Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Adyashanti

  • Waning Gibbous Moon

    I was restless at bedtime last night. It had been a pleasant day but late in the evening I got a text from a friend who had ended up at the ER over the weekend, John’s bedtime blood pressure reading was a bit elevated, and I read an email from a person who is asking something of me (again) that I am not comfortable with.

    The next email I read was from another friend. I did not respond to her before going to bed, but as I spent time answering her this morning it felt like a journal entry so I am sharing it here.

      What are some of the catalysts for you? I hope you are managing okay?

    D: The catalysts are feelings of being unsure, not trusting, afraid I will make a mistake that will bring about pain or loss. John has a primary physician; an endocrinologist for his thyroid condition; a neurologist because he had a TIA; two cardiologists because he had the quadruple bypass surgery (one in Michigan and one in Florida).

    They all have opinions about the medications and they make changes and he develops a side effect from the medication so they give him another medication to counteract that side effect. We end up constantly at the doctor’s office and living with our finger on his pulse instead of enjoying the quality of life we do have.

    The catalysts are always things we recognize from our practice: hindrances, worldly dharmas…. and we all have habit energies around grasping and aversion — things we want or don’t want.

      I have catalysts too 🙂 An ongoing deep sense of wanting to belong with a group I resonate with.

    D: Are you familiar with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are physiological (food and clothing), safety (job security as well as physical or emotional safety), love and belonging needs (friendship or group affiliation), esteem, and self-actualization The idea is that the upper needs cannot be satisfied until the lower needs are. The sense of not belonging to a group blocks confidence and self-acceptance. It is an interesting way of seeing. Others are coming forth with more contemporary ways of looking at these with greater dimension, but they seem to follow this essential pattern.

    May you be happy; may you know love, may you know perfection and peace. That is the great prayer, isn’t it….

      There is also some fear, which I recognize is my lack of confidence and faith in the practice.

    I appreciate how some of the teachers of the direct path speak about it. Mooji and Adyashanti, for example. Seeking will keep us seeking.

    Perhaps because I am much older now I am more OKAY with what is. Even these current catalysts are gifts. I have watched John lose consciousness now twice, and both times in a doctor’s office!

    I had a dream MANY years ago. John had been hit in the head by a part of a boat, like a boom, while he was working at the dock. His head was bleeding profusely and I knew he was dying. I was sitting on the sand in shallow water holding him in my arms totally knowing he was dying and yet we were just present with one another in such deep love and devotion and gratitude for our lives together. It was beautiful.

    This summer I had the honor of watching a friend be held by his wife as he died in much that same way. Claudia held Wayne that way as he was dying.

    We are capable of living life and facing death with confidence that whatever happens it is OKAY.

    And in the moments when we are not feeling that it is OKAY we can let go of the grasping and allow our true essence to return. And it does. The moon is not always full in my sight but it is never larger nor smaller than it is…. And you and I are not always visibly awake in our thoughts and feelings and sensations (aggregates) but we are never more nor less awake.

      Have a good night 🙂

    I was a bit restless, but morning came and the windows are open and the air is fresh and my coffee is hot.

    Last night as John and I walked home after playing cards with Linda and Larry a beautiful waning gibbous moon hung low in the sky.

    “A waning gibbous moon phase is a time to look inwards and re-evaluate your goals. It’s a time to feel grateful for what has been this month and re-adjust your intentions moving forward.”


    I am grateful for you in the world, Dear Friend.

  • A Beautiful World Within

    The kind of beauty I want most is the hard-to-get kind that comes from within. ~ Ruby Dee

    Last evening I went to a drumming at the home of some long-time friends. One of the other drummers was also a blast from my past. But, the delight of my heart was a young man who had the beauty of curiosity and seeking. Lots of sharing ended an evening significantly warmer than the weather. This morning I sent along information about Adyashanti and Rupert Sprira and a few quotations they might appreciate. I am obviously still under the influence of the 8-day retreat and grateful.

    Hearing Rupert Spira telling a questioner that “the contemplation that we do in the yoga meditations would be the first step. The next step is out in the world. That is obviously more active than just contemplating the objective content of our experience. But In theory there’s no reason why it should feel any different from meditating in your chair. Really, everyday life should be considered an advanced to yoga meditation.”

    On the retreat John Orr spoke of the horizontal or linear path which puts more emphasis on the conditioned realm, and the vertical path which puts more emphasis on non-striving, and the intersection of these two paths. The vertical path does not negate the movement of mind and the nature of the conditioned realm where one thing leads to another. As Rupert Spira says in The Inward and Outward-Facing Paths of Non-duality, “It is either meditation with your eyes closed or meditation with your eyes open. Those are the only two options.”

    My eyes were certainly closed and open a LOT during the retreat. So was my heart.

    For example, when I could hear my host in the room next to the apartment where I was and I noticed the slight contraction in my lower abdomen I was also aware I was having cellular memory from the past lifetime when I was pregnant with the soul that is/was my business partner in this lifetime. Throughout the week I was experiencing this looping back and forth of then and now, here and there, same and not same. And remembering to simply inquire of myself, “Is anything other than?”

    On Monday after I got home from the retreat John and Stacey and I visited our previous home on Lincoln Avenue. The new owners are the daughter and son-in-law of our neighbors. They have done MAJOR renovations. They moved the basement stairs and turned Stacey’s former bedroom into a walk-in closet with in-room-laundry. They added an out door pavilion. Saying all of this I have not even hinted at the magnitude of the changes.

    It was spooky to see how many of the things we had actually contemplated doing at some point during the 40 years we lived there. They put a sliding glass door out of the kitchen; they turned the former formal living room into a dining room; they put in a huge kitchen island.

    As I walked through room after room I could feel the sameness and the difference. “I love the changes you made and I love that you also recognized and preserved the essence of the house.” Wow, that is the intersection of the linear (horizontal) and vertical paths…. It is like living in these bodies knowing they are temporary without denying birth is not the beginning and death is not the end.

    I mentioned having a strong sensation of my week as a Bardo preview. Bardo is the Tibetan term for the intermediate state or gap we experience when we leave this physical body. Most teachers see that cultural differences and personal idiosyncrasies generate a variety of experiences, with a common theme of some fort of life review. We have an opportunity to integrate our learning and balance any unfinished business or unwholesome karma. Medical evidence suggests this is a result of the brain firing as it is going off line.

    What truly excites me is the option to open our heart and mind to see it is a beautiful world as we walk this path while we still have these bodies. Awareness is the key.

    Some people go to the dentist in fear and dread every time. As I key these words in I am developing awareness that this is my path beyond fear of medical things. I know fully that the anxiety had its origin in my mother’s central nervous system while I was in her womb and she was filled with rage, sadness,feelings of betrayal, concern, embarrassment, and fear. Many of my readers know my birth story. My mother discovered she was pregnant and that she had syphilis at the same time. Both were a gift from my father…. Then having been diagnosed with and treated for polio at age five resulted in lots of trauma.

    While that was then and this is now, “now” and “then” do not actually exist independently, they exist interdependently. The beauty is your eyes and heart being open enough to see. Following the retreat, I sent the YouTube video of Les Crane singing Desiderata to my dharma sister co-hosting the retreat.

    You are a child of the universe.
    No less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.
    And whether or not it is clear to you,No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
    Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be.
    And whatever your labors and aspirations,
    in the noisy confusion of life,
    Keep peace with your soul.
    With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
    it is still a beautiful world.

    Desiderata: Les Crane

    Yes, it is a very beautiful world within and without….

  • Sea of Life Not Stay Same

    Opening email this morning and reading Neale Donald Walsch’s words: “… in moments when things look bleak — especially in those moments — see only perfection, express only gratefulness, and then imagine only what manifestation of perfection you choose next.”

    Cellular memory of our daughter Stacey’s move to Tennessee shortly after the birth of our first grandchild flooded in while sharing recently with a person who had made a cross-country move soon after her mother’s transition in the Midwest. While she was sure she was where she was to be, she was navigating intense feelings of “missing” her family and the fear of additional loss felt overwhelming.

    Speaking about loss, grief, and the necessity of regaining our emotional equilibrium in the midst of a sea of changing conditions was a reminder my current feelings are woven together with the collateral losses resulting from Hurricane Ian.

    My deep listening to Adyashanti shed some light on the universal journey with all of this. The talk was called “Self-Realization: I Got It!, I Lost It!” but it was excerpted from “The Timeless Nature of Being” given October 6, 2019, in Palo Alto, California.

    Something about it is still with you. Not by grasping at it but just almost like that intuitive sense, “What haven’t I lost?” – just sensing that, making space for it…. ~ Adyashanti

    I was at Walgreens waiting at the check-out counter for someone to come help with a rain-check for Ultra Soft Kleenex tissues. A young girl, maybe 10 or 11 years old, was next in line. As my wait time became longer and longer, I told her she was welcome to go ahead of me rather than wait. She said, “Its okay, I have my whole life ahead of me.”

    Unable to stop myself, I responded, “I have my whole life ahead of me, too, but I suspect you have more time than I.”

    A very wise expression came over her face….

    The sea of conditions is ever changing, that is for certain. But notice how much our expectation creates our experience of what is, what was, and what is yet to be. That young girl might have transitioned before I got up this morning. No, the odds are not in that direction, but the life that we experience is not always what the odds might indicate.

    We played a crazy-fun game this week while Linda’s sister, Brenda, was visiting. Poetry For Neanderthals is a word-guessing game like Password, but with a couple of quirky twists. First, you can only use one syllable words as clues. Second, if you use a larger word you get bopped in the head with a 2-foot long inflatable club.

    For example, if you are trying to get your team to guess the word broccoli, you might say “Green thing you eat for live long and have good health.” The game forces you to explain complex ideas using simple words. I like that. I am good at that. That is why this post is SEA OF LIFE NOT STAY SAME.

    One might go on to add SEA OF LIFE CAN STILL BE GOOD.

    It takes a bit to be good at it but you can even say SEA OF LIFE CAN BE GREAT.

    WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU TO BE GLAD FOR WHAT IS WHILE YOU STILL FEEL SAD FOR WHAT WAS?

    I THINK YOU GET THE POINT NOW. RIGHT?

  • Already Is

    A friend wrote this week asking me, “So tell me your blog experience. How did you get into doing that? How many people follow you? Is it hard to get it up and going technically?”

    It took a bit of thinking time to respond, and, still, I had to start with the easiest aspects first. Here is my response to her:

      Not very many people follow me. In fact, most of the people who know me well and love me are among those who do not read my blog regularly. I have a few very loyal readers. I have come to the conclusion if it is true that ‘We read to know we are not alone,’ – the character of C.S. Lewis says this line in William Nicholson’s play, Shadowlands, I write to know that we are all one. I would write if no one would ever see what is written. If it means something to someone else, that is just a bonus.

      That said, I first set up a blog on Blogspot. It was super easy and you can read over 180 posts from December 24, 2011 to July 26, 2016 made on this platform. https://dbasham.blogspot.com/

      Then my blog was set up on Word Press by our webmaster. I “think” there is a way to know who follows you, but I have not paid attention to any of that, especially now that I am in the business of not maintaining a professional business. My grandson is working to dismantle the online persona of Debra Basham of SCS-Matters, the professional partnership I had for 20 years with Joel P. Bowman.

      The Word Press blog is called Yellow Brick Road. https://scs-matters.com/YellowBrickRoad/

      I do not allow comments. It is a full time job that I am not interested in: cleaning out spam, phishing, and obscene stuff. People who know me and are touched by something I write and share have legitimate ways of reaching out to me.

      It may be worth some insight about what you want to give (and/or receive) by creating a blog.

      Willing to muse about this more if something is helpful! Love, D

    As I was out for a bike ride yesterday I was musing about Aaron’s Daily Quote.

    How can a third density human co-create a fourth or fifth density Earth? You can plant seeds. But for it fully to happen you need to come into the fourth density, fifth density aspect of yourself. Imagine you are a fourth or fifth density being. How would that feel? What would it be like? There would be joy and sadness; those are experiences for fourth density also. But there would not be suffering, loneliness or separation. There would not be fear or hatred. What would it be like to be a fourth or fifth density being co-creating a fourth or fifth density Earth by sharing that energy and light that you are? ~ Aaron

    That sent me into the Deep Spring archives where I read a bit more about what Aaron calls densities. I think of them as stages of consciousness but not in a linear way, more like the mighty oak tree that is already within the acorn, or the butterfly that is already within the caterpillar.

    Simply put, Fourth Density is about learning compassion, and Fifth Density is about deepening wisdom. Think about these as already being within in that same way. Just as a bird needs two wings to fly, to be wholly wholesome compassion and wisdom must be used together. Unwholesome compassion commands us to sell all you have and give it to the poor without the wisdom (spoken by Richard Bandler) that understands clearly the best way to help the poor is to not be poor.

    Densities remind me of the chakras. The fourth chakra is the heart chakra. The fifth chakra is the throat chakra. The heart chakra is associated with unconditional love, compassion, and joy. It is the source of deep and profound truths that cannot be expressed in words. The throat chakra is about hearing and being heard, where you find your voice, where we speak our truth without blame or shame. From the Deep Spring archive: Fourth Density is beyond the dictates of the emotional body that would lead you to feel shame or pride.

    Awake VERY early this morning I was grateful to sit in the silence feeling the night sky. Now past dawn, the busyness of the day will likely soon push the stillness out of my awareness.

    Perhaps that fourth or fifth density earth already is in the same way the butterfly already is within the cocoon and the oak tree already is within the acorn.

    As Adyashanti said, “The more okay we are when we are not okay, the more okay we are.”

    ALL ready….

  • Happy Birthday Haiku

    “Our inner lives are every bit as astonishing,
    baffling, and mysterious
    as the infinite vastness of the cosmos.”
    ~ Adyashanti

    Adyashanti’s words speak volumes to me as I am in the pondering process related to culling everything SCS-Matters in preparation for a new DebraBasham.com website. What to keep, what to save. What to repackage or repurpose. What to give away, what to sell; what to forget and what to savor. Timely for my birthday today.

    I wake up this morning having turned 73. While some dread aging, I experience each day of aging as grace. It seems having had birth trauma, and medical trauma at age 5, and a near-death experience at age 12 prepared me for LIFE.

    Again today a mocking bird was sitting on the fence directly outside of the kitchen window of the house we are sharing with Linda and Larry this winter. The title of To Kill a Mockingbird has very little literal connection to the plot, but it carries a great deal of symbolic weight in the book. In this story of innocents destroyed by evil, the “mockingbird” comes to represent the idea of innocence. Some of the key characteristics and attributes of Mockingbird Animal Spirit include inventiveness, keen-mindedness, happiness, playfulness, protection, thankfulness, security, and, most of all, communication.

    For sure, the Imagine Healing process is something I want to have available to the world. It is such gift to see in every surgery or injury or experience myriad opportunities. Why just go through whatever it is on the surface level. Let that bruise be an evidence procedure of healing of memories, beliefs, behaviors, or attitudes that lessen the amazement of living. Every moment of every day we are meeting life on infinite levels and awareness provides a HUGE happening from the most mundane. I don’t even just brush my teeth!!!

    When Joel Bowman and I were actively training folks in the Imagine Healing process we always did mock surgery as a role-play and students experienced an ectomy (removal of something they and others in the world would be better off without) and implant (something beneficial they and others in the world had not been able to have previously). Imagine a fear ectomy and a joy implant….

    January 22 is a birthday I share with my friend Wayne Kaiser. This is the first year since we have been friends that I am in body and Wayne is in spirit. I do not think of Wayne as dead. In fact, I cannot comprehend death as different from birth, and this week I listened to an amazing account of Rabbi Stephen Robbins (who has had 8 near-death-experiences!!!) and, as my birthday ritual, will share some of his beautiful comments about life.

    “Every soul is formed to do one of three things. One is to take something out of the world which no longer belongs — either a treatment or a system of genetics which don’t belong in the world anymore or a spiritual quality that can be stopped. The other is to bring something new into the world of knowledge or experience — an insight that has not been there before. And the third is to synergize both of them so that what comes in is the sense of what it means to live a life for service and for purpose rather than for our own gain.”

    “So that in our leaving this world and realizing there is no death, we change the genetic out-pour that will stop the repetition of the destructiveness like drug addiction, child abuse, violent acquisition — and at the same time will add a sense of insight and understanding which will lead beyond living with a sense of the limitation in this life.” (Rabbi Stephen Robbins 8 Near Death Experiences)

    If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

    Yesterday Linda and I spent our day busy in the kitchen. She roasted a turkey and we have made a dinner for friends out on Pine Island that are living in (while doing rehab) after Hurricane Ian filled their manufactured home with four feet of floodwater. Four months later they do not yet have a stove. Mind you, theirs is a three-generational family including their adult daughter and their 4-year old grandson. Today we will deliver turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, two-corn casserole, and brownies. These can be warmed in the microwave oven they do have. I told Linda that this is my best birthday dinner ever.

    After the delivery, we will attend a matinee of “The Sound of Music” at the Cultural Park Theater in Cape Coral, before meeting Nancy Green for dinner at Miceli’s in Matlacha. In 2013 John and I went there for my birthday dinner and discovered they give you a free entree plus desert ON YOUR BIRTHDAY. We have gone back every year since. It is bittersweet to go this year after soooo much of what was familiar and special about our beloved Florida community was damaged, devastated, or destroyed.

    Even in the midst of loss there is gift….

      A Happy Birthday Haiku

      I am young no more
      Neither am I old
      I am timeless like the wind

      I do change a lot
      No longer the same
      I’m here and there however

      Here and there am I
      Not one single place
      Ever moving, always free

    Happy Birthday, Wayne Kaiser. Happy Birthday, Debra Basham.

    And many happy returns.

    He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. – Ecclesiastes 3:11

    Don’t Go Back to Sleep
    by Rumi

    The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
    Don’t go back to sleep.

    You must ask for what you really want.
    Don’t go back to sleep.

    People are going back and forth
    across the doorsill
    where the two worlds touch.

    The door is round and open.
    Don’t go back to sleep.

  • Essence

    We are enjoying wonderful weather here on Pine Island. Whether the weather is pleasant or unpleasant, John and I continue to navigate some challenging physical stuff.

    John started with planting a mum early November in Michigan’s hard autumn ground. Stepping on the shovel with his right leg, he felt a pop in his low back. Three chiropractic sessions, a TENS unit, and exercises could not prevent our long drive times from Michigan to Tennessee and from Tennessee to Florida from pushing him over the edge. Fast forward to this week:


    I am having some sort of chronic sinus stuff. Interestingly, my friend (who did not know about this) sent an article titled “Marvels of Mucus and Phlegm.”

    It is challenging to not feel discouraged.

    A couple of days ago problems with some Amazon Web Services cloud servers were causing slow loading or failures for significant chunks of the internet. Our Alexa device stopped working. Everything looked right at the configuration level, but nothing I did brought her back online. Later, when Alexa came back online, we could still not access Amazon Music Unlimited.

    Add to this a new app for TV here in Florida. Hmmmm, you know about teaching old dogs new tricks, right? We are struggling big time with that.

    I said to John, “This house is too quiet!!!”

    True confession. Those words have never come out of my mouth before.

    I miss his music.

    I miss putting together thousands of puzzle pieces as he is playing his guitar and I am (badly) singing along with him.

    I miss him being out-and-about gabbing.

    I miss the way we have historically lived life here.

    We have both realized the profound fact that a lot has changed.

    John’s brother, Jerry, passed in September. John will not be hanging out with Jerry for his normal two-days-per-week-off-island this January, February, and March. Also, John’s long-time musician friend, Walt, sold his place here on Pie Island after Walt’s wife passed in September.

    Big changes.

    I am currently the one to go to the store, the pharmacy, the store, the pharmacy; the pharmacy, the store, the pharmacy. The other day, the pharmacy tech at CVS was having a really bad day. She used the “F” word, and she cried.

    We are not alone living through these stressful times.

    Yesterday I had the privilege of transcribing my (marvels of mucus) friend’s private session with Barbara Brodsky. Here is a brief excerpt:

    You said you’ve been – I don’t remember who – you said you’ve been listening to some of these teachers. I am looking at the questions.

    Adyashanti – alright, he is very rooted in the true self, and I don’t know the 30 specific pointers and “practices” but I would imagine they must be pointers toward remembering and resting in the true self.

    I am glad you are doing that. That’s perfect.

    My true self is way beyond the mucus. John’s true self is much more than sciatica pain.

    For sure, everything is a reminder of how we are giving meaning to our experiences. I drew an Osho card this morning. 7 of Water. Projections. The last lines: And there are as many worlds as there are minds, because every mind lives in its own world.

    Grandson Brad checked in with us last evening. He suggested John tally his highest level of well-being each day. Rather than using a pain scale to see his lows, what was he able to do/enjoy/achieve today?

    A couple of evenings ago, after some lateral leg pulls and a few minutes on the makeshift inversion table John was able to walk upright. He looked like someone with a book on their head, as proud as punch!

    A suggestion from my friend’s reading: I want you to find that infinite source of love, that essence of love which you are…

    And from Adyashanti: Essence isn’t a small thing, essence is an immense thing. The essence of you is everything you ever see, taste, touch, and experience. Everywhere you go, every step you take, every breath you take is actually happening by the essence, of the essence, in the essence, and to the essence.

    The marvel of mucus and the severity of sciatica are both happening in the essence….

  • Hip Hip Hooray!

    “Just because we are afraid doesn’t mean anything is wrong.
    Doesn’t mean a mistake is being made.
    Doesn’t even mean, necessarily, we’re in danger.”

    ~ Adyashanti, “Letting Go of Fear”
    from In the Face of the Infinite

    It is 6:21 am and I am sitting with an ice pack on my left hip writing this post.

    My relationship with this left hip has been long standing, pun intended.

    My left hip was dislocated at the pelvis August 12, 1962, in an auto accident.

    An auto accident which resulted in my having an out-of-body experience.

    There, I have said it.

    I distinctly recall floating above my physical body watching the scrambled flesh on my forehead being sutured.

    I was watching from a “space” of no pain, no fear, no sense of myself as a separate being.

    The summer of 2021 has been a time of revisiting this experience. I have connected with dozens of others who had similar altered states of being. Many shared much more extreme experiences, including those who were clinically dead for some time, but everyone identified ways that experience shaped the rest of their lives.

    Possibly EVERYONE knows someone who has had some type of experience.

    Profound gratitude for each person who has spoken out loud. (The International Association for Near-Death Studies is a non-profit organization based in Durham, North Carolina in the United States, associated with the academic field of near-death studies.)

    It is likely not an accident that I was immersed with this community, nor a co-incidence my hip would flare up as I process that experience I had when I was twelve years old.

    I will give a talk at St. Johns UCC in New Buffalo, Michigan titled, “Time Change.” Notes from that draft:

      Now is not a moment moving through time. Now has no duration. There is no time through which we move.

      Time is imagined to be real only when we have forgotten our true nature of ever-present awareness.

      We imagined ourselves instead to be limited, located entities. Time and space are born with that thought, but there is no present moment.

      This ever-present now is eternity.

      Time is thought superimposed upon eternity, and eternity is just another name for our true nature of awareness.

      ~ Rupert Spira, “Time and Death”

    Louise Hay, in You Can Heal Your Life, shares a probable mental cause related to hip problems: Carries the body in perfect balance. Major thrust in moving forward. Fear of going forward in major decisions. Nothing to move forward to.

    Oh, my….

    While the night is still dark, before I have welcomed relief from discomfort, even as you seem to be there and I seem to be here and we seem to not yet know what we moving forward to, truth embraces and erases each of these distortions.

    In 1988 I was told I needed to have a hip replacement. I was only 38 years old, considered to be too young. They only got about ten years from an artificial hip at that time. The same hip could only be replaced twice due to the formation of scar tissue. The doctor said, “Replacing this hip now would leave you with no options. You just have to face it, you will never have quality of life.”

    I tell the entire story in Freedom from Pain.

    Yesterday morning I cried when I saw my doctor, Dr. Leanne Mancini, DO, at Family Physicians of Sanit Joseph. “Does this mean I have to give up on this hip?”

    “No,” she gently reassured me, “it simply means we have to treat it.”

    Thus the ice, and the ibruprofen, and the rest.

    And, of course, the affirmations by Louise Hay:

    Hip. Hip. Hooray — there is joy in every day.

    I am balanced and free.

    I am in perfect balance.

    I move forward in life with ease and with joy at every age.

  • Meddling Mind

    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.