Joy to forgive
and joy to be forgiven
hang level in the balances of love.
~ Richard Garnett
Last evening after our Zoom dominoes game ended, Linda asked us when we are planning to head south. One of the realities of the pandemic: It is difficult to plan.
The one thing we have put into place is a reservation at a hotel in Smyrna for Saturday night. It feels undeniably awkward to not be pulling into 1500 Clayton Court and having Baxter come running out to meet us, followed closely by Thor and Butter and Stacey and Doug.
Also undeniable is the lump in my throat and the tears running down my face.
For some reason, this move is triggering an avalanche of sadness and missing and fear of the unknown that staying safe at home since April has held back.
On the surface, it would be easy to blame our son-in-love, Doug, for the emotions. Doug has expressed his unwillingness to wear a mask in his own home over the four-day weekend. Since Stacey let us know that mind has been spinning, churning up the hurt.
Listening this morning to a talk by Pema Chödrön on the “Mindful Gap” allowed space for the wisdom mind to look at the neurotic mind, and now I am feeling what I am feeling: I don’t know what will allow me to feel safe visiting the kids.
You see, it is not just that I am afraid of John or me getting the virus from them. I am afraid of having them give the virus to one or the other of us and then them having to live with that.
Shantideva, an 8th-century CE Indian philosopher, Buddhist monk, poet and scholar cautioned against letting the mind be wild with impatience, gossip, attachment to things going your way. “When the urge arises…. do not act, be silent, do not speak, and like a log of wood, be sure to stay.”
So this morning, I am staying with the truth of the painful feelings that things are not going to go my way.
Suffering is transcended
by total surrender.
~ Shantideva
Meeting with our Grief Journey group yesterday brought home this universal suffering of arguing with what is, and the universal necessity of surrender.
One mother lost her adult son in August of 2020.
One wife lost her husband in January of 2020.
One wife lost her husband 15 years ago… In 2020 she is still navigating life as it is. As we all are.
This quotation by Hermann Broch, shared by a 70-something woman who lost her mom at age 5, points wisdom mind to the truth: No one’s death comes to pass without making some impression, and those close to the deceased inherit part of the liberated soul and become richer in their humanness.
In our collective humanness, we are not just navigating the loss of persons. In the year 2020, we are collectively navigating the loss of the way things were, and the loss of the insistence things go our way.
Weather permitting, perhaps we could gather a picnic and meet at a park. (Right now the forecast says 50% chance of rain.)
Perhaps we could get take out from our favorite Thai restaurant and meet at their church fellowship hall.
Neale Donald Walsch says, So, don’t try to “figure it out.” Stop it. Just focus on what you now wish to create. Keep moving forward. There’s nothing behind you that can possibly serve you better than your highest thoughts about tomorrow.
In whatever ways it unfolds, all thoughts today about tomorrow deserve to be our highest.
Every day we pray for the willingness
to make sane choices about our lives.
~ from the book Answers in the Heart
We will be having left-over Thanksgiving for dinner tonight. Last evening, John and I shared the traditional fare with Janis and Larry!
We bought the turkey. She roasted it. She made deviled eggs and gluten-free brownies. I made mashed potatoes, corn (cut off the cob), and lemon pie. We each steamed garden peas, and we made our own gravy. Larry shared his cranberry sauce with John.
I even included two cloth Thanksgiving napkins along with my contributions. And, of course, chocolate chip cookies for Larry.
Our dining room was on ZOOM, where we could see one another, and hear first-hand the murmurings and moans. The food was delicious, and the company was delightful. True thanksgiving.
The four of us have been very mindful to avoid unnecessary exposure to the coronavirus. We mutually decided virtual was the best choice. It was Larry’s first Zoom experience. He said we will definitely have dinner together via Zoom while John and I are in Florida for the winter.
I finished another journal.
A mixture of emotions always accompanies the ritual of writing the date of the last entry on the cover. I chose to let a poem be my final entry.
Truth-be-told, the poem was begun on the evening of November 21, 2020, and completed on the morning of November, 22, 2020.
Perhaps the poem, like our virtual thanksgiving, is a bridge:
The Last Page
Years of journals
Pages yellowed from
Decades of moments
Unfolding like
Butterfly’s virgin wings
Each new volume
Filled with possibilities
Nothing hidden
Raw experience splayed out
Telling the ancient tales
Momentous occasions
Now lie perfectly flat
Letters etched with
Precious precision
Fading with great haste
Someday perhaps
These words will land
Upon lips of one who can
Treasure what was
Just because it still is
… within the heart
Debra Basham 11-22-2020
The first page of the new journal begins with: One week from today we expect to head to Florida. Willing to have all of that go easily and safely. The greatest unknown is seeing the kids. Weather will play a role in all of that.
Word for the Day
What gives me hope
is that life unfailingly responds
to the advances of love.
~ Nipun Mehta
The final words on that first page in the new journal are from the “voice” (what I call Holy Spirit):
When you stay in the relative reality box, you create the kind of fights with each other, ‘I’m right.’ ‘No, I’m right.’ ‘No, I’m right.’ You can’t hear each other. You become more and more polarized. And this of course is consonant with the lower stages of consciousness, the magical consciousness that believes that somehow it can prove to everybody that it’s always right. I think you all know that one! If you don’t remember it in your own experience, go and find a 2-year-old. It’s very much engrossed in the magical consciousness and very certain that it’s always right. Slowly you begin to open out, and as the stage of consciousness rises you move more into the openness that can view infinite possibilities. ~ Aaron
From my journal this morning:
D: I fully recognize the thought, “when I make a choice that is right for me, it is right for everyone,” as a relative reality thought. The thought holds a subtle distortion because of the separate self.
What is whispering to me is awareness of the interconnection of everything. Like waves in an ocean.
So how do I navigate?
V: The awakened heart knows one person is planning a picnic — a big event serving lots of people. A “thank you” event to many, for great service to humanity. That heart also knows the farmers in the region need rain. The time is crucial. The seed has been planted but rain is needed to bring forth the sprout. Many will feed upon the bread made from the farmers’ wheat.
What happens to support highest good for all beings?
D: This is exactly what I am asking!
V: In relative reality, a conflict-of-interest seems to exist. This is not real.
Imagine an all-night, slow, steady rain. Imagine the rain nourishing the soil and causing the conditions that bring forth a healthy harvest. Now imagine the sun coming up, a light breeze blows over the face of the earth, drying up the surface moisture. The picnic takes place now on a ground that is well-watered.
When you are drawn to notice a seeming “conflict-of-interest” simply greet the situation with an open heart, saying, “Hello, Teacher.”
All of the elements: earth, air, fire, water, and energy — they all know how to collaborate. You are made of these elements. You do know what to do for the highest good of all beings, and harm to none.
As Aaron says in the opening quotation, slowly, you begin to open out, and as the stage of consciousness rises you move more into the openness that can view infinite possibilities.
From Neale Donald Walsch:
On this day of your life I believe God wants you to know that most dramatic conflicts are perhaps those that take place not between men, but between a man and himself.
What are you battling with right now? What unwanted habit? What undesirable behavior? What old pattern? Claim victory over these, and your entire life can change.
Last evening I looked up and saw a soft pink haze in the western sky. I stepped out on the front porch and saw a rainbow out to the north. I grabbed my phone and took a photo, and as I turned around the western sky was ablaze with color.
On May 11, 2020, the poem of the day was “Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda. Please go to Duke Trinity College and read the entire poem. Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He transitioned from this earth plane in 1973, but “Keeping Quiet” is his perfect gift for us at this time. Sharing here the next to the last stanza:
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.
Michigan has gone back under stay-safe-at-home orders as the numbers of coronavirus cases from community contact skyrocket. This is happening across the globe as the second wave of the pandemic crests.
Humanity is invited by this “teacher” to view infinite possibilities as we are keeping quiet….
I am back in the tiny house. It was such a gift going on retreat. Being in Carol’s Cozy Cottage felt so much like Still Waters, where my soul has been nurtured for decades.
While on retreat, a dharma sister shared a powerful poem she saw in a post by a Chicago Cognitive Behavior Therapy practice. Here are a few lines from “The Felt-Sense Prayer” from a podcast by Tara Brach:
I am a messenger with good news, as disturbing as I can be at times.
I am wanting to guide you back to those tender places in yourself, the place where you can hold yourself with compassion and honesty.
If you look beyond my appearance you may find that I am a voice from your soul.
Solitude, contemplation, meditation…. to many people these sound like torture. To those of us who are on this path, solitude is the place where our soul can breathe deeply.
Saturday morning was brisk, but the sky was clear so I bundled up and went for a walk. Carol’s husband, Steve, has been on a mission of planting trees. LOTS of trees….
The early morning frost had created an enchanted forest.
Before leaving on retreat, I received word about a friend seriously ill with the coronavirus. Another friend is in the hospital. One of the women at the retreat was going to be with her mom, and might not be back to the retreat. Her mom passed that night. Buddhism is no stranger to impermanence. Quite the opposite. And just as I was so moved by the beauty of the ice crystals , I was also inspired by the brevity of its existence.
A Haiku by Debra Basham
@ Carol’s Cozy Cottage
November 14, 2020
“Fleeting”
Icy crystals cling
playfully to willing plants
Glistening for now
Nothing lasts beyond
this moment – precious and full
Can you see it too?
Like fairy dust spread
just when you are not looking
To surprise and bless
Shapes, angles, light wait
to be seen in their glory
By humanity
Bounteous beauty
beauty in ALL the being
Lay waste the longing
Frozen in this time,
asking the frost to linger
Is futile at best
Vanishing quickly,
our lives like this autumn frost
must be loved right now
They too are fleeting
I had some internet instability so much of the time I was only able to call in and listen to the dharma talks. Not being seen or heard was a sort of solitude in and of itself.
Some amazing insights came during my yoga practice Saturday morning when I noticed my shoulders were trying to support the low core. I began hearing, “Trust the low core to do it’s work. You can trust it. It is safe.”
The SCS/NLP material on the drama triangle came into my awareness and I realized the way all three roles on the drama triangle work together is perfect: playing all the roles balances karma!
We have been studying a Mahāyāna Buddhism concept of the three bodies, or modes of being: the dharmakaya; the sambhogakaya; and the nirmanakaya. For this post, suffice it to say that I could see how the drama triangle corresponds to the nirmanakaya.
These sorts of insights often get stifled by the busyness and distractions of every day life. A doctor who expressed concern seeing a lot of severe burnout among his colleagues closed the retreat with a comment about the pandemic also bringing a gift to slow things down.
And when I opened email after I got home, I saw this message from Matt Kahn, author of Whatever Arises, Love That: Personal growth is only a means of improvement when seeing how miraculously you are able to grow when improving the way you care, treat, and speak to yourself. From this space, personal growth is a choice that only love can embrace.
It seems New Hope was the perfect way to describe this retreat…. Namaste’
Elizabeth Lesser wrote a New York Times bestselling book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow (Random House). That book has sold more than 300,000 copies and has been translated into 20 languages. Lesser says, “When you feel yourself breaking down, may you break open instead. May every experience in life be a door that opens your heart, expands your understanding, and leads you to freedom.”
Her newest book, Cassandra Speaks: When Women are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes, reveals that humanity has outgrown its origin tales and hero myths, and empowers women to trust their instincts, find their voice, and tell new guiding stories.
It is not only women who have outgrown the original tales and hero myths. Men, women, children, and societies are capable of skillful relating — seeing each relationship as the fertile soil in which we come to rest in our spiritual maturity.
Resting in this “spiritual maturity” is our authentic self, and at our core it is always alive and well. Please take a moment to watch an amazing video of former prima ballerina, Marta C. González as she instinctively moves to the music, in spite of advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
Focus on what I can learn about myself all the time, especially from my reactions (such as anger, fear, jealousy, resentment, and impatience), instead of judging or blaming others or myself.
Pay attention to my emotions by feeling the physical sensations in my energy centers (such as my chest, solar plexus, and throat areas).
Pay attention to my thoughts (such as judging, analyzing, comparing, daydreaming, planning my reply, etc., or thoughts of gratitude, appreciation, contentment, openness to Life, etc.).
Pay attention to my intention such as blaming, judging, needing to be right, seeking admiration, escaping into thoughts (intellectualizing), trying to convince, etc., or cooperating, sharing, creating harmony, and revering Life.
Indra’s Net symbolizes the universe as a web of connections and interdependencies among all its members, wherein every member is both a manifestation of the whole and inseparable from the whole. (Photo: Indra’s Net)
During this chaotic time, pay attention to the quality of your relationships. Like the jewels in Indra’s net, our relationships are a web of connection. Each strand is both strong and vulnerable. In The More We Find in Each Other, Mavis Fossum and Merle Fossum remind us that when we feel the pain of separation from each other, we need to reach back and reopen communication.
Nature does not preserve species,
nature preserves purpose.
~ Barbara Marx Hubbard
When Barbara was preparing to move to New York City in pursuit of her life’s calling as a futurist, she asked her 9 year-old son, Wade, if he was willing to go with her. In his wisdom and love, Wade responded, “Mom, you’re doing what mothers are supposed to do. You’re trying to create a better future for your children. I want to come with you.”
Barbara Marx Hubbard did not just move to move, she moved be-cause of her commitment to the vision of humanity’s Conscious Evolution.
When I look at the places I have moved while following my life’s purpose, I see a 5 year-old walking into a Sunday school class, hearing a song and knowing Jesus loves ME.
At sixteen years of age, I moved to become a wife and a mother.
My move to being an ordained minister was first in the United Methodist Church, and then as an Interfaith Minister of Reunion in 1997.
I moved to create Holistic Alliance – the first holistic entity granted tax-exempt status by the federal government – and I moved with others to disband the organization in 2005.
Paul Loeb writes in Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time, “Working toward sometimes difficult dreams of social justice requires hope. At times we gain it from seeing tangible results from our efforts or the efforts of others. More often, it’s a way of viewing the world that can be strengthened and refined through experience, helping us persevere despite all the obstacles.”
I admire the move Barbara Marx Hubbard made. I greatly admire the move of her young son, Wade.
We are all being asked to move again. Moving means we know how to be-causal. What are your thoughts causing? What results do your words cause? What reactions are caused by your actions?
This is not the first time we have been divided fifty-fifty. The previous time the citizens of these United States of America were so divided on an issue was during the Civil War, where brother fought brother over the idea, “Is it OK for some people to own other people?”
I asked John which side he thought he might have been on, had he been alive during that time. He said, “Probably the North.”
He went on to say that he is in favor of freedom, he believes an individual should be allowed to make his or her own choice.
I asked about an individual’s choice to go camping in the high hills and have a camp fire.
What if it is in dry season?
What if the winds catch that individual’s camp fire and the sparks take on a life of their own and destroy hundreds of homes, cost millions of dollars, and destroy lives? Be-cause of an individual’s right?
Only as humans raise our individual consciousness does true freedom and an individual’s right mean harm to none. It is time we move.
Would you steal if you knew you could get away with it? I have. But I would not now, because now I know the truth: I cannot harm another without also harming myself.
We are be-causal.
In “The Genius of Second Maturity” Jean Huston says: For many of us, our years are being extended as our options and opportunities are being increased. We now have the time to become who we are; no longer men and women working a few short years in search of subsistence, we now are gaining a life span that allows us to become sages, richly actualized human beings able to transcend the particularities of our local selves, able to deal wisely and creatively with the enormous personal and planetary complexities of our time.
We are be-causal. What are your highest intentions? When Dr. Mary Jo Bullbrook led a ceremony of intentions on December 16, 2012, I wrote the following be-cause writing intentions helps bring desires into the physical realm.
I intend to continue healing on all levels and for all times as the ONE
I intend to lavishly share my light and love in the world
I intend to move into the new year with ease and joy and grace in my heart and mind and body
I intend to be open to spirit’s leading as to the ways and places and specifics of how this will all express itself in the world
I intend to laugh more
I intend to love more
I intend to balance work and play
I intend to be generous with my time and energy and money as I experience the endless supply that is our spiritual reality
I intend to give thanks for the simple joys of living in physical body: eating, drinking, sleeping; drawing nourishment from all and eliminating the waste
I welcome the next right steps with regards to John (and the selling of his business), Joel (and the expression of SCS in the world), and to our living in a simpler, elegant, peaceful space here in Michigan
I intend to continue practicing Vipassana
I intend to be open to highest good and to welcome the continuation of that red carpet being rolled out for all
A friend mentioned Russell Boulding’s Earth Energy Healing work last Thursday and I finally got around to checking his website out. Russell says this of himself: “All of my life I have been inclined towards a left-brain rational approach to thought and action. I have a BA in geology from Antioch College (1970) and an MS in water resources management from the University of Wisconsin/Madison (1975). From 1977 to 2003 I worked as a free-lance environmental consultant, specializing in environmental problems related to coal mining and contamination of soil and ground water.”
That was before the winds of change blew Boulding beyond his intellect.
It certainly might be that the human intellect is overrated.
Machaelle Small Wright’s procedures for gardening with nature spirits blew the winds of change for Russell. You can visit his website to read the amazing details of his life-changing experience after he blurted out without forethought, “I’m ready, take me as far and as fast as you can.” (See: Russell Boulding/Earth Energy Healing.)
Late in the spring of 2004, a mother robin built her nest in the crook of the downspout just outside our bedroom window. On May 22 of that same year, a 2.5 mile wide F4 tornado tore through Nebraska with its 200 MPH winds of change. The storm damages totaled $160.22 million. Our friends, Roger and Sharon, survived to rebuild their home when their entire town was blown away.
In the 40 years John and I lived at 4230 Lincoln Avenue, only that once did a robin built a nest in that location.
When the storm system that had devastated Nebraska raged through Southwest Michigan, John and I watched out our basement window as the wickedly wild winds blew trees near horizontal to the ground. Our beautiful bluff a few miles away was cleared of its majestic mature trees, hundreds of roofs were ripped off area homes, and tens of thousands were left without power for weeks.
Four baby robins weathered the storm in a secure nest.
We can be sure it was not “intellect” that guided the mother robin to place her nest in that unusual location.
Boulding says, “It has been necessary for me to develop my understanding of the larger reality that lies beyond our physical world primarily through intellect rather than through direct experience.”
Once you know beyond a doubt the source of the winds of change is Divine, like Russell, you and I are able to say, “I’m ready, take me as far and as fast as you can.”
Daily the world grows smaller, leaving understanding the only place where peace can find a home. ~ Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions
P.S. — A core benefit of the Imagine Healing process is the “evidence procedure.” Because you can see something you know is following its natural progression, you can pair up something else with it. Since late yesterday I am watching the progression of healing of a very sore little toe. Healing is natural. As that heals, I am saying to the whatever it was that moved the mother robin, “Take this healing as far and as fast as you can.”
P.S.S. — Imagine my surprise to see my friend, Dottie, in the photo with Russell Boulding. He had come to Friends Lake Quaker community to give a workshop.
This morning I enjoyed listening to Linda Beushaushen Gunter’s sermon, “Life’s Story.” She told the first “version” of her life and then, reporting on the exact same history, another “version.” The first story focused through the lens of things being unfair, difficult, painful. The second told of the same events, but without all of the doom and gloom and blame and shame. She told of having been the eldest child; her mother’s depression; her divorce; her widowhood…. each was seen as rife with opportunity and blessing, shaping her into the servant leader she is today. Her closing quotation from The Tiny Buddha was not attributed to anyone, so we can each make it our own,if we choose:
In this life we are all just walking up the mountain, and we can sing as we climb or we can complain about our sore feet. Whichever we choose, we still gotta do the hike. I decided a long time ago singing made a lot more sense.
Yesterday while I was out on a bike ride I received this email message from a dear friend, a loyal reader of Yellow Brick Road. She is someone I have shared a lot about life with.
I’m trying to get to a good place about all of this, so I again send you my gratitude for all of your election-related YBR posts. Thanks to you, I don’t feel like a loser, but I fear that our beloved country will become one if the Democrats win in the Senate too, allowing what I view as impractical concepts to become the norm. Chuck Schumer announced that Joe Biden will help the US change the world! I’m not ready for that. However, as much as Trump or Biden want/wanted to believe that were/are/will be in charge, I’m comforted that God is our ultimate leader, yes?
I thought of this friend as I listened to Linda’s sermon, and also when I read Neale Donald Walsch’s daily thought.
If you were thinking rightly you could not possibly
imagine that anything was going ‘wrong.’ You would
know that nothing in the Universe is working against
you. By definition, given Who You Are, this is impossible.
Move, then, to gratitude when you encounter your
frustrations. And see every event as an Opportunity.
I posted “Why Cycling Can Make You a Happier Person” on the Imagine Healing Facebook page yesterday before I went on my ride. Truth be told, love of cycling is probably my strongest pull to snow-birding. Cycling is good exercise. It gets me out in nature. To stay safe cycling you really do have to be mindful. From the article:
Within 10 minutes of being on a bike, things that are immediately worrying you – that piece of work you haven’t finished – have been dismissed. Ride for 45 minutes and you hardly know what you were thinking about and then something else drops in – a line from a poem or something your child said.
While cycling yesterday, that happened! Something profound opened up to reveal the structure of the universe. I saw EVERYTHING! And everything is unfolding in divine order.
I sobbed telling my sister, Janis, about my experience, and she kept saying, “You had an epiphany….”
Now the epiphany is similar to the way dream images vanish upon waking where the details are no longer clear but you totally recall having had the experience. The most I can articulate right now is that we are all playing roles, each contributing to the divine unfolding. Some are moving out into the change, some are leaning back to the familiar — together all of it balancing our progression.
I had an epiphany….
I could see with a different understanding the experience I had had in Europe in 2011 where options would close or open depending upon my inner state.
A wave of profound appreciation came over me for my brother-in-law’s having broken the water line installing the new sink in the guest bath. Sure, finding the mold and facing the expense of remediation meant going through all of the frustration, but now John is healthy!
Frances Newton said “I can stand what I know. It’s what I don’t know that frightens me.” Our central nervous systems react poorly in the face of the unknown. Fear of the unknown, often referred to as free-floating anxiety, catches up to us on occasion. But it needn’t. Pompe Strater-Vidal has some great guided meditations you can enroll in for free at Relax Breathe Flow to help you.
We can sing as we climb or we can complain about our sore feet.
The path forward may sometimes be unclear. And it may be messy. But the shared heart is calling, and we have an opportunity to make lasting shifts toward love and justice in our world.
~ Kristi Nelson
Photo of Lake Michigan by Kathy Kreager, used with permission.
“Your job, once you understand that the river was never broken, is not to go on campaign to clean up the polluted river, but to help to teach those who live along the river that they are responsible for cleaning it up. The need is to understand clearly what needs to be fixed. Then you don’t enter into it as ‘I am the teacher and I’m going to show you how to do it.’ Perhaps you talk to the people who live there about how sad it makes you to see this pollution. You help them to understand their responsibility for creating it and that they are empowered to clean it up if they wish to.”
A Wall Street Journal headline caught my eye: Bullies Are Everywhere – How to Stop Them. I was reminded of a line Richard Bandler would often use, “The best way to help a poor person is to not be one.”
Right speech and right action (wholesome attitude and behavior) is a central motive for our practice in mindfulness. The best way to stop a bully is to not be one.
My meditation teacher was involved in the civil rights movement when she was a teen. She tells of having been well trained in non-harm before being sent into spots where illegal acts of violence (like lynching) was still occurring. How they responded in those spaces of such hatred and tension brought about life-or-death results. I personally know a man who was holding the hand of a woman killed when a bulldozer plowed into humans lying on the ground in protest of the demolishing of a brand new school building to avoid integration.
Rather than relying on a thin,
idealized hope that
we will all
one day
just get along,
we can approach conflict resolution
as an art form that
we are privileged to
develop and hone.
~ Diane Musho Hamilton
Aggravated anger that erupts in deadly violence does not just jump on us out of thin air. We are constantly utilizing or missing opportunities of grace which is continually creating active moments.
A couple of days ago, our daughter, also a supporter of President Trump, sent a text message to her dad saying it was a mathematical miracle that 100 percent of the late mail-in votes were for Biden. Before he responded to her, I said, “I can conceive of some tiny sampling where that statement was true. These distortions are what is fueling the hatred and distrust of one another.” (The tilting of truth I wrote about in a previous post….)
He responded to her saying he hopes one of the things that comes out of this is an end to voter fraud. He also reminded her to keep this all in prayer, that she has a very strong faith in God. He utilized that active moment!
The article about bullies addressed the underlying drivers of the behavior of bullying. At the top of the list was narcissism. Craig Malkin, a clinical psychologist, lecturer at Harvard Medical School and author of “Rethinking Narcissism” is reported as saying, “People who are very narcissistic display a trio of behaviors called the Triple E: exploitation, entitlement and empathy impairment.”
A poignant point to you and me is to realize that excessive interest in oneself and a sense of entitlement actually occurs on a spectrum. All humans have some. As Abraham Hicks says, being self-interested is just hard wired into humans. Brad Bushman, a professor of communication at the Ohio State University in Columbus, who studies narcissism and aggression adds, “Have you ever rushed into an open spot in a busy parking lot before someone else can grab it? That’s narcissism.”
My dharma sister shared having a very tender awareness on a recent retreat, her voice choking as she said, “My father was a bully. My brothers are bullies. What I realized this week is that I am a bully too.”
I have been a bully as well. We all have. I have been a religious zealot. That term was first used in reference to a political movement in the Judea Province in the 1st Century. They were trying to incite a rebellion to expel the Roman Empire from the Holy Land, by force of arms. Reference the FIRST Jewish-Roman War. Oh, my…. we are slow to learn, but we are learning.
It is our river of life that has been polluted by our narcissistic behaviors — on both sides of every issue.
Over the next days and weeks and months following this election, speak honestly about how sad this pollution has made you. Speak words that lessens distress — in ourselves and in the one with whom or about whom we are speaking.
On occasion we might even feel superior to some people — like the gruff man in line ahead of us at the bank or the rude cashier at the grocery store. But in all cases, the moment we compare and thus create a separation between ourselves and others, we deny the blessing of God’s all-encompassing plan for each of us.
We are all one in God. When we realize our connection to one another, we learn our task is to care for each other rather than artificially set ourselves apart.
~ In God’s Care, Daily Meditations on Spirituality in Recovery
We are all one in God. With each active moment we are able to clean up our own river of relating. If we wish to….
At the end of our Zoom dominoes game last night I asked if anybody knew what was going on with the election results. John said, “Biden won.” I was shocked. Linda clarified that results have not yet been declared because of laws suits.
John’s first comment when I asked him if he was OK with Biden’s being elected: “I can’t do anything about it. All I can do is live my life, be the best person I can be.”
David R. Hawkins said, “Make a gift of your life and lift all… by being kind, considerate, forgiving, and compassionate at all times, in all places, and under all conditions, with everyone as well as yourself. This is the greatest gift anyone can give.”
I could see in sadness in John’s face and feel his concern as he added, “Biden won’t be president long because his cognition is failing.” He spoke of the good that Trump has achieved as President and gave as example stopping the U.S. giving money to Germany to protect them from Russia while Germany was buying natural gas from Russia instead of buying it from us. I know nothing about that stuff, but I can respect that John does.
I encouraged John to hold a view of humans acting out of positive character.
“If Trump had won there would have been riots in the streets tonight,” he said quietly. I told him it had been surprising and distressing to me that my dharma friends were so unskillful about Trump over the past 4 years. I spoke of it like a teeter-totter, of our taking turns being up in the air.
In the light of day, I see it more as taking turns carrying a burden. We are all working toward a higher vibration on the planet (a better world; John’s ‘America is a great country’), and it is like we are having to ‘tack’ along the way.
Tacking is a sailing term. When the wind is not in your favor, you can still get to your destination. You have to turn your bow toward the wind so that the direction from which the wind blows changes from one side to the other. This maneuver allows progress in the desired direction.
Perhaps President Trump’s winning in 2016, and Joe Biden’s winning in 2020 is humanity’s tacking — the wind blows changing from one side to the other.
Recently Aaron had this to say:
For the Earth to reach shore, in other words to move into a higher density, to move into a higher consciousness, there is going to have to be a wave or a series of waves. When that wave comes in—picture the water on the ocean, the ocean floor, and the water from the first wave rolling out and the new wave rolling in so they meet at this point. Crash into each other. There’s a contraction there where the outgoing wave meets the incoming wave, and that’s part of what lifts the incoming wave and gives it its height and power to make it all the way up onto the shore. If there is not that contraction, you just float. Bobbing up and down on very little waves that will not carry you to shore.
The challenges of your present world, while unpleasant and in some cases, deeply concerning, are also part of what is necessary for the shift, the transition to higher consciousness.
We don’t talk about this as good or bad. We can talk about it as pleasant or unpleasant. But if you choose to make any kind of transition, there’s going to have to be something that blocks you a bit, creates challenges that allow you to move into a higher vibration and move forward, expand outward, and overcome those challenges.
I wrote in my journal this morning: What would you have me know? (my most frequent question!)
V: You can feel your heart open. You know you are holding the intention for our way to a world that is truly in service to all beings and lives from the intention to harm none. Aaron spoke of the least harm. It would not have been kind to have rioting. It would not be kind to deny benefits that this President has brought forth. It is time to transcend any sense that “the means justifies the end” and bring about successes that are undergirded by spiritual values.
What an image this lone dove sitting on the edge of the birdbath with all the fallen leaves made this morning shortly after the sun came up.
Doves are messengers of God and their message usually is: no matter what is happening, peace will always follow. When doves appear, it is a sign of your innocence and grace. Know and trust that your loved ones are watching you always. Dove totem animal brings peace, joy, and harmony. ~ Dove Totem Meaning
My heart holds the melancholy feeling I had seeing the lone dove; I am unwilling to project this onto my fine feathered friend.
Give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.— Luke 1:79
P.S. When I shared this all with John, because of the dove and the message of peace, he added that President Trump negotiated peace in the Middle East for the first time in decades….
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