Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: connection

  • 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….

  • Inter-Are

    I have been wondering about the distinction between self care and nurture (kindness and wisdom) and “distraction.” Might we be doing wholesome actions such as exercise or journal writing, or playing music, without being skillful?

    Additionally, I wrote to Barbara Brodsky, Founding Teacher of Deep Spring Meditation Center, asking about all of this. “We are encouraged to skillful practice of support practices, Metta, Tonglen, etc., that are a part of Buddhism. Might it also be appropriate to develop skillful support practices that come from outside of Buddhism? For example, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Tapping on the meridians, while being present with difficult body or mind states, and saying skillful statements can support insight and release of painful karmic patterns. One does not try to avoid the emotion, one feels (touches) the emotion, then moves through a process of working with the emotion at the level of energy and awareness.”

    Barbara clarified that the primary distinction isn’t the specific practice but what truly has drawn the practice forth. Was the motivation genuine kindness or was fear present, thereby was the real desire to “fix” something?

    Barbara went on to say that all support practices from any tradition are helpful when motivated from a spacious and kind desire to attend, rather than from a contracted fearful need to fix.

    Barbara said the ‘Daily Quote’ from Aaron clarified the question perfectly.

    When we release some of the self-identity and separation, we come to feel our interconnection with everything. The tree dances with the wind not because the wind forces the tree but because the wind and tree literally inter-are. They share the same core of being. The wind is the tree; the tree is the wind. And so they dance together. You can dance with life in the same way. ~ Aaron

    Barbara’s summation was simply, “When our practice comes from that place of interconnection, we are attending with skillful support.”

    At the relative level we appear to be separate, but at the ultimate level, there is no separate self. You can understand that no wave is separate from the ocean. The wind and the tree and you and I dance with life. We inter-are….