Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: beads

  • Use Your Bird Brain

    I was writing in my journal how it seems otherworldly that we don’t plan to be back here in our Michigan home until April 6. As I write the question,”What would you have me know?” I hear in my head:

    V: Wherever you are is home. Notice how the selfing tells you this is home, this is not home. You are welcome to appreciate the creature comfort’s – just be in the experience rather than telling yourself stories.

    Can you see a bird that is migrating having a sense of “leaving home”?

    The bird is following an inner call. The bird goes. The bird eats, roosts, and sings wherever it is.

    Use your bird brain….

    Every day we are being invited to experience an expanded awareness. At a certain level of development, when asked what makes wind a child will say that the branches waving makes the wind. As our thinking expands, we understand warm and cold and upper level currents and wind.

    Many of us grew up without an understanding of “karma.” We may have even thought of karma as something only Buddhists experience. We may have perceived ourselves as immune from karma because we did not perceive it, like the child did not perceive the wind currents.

    Today’s quotation from Aaron says “Karma attaches to the emotional and mental bodies and it moves with you from lifetime to lifetime. Whatever insights you have as you move through the lifetime and the transition at the end of this lifetime, you do not lose them. Whatever you deeply understand stays with you. Whatever negative habit energies you have that are not released, they also stay with you. You do not lose anything, not the wholesome, not the unwholesome.”

    If you have not yet embraced an understanding of moving from lifetime to lifetime, simply think of this as moving from childhood to adulthood. As you move though your life whatever insights you have go with you. Likewise any negative habit energies you have that are not released stay with you.

    Worry, insecurity, impatience, desire for control…. these unwholesome habit energies are your karma.

    Joy, patience, kindness, enthusiasm, surrender…. these wholesome energies are also your karma.

    One of my favorite practices around all of this is the Daily Recollection. (See my November 2012 post Beads!)

    Marker bead: Namo Prajna, Paramita Hridaya. Homage to the wisdom mind.
    63rd Bead: Whatever has the nature to arise has the nature to cease and is not me nor mine.
    64th bead: When wholesome thoughts arise, cultivate the wholesome. When unwholesome thoughts arise, abandon the unwholesome.
    65th bead: Tend the contents of the mind with compassion, as a mindful gardener tends his garden.
    66th bead: This is the way to purify the mind and remove the clouds that obscure the vision of ultimate reality.

    Intention bead: In this way will I train myself.

    P.S. Send me an email or text message if you would like to receive and use the handout of Barbara Brodsky’s Daily Recollection.

  • 108 Beads

    She had gone into the bead shop to purchase beads for a prayer necklace. There are 108 daily recollections, along with section beads, and intention beads, and marker beads. She wanted to stay within her budget, so she and the shop owner both had their eye on the prices, but it was vital that the beads not only looked right, she wanted to be able to feel where she was when she was praying.

    The marker beads needed to feel distinctive from intention beads, and the daily recollection beads needed to be unique from the section beads. They finally determined the round beads would best serve for the 108 daily recollection beads. There were four strings of that type of bead, but how many single beads were on each, and were there enough?

    Most strings in the shop had 25 beads on them….

    The shop owner picked up one string and began to count, then announced, “Twenty seven.”

    She counted the second string and said, “Twenty seven.”

    She grabbed a calculator, hit some buttons, and whispered, “Four times 27 is 108.”

    They each picked up a strand and counted.

    “Twenty seven,” they said together.

    Sometimes we notice that everything has been laid out for us!