Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Author: Debra Basham

  • Healing is all the Buzz!

    Sacred Stories

    (A woman living in Florida, articulates her amazing synchronicity with a friend who lives in Mexico around a shared joy of the art form of dotting.)

    Note: Ze/Per/Hir/They – These pronouns offer inclusion and accuracy for someone who doesn’t identify by the male/female gender classifications, and were used in the original communication, and included here out of respect.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~

    About 4 days after my surgery, I had an amazing dream and sent an email telling zer about it:

    I want to let you know that your dotting has factored into my healing process.

    My post-lumpectomy healing has been progressing really well. Last night I slept perfectly again, aided by XS Tylenol, and dreamed that you and I were emailing each other using only dots to communicate. We did it so much that the predictive text feature started suggesting dots for us to use. The really amazing part of the dream was when the dots came off the screen and morphed into a honeycomb alive with buzzing bees. I awoke feeling better than ever, almost zero discomfort, as if the bees and honey had permeated my body and resolved all physical issues.

    My friend wrote back:

    OMG!!

    First off, I’m so happy to hear that you are healing well and slept well with no pain!

    But…. Last night I was sitting here with a pencil and paper trying to figure out how to make a honeycomb out of dots. How cool is that!!!

    (really what is reading off a screen but just a bunch of dots we programmers call pixels)

    Here’s to more healing. Holding you in the buzz.


  • Reaching Out

    There isn’t anything anybody wants
    that is for any other reason than that
    they think they would feel better in having it.

    Our Love,
    Esther
    (and Abraham and Jerry)
    Excerpted from Seattle, WA on 7/3/99

    This morning I am pondering….

    What have you lost and/or gained from COVID-19? Some people have lost their lives, others have gained weight.

    My pondering has led me to wonder about the loss of our peaceful, easy, feeling with being with our daughter, Stacey. Stacey is our only child. We were sooooo young when she was born, we all grew up together. Most of our adult life there has been no one we more enjoyed that peaceful, easy, feeling with. Admittedly, the emotional distance predated the global pandemic. Likely, it was exacerbated by the political polarization that predated the pandemic.

    AS I WAS KEYING IN THESE WORDS, Stacey send her dad a text message saying she would like to come up and see us, and asking if we would be comfortable!

    We would certainly be more comfortable if we knew she was fully vaccinated.

    On the surface “things” can look like they can be disconnected, but there truly is no such thing.

    Last evening I could feel someone reaching out, a felt-sense someone was needing support. I did not know who, what, when, or where, so, I went to bed early with this intention on my mind and in my heart: May all beings come to the end of suffering.

    Checking text messages early this morning revealed the particulars of the reaching out, and I was blessed by a FaceTime visit with my friend who had sent the text message asking for support the night before.

    Just now, as I was reaching out asking for this emotional distance to be spanned, Stacey was also reaching out wanting the same thing.

    We all know that a peaceful, easy, feeling feels better.

    A friend shared having a dream that her entire body was covered with a honeycomb. It was very soothing — sort of like a protective layer. She woke up feeling very supported.

    A bit later, she discovered that WHILE she was sleeping and dreaming of a honeycomb, her friend/colleague was awake trying to figure out how to create a honeycomb pattern with ink on paper with a dotting tool!


    Bees, honey, and honeycombs are significant to life on earth. Neanderthals probably used honey as a food they gathered. The family of apes are known to utilize honey.

    What we humans are going through on earth at this time is not new.

    EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED.

    The wisdom and awareness of this, as truth, is what is new….

  • Mysterious Ways

    Sacred Stories

    She had been practicing meditation for many years. She understood that there was something that she needed to understand—where to go, what to do.

    She walked into a bookstore that had a large area of spiritual books and was just standing and looking. Just at ease, standing and looking. Not even taking books off the shelf; looking at the titles.

    A man walked up to her, pulled two books off the shelf, handed them to her, and said, “This is what you need.”

    She was startled. She looked. The first book was Be Here Now by Ram Dass.


    The second was a book of instruction on Insight Meditation. Not on Buddhism, but on Insight Meditation.

    She was startled. She looked around a minute later for the man. He was gone. She went to the counter and said, “Where did the man go that was just standing here?”

    “There was nobody else here. Only you were in the bookstore.”

    Well, of course she bought the two books! She took them home. She read them.

    What you need will come to you, sometimes in what seems to be mysterious, but always loving ways.

  • World 24

    My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue,
    An everlasting vision of the everchanging view,
    A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold,
    A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.

    ~ Carole King

    Today is day five of a five-day workshop that in music might be called the crescendo of the past three years of an intensive spiritual program with Barbara Brodsky called “Dharma Path.”

    The closing ceremony is one in which we are to express our deepest intention for our highest purpose of this human life. I wrote in my journal:

    What is my highest intention for this incarnation?

    1. It is my highest intention in this incarnation to participate fully in what Aaron calls raising earth’s vibration and assisting in it’s becoming positively polarized.
    2. It is my highest intention to know the realms of support for this coming to be.
    3. In the personal realm, that translates to balancing old karma, freedom from habit energy related to that old karma, stabilizing new patterns that activate the highest possible frequency and: Living, encouraging [and enjoying] a conscious spiritual journey.
    4. To respond to reactivity with clarity from this highest intention, I remember the great prayer: May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings feel joy. May all beings realize their intrinsic perfection and find perfect peace.

    ~~~~~~
    This morning I awoke at 5:00 am and unable to fall back asleep, went into the front bedroom which is simultaneously serving as my meditation hall, office, and guest room. I opened my email to a promotional piece for a book by Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm, and listened to an interview with her as she speaks about the book. Here is a link to the podcast: A Different Way to Live Virtuously, in which she says:

    The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The opposites tend to play out on our planet.

    These things [fruits of the spirit] aren’t just virtues, they are not just nice little moral qualities, they are not just nouns. They’re actually energy packets, they are food. And they’re nutrients that our planet needs directly because the lack of them causes things to get so harsh and so desiccated and so dry and barren and parched that you can’t stand to live here. Craziness enters….

    We do have something that we have to give back and pay back, and it is not only food for our own realm but for realms above.

    She speaks about George Gurdjieff, Russian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer of Armenian and Greek descent, who died in 1949. She says her book is mostly about “World 24” – from his metaphorical number system about human consciousness.

    World 24:
    The world of Presence, deep equanimity, of deep mindfulness and of the conscious circle of humanity, the place where we actively receive on this planet assistance from above (from what Christians would call the Saints and the rest of the traditions would call the enlightened ones). Where we hand up our transformed gifts of goodness and love and forbearance and patience and devotion and where we bring down onto our planet the benefits of faith, coherence, temperance, forgiveness, courage. It’s a realm of very active interface between the visible and the invisible, what the senses and reason says is logical and sensible and what the heart knows is good and true.

    World 12, accordingly, for the Christians it is Heart of Christ and for the Buddhist it is the Boddhisatva Consciousness – identical states of consciousness where human beings know we are bound to each other.

    For over ten years now, my signature line on my email is this quotation by Mother Teresa: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

    I ask you to offer support for my intention, and to craft your own.

    May all beings come to the end of suffering.

  • Donate Platelets!

    Sacred Stories

    She had been feeling lonely and homesick for their previous home of 27 years, missing friends in particular. She began reflecting on the power of connection, even small conversations with those one doesn’t know well, in the course of daily life. She recalled the early days of Covid quarantine, wherein her daily walks brought nourishing and sustaining brief encounters with people she didn’t really know, or only knew slightly—and remembered how uplifting those small exchanges were. So, she resolved to start conversations with at least a few strangers she would encounter on that day’s walk—and she did!

    Out on her walk, she met a man wearing a T-shirt urging others to donate platelets — and her husband had just been scheduled to receive a transfusion of platelets, at least the 3rd or 4th such transfusion he has needed as a result of his blood cancer.

    So, she was able to thank the man personally, and give him a tangible piece of evidence of how much his lifesaving blood donations meant to another person in his community. She then learned that he had donated platelets over 350 times!


    Further, this man shared that he had had a heart attack and triple bypass just 3 weeks earlier, and was now on aspirin. So, he was in the process of determining how many days he would have to go without his aspirin in order to be able to donate again!

    As they parted after this personal and meaningful, though brief, conversation, the man said to her: “So many people have it so much worse than we do.” She was so touched and inspired by his ability to express this perspective, when he had narrowly escaped death just 3 weeks earlier!

  • The Collective

    When I picked up the spoon off the napkin to stir my morning tea, a huge ant fell out onto the kitchen counter. I carefully picked it up with the napkin, and carried it out onto the porch.

    Looking up “ant as animal totem” I was surprised to see a reference to MOLD:

    The plant spirit medicine of mold is in partnership with Ant medicine and it teaches of the psychedelic dimensions of Earth.

    The insect nation is in direct communication with such dimensions which is why it is often very disconcerting to encounter Dragonfly, Ant, Spider, and all the other tiny crawlers of Earth.

    (Regular readers of Yellow Brick Road know we had quite the dance with mold.)

    Coming back to get my tea, I saw a long-legged spider in the sink. I grabbed a tissue and carefully delivered the spider to the porch as well. Very unusual happenings both of these….

    The following morning, another (near-identical) spider was in the sink!

    Over the past week I have been gifting contents from my professional office. While it was not an easy decision to give up a formal practice space, I have already had many confirmations that opportunities abound to love, serve, and remember, as Betty Lue and Robert (Reunion) taught us to sing.

    My massage table went to Tina at Creative Therapy School of Massage.

    The elephant statue was dropped off to Kimberly.

    It has been my hope that the love and healing related to each item and all of our history will continue to bless the world with remembered wholeness.

    I had an odd interaction when I dropped off the door name plate to one colleague. Knowing she had last expressed not having been vaccinated, I put on my mask and offered a hug. “No hugs,” she replied. “I have to protect you.” The words did not match the energy.

    “I am masked to protect you,” I responded.

    “No hugs,” she repeated, shaking her head.

    I got back into my car feeling some sadness. I was very grateful our next delivery was to drop off the afghan with Jesus surrounded all the forest creatures. It was a wonderful visit…. complete with hugs.

    One of the members of the Zen Empty Circle shared the stressful situation with his in-laws, who neither mask nor choose to be vaccinated against the coronavirus — understandably wanting his young daughter to come spend time with them. They miss her. He does not feel comfortable allowing her to go. The meditation teacher said, “Remember you are not keeping her from them, you are protecting her from the virus.”

    In our own family we have this dynamic.

    In many families, this polarized world view expresses itself.

    What will our post-pandemic world be? The wondering comes if we will we be like the Sneetches (Dr. Seuss) and get over ourselves, but at a cost like when McBean drives away with the Sneetches‘ cash, exclaiming, “They never will learn. No. You can’t teach a Sneetch.”

    It did not feel as though she refused a hug “to protect me” but I do know she is not a Sneetch, and neither am I….

    If you want to go fast,
    go alone.
    If you want to go far,
    go together.

    ~ African Proverb
    (The tag line on the ant totem reading.)

  • Elephant Totem

    Sacred Stories

    She had experienced elephant as totem when she was first starting work as a clinical therapist.

    Many years later, elephant energy popped into her mind one evening.

    The next day a teacher/colleague (who was giving up formal office space) posted this on her Facebook wall: “Thought of you when I unpacked this. And if elephants are still significant for you — and it would bless you — would like to gift this to you.”



    She wrote back, “So interesting! I was appreciating the elephant symbol in my life just yesterday, and thinking back to my first baby steps into the work we/I do. I am humbled and grateful to accept this gift.”

    The elephant totem or elephant medicine will bring strength, power, courage, memory, good luck, happiness, bliss, and positivity in your new undertakings. … The elephant medicine will bring you good luck, health, and positivity.

    ~ WorldBirds.org

    Sacred stories are evidence of our connections!

  • Poppies Three

    Sacred Stories

    She was walking to a neighbor’s home to drop off a couple of things, and pick up a couple of other things, when she met a friend whose sister now lives on her street.

    She was wearing her garden shoes. “Poppies,” she said.

    Looking down at the shoes, her friend said, “I can see that.”



    “I thought they were lips when I first saw them,” she admitted. They both laughed.

    They easily completed her tasks together and she invited her friend in for a visit.

    Poppies were obvious again in the glass painting hanging in her window. (See “Poppies”) She shared having met the artist when the artist’s husband was going through cancer:

    “I had never met either of them, but a colleague hired me to go to the hospital to work with him. His wife (the artist) was there, seated in a recliner next to the bed. I introduced myself and began to work with him. He quickly went deeply in. I motioned to his wife to lean the recliner back and close her eyes.

    I was still working with the wife when the husband opened his eyes and blurted out,” I swear to God you someone was holding my feet.”

    Matching his cadence perfectly, I replied, “I swear to God, I never work alone.”

    Her friend recently discovered metastasis of breast cancer. Suddenly she had the urge to gift her friend an extra set of Medicine Cards. When the friend opened the book she saw a bookmark by Marjolein Bastin.

    On the front of the book mark were POPPIES and this message:
    I love the way the poppy blooms only for a day so colorfully and so expressively.

    The back of the bookmark was signed: from Sue Miller — made — her mom died October 6, 1995.

    This is the “spiritual meaning” of poppies: Poppies are seen as a symbol of imagination, messages delivered in dreams, beauty, success, luxury, extravagance, and even peace in death.

  • Motherless Child

    Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
    Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
    Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
    A long way from home, a long way from home.

    Odetta knew what LIFE can feel like.

    Just yesterday — one day of LIFE holding sooooo much feeling.

    A dear friend, navigating tenuous steps speaking her feelings toward her husband (related to the complications of decisions that could birth a new beginning):”This father does not want the child,” she says, speaking metaphorically, of course.

    Another dear friend welcoming a companion as she was filled with trepidation reading online the results of a recent PET scan (positron emission tomography).

    Sad news from our daughter that our grand-kitty, Thor, crossed the rainbow bridge. Thor, one of THOSE beings. Love oozed from Thor’s pores. Thor massaged love into your most tender spots, and his purr moved mountains of misunderstandings.


    Utterances from the lips of a wife, candidly wondering aloud if they would both be better off if her husband stayed in long-term care.

    “We are called beyond and empowered by the silver thread of hope that hangs by a thread below,” this expression of LIFE written by my friend in the midst of it all drapes over the feelings of the day like low-hanging clouds.

    Don’t do things for personal benefit. And don’t do things to avoid personal damage. Do things to feel personal authenticity. Then your life will make sense, no matter what is going on around you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

    Today is the anniversary of my mom’s “rebirth” day on May 20, 2003.

    May 20 is also the rebirth day of the woman who owned and lived in this tiny home for 33 years before we purchased it in 2017. Ursel had actually purchased the home on May 20 – 33 years prior.

    According to the teachings of the Buddha, emotions are a fundamental part of who you are — an expression of our basic intelligence and creative energy. “When you can connect with the essence of your emotions, you can respond without preconceptions and judgments.”

    Experiences are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

    We tend to grasp after the pleasant feelings, try to avoid unpleasant feelings, and miss the neutral feelings much of the time.

    Thought for Today

    Breathing in, I am aware of you, of your suffering. Breathing out, I hold space for your suffering. Breathing in, I am aware of my suffering. Breathing out, I hold space for my suffering. Your suffering and my suffering, the same.

    ~ Aaron

  • The Path to Peace

    If it happens, it needs to occur.
    ~ Neale Donald Walsch

    Jerry Ashmore, senior dharma teacher at Empty Circle Zen center in Hobart, Indiana, said simply, “If we don’t clear our stuff how can we help others?”

    But how do we know what our stuff is? We can pay attention to the tendency we have to “perseverate” — meaning when we repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased.

    We have an interaction that triggers something. Thoughts pop into mind over and over and over again. For example, guilt or resentment might arise because we are looking at past actions not recognizing the experience as a moment of unconsciousness. (We don’t need to personalize it.)

    Forgiveness is when we bring presence (consciousness) to the thought as it pops into our mind yet again. We can notice that something has not yet been undone.

    This is not a new idea. Epictetus, a Greek Philosopher who was born in 50 AD and died in 135 AD, said: “Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events whichever way they happen: This is the path to peace.”

    Suffering is simply arguing with the way things are. Sokukoji Buddhist Monastery broadcast a dharma talk with a very interesting phrase: Path of Zen starts at the mountain top and goes up.

    Grandson, Adam, while he was in Europe.

    Jerry Ashmore went on to say that all practice starts by releasing tension in the body. He said, “We can be OK. Don’t discount OKness… the more you experience things as they are rather than how you want them to be, you are on your path.”

    Yesterday, The Mother (channeled by Barbara Brodsky) spoke this Darshan (blessing) to me:

    Dear Friend, you are making a difference. Let go of the ten thousand (this is a reference to the person tossing stranded starfish back into the ocean) and stay focused on whatever is present in front of you and let your heart sing with joy for the difference you have been able to make in that presence.

    Will you try to do that? And if the mind goes to the ten thousand, just, “Shhhh…. Stop.”

    Contracting.

    Fear.

    Ahhh…

    Right there with fear is the heart of love. And the heart of love must be allowed to be free to continue making the difference.

    Today, I took a friend for cataract surgery and received such a lovely confirmation in her thank you card:


    The opening quotation by Neale Donald Walsch concludes with this comment about path: “Whatever experiences the universe brings your feet are a part of your path, inviting you to consciously engage in a process of becoming the highest version of you.”