Tag: ACIM

New Frontiers
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….
September 16, 2020
The Aftermath

You see, I have this weird, but in my experience, validated faith that if I surrender myself to my own words, the ones that came without too much cogitation or premeditation, they will lead me to a place I didn’t know I’d be visiting; they will show me 1) What I didn’t know was on my mind when I started, and 2) What I didn’t know I knew about that particular subject.

Sydney Lea, page 195, The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop, by Diane Lockward.

Sitting in my Snowbird Poets group, I placed my fingers on the keyboard barely breathing and witnessed The Aftermath.

Time is nonexistent, Dear One, non-exist-ant

Standing barefoot
I am aware
of things I am too young to know

Stripped of my innocence
when he climbed on top of me
in the courtyard
beneath the Viburnum

That snowball bush was in full bloom
while I was not
yet
but soon would be

Ten years later
I hear from some
deep drug-induced fog:
“If we don’t get her awake
she is never going to
have this baby!”

Then: “It’s a girl!”

53 years later
my twenty-year-old granddaughter
takes off on a bicycle
as a sinking feeling
of fear
flashed fast across my face

Of course, she was right
I would have let her brothers go—
without so much as a second thought

But the Viburnum will bloom
again and again
unlike a young girl’s innocence

Debra Basham 03-18-2019

See Processing.

Pearl Bailey says there’s a period of life where we swallow a knowledge of ourselves and it becomes either good or sour inside.

Bailey’s words sing the truth. I had come from a legacy of women who had worn the shackles of sexual shame. My mother had a first marriage she did not tell us about, and I did not learn until I was in my forties that she had discovered she had a sexually transmitted disease at the same time she found out she was pregnant for me.

I became pregnant on New Years Eve, three weeks before I turned sweet sixteen on January 22, 1966. I got married, and I was forced to leave high school in tenth grade. (See Loved and Wanted: Listen to Your Mother.)

My daughter, and my granddaughter have carried that legacy of sexual shame, but none of us need carry it any longer. It is time for all women to be free….

A Course In Miracles

LESSON 60

God is the Love in which I forgive.

God does not forgive because He has never condemned. The blameless cannot blame, and those who have accepted their innocence see nothing to forgive. Yet forgiveness is the means by which I will recognize my innocence. It is the reflection of God’s Love on earth. It will bring me near enough to Heaven that the Love of God can reach down to me and raise me up to Him.

I do not have written permission to share these words from Each Day a New Beginning: Daily Meditations for Women by Karen Casey © 1982, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation, but the message must be shared:

For too many of us, feelings of shame, even self-hatred, are paramount. No one of us has a fully untarnished past. Every man, every woman, even every child experiences regret over some action. We are not perfect. Perfection is not expected in the Divine plan. But we are expected to take our experiences and grow from them, to move beyond the shame of them, to celebrate what they have taught us.

Each day offers us a fresh start at assimilating all that we have been. What has gone before enriches who we are now, and through the many experiences we’ve survived, we have been prepared to help others, to smooth the way for another woman, perhaps, who is searching for a new direction.

We can let go of our shame and know instead that it sweetens the nuggets of the wisdom we can offer to others. We are alike. We are not without faults. Our trials help another to smoother sailing.

I will relish the joy at hand. I can share my wisdom. All painful pasts brighten someone’s future, when openly shared.

March 22, 2019

Tag: ACIM

New Frontiers

The Aftermath