By Debra Basham, on September 16, 2020
Sometimes people get the mistaken notion
that spirituality is a separate department of life,
the penthouse of existence.
But rightly understood,
it is a vital awareness
that pervades
all realms of our being.
~Br. David Steindl-Rast
Today, it is this beautiful planet we call home that calls us home to our hearts. We are being asked to plant seeds of wisdom and love. I told John today one could consider if you are hearing or reading something that is stating who or what was or is to blame about anything, to please just consider this: Anyone can win the game of Monday-Morning-Quarterbacking. It is the coaching before and during the game that makes the difference.
I have been patient (mostly) with the world around me. While not first in THE world, I was first in my world to not allow smoking in my home. While not first in THE world, I was first in my world to save things believing they would some day be recycled.
I have been asking John for years to consider a more environmentally friendly yard. It makes little sense to spend time, energy, and money to kill what flourishes naturally, then invest more to plant things that cost even more to be fed and watered to survive and contribute little to myriad species called nature.
But we are where we are: we are where wild fires rage and tropical storms blow: too much or too little wind or rain. The following powerful excerpt is from the Seattle retreat in the fall of 2019 (reviewed and with some additions and edits on 09-14-20). It was just posted on the Deep Spring Meditation Center Facebook page, and it is so timely.
Aaron: These fires in California deeply concern me, not just for the immediate damage they are doing, burning people’s homes and so forth — although it is sad that people are losing their homes, their livelihood, even and especially their lives — but for what it’s doing to the energetic and spiritual environment. To me, if people choose to live in an area where there will be a likelihood of such fires, they know that this can happen to them. But the trees did not thusly choose. Well, yes, the trees agreed to grow there, but they agreed to grow there not to be burned away but to help support a wholesome environment.
They agreed to grow there with no foreknowledge of man’s thoughtlessness of the environment. It was a possibility but not yet a fact. The earth is ancient and the short-lived choices of mankind are more recent. And so, the Earth is getting a different message. Trees and other vegetable life are beginning to say, “Maybe it’s not safe to be here on the Earth. We are not cherished as we need to be in order to flourish. Maybe it’s time for us to shift ourselves to some other kind of evolutionary space where we may evolve with love.” Such a shift or even thought to shift is going to further downgrade the Earth’s environment. Just as man destroys the environment for certain animal species, he can destroy it for trees, and even for the elements themselves.
Once these fires are under control and out, I’d like to see large teams of people going into the woods, into the charred roads, thanking the earth, thanking the trees, and planting seedlings. With a strong commitment, speaking to the seedlings; speaking to each from their heart, “Thank you for making a new attempt to grow here. We will try very hard to cherish you, to take care of you and the environment in which you grow.”
It is not only our planet that is suffering. Our emotional bodies are going through these turbulent times as well. After the wildfires of anger and jealousy, fear and disdain, it is imperative we are willing to plant seedlings of forgiveness, wisdom, kindness and compassion.
One morning after we finished (virtually) sitting together in meditation, I shared a deep and precious conversation with Bob. Bob mentioned “A Course of Love”, describing it as sort of like the sequel to A Course in Miracles. “There are several chapters you can read for free,” he said.
ACIM was one of the bridges over troubled water when my spirituality out-grew the religion of Christianity in which I had met and committed my life to Jesus.
From Chapter 14: New Frontiers Beyond the Body and Mind, Form and Time, A Course of Love – The Dialogues:
What might this situation look like if I forgot everything I have previously known about similar situations, and looked at this in a new way?
Do I really need to worry about this situation, or can I affect this situation simply by not worrying about it and allowing it to be and unfold as it will?
While I realize that the facts would tell me this or that is true, I wonder what would happen if I disregarded the facts and was open to this being something else?
There is so much to disregard. Our old habits, thoughts, beliefs and actions are being invited to surrender. In The Language of Letting Go, Daily Meditations on Codependency Melody Beattie affirms: “We relinquish our tight hold and our need to control in our relationships. We take responsibility for ourselves; we allow others to do the same. We detach with the understanding that life is unfolding exactly as it needs to, for others and ourselves. The way life unfolds is good, even when it hurts. And ultimately, we can benefit from even the most difficult situations. We do this with the understanding that a Power greater than ourselves is in charge, and all is well.”
I whisper to all sentient beings that we will do our best. We are able to cherish life and summon that vital awareness that pervades all realms of our being into new frontiers….
By Debra Basham, on September 11, 2020 Joel has been having ongoing challenges with his gmail account. I reached out to Rebecca, our wonderful webmaster, and she is on it. When he wrote saying, “I think I must have been cursed by the gods of the internet. What did I ever do to them….” I wrote back:
“Well, bless the sea snakes!!!! Rebecca is going to see if Geek Squad can help her help you!”
The following morning, Joel responded:
I don’t remember how the sea snakes got in this. They play a prominent role in Coleridge’s “Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.” Everyone on the ship has died except for the “hero,” and the ship is floundering and adrift. The only person left alive on board is about to die. He has to bite his tongue to have enough moisture in his mouth to speak, but with what he thinks will be his last words, he blesses the sea snakes surrounding the vessel. With the blessing, the wind comes up, and the ship makes it back to England.
Recently I was listening to a dharma talk by Kyoun Sokuzan. Sokuzan met Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, in late 1973 and became a student. In 1974, Sokuzan attended the first session of Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. In 1975, he established the Dharma Study Group of Battle Creek, Michigan. The group is currently meeting via Zoom. When someone asked Sokuzan if we need protection from the coronavirus, Sokuzan answered, “You don’t need protection, but you ask for protection. You participate in the realm you are in.”
Continuing, “Everything is temporary. Work with it however it shows up in your neighborhood.”
This all comes as I see my mind grasping for a safe way to be with friends and family. I hear Sokuzan say, “Go into the darkness. That is where the light is.”
Human experience is polarized. I was one of those odd ducks who was anti-abortion and pro-legalization of abortion. A woman desperate not to birth a baby will take dangerous measures to end that pregnancy. Coat hangers are just one… Truth. Some people argue that making abortion legal motivates more women to choose that option. This is just not truth. The same argument is happening around the legalization of marijuana. Truth?
Sokuzan: “It’s all relative truth. You can’t see the truth.”
A friend stopped by briefly yesterday, willing to do me a huge favor. I had placed the two chairs on our front porch at the furthest distance. I donned my cute little kitty mask (a gift from my sister, Janis) and went out onto the porch. As my friend got out of her car, she saw me in my mask. “Do you want me to put a mask on?” she asked. She had one in the car. I said I would appreciate her putting on a mask.
My friend was obviously not comfortable in the mask she was wearing. Every few seconds she would need to adjust it. The mask just did not fit her face well. As I watched, I had the thought it was more like a thong than a bikini. I hate when my underpants ride up in the crack of my butt. I have never understood someone wearing a thong. Maybe it is like Erma Bombeck’s having said she does not eat chocolate cake — she just smears it on her hips and thighs because that is where it is going to end up!
Early in the pandemic, I began making masks that are fun. Many of those iterations have been shared in previous posts. Why? Because, as Sokuzan says, “It’s all relative truth.”
If my friend or I had been an asymptomatic spreader of the virus, would our actions have been enough to protect the other? Sokuzan said we don’t need protection but we do need to work with things however they are showing up.
Sokuzan used a Buddhist teaching term I had not previously run into, unless I had heard it and did not yet fully embody the dharma these words are pointing to. Trycycle has an excellent article on the teaching if you are interested. Here is the link: “Drive all blames into one.” From the article:
“Conveniently, blaming others allows us to avoid looking into our own role in the problems and conflicts we encounter. We look outward, but we do not look within. And even in looking outward, once we have assigned the blame, we go no further. So we do not get to the root of the problem. We stop short, satisfied that we are off the hook and someone else is at fault.”
I think a lot about my family. I take drive all blames into one to heart. If we went for a visit (as we soooooo want to do) and one of them was an asymptomatic spreader, and John or I got ill and/or died, who would be to blame?
“This slogan {drive all blames into one} is quite radical. Instead of blaming others, you blame yourself. Even if it is not your fault, you take the blame. It is important to distinguish this practice from neurotic self-blaming or the regretful fixation on your own mistakes and how much you are at fault. It also does not imply that you should not point out wrongdoing or blow the whistle on corruption. Instead, as you go about your life, you simply notice the urge to blame others and you reverse it.”
If my action exposed me to the virus, not even the virus is to blame. But if my action exposed someone else to the virus, I am responsible. It is simply how things showed up in the neighborhood. Drive all blames into one….
“Pay attention to how blaming arises and what patterns it takes. See what happens when you take on the blame yourself. Notice what changes in your own experience and in what you observe around you.”
A friend rented a hotel room near her daughter’s cottage as the extended family gathered for the Labor Day weekend. My friend took her own provisions, and she was masked and maintained safe-distance as she joined them for the wonderful celebration of her grandson’s 25th birthday.
Other friends are leaving this weekend to visit their son and family out of state. They, too, will stay in a hotel and enjoy time with the family out-of-doors.
Soon, in the Northern hemisphere, it will be winter. “What then?” you might ask.
Bless the sea snakes….
Everything is temporary.
By Debra Basham, on September 4, 2020 My sister and I are having a wonderful experience with the Magic Eye calendar for 2020.
We meet via a video call on the first day of each month and we turn the page together. We love the sharing: looking; not seeing; relaxing; looking again; seeing. That is how the process works!
September was a very challenging image to see. We both had to make at least a half-dozen attempts.
Relaxing is key.
Our collective exhilaration when we finally see is palpable.
My writing time with Southern Circle Poets began with someone’s post about “Ambiguous Loss” that I had re-posted on Facebook:
Someone once said when you love someone with dementia you lose them more and more everyday: when they are diagnosed, when they go through different stages, when they go into care and when they die.
This is called “Ambiguous Loss.”
‘Rapidly shrinking brain’ is how doctors described it.
I wouldn’t wish Dementia on anyone. As the persons brain slowly dies, they change physically and eventually forget who their loved ones are. They can eventually become bedridden, unable to move and unable to eat or drink.
There will be people who will scroll by this message because dementia has not touched them. They may not know what it’s like to have a loved one who has fought or is fighting a battle against Dementia.
My friend, Claudia, knows this experience well, as does Katey, one of the Southern Circle Poets.
I wrote:
I cannot expect you to understand what it feels like to see someone struggle with tasks that once were as easy as breathing. To hear a loved-one say or ask the same comment or question over and over again.
And to know the truth, “I cannot fix this.”
Being present with my own inner struggles with wanting it to be fixed is the best I can do.
I begin a poem:
You Once Were
You once were so skillful; and willful.
You once were so strong.
The writing doesn’t go anywhere from there, so I begin again…
Ambiguous Loss
I wonder when I first recognized you were losing precious skills we had both taken for granted. Like scales falling off the catch-of-the-day, your identity seems to be hell-bent on shedding strengths.
Crossing the street as the afternoon sunlight was casting shadows, I saw autumn trees on the face of the glistening parking lot still damp from a brief shower. This the first time I had accepted it was me cautioning you to watch your step. Red, yellow, orange and gold…. green now sleeping soundly somewhere.
I cannot see your world from here.
Permission granted to enjoy the hint of fall as the breeze blows in from the window behind me, almost cool enough to cause a chill.
Permission granted to witness the tightness moving mechanically across my chest as I wonder what your future will unfold to.
Permission granted to be content with both the not knowing and the wanting to know and the soft, sensuous dance between seeming opposites.
Memory drifts back to delivering my mom to the adult foster care home. Grief at leaving her there as she looks into my face calling me Debbie, and pleads, “Don’t leave me with these strangers….” and the guilt at being my relief to be leaving her there. The years of her decline, the day of her passing—edges blur as they burn a hole in my emotional body, a single heart breaking open enough to hold the whole human happening.
Profound gratitude now for the dear ones who have walked this path previously, providing a trail of recognition along this treacherous terrain. Remembering Hansel and Gretel and their crumbs of bread being consumed by the birds….
I make the choice to trust I am still moving toward the center of our being.
This morning I had a near-identical conversation with two people I love. One was about the news that a job would be ending. The other was about having been at an eye doctor’s office with frighteningly lax procedures for prevention of the spread of Covid-19. Although the content of these two experiences looks dissimilar, the words that came crossed the chasm of delusion: Every experience will be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. We learn from it all.
I said, “When you have already already felt the pain of the experience, be sure you reap the benefits.”
Having worked at jobs which demanded so much that life balance was sacrificed isn’t failure. Noticing is gaining insight.
When a child is burned by touching a hot stove, the child learns from the pain how to be safer.
Now, this is “Ambiguous Gain…”
By Debra Basham, on September 1, 2020 Society evolves not by shouting each other down,
but by the unique capacity of unique,
individual human beings to comprehend each other.
~ Lewis Thomas
I started having flies in the master bathroom. We pretty quickly figured out where they were getting in, but it took me a while to catch and release them all.
I have been able to catch flies in my fingers for as long as I can remember. I speak to the flies, saying, “Slow down. I will let you out where you have more access to food. Easy… easy… almost there.”
The fly totem meaning is quick and abrupt changes in your thoughts, emotions, and endeavors are afoot.
Fly eyes are immobile, but the spherical shape and the eye’s protrusion from the head produce an almost 360-degree view of the world!
The message from fly is, You must use your keen eyesight to see the way.
Lewis Thomas, author of the opening quotation, was an American physician and researcher, a scientist who wrote essays and reflections on topics in biology.
Nature has so much to teach us…
Barbara Brodsky was a civil rights activist in her teens. She was trained in nonviolence. She tells of having been sent into a small segregated town in the deep south with an adult Caucasian couple, and a black teenage girl. Every eye was glaring at them as they entered the busy cafe, but they felt victorious that they were allowed to take a seat.
A waitress came over and took their drink orders.
When the waitress came back with their beverages, the ice-filled contents were poured over the head of the young black woman! Chairs were instantly kicked back and patrons filled with hatred and anger were on their feet. It was impossible to know if they would get out unharmed.
1 Peter 3:9
Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.
It took patience and a genuine commitment to DO NO HARM to get every one of those flies out of my bathroom alive. It took that and more to get Barbara and her companions out of that small town alive….
Abraham Hicks said, “There isn’t anything that I cannot be or do or have, and I have a huge Nonphysical staff that’s ready to assist me, and I’m ready.” (Excerpted from Boca Raton, Florida on 1/12/97)
It is time for kindness and wisdom and patience and commitment to do no harm. We need the help of all of that nonphysical staff so every sentient being on this planet can inherit a blessing.
I am ready.
I hope you are ready too…
By Debra Basham, on August 28, 2020 The world is changed by your example, not your opinion.
~ Paul Coehlo
As I was feeling befuddled by boredom, I happened upon a dharma talk by Kyoun Sokuzan. Sokuzan, a fully transmitted monk in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition, was speaking about meddling mind.
Adyashanti (born Steven Gray in 1962), an American spiritual teacher and writer, says, “To have enough curiosity to start to question your deepest identity is absolutely vital and essential to spiritual awakening, and to the realization of peace and freedom.”
When I say “I stumbled upon a dharma talk,” I mean that I still have no rational understanding of how I got onto the live stream. Oh, I know this teacher is the head of the SokukoJi Buddhist Temple Monastery, in Battle Creek, Michigan. A mutual Buddhist friend has attended events there before Covid-19.
From the Website:
America has Zen all the time. Why, my Teacher, should I meddle?
April 10, 1938
We have here the very same breeze as the remote spring at Lumbini, the birthplace of the Buddha.
The very same mist hangs over the evening garden as it did over the ancient woods of Asoka trees.
There is no spot on this good earth which is not the birthplace of a Buddha.
I had not gone to their website, or their Facebook page, nor signed up for anything with this group. But the morning after I heard the dharma talk on meddling mind, I had a deep discussion with a dear friend about the danger of delusion. Very shortly after that conversation I read these powerful words of a writer-colleague:
“Doodling Without Concern for End-Gain”
By letting go of fantasy, desire, and ego, which all come from inside ourselves, Paulus suggested opening to the energy of nature, a model of abundance and non-possession coming from outside ourselves.
~ Zan Lombardo
(NOTE: This is a chapter for a collaborative book being written by a group of people who were strongly influenced by Paulus Berensohn (1933-2017), dancer, potter, poet, artist, deep ecologist, teacher and former director at the Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina. Zan’s work is not yet published work, and has been shared here without her expressed permission.)
P.S. I found this “Ball and Box” analogy explaining grief relevant. It was posted by a friend who lost her 35 year old son recently. If you find it helpful, please share it with others.
Grief related to a recent loss can stimulate fairly constant pain. The ball and box analogy allowed the author of the article to understand why it is normal to still be experiencing intermittent feelings of grief even years after recovering from the initial shock of a loss.
Grief is something we get through…. not something to get over.
Meddling mind would have us believe or deny or act out feelings, thoughts, and opinions related to grief and loss. Coehlo expressed it so powerfully: the world is changed by our example.
The pandemic is generating and amplifying feelings for people. Awareness allows us to be more skillful, compassionate, and wise with ourselves and others.
By Debra Basham, on August 24, 2020 The farmer may only be planting a seed,
but if he opens his eyes
he is feeding the whole world.
~ Omaha Bee
This opening quotation kicked off a precious story about a three-person construction crew who was approached by a man asking what each was doing. The first said he was working for pittance and was getting tired, the second said he was laying concrete, the third (a woman, in the version I read) said, “I am building a hospital where people will receive needed medical care and many lives will be saved.”
The man responded, “Yes… You are building my hospital.”
The man was the benefactor, and he made the woman head over the entire project.
I don’t know if this story actually happened as it is written, but the essence of this story is happening all over the planet at every moment as we are either working for a pittance, laying concrete, or saving lives.
What are you doing today?
Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
You ask why there seem to be increasing obstacles. If you’re muddling around thinking about being more loving and caring and connected in your lives but not really doing much about it, negative polarity can relax. They see you’re not really getting anywhere. Since WWII, there has been a tremendous move toward positive polarity in the world. Many old souls are coming into birth, especially in the past 30 years. Here are many beings really intent on finding a way to live with love in the world rather than with an ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ doctrine. Negative polarity looks around and says, ‘What’s happening? This is getting out of hand! Look how loving they’re becoming. Let’s toss in some opposition here.’ ~ Aaron
Deep Spring has a new blog! Here is a link to the first post: The Vibration of Love is Protection from COVID-19
Sign up to receive all of the posts real-time!!!
By Debra Basham, on August 20, 2020 Twelve minutes late coming to join the Southern Circle Poets writing group, I have been transplanting some flowering things that have been blooming beautifully along the left edge of our driveway all summer. We are scheduled to have work begin tearing up the old concrete and blacktop, and putting in a continuous concrete driveway from the sidewalk to the door of our barn. John hopes it will work for shuffleboard!!!
Yesterday when I mentioned my desire to transplant the flowering things, he queried as to if they were wildflowers or weeds. “What is the difference?” I asked. “Perhaps we just call them weeds because no one sells them at the garden shoppe.” They are beautiful, they are healthy, and they are contributing oxygen to the planet. It is worth a try to keep them alive….
Simultaneously, I have been going through major disorder in my front bedroom/office/meditation hall. My HP PC crossed the rainbow bridge. (English: My desktop computer cannot be repaired.) I had big stuff tied to that PC: a big tower, a huge monitor, an external camera, a professional Brother laser printer, great-sounding Bose speakers. The PC’s valued accessories generated a need within me to hold onto it all when we downsized three years ago. And now what was is no more.
Things have changed, and I am now working towards freeing up space. I will use my laptop as my ONLY computer. Unless you count my iPhone….
So for days now I have been purging files to get the contents of four two-drawer file cabinets down to three.
I am still somewhat in grief about my Brother printer. This has been a fantastic printer. I have cranked out client intake forms, NLP certificates, myriad lunch-and-learn handouts, and lots of poetry.
Perhaps it has not yet been determined what will go or stay. Not only is this printer quite large, but the installation is on a CD and my laptop does not have a CD player. I know one can purchase an external CD player but I just don’t know if I want to accommodate the size of this printer.
I will figure it out as I go along. I did determine that I can use my Bose speakers with my laptop when I want really good sound.
Things are in disorder around schools. Two Midwestern universities announced on Tuesday that they will be modifying their fall plans because of the coronavirus pandemic. University of Notre Dame has suspended all in-person classes for at least two weeks due to the swell of coronavirus since students returned August 10. A letter from the President of Michigan State University stated: “Effective immediately, we are asking undergraduate students who planned to live in our residence halls this fall to stay home and continue their education with MSU remotely.”
A friend who teaches K-12 was struggling with whether or not to take an early retirement from teaching. An important piece for her is that she can now retire with medical benefits — a big deal as she is a survivor of breast cancer.
So much is going on. Old habit energy is amplified. Some people are paralyzed by panic. Others are already seeing opportunities opening up. I suggested my friend might benefit by creating and using a breath prayer, such as “I will figure it out as I go along….”
My friend laughed so hard she cried, but the truth is we have all been doing that all along. In this ‘disorder’ phase we can see that clearly. It allows you to relax about it.
I have found things in this office space while purging that I did not even know I had. You do want to keep the important stuff. As you anticipate reorder, notice what is truly important. Let go of the everything else. We will figure it out as we go along…
Look at all the space that is being created!
By Debra Basham, on August 18, 2020 In response to “When Everything Falls Apart, What Remains?” posting, I received a precious email message from a Florida writer-friend.
Thank you, Paul, for igniting my heart by sharing your powerful writing of your poignant experience.
(Soft edits only!)
Welcome to the Yellow Brick Road, and please come again….
Dear Debra,
I stared at the title of your recent blog for moments before I opened and read the email.
The title described exactly, in a few short words, what I’ve been feeling for weeks. Seems that we’ve experienced a string of negative events these past few months that have made July/August 2020 among the most unforgettable in recent memory.
I’ve tried to remain positive, yet have found this challenging.
Although not the root cause, COVID-induced separation is a likely contributor to a nagging sense of disconnect.
I wonder sometimes if we’ve gotten too good at “social distancing.” We stay at home; work from home in separate rooms; spend all day in different mindsets. We frown under our mask if someone is shopping in the wrong direction in the supermarket aisle. We are cautioned to avoid people who are sick, when we used to be encouraged to do the opposite.
E.M. Forster begins his novel “Howard’s End” with the words “only connect.”
A final thought on human interaction and connectedness: One of our favorite activities since moving to Southwest Florida is shopping at Mario’s Italian Market in Fort Myers.
Having grown up in Brooklyn with parents who were raised in Little Italy, I feel qualified to comment on the salumeria experience in America.
The magic of Mario’s is that everyone there—regardless of ethnicity or nationality—is for that moment bound together by a familiarity and fondness for this food. We make sure that number 75 doesn’t answer before we hold up our ticket number 76. We ask the woman who ordered the long-hot peppers if they’re really hot; she replies with a smile and left-right wag of her hand. The counter man offers a sample slice of Calabrian salami—an inducement to order a half-pound instead of a quarter. We discuss the merits of gorgonzola versus blue cheese with a stranger.
Perhaps this is what will remain when everything falls apart.
Perhaps, when everything falls apart, what remains is everything that is loved….
You are loved, Paul!
By Debra Basham, on August 16, 2020 I am technically practicing silence in a meditation retreat at Heartwood Refuge and Retreat Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina. But I am attending via Zoom and my fingers are on the keyboard. The focus of this retreat with John Orr is When Everything Falls Apart, What Remains? This was John’s blurb about the retreat:
Our world has seen a massive upheaval as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the continuing racism and political divisiveness. We are all having to deal with changes in our lives and the communities we live in. At times it may seem like everything is falling apart and we are left with a profound feeling of uncertainty. Now more than ever the dharma and our meditation practice can be a refuge to meet the present challenges.
During this retreat we will explore the ancient teachings of:
The Don’t Know Mind (making friends with uncertainty)
Impermanence (this too shall pass)
Dissolution (when everything falls apart, what remains?)
Non Duality (Something isn’t separate from Everything)
Our meditation draws on Mindfulness, Vipassana and Pure Awareness. Clear instruction will be offered for all levels.
Loving Kindness and Compassion Meditation and chanting are also part of our retreat together. A special focus will be how to practice and hold our hearts open with the inconvenience, discomfort and uncertainty of today’s world.
On Wednesday afternoon before the retreat began, I had yet another tender conversation with our daughter about our diverse approach to precautions related to this virus. We did not argue, but we make very different choices. A few hours later, during the opening introductions, I received news from a good friend–also attending via Zoom–that she was not feeling well. Here is the rest of the story, posted on Facebook a few moments ago in response to another friend, Kate:
Kate posted:
I feel like I’m one of the few people still practicing social distancing, and sheltering in place. FB is full of pics of people out to restaurants, at pools and beaches or sharing space with relatives they haven’t seen in awhile. I would love to see our kids but I can’t guarantee I’m not infected nor can they. Am I just over sensitive to this?
I responded to Kate:
Kate, THANK YOU! I could have written this post. Today I would add that another friend, thinking the same way you and I have been thinking, relented and got together with her family.
Her adult children drove in from out of state, each household traveling in separate vehicles, taking proper precautions along way.
Each household brought a tent. My friend rented a party-potty and set up an outdoor kitchen. My friend’s family did not enter her house, and when the family went hiking each family drove in his/her own car. They maintained social distance along the trail.
Shortly after they arrived, her daughter’s partner received a call from work that his colleague had tested positive. He got in their vehicle and drove to the nearest location and had a Covid test.
Of course the results from his test didn’t come back until AFTER he was already back home, and not until AFTER he was already symptomatic. His test came back positive.
On Wednesday evening, gathered via Zoom, my friend reported that she had a “wicked cold” and had gone to get a Covid test. She would know in a week.
Yesterday, she sent a private message via Zoom chat, “I tested positive. I have COVID.”
Even the precautions level that you and I are committed to, may not be enough….
Kate, keep teaching by example! So much to learn from this.
❤️🙏🏼🦋
Deep Spring Center
Thought for Today
It is not the teacher who is the authority; it is the dharma that is the authority. It is sati, mindful presence, which is the authority. It is awareness, which is the authority. It is the deeply loving and open heart that is the authority. It is the Ground of Being, the divine essence of each, which is the authority. The teacher who has done his or her work, understands the practice and has developed a depth of realization of how things are, has no need to be the authority to another, but is willing to offer what he or she knows with a certainty, offering it for the guidance of others, but with no need to say, ‘This is it!’ If it really is it, others will discover that through their own practice. ~ Aaron
By Debra Basham, on August 5, 2020 
Recently, I included some information about transformation from J. Krishnamurti in my clergy “Insight’s” article.
Transformation is said to occur only when NONE of the following are present:
desire to change the experience
judgment
analysis
justification
grasping
selfing
resisting
believing that “I am witnessing”
Since the coronavirus stay-safe-at-home order in March, I have done daily yoga with Kathy Zerler. We started out by phone, but when it became obvious that the YMCA could not safely and legally hold the classes onsite any time soon, we started recording her yoga classes using Zoom. Kathy’s videos are available on Youtube by putting “Kathy Zerler yoga” into your search engine.
This morning I had a heart-felt experience of transformation — exactly as Krishnamurti describes it — during the guided meditation at the end of class. “Your World is Your Greatest Creation” was published in Kathy’s Joyful Meditaions:
Imagine yourself on a solitary beach at sunset. You are very relaxed after a long day…
You come upon a raft that is half on the beach and half in the water. Your name is written on a flag that waves from a mast in the center of the raft. You understand that this raft is yours to use for as long as you need it. You decide to load up every person who has ever hurt you. Politely, you help each person onto the raft. When they are all seated, you toss in the baggage they have heaped on you along with a few things of your own that you no longer need. You push the raft out toward the setting sun and watch as these people and their baggage float out of your life.
You are allowed to let them go. Just let them go….
I have heard Kathy do this guided meditation several times before, but something truly remarkable happened today when the only person that got into the raft was me!
I was alone in the raft and I could see clearly that only my distorted thoughts, beliefs, attitudes had hurt me.
I gently oared the raft toward the setting sun in perfect peace.
Transformation….
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