Our hearts are nourished with the true meaning of Christmas:
That Mary and Joseph—Mary heavy with child—traveled through the countryside.
She was at the time of giving birth to the child.
They found shelter, simple shelter.
And many beings experiencing, “The light has been born! Ah… The light is back!”
It wasn’t me, it was more that my birth opened the doorway so that the Heavenly light—the Love, the remembrance of Love—could pour through.
What was that star? Let us metaphorically call it an opening in the dark heavens where the remembrance of light and Love could pour through—pour through to where I lay as an infant, not to highlight me but to remind humans nothing is hopeless.
Light IS.
Love IS.
And it is right here.
And it was pointing at me, but it could be pointing at any of you.
Here is the ground of love and light.
And the earth sang, “Halleluiah!” not for my birth but for the remembrance: LIGHT IS, LOVE IS.*
* Jeshua, channeled by Barbara Brodsky on Christmas Eve 2020, sharing some thoughts about what Christmas means to him and how we can carry the meaning of Christmas through to our times.
By Debra Basham, on December 18, 2020 This post begins with a reprint of a Sacred Story published December 23, 2017: “Husband’s Clothes:”
As she stood in line at the grocery store the man in front of her looked so much like her late husband it almost took her breath away. The same height, the same built, even a similar style of movement.
Without thinking she spoke, “My husband passed recently and you are of such a similar build I am wondering if you are open to receiving his clothing. Some people are funny about that. I have been wondering what to do with them. He even has jeans he’s never worn…”
“Well, that is very kind,” he smiled softly.
They also discovered he wore the same size shoes as her husband, so those went with him, too. As he was leaving with his treasures he thanked her and confessed, “I have a new job that I have to wear ‘good’ jeans for. I only had this one pair, and I have been washing them every night and wearing them again the next day.”
She suddenly realized she had obviously truly been guided.
Warp and weft refer to the orientation of woven fabric. The warp direction refers to the threads that run the length of the fabric. Warp yarns are finer and stronger than weft yarns.
Life is comprised of warp and weft. But the greatest of these is warp….
Larry, the now beloved husband of my dear friend, Linda, had lost his wife, Joyce. Soon after we met, Larry wondered aloud to Linda, asking if she thought I would be offended to be offered some of Joyce’s clothing. Many of the items still had tags hanging on them…
Assured by Linda that I would be honored, the clothes were lovingly given and received. As my fingers glide across the keyboard right now, I am wearing one of Joyce’s dresses.
One of my friends is in the process of “death cleaning.” In Swedish it is called döstädning—dö is “death” and städning is “cleaning.” The process is simply to get rid of unnecessary things, especially important as you age. You know you will eventually leave the planet, taking nothing tangible with you — we all will.
While we take nothing, we leave everything.
After their passing, the influence of our loved ones remains.
Thich Nhat Hanh shared a beautiful story:
A friend of mine has been taking care of her ninety-three-year-old mother. The doctors say that her mother will die any day. For more than a year, my friend has been teaching her mother meditation exercises that have been very helpful. She began by watering the seeds of happiness in her mother, and now her mother becomes very alive every time my friend comes around. Recently she told her mother, “This body is not exactly yours. Your body is much larger. You have nine children, dozens of grandchildren, and also great-grandchildren. We are all continuations of you, and we are very happy and healthy. You are quite alive in us.”
Her mother was able to see that, and she smiled. My friend continued, “When you were young, you were able to teach many people how to cook and do many other things. You made people happy. Now we are doing the same thing; we are continuing the work you have begun. When you were young, you wrote poetry and sang, and now many of us write poems and sing beautifully. You are continuing in us. You are many beings at the same time.” This is a meditation on nonself. It helps her mother see that her body is just a small part of her true self. She understands that when her body departs, she will continue in many other forms.
During the December 16, 2020, “Evening with Aaron,” I heard an amazing story about Nathaniel, a follower of Jesus. Nathaniel’s group had been brutalized, all of their ceremonial objects stolen, along with their food!
When Jesus learned of this, he took Nathaniel with him and went to confront those responsible. Nathaniel was frightened they would be beaten again. Jesus admitted they might, they were outnumbered, but Jesus insisted that they must be willing to say, “No!”
Confronted by the Divine Love in Jesus, the men stepped back.
Imagine Jesus speaking about this:
I would not have hurt them — how could I hurt them?
But they had to hear this truth. “Where is that within you which is capable of love, which is capable of non-harm? Remember from whence you have come and cease to destroy. I ask this in the name of our Father and with love. Cease to do harm to each other and yourselves.”
I motioned to Nathaniel to pick up the blanket and the candlesticks.
He was a bit afraid, but I nodded to him, “Take them. They belong to our Father, not to this band.”
“Keep the food,” I told the men. “If you are hungry, please eat. But these tokens of the Sabbath I bring back with me, lest you desecrate them.”
No one stepped forth to stop us.
I’m sure if Nathaniel were here in the body he would tell you he was trembling! And yet, his love, his deep commitment to service of all beings —
Here I am, Lord.
Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
The same commitment you all have.
We took these candlesticks, rewrapped in the blanket, and simply walked off into the dark. We walked back to the village. These men never came to brutalize that village again.
People can learn.
The warp direction of our fabric is the Divine Love that runs the length of human existence. The warp of this Divine Love is finer and stronger than greed, hatred, brutality or any of the faces of fear. Just as the band of men who had stolen from Nathaniel were disarmed, every face of fear vanishes with the warp of love.
Warp and weft. People can learn….
By Debra Basham, on December 15, 2020 Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
If one never were to experience this
dark night of the soul,
one’s compassion
really would be limited.
One may have a belief,
‘I can be compassionate
with that which is light
and beautiful and loving
in myself and others’
but one has never tested it
to see if
one can also extend that compassion,
even to the utmost of darkness.
~ Aaron
This morning I did something I rarely do. I followed a link and read an article after the headline caught my attention: Deadliest place in America: They shrugged off the pandemic, then their family and friends started dying.
Dinkel says too many people are refusing to do their part to protect the elderly from COVID-19.
“To sit there and say they are old that they will die of something,” she says, “Well, they wouldn’t have died of the flu. My dad wouldn’t have been in the hospital for a month if this was the flu.”
Despite the efforts of local public health officials and experts, many residents aren’t taking the deadly pandemic seriously. Bearded farmers stride defiantly down Main Street past signs requiring them to wear masks. School is still in session and churches are open. Someone threatened to blow up the home of a pro-mask county commissioner.
Nicholson, the ambulance worker, is also co-owner of a restaurant and brewery on Main Street, and she’s had customers swear they’ll never come back after she reminded them to wear a mask when picking up food. She doesn’t want to wade into the middle of a political dispute. She just wants her neighbors to live.
But this post is not about COVID-19, even though four of our high-school classmates died of the coronavirus in just one week at home.
This post is about how mindfulness is like a bird — both need two wings to fly. The two wings of mindfulness are wisdom (clear seeing) and compassion.
Compassion is a result of seeing life’s experience clearly, therefore not everyone’s experience generates compassion. Life’s experiences reveal our world view.
The people in the deadliest place in America justify not wearing masks by saying the people who are dying are old, and people die in God’s time. The kernel of truth in not only toxic, it is deadly.
Sunday morning I went to the only grocery store here on the island. I had read “masks required” on the ad, and I checked out the website of the company to read the same thing. “Masks required” was also on the entry doors. However, customers were coming in and shopping and getting service without a mask.
Numbers in this small community on the south end of the island are climbing, yet, the Ragged Ass Saloon still hosts live music and welcomes wall-to-wall (if you can use that term about a parking lot) patrons not wearing masks or maintaining safe distancing.
As human beings, we all try our best to bring about a world based on kindness and compassion. What seems to go wrong, however, is that what I want, what I personally would like, becomes more important than the benefit of the whole community.
Yes, death will come to each of us. That is not failure. The bloom is the bud’s undoing…
We are capable of spreading our wings and soaring to the heights of wisdom and compassion.
As the Buddha said, “If it were not possible, I would not ask you to do it.”
|
|
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 43 other subscribers
|
Comments are closed 
You must be logged in to post a comment.