By Debra Basham, on July 17, 2024 Anālayo, a Buddhist monk, writes, “As long as the constant change inherent in life is not recognized, death is easily perceived as an abrupt end of all that has thus far been experienced as stable and lasting… it is not possible to live properly and fully unless the inevitability of death is accepted as an integral part of life.”
My previous post was on June 26. The days between then and now have been filled with my being present to what ended up being my friend’s death. Present with her. Present with those who love her and cared for her, including myself. She died Friday morning, just 24 hours after telling the doctor she wanted no more medical treatment but was choosing instead to be made comfortable and allowed to die in peace. We were preparing for her to come home with hospice care.
When people ask how I am, I say I am very sad, and I am glad she is no longer suffering, but mostly I am in awe. She is the first person I have touched after death. We were not yet at the hospital when we got the call she had died. I had spoken with that same nurse a little over an hour earlier. When I got to the hospital and entered the room with the purple door card I could not not touch her. Some will understand….
A dear friend who is no stranger to loss shared this from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue:
May you know that absence is alive with hidden presence,
that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.
May the absences in your life grow full of eternal echo.
May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere,
where the presences that have left you dwell.
May you be generous in your embrace of loss.
May the sore well of grief turn into a seamless flow of presence.
May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear from.
May you have the courage to speak for the excluded ones.
May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life.
May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle words or false belonging.
May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight are one.
May your longing inhabit it’s dreams within the Great Belonging.
It is mysterious why her death has affected me differently than any other. Yes, ours was a relationship which spanned over 27 years. I was present for her joys and sorrows over almost three decades. And, yes, we were both winter (Florida) and summer (Michigan) friends. Perhaps it is because I was so present with her that her absence is so alive with hidden presence.
I saw this on Facebook a couple of days before she died, and shared it with our Grief Journey Group.
I can’t say I loved you. I just can’t
Because it makes it sound as if my love is past tense. Gone, finished, ended.
And that is so far from the truth.
My love is not in the past. It will never be gone.
I love you now. Still.
You didn’t take all this love away with you. It stays. It lingers.
Some days it jumps up and hits me in the face just to remind me that it is still here. Still persevering.
Some days it nudges me. Challenges me to keep going. Daring me to find the strength to get through the day.
But mostly, it just resonates inside of me with everything I do. With every step forward and every glance back. Every close of my eyes. Every breath.
My love is not dependent on you being here.
There is nowhere far enough,
and nothing permanent enough
to stop me from loving you.
So I will not say I loved you.
Because I love you.
Still.
~ Becky Hemsley Poetry
I will not say I loved her. I love her still.
By Debra Basham, on June 26, 2024
Agitation is interesting.
Instead of trying to make it go away, allow it to be fully present, so that you can watch and learn its nature clearly.
~ The DailyTejaniya
It is difficult to recall how long ago now I saw so clearly the futility of speaking about a situation that is causing agitation. Any idiot can speak about the problem, but only someone with imagination has the wisdom mind to see solutions.
You are the only one who knows the conditions in your own life that are currently playing this dynamic out clearly, however, everyone has something going on right now that invites feeling helpless and perhaps even a bit hopeless.
I have previously mentioned my friend having SERIOUS health conditions in Florida over the winter and since returning to Michigan. (See Anxious Feelings – Power of Presence)
Well, conditions continue….
Last week I spent the morning with them at the hospital. She was having the long-awaited cardio version to return her heart to a normal sinus rhythm. We had opportunity to laugh at ourselves and one another. She had been desperate for a hair cut. The day before the cardio version she had an appointment, but when it came time to leave the house she refused to put her slippers on, going to the car instead in her bare feet! Helpless to reason with her, he drove her to the salon only to have her unable to navigate the unbearable heat of the blacktop parking lot. (Plus, with all the shenanigans they were already too late for her appointment!)
While the three of us waited in pre-op they were both willing and able to confess to and laugh at the absurdity they had collaborated. Unfortunately, we are all prone to mind states and habitual attitudes and unconscious catalysts that augment agitation and interrupt imagination, robbing us of the peace we truly are.
We talked about how counter productive human behavior can become when conditions prevent us from being able to have or do or be what we desire most — and sometimes actually need. You only have to think for one moment about the political or environmental or institutional climate crisis we are experiencing on this planet to understand fully the feelings leaning toward helplessness or hopelessness. Add as backdrop the layer of the inevitability of old age, illness, and death (from Buddhism: This body is subject to breaking up, subject to being laid down).
So, this morning I am allowing agitation to be fully present.
I am remembering how consistent I had to become with taking John’s vitals EVERY DAY and reporting them to his doctor EVERY WEEK for over two years now. You can watch and learn agitation’s nature clearly. The doctors’ agitation with the insurance stranglehold is not other than my own. The agitation with delay in getting access to what we want or need. The agitation that is precariously leaning toward helplessness or hopelessness, but also can open us up to imagination.
This comes from the preface of Imagine Healing: Guided Imagery to Help You Heal, by Debra Basham and Joel Bowman.
Woven into the fabric of your illness or health crisis, are the emotional, mental, and spiritual dynamics of both “dis-ease” and well-being. That simply means what is in the way, is the way. The use of your imagination can help you heal now.
By activating your imagination, you will not only be healing the physical ailment, you will be healing on all levels—body, mind, and spirit. Why settle for healing that is just skin deep, when you can activate your innate healing capacities. Although we cannot “unhappen” history, you are able to experience relief from painful memories, beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, even as you physically heal
Agitation is interesting.
Blessed be.
By Debra Basham, on June 13, 2024 Retreat Musings June 12, 2024
Today is the last day of this retreat with Barbara Brodsky and John Orr. I was blessed to stay in the guest quarters at the home of my dear friends, Delcy and Tom Kuhlman.
The title of this week is “Living Our True Nature as Love: Vipassana, Pure Awareness and Practices of the Heart” and this morning I wrote in my journal:
What has it meant for me to be present in this retreat? Nothing more or less than what it means for being present in any place and any time.
Two things that seem to want to be shared.
1) What is in the way is the way.
2) Practice with the everyday things of life, called the mundane. Years ago we learned an exercise to take a small amount of water into your mouth and just hold it as you watch an urge to swallow arise. When the urge begins to lessen, consciously swallow. Absolutely everything is arising and ceasing out of conditions. Perhaps there is a third thing that wants to be shared
Everything in the mundane sense realm goes in totally. You may only be aware of aspects, but your experience includes everything: what you see, what you hear, what you feel (the kinestetic cluster includes what you taste and smell) as well as what you know. The sense realm that you are least aware of consciously often has the greatest influence.
It has come to be my experience that the same can be said of what are called the supramundane. Each mundane sense has a corresponding higher sense realm, because it is the consciousness with which we are perceiving that shifts what we perceive. These supramundane sense experiences are also always present, whether we have awareness of them or not: Nada is always there. Luminosity is always there. Chi energy is always there. Spaciousness is always there.
In Buddhism, however, nada refers to the sound of silence. To detect the nada sound, turn your attention toward your hearing. If you listen carefully to the sounds around you, you’re likely to hear a continuous, high-pitched inner sound like white noise in the background. (Article The Sound of Silence, published in Lion’s Roar.) Interestingly, nada is also the Spanish word for “nothing.”
According to Wikipedia, luminosity or clear light is the innate condition of the mind, associated with Buddha-nature, the realization of which is the goal of meditative practice. It can seem that everything is more brilliant than physical light, illuminated, almost glowing. Think about images of halo’s you may have seen.
Chi energy can be thought of as the bridge between your form (meaning your physical body, your thoughts, emotions, sensations) and the formless part of you which is your true essence — soul, spirit, or consciousness itself. Science might speak of the bio-electric magnetic field, energy that emanates from your organs.
Spaciousness is a bit more challenging to define but is likely the most basic. Think about it this way: The spacious mind has room for everything. It is like the space in a room, which is never harmed by what goes in and out of it. In fact, we say “the space in this room,” but actually, the room is in the space, the whole building is in the space.
The Daily Quote from Deep Spring for June 12, 2024 says, “There is no duality. Anything that is born of love also carries darkness and fear. These are not the essence; these are conditioned expressions. You cannot fully express love until you face fear. You cannot fully express light until you live in darkness and learn how to move through and transcend the darkness, transcending it by the light within you.”
The Daily Tejaniya tied right in: “Let things unfold naturally. As you watch an experience continuously, you will begin to recognize patterns. Later, you will see the whole picture. The value of meditation becomes more apparent with dedicated practice over long stretches of time.” (Article Noticing Space published in Tricycle.)
One of the most active points of this retreat was Dharma Sister who as the result of a brain bleed is having difficulty navigating the technology to access Zoom. It has taken a village to assist this beloved one to be able to have the experience of study, sharing, and meditating with others dedicated to the path. In thanking those who were physically there to offer the necessary support I said, “I am confident that if you had been with us on our closing Zoom circle to see and hear her read with such skill and depth of understanding of the Dharma her sections of the Mala Recitation I know you would share now in that joy completely.”
So many things shared by those on the retreat still resonate in my heart. Here are a couple of things that may also touch you deeply:
The Path of Love
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
And here I thought the path of love
would look like love. Like kindness.
Like generosity. Like gentleness.
Instead it looks like me being bothered
by the sound of loud chewing. Me
wanting praise. Me needing to feel
loved. Hello me. How elegantly love
has arranged for me to meet
all the parts of me that would stand
in love’s way. How easily
it shows me I’ve thought of love
as a destination. But here is love
with no expectation. Here is love
with no name, no locus. Here
is love with no face, no shape, no
promise, no vow, no hope.
Here is love as itself, surging
and flowing, love as itself insisting
on love, love as itself eroding
all those layers of me that still
think they know something about love
(and love holds me while I rail
and love throws me back in the stream
and love is what is still here when I am not).
“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” ~ Rumi
Yes, there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground, and love is what is still here when I am not.
Blessed be….
By Debra Basham, on May 26, 2024 Themes seem to emerge into awareness while I am doing things other than looking for themes. Like peeling potatoes for potato salad for today’s Memorial Day meal to be shared with my sister, Janis, and my brother-in-love, Larry. Or while I was out riding my bike and meeting a breed of dog that looks a lot like a hyena (Korean Jindu). Sometimes when I stop doing and put my feet up.
Of course, everything is connected so last evening’s phone conversation with a Dharma Sister was already active in awareness. My friend had just attended a 10-day retreat where they were working with mindfulness of breathing. “Know the long and short breath.” She said it was not about the length of the breath but about what you think is a long breath or short breath. She went on to say that we are to know the whole breath body. You need to pay attention to the beginning, the middle, and the ending. They were also contemplating impermanence.
It seems impermanence is perhaps the only true constant!
This morning’s awareness was also shaped by my having listened to Tara Brach after the call with my friend. Tara was speaking about Inner Fire, what she also referred to as Spiritual Aspiration.
I noticed (and after number 2 I kept count) my friend’s repetitive use of a 3-word phrase: LORD, HELP US.
It seemed significant so I mentioned to her that she had used that phrase five times during our conversation. She had not been conscious of using it even once. I asked what the phrase means to her. She had no sense of connection to it.
Make sure you know this blog post is not a criticism of her, or even a comment about her personally. It likely is, however, vital to her and to all of us.
So, immediately following that conversation, it really caught my attention when Tara Brach (about 5 minutes into the talk) told of a man who was searching for something important and began to pray, “Lord, help me,” saying he would dedicate his life to service, he would be faithful, clear, true, strong – if God would answer his prayer. Moments later, the man found the item and quickly prayed again, “Never mind, God, I’ve found it.”
A search for the phrase “God, help us” produced an interesting post by Collins Dictionary: If you say God help us, you mean that you have negative feelings about the person or situation you are talking about.
Other ingredients in this mental stew include a draft I am working on for my next Insights article. The working title is “As a Child” and encourages looking at how experiences humans have while growing up shape beliefs that continue to operate long after they would not hold up to the light of day at an adult stage of our development.
I did find a reference online clarifying that “Lord” in the Old Testament merely refers to someone of a higher rank. Further down the Yellow Brick Road we may look more closely at that nuance.
Looking for an image of the phrase “Lord, Help Us” lead me to a sermon. Listening to part of the sermon, I heard how we sometimes wait a long time before we ask for help, staying in a problem that could have been been taken care of sooner, had we asked for help.
There may not be rock solid answers provided in this post, but these ideas touch me deeply today. Lord, help us may be an invitation for all of us to benefit from greater awareness.
By Debra Basham, on May 12, 2024 I was awake a few times during the night. My friend is in the hospital. She just got home from Florida on Tuesday about dinner time and when I took “Welcome Home” cookies to her about noon on Wednesday, it was obvious she was not in tip-top-shape. This friend had MAJOR back surgery while in Florida, and her history of heart issues resulted in a longer-than-expected stay in the hospital with MANY complications. We were so looking forward to her being home and healthy.
A call to her cardiologist office resulted in her going to ER. Sparing significant details, suffice it to say, she is in the hospital now. It seems she is having pauses between beats. She has called these “spells.” Feeling like she was going to faint, but not actually losing consciousness. The pauses have been getting longer and the plan is for her to receive a pacemaker. If you have a practice of prayers, please pass along some for her.
I had seen this post on Facebook from “Fabulous Lovers of Weird Everything” about ten days ago, and I knew this post was coming, even before the situation with my friend and before Mother’s Day.
“Piglet?” said Pooh.
“Yes?” said Piglet.
“I’m scared,” said Pooh.
For a moment, there was silence.
“Would you like to talk about it?” asked Piglet, when Pooh didn’t appear to be saying anything further.
“I’m just so scared,” blurted out Pooh.
“So anxious. Because I don’t feel like things are getting any better. If anything, I feel like they might be getting worse. People are angry, because they’re so scared, and they’re turning on one another, and there seems to be no clear plan out of here, and I worry about my friends and the people I love, and I wish SO much that I could give them all a hug, and oh, Piglet! I am so scared, and I cannot tell you how much I wish it wasn’t so.”
Piglet was thoughtful, as he looked out at the blue of the skies, peeping between the branches of the trees in the Hundred Acre Wood, and listened to his friend.
“I’m here,” he said, simply. “I hear you, Pooh. And I’m here.”
For a moment, Pooh was perplexed.
“But… aren’t you going to tell me not to be so silly? That I should stop getting myself into a state and pull myself together? That it’s hard for everyone right now?”
“No,” said Piglet, quite decisively. “No, I am very much not going to do any of those things.”
“But – ” said Pooh.
“I can’t change the world right now,” continued Piglet. “And I am not going to patronise you with platitudes about how everything will be okay, because I don’t know that.
“What I can do, though, Pooh, is that I can make sure that you know that I am here. And that I will always be here, to listen; and to support you; and for you to know that you are heard.
“I can’t make those Anxious Feelings go away, not really.
“But I can promise you that, all the time I have breath left in my body…you won’t ever need to feel those Anxious Feelings alone.”
And it was a strange thing, because even as Piglet said that, Pooh could feel some of those Anxious Feelings start to loosen their grip on him and could feel one or two of them start to slither away into the forest, cowed by his friend, who sat there stolidly next to him.
Pooh thought he had never been more grateful to have Piglet in his life.
~ Thinushi Jayarangi
When I got to the hospital on Friday, my friend had experienced an adverse reaction to an IV medication. Her heart rate and pulse had plummeted. The nurse and doctor were still there with her…. and my friend kept telling me how wonderful the nurse had been through the event, “She just stayed here with me and she kept calling me back….”
Perhaps today is the perfect day to share this story because it is Mother’s Day. I just sent a text message to a friend saying that not every woman (and not one man) gives birth to another human, but we all share in that universal love called MOTHER. That friend lost her mother recently and today is the first Mother’s Day with her mother in spirit.
Even when our physical mothers are not here in bodies we are receiving a Mother’s Love. Calling the planet we live on “Mother Earth” seems perfect. Every moment we are in these bodies we are being nurtured and held and sustained, especially when we are navigating challenging conditions and have anxious feelings.
Women and men are doing that for one another. The Holy Spirit is doing that for each of us. Our ancestors, our deities, our partners, our pets…. this is the Power of Presence.
By Debra Basham, on May 2, 2024 I have been working with a habitual habit energy. I’ve been at that place in the process where I could see clearly it was habit energy but I was not yet able to see what was driving it. You cannot see it until you can see it, and you cannot release it until you can see what is fueling the pattern from all sides..
This past Sunday Barbara Brodsky, (as The Mother), spoke to me about resistance. I was encouraged to just note it gently so the resistance can inform me about the places where I still hold something separate from myself. She reminded me that it is subtle, and cautioned me to not try to fix anything. Just be present with whatever is happening in the mind and body. Be aware of the overlap of that with the essence which is so open and broad and filled with love.
This reminds me of the holy experience of fully experiencing both the grief and the relief with loss. This morning it was the loss of a friend as navigated with her kitty. Eddie, an indoor-only de-clawed cat, got out and has been missing since Saturday. On Wednesday she was resolved to accept Eddie’s was the shriek she heard in the night on Saturday, rather than a rabbit being eaten by a coyote (as her neighbor and kittie-sitter wants to believe). Of course, neither of them has proof. (Please see update at the bottom of this page.)
Related to the habit energy I have been navigating, I am now able to observe how underneath the resistance has been sadness and fear. I am more aware of the sadness. This reminds me of the question: If a lion roars in front of a mirror, do you think the mirror roars? The mirror does nothing, it simply reflects.
The opening of a retreat with Barbara Brodsky includes taking The Five Basic Precepts, derived from the Tiep Hien Precepts. The second seems relevant to my having seen what has been fueling this habit energy pattern from all sides.
Possess nothing that should belong to others. Respect the property of others. Prevent others from enriching themselves from the suffering of humans or other beings.
In what ways do I take that which is not mine? Do I take more than my share? Can I become more mindful of when, why and how this happens?
I undertake the precept to refrain from taking that which is not freely given.
This is not the first time I have written about this habit energy. (See: It’s So Simple Isn’t It)
What I am able to see now is a time in the past when the shoe was on the other foot. What I have been experiencing as both recurring and painful I once was doing to another. I know harm was not intentionally inflicted, but I see clearly now that I was inflicting harm nonetheless.
A memory just popped in from years ago when I had seen some trash on the beach and a judgment about “someone who would litter” arose. Moments later as a receipt on my passenger seat was sucked out when I opened the car window on the drive home.
A stressful event occurred when the woman I was traveling in Europe with changed her mind about some directions she had given me without communicating that change. She was frustrated, angry, and lashed out. As she was admonishing me for not doing what she now wanted me to do, I had lucid awareness (time and place) of my having done that to another.
If someone calls us a fool and we
get angry, we think that this person
made us angry. But we don’t see the
subtle thought process that goes on:
the identification with self; the pride
that doesn’t want to be called a fool;
and all of that. That’s what makes
the mind angry, not anyone
calling you a fool.
~ The DailyTejaniya
In both of these past situations — and thankfully also with this current habit pattern — release comes when you see the pattern from all sides.
Update: Eddie is safely back home! Interestingly, the same family that saw his post on Nextdoor and sent a photo of another cat yesterday was successful in assisting Eddie’s safe return this evening…. So grateful for all.
By Debra Basham, on April 17, 2024 I almost did not go for an out-of-doors bike ride today because of a threat of rain and a fairly stiff wind, but the newborn leaves making their debut on the trees outside my window moved me. About 7 miles in, and very near home, the three walkers looked a rather odd trio from behind, and I spontaneously called out, “A rather unusual looking group of walkers!” They repeated my words and let their laughter speak agreement.
Then I saw her from the front. She had one of those BRILLIANT streaks of color on one side only of her longish hair. Suddenly I had the judgment, “I am pretty mundane when it comes to hair.” My sister, Janis, has had light hair/dark hair; short hair to almost no hair; normal-colored and not-so-normal colored hair. Sometimes she has had more than two of these in the same day!
In some traditions, hair is considered a metaphor for spirit and uncut hair the symbol of interconnectedness of all life. To cut one’s hair was thought to diminish strength or wisdom, while long hair represented a connection to the natural elements, including the spirit world and ancestors.
I have an album of photos on my iPhone titled: Hair. I have selected three. One is my photo from the year I was Number One in Sales at Creative Galleries. The dark hair phase photo shows me giving a tiny grandson, Adam, a massage as he smiles a sleepy slur saying, “Every peoples ought to have a massage.” The back shot is of my post-Covid hair taken by my brother-in-love, Larry Britton, shortly before I donated it to Wigs for Kids.
  
Last Friday evening we went to a “reunion” of The Dunns, a benefit concert of a Southern gospel band that Michael Springer, our music friend, toured with for many years. In addition to some old familiar gospel tunes, I heard some lyrics new to me that still linger, like the words to When I Get Carried Away © 2024 Heritage Singers.
It is interesting that I had unknowingly changed the words of that song ever-so-slightly from when to ’til:
I’m gonna have the time of my life ’til the time of my life is over; I’m gonna get carried away ’til I get carried away.
Perhaps my hair experiences have not been as mundane as I first thought.
By Debra Basham, on March 21, 2024 Today is March 21 and I have absolutely no “excuse” for not having posted on Yellow Brick Road since February 26. Yes, we have had house guests off and on for the past six weeks. Yes, I have been riding up to 20 miles per day on my bike this year rather than the normal 5-8 miles of recent years, including time for stopping to share affection with this kitty on Harbor Drive.
Yes, I have completed 19 one-thousand-piece puzzles, and, yes, I have also read five books since we arrived here in Punta Gorda early December, but, the real reason my posts have been few and far between is far deeper.
The real reason is I am profoundly present with the play of light and darkness within my mind and that can be awkward to speak about. At Tuesday evening’s North Fort Myers Bluegrass Jam after the sun had gone down light was pouring in from from the nearby baseball field behind the line of trees. I was transfixed by this juxtaposition of the light and darkness so I snapped a photo.
I am likely continuing to mine gifts of intentionally working with shadow. These past years of classes with Barbara Brodsky and John Orr and Aaron during which we navigated the Sacred Darkness. Sacred Darkness is very much with me. As is the Light. Each experience brings myriad thoughts, feelings, sensations, emotions…. all can be welcomed, even while not all are comfortable, and some are outright uncomfortable.
As a guide, Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” comes to mind frequently.
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Copyright 1997 by Coleman Barks. Posted with permission. All rights reserved. From The Illuminated Rumi.
Every line of this poem played itself out on Sunday when I watched a china pasta bowl I bought at the flea market for one dollar break in half against the asphalt. A hundred things cannot fully express the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions melded into an experience.
“It was only one dollar,” were the words I spoke at the time of the crash.
Totally true words, but not the totality of my experience.
I could not get that bowl out of my thoughts.
I wished I had taken it to the van.
The best way to describe it is like a too-brief encounter that leaves you yearning for a deeper knowing of one another. Who made this? How did it come to be at this flea market today? Who gave it such a low price? What is/was it’s real value? What would it feel like and look like filled with delicious food sitting in the middle of the table?
I wished I had taken a photo of that bowl it to remember it by. I think I recall there having been a couple of butterflies and some flowers. I know there was green along the rim. The bowl was made in Italy, but I do not know if it was hand painted. I wished I had carefully brought the two halves home and glued them back together rather than having John toss them into the trash can. It could not hold pasta but perhaps it could have held fruit on the counter…. I grieved the loss.
Complicating factors were the unanswered questions around the mishap. Details I did not have access to as I longed to put my mind at rest. I wanted to know the who, what, when, where, why, and how. I longed to free my mind of the ruminating. This being human is a guest house.
The experience is not just about that bowl. It is about the nature of mind. A loved one dies. A loved one survives. All of the unanswered questions. A welcomed baby. An abused child. Kindness. Unkindness. Pleasant and painful. Light and darkness playing itself out on that inner landscape of mind.
This being human is a guest house. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. ~ Rumi
By Debra Basham, on February 26, 2024 Early Saturday morning I woke up dreaming. I knew the symbols were significant so by the light of the digital watch I keep on the nightstand I wrote in my journal:
Dream
Am sliding head-first down a piece of card stock to show a friend she can “trust your own story/writing….”
My scribbled note was at the bottom of a page, so I flipped to the next sheet and crawled back into bed. At 8:38 am my cell phone rang in the great room. The call, from a Michigan State police trooper, had gone to voice mail before I got there, so I returned the call. The news was quite upsetting, and I apologize for needing to mention having gotten the call without sharing the details of the information in the call. My upset state of mind is what is most relevant, and that I forgot about having had the dream….
I am grateful Stacey was available to talk with me about the call, and thankful we genuinely affirmed for one another the importance of taking things as they come. I calmed down enough to go out for a bike ride.
Making a right turn off one road and onto another, there was a very attractive young woman (well-dressed) with a little white pug-faced dog on a leash in the yard. I didn’t think anything about it until I came around the corner and the dog ran to the end of the leash and W-H-O-O-S-H was off the leash and chasing me down the street!
A car was driving toward us at a pretty fast clip and showed no sign of slowing down. The dog’s owner was running hard, desperately trying to catch the dog. I knew she was terrified the dog was going to run out in front of the car. I kept moving to stay between the dog and the car.
I’ve been bitten by a dog, so I don’t have a lot of confidence when I am being chased. As the dog caught up to me I stopped peddling, began coasting, and raised my feet up so that the dog wouldn’t have access to my feet or legs. After the car passed and the owner yelled, “PLEASE STOP!” I stopped and she caught the dog.
I was sooooooo aware of all of the aspects: I didn’t want to get bitten by the dog, I didn’t want the dog to cause me to fall of my bike onto the pavement, I didn’t want the dog to get hit by the car, I didn’t want the driver of the car to hit the dog…. Each of these aspects of things I didn’t want pointed to the vital truth: I truly wanted the best possible outcome for all.
The owner and I apologized to one another. She did not realize I had kept riding to keep the bike between her dog and the car. We shared a few tears mingled with the stress and the relief. She kept saying she could not understand how the dog got off the lease; that had never happened. With shaking legs but a grateful heart, I rode on.
All I wrote in my journal that morning was that I had gotten the call from the trooper with the upsetting news and “Dog got off leash and chased me.”
Sunday morning I went for another easy ride. It was one of the most pleasant early morning rides in weeks because the temperature was mild and the wind was calm. After I got home I touched base with a dear Michigan friend, Linda Higbee, (another snow-bird) who just had back surgery here in Cape Coral. A headache had her still in the hospital, lying flat.
She wrote: “The nursing assistant, Kristin, came up with getting me high protein ice cream. It’s sticks to the spoon and l can eat it lying down  . I’ve been able to rest well and ask for some spirit help. Stepping back to see both the positive and negative happening is very introspective and kind of calming too.”
The dream flashed into my mind! I could totally see how this had played out with my experience of having been chased by the dog. I wrote back to her, “All good news…. and I’m sharing that awe and calming of seeing both the positive and the negative (maybe it’s more accurate to say both the pleasant and the unpleasant) at the same time. I’ll write up and share my experience of having been chased by a dog on my bike today!”
I hope you are able to see with me how my dream was a gift from Holy Spirit. The symbol was speaking to me about the phone call from the trooper AND speaking to my friend about her recuperation.
An unpleasant experience does not have to be labeled as negative. As Morgan Harper Nichols is quoted by Gratefulness.org, “Peace is an invitation in daily life to breathe deep, right here, in the uncertainty.”
You are able to “Trust Your Own Story,” right here, in the uncertainty.
By Debra Basham, on February 22, 2024
It is this disinterested but completely allowing contemplation of the body in the world that the body loses its ‘me-ness’ and the world loses its ‘not-me-ness.’ In this way bodily sensations no longer cry out ‘I am separate, I am exclusively you” and perceptions of the world no longer cry out, ‘I am separate, I am not you.’ Everything sings out, ‘I am made of you.’ ~ Rupert Spiria
 Is this a drawing of a duck or a rabbit? A catchy little trick from NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) was to ask a client if he or she was sure enough to be unsure when that person could see conflicting points of view. This week it has come into clarity how vital it may be for each of us to move toward willingness to live in a state of asking that of ourselves: “Am I sure enough to be unsure?”
The point is freedom from identification with any point of view; a full freedom from attachment to ALL points of view. This does not mean I won’t have a point of view. Of course we will. The shift comes as awareness reveals whatever the point of view, it is simply a point of view.
Points of view can be very similar, somewhat similar, somewhat different, radically different, or even diabolically opposed. I think you will agree that way too often solidified points of view which are widely differing or diabolically opposed can become deadly. Literally….
At the very least solidified points of view have an impact on rapport and can damage relationships, cause stress, and rob us of our natural state of harmony and happiness.
Decades ago it was pretty easy for me to hold a firm intention to have freedom from a “negative” point of view, and to observe the changes within myself when I was free from that point of view. I could quite easily and notice when my Debbie Downer was in charge, and I could choose a better feeling thought. This was quite skillful at that time.
The past several years I have been studying Sacred Darkness with a group of others who are also intentional about awareness with a capital “A.” What is sometimes called “pure” awareness is not a limited awareness of this or that, and it is not attached to a particular point of view. Even preferences of positive or negative are simply part of the continuum of The All That Is.
For sure, I prefer feeling positively, but can you see that this preference is also aversion to feeling negatively? I remember so well letting something negative “go,” but continuing to hold the point of view that it was or is negative.
Aaron’s Daily Reflection:
Many of you were raised with this idea, “Hold it in the light and it will dissolve.” What do I do if it doesn’t dissolve? And of course, sometimes it doesn’t dissolve. If the conditions are present and have not yet been purified, then that condition will arise and will maintain itself until the conditions dissolve. If the conditions for body pain are still there, the pain will remain, no matter how much you try to love it. You do not love it to make it go away. You hold it in love — the body pain, the anger — because that spaciousness is what allows the conditions to dissolve. If you hold it in a kind of idea of love, saying, “I will love it. I will love it. Why is it still here? I’m loving it so hard! Why doesn’t it go?”, well, you’re just more and more contracting, more and more caught up in whatever has arisen, because you’re trying to smash it away.
Rupert Spira is a teacher of non-dual awareness. He is the author of the opening quotation. His words are still a bit foreign to most humans when we try to use the finite mind to know or speak about the world. However, Spira’s work assures us, “It’s not possible to view the world directly from awareness’ perspective,” because, “There’s no room in the infinite for the finite.”
Awareness needs the finite mind to know the world. The finite mind holds points of view.
Every point of view is finite but love is infinite.
Perhaps one way human beings are able to open to and enjoy the sweet fragrance of infinite love is by being sure enough to be unsure…. I am made of you.
|
|
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 40 other subscribers
|
Comments are closed 
You must be logged in to post a comment.