Anālayo, a Buddhist monk, writes, “As long as the constant change inherent in life is not recognized, death is easily perceived as an abrupt end of all that has thus far been experienced as stable and lasting… it is not possible to live properly and fully unless the inevitability of death is accepted as an integral part of life.”
My previous post was on June 26. The days between then and now have been filled with my being present to what ended up being my friend’s death. Present with her. Present with those who love her and cared for her, including myself. She died Friday morning, just 24 hours after telling the doctor she wanted no more medical treatment but was choosing instead to be made comfortable and allowed to die in peace. We were preparing for her to come home with hospice care.
When people ask how I am, I say I am very sad, and I am glad she is no longer suffering, but mostly I am in awe. She is the first person I have touched after death. We were not yet at the hospital when we got the call she had died. I had spoken with that same nurse a little over an hour earlier. When I got to the hospital and entered the room with the purple door card I could not not touch her. Some will understand….
A dear friend who is no stranger to loss shared this from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings by John O’Donohue:
May you know that absence is alive with hidden presence,
that nothing is ever lost or forgotten.
May the absences in your life grow full of eternal echo.
May you sense around you the secret Elsewhere,
where the presences that have left you dwell.
May you be generous in your embrace of loss.
May the sore well of grief turn into a seamless flow of presence.
May your compassion reach out to the ones we never hear from.
May you have the courage to speak for the excluded ones.
May you become the gracious and passionate subject of your own life.
May you not disrespect your mystery through brittle words or false belonging.
May you be embraced by God in whom dawn and twilight are one.
May your longing inhabit it’s dreams within the Great Belonging.
It is mysterious why her death has affected me differently than any other. Yes, ours was a relationship which spanned over 27 years. I was present for her joys and sorrows over almost three decades. And, yes, we were both winter (Florida) and summer (Michigan) friends. Perhaps it is because I was so present with her that her absence is so alive with hidden presence.
I saw this on Facebook a couple of days before she died, and shared it with our Grief Journey Group.
I can’t say I loved you. I just can’t
Because it makes it sound as if my love is past tense. Gone, finished, ended.
And that is so far from the truth.
My love is not in the past. It will never be gone.
I love you now. Still.
You didn’t take all this love away with you. It stays. It lingers.
Some days it jumps up and hits me in the face just to remind me that it is still here. Still persevering.
Some days it nudges me. Challenges me to keep going. Daring me to find the strength to get through the day.
But mostly, it just resonates inside of me with everything I do. With every step forward and every glance back. Every close of my eyes. Every breath.
My love is not dependent on you being here.
There is nowhere far enough,
and nothing permanent enough
to stop me from loving you.
I am listening to a podcast by Ram Dass. (Ep. 199: The Continuity of Consciousness)
“Somewhere between not enough and more seems to be enough.”
At least a few moments go by before i have a thought about Joel — that’s progress. I have heard nothing from him since last Sunday evening when he sent email saying he was on the floor in his bedroom and could not get up.
Ram says the concept ‘I am meditating’ is still “rush collecting.” He continues:
You have been born many times and many times you have died and each time you have died you have struggled against death. You have said: “Why me? Save me. Heal me! Do whatever you need to do, doctor: Transplant, freeze, do whatever needs to be done. Cut. Mend. But keep me here.”
And you hold desperately to the bed sheets and you struggle against it. And then you’re dead. And then a voice says to you, “Hello.”
And then you say, “I guess I didn’t die.”
And the voice says, “Oh, to the contrary, you are quite dead.”
Time and time again, death after death, you have rejected that voice, and stayed in what the Christians called purgatory. You stayed in a state of confusion between births.
(Ram Dass uses the term ‘veil of illusion’ — I’ve never heard that. I’ve heard the other side of the veil but I’ve not heard it said that it is the veil of illusion.)
2/5 of the population of America have had transcendent, mystical experiences. That is 40 million people. Of those 40 million people, a sampling shows that 85% said, “It was the most powerful experience of my life and I never want to have another one.”
For only some of the people, when they see through that veil, they are able to utilize that new awareness… And when you are really ripe, that one millisecond changes your whole life from now on — that lifetime. And when you are really ready, that one moment makes you say, “From here on all I wish to do now is to get free.”
Now, when you have started to awaken in a particular lifetime, and then you die, you say, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die,” and then you are dead and somebody says welcome and you say I guess I didn’t die and they say yes you did and you are confused and then that moment of that previous birth when you awakened comes to you and you say, “Ah, right, this is what that was about.”
(I have the awareness that suffering is grace.)
Up until that time, you’ve been seeking to optimize pleasure.
A birth is like a process of getting you straight or cleaning you up or awakening you…. You are part of a far more interesting game which you begin to be aware of in terms of your own identity….
The meaning of every act in life starts to change. You look at all of it as process for awakening, for cleaning up your game. You don’t begrudge your history — no matter how neurotic it has been — for it has in it the stuff which has created the space you are in at this moment which allows you to hear right now.
(I notice that I am trying too hard as I am chopping vegetables for quiche and then I hear, “Let the tool do the work.”)
That may be the lesson of the power washer. No amount of stress or strain enhances the work. I hear that the central message again and again as I continue. No amount of effort forces sleep. No amount of worry produces peace. No amount of effort produces clarity. One cannot TRY oneself to anything.
My mind recognizes that we can aim. A – I – M. Already is (or always is) mentality.
Peace already is like the sun is always shining. Peace always is. Love always is. Light always is. Nothing we can do “makes” it.
I realize consciousness is also a tool. I feel fluttering in my heart as I write this sentence.
My blood pressure continues to be quite high, although I have had two readings over the past week and a half that would be considered normal.
I am on Zoom attending the year-end “intensive” right now. Perhaps additional insight is to emerge during these five days. This morning’s Thought for Today from Aaron is quite interesting for me:
Whatever it is that you’re praying for, be it health or well-being of yourself or for a loved one or whatever the prayer-intention may be, that innate perfection is always there. If you approach it from a place of fear, you keep manifesting the distortion. When you come back to the place of love, you center yourself in love and invite others to take hold of the strands with you and pray with you from that same place of love. Energetically they’re weaving together with you, weaving together a tapestry of healing with you, of growth, of love, of joy. So this is the power of prayer.
I find it fascinating that I had just written the string about always there. Plus, when I first started my practice in Healing Touch, I named my business “Tapestry” with the tag line weaving together the threads of body, mind, and spirit. Also on the card: For when you are ready.
I am ready.
From my journal:
Saturday, June 4, 2022
Dear Holy Spirit,
Very much aware of anticipatory stress. I am willing. I ask Alexa to play Karen Drucker’s “Morning Prayer: I will surrender to my greatest highest good.”
As I listen, I am aware of a sensation in my left jaw and my right thumb. I look up the Louise Hay meaning of thumb and it is about intellect and worry. The affirmation is “my mind is at peace.”
I look online and find the five hindrances. One is restlessness and worry. Uddhacca, defined as a mental factor characterized by disquietude, like water whipped by the wind.
I imagine my body as a wide container where the energy is allowed to bounce around freely like a pinball machine. As I am sitting with the sensations and allowing them to bounce around, the sensations settle on their own.
Joan is online from the hospital, where her husband, Bob, is in very serious condition. I have the precious memory of John’s and my experience of being held in this sangha’s awakened heart while he was in the hospital with the TIA during the Emerald Isle retreat in April. A profound awareness washes over me that if one was to complete the transition back to non-physical, this is an ideal place to do that.
From Gratefulness.org: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. (Mary Oliver)
Perhaps a perfect image to remind me is Midnite’s purple petunia plant. Every one of these variations arise from one plant.
What is this one heart we all share? It is our true nature, the essence of our being, which is love and light. Meditation is one effective way of coming to know this inner light of our divinity that is infused with love and pervades everything. Once we come to know our true nature, we develop, through practice, the ability to rest in it more stably. Then we can live more continuously from this heart of wisdom, love and compassion and truly come to know it as the One Heart we all share.
I have previously mentioned the saying, “For those who understand no explanation is necessary. For those who do not understand no explanation is possible.”
Some research indicates the saying came from Thomas Aquinas. Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that the existence of God could be proven in five ways, mainly by:
1) observing movement in the world as proof of God, the “Immovable Mover”;
2) observing cause and effect and identifying God as the cause of everything;
3) concluding that the impermanent nature of beings proves the existence of God.
The original quote was not about ‘understanding’ but about religious belief, specifically “faith.” The original quote is, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
It is amazing to me how perspective differs, but what is does not. For example, this cartoon that Linda B/G shared recently.
At the retreat, the teachers spoke about the nature of karma.
I remember the nature of karma;
I am born of karma, I am heir to karma, I abide in karma, and I am supported by karma.
When I act with intention, I am the owner of my actions and inherit their results.
My future is born from such actions, and their results will be my home.
All actions with intention, be they skillful or harmful, of such acts will I be the heir.
While karma is not a term used in Christianity, it is certainly there in Galatians, Chapter 6, Verse 7: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
One of the mystical experiences common to retreat for me, regardless of the theme, is that I will have a foreshadowing of a teaching point to come. I will write in my journal an insight, then hear the teacher/s speak that to the group.
Sharing (with permission) the words of one student:
In all the years I had been practicing, it was suddenly like, “Oh, oh….” because I was in that place.
I realized grief isn’t just an intense feeling, it is actually a REALM. I was in this place, and it wasn’t here and it wasn’t the other side. I was somewhere in between and this portal kept opening up, and when it did my heart would just explode out.
I knew, too, that the process of grief for me was a rite of passage, it was something that was changing me.
In our culture, we are encouraged to sort of get over grief and get back to our lives. That this is a measure of our mental health – how fast you can get back as if nothing has happened. I knew intuitively that this was just nonsense. That I did not want to be the same person I was before my father died. I wanted to be different in the world going forward after that.
This student and you and I, like Mary Reed, are likely becoming unwitting mystics…
In a recent interview Mary Reed was asked to name three things she wished everyone could experience before we die. The interviewer did a short animation video of her response, which added a fun, unexpected dimension to Mary’s answer. See: Three Things to Be Experienced Before We Die
The first day of the retreat was the 49th day since Jerry Basham passed. In Buddhism, we chant that person’s name along with gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Gone, Gone, to the other shore, the shore of liberation.
When I came out of silence and caught up on messages and social media, my sister-in-law had posted this:
Your Loved One in Heaven
by Sean Dietrich
Hi. This is your late loved one speaking. I don’t have long, so listen up because I have a lot I want to tell you.
First off, I get it.
Ever since I left this world you have missed me, and I know you’re bracing for the holidays without me. No matter what anyone says, this year’s festivities are going to be really tough.
In fact, let’s be honest, this festive season will probably suck pondwater. But then, Thanksgiving and Christmas are tough holidays for a lot of people. You’re not alone.
See, the misconception about the holidays is that they are one big party. That’s what every song on the radio claims. Each television commercial you see shows happy families clad in gaudy Old Navy sweaters, carving up poultry, smiling their perfect Hollywood teeth at the camera. But that’s not exactly reality.
In reality, fifty-eight percent of Americans admit to feeling severely depressed and anxious during November and December. In reality many folks will cry throughout the “most wonderful time of the year.”
Well, guess what? Nobody is crying up here in heaven. This place is unreal. There is, literally, too much beauty to take in. Way too much.
For starters—get this—time doesn’t even exist anymore. Which I’m still getting used to.
Right now, for all I know, the calendar year down on Earth could be 1728, 4045, 1991, or 12 BC. It really wouldn’t matter up here. This is a realm where there is no ticking clock, no schedule. Up here there is only this present moment. This. Here. Now. That’s all there has ever been. And there is real comfort in this.
I know this all seems hard to grasp, but if you were here you’d get it.
Also, for the first time I’m pain free. I feel like a teenager again in my body. You probably don’t realize how long I’ve lived with pain because I never talked about it, I kept my problems to myself because I was your loved one, and you needed me to be brave.
But pain is a devious thing. It creeps up on even the strongest person, little by little, bit by bit. Until pretty soon, pain becomes a central feature of life.
Sometimes my pain would get so bad it was all I thought about. No, I’m not saying that my life was miserable—far from it. I loved being on earth. It’s just that simply waking up each morning was getting exhausting.
But, you know what? Not anymore. In this new place, I am wholly and thoroughly happy.
But enough about me. I don’t have room to describe all the terrific things I’m experiencing, and you don’t need to hear them. Right now, you’re grieving, and what you need is a hug.
Which is why I’m writing to you. This is my hug to you. Because you’ve lost sight of me. And in fact, you’ve lost sight of several important things lately.
Death has a way of blinding us. It reorganizes the way you think, it changes you. You will never be the same after you lose someone. It messes with your inner physiology. It reorganizes you’re neurons.
But then, there’s one teensy little thing you’re forgetting:
I’m still around.
Yes, you read that correctly, I’m right here with you. No, you can’t see me. No, you can’t reach out and hold me. But did you know that one of the things I’m allowed to do as a heavenly being is hang out with you?
It’s true. I’m never far away. I’m in the room with you now, along with a big cloud of ancestors, saints, and witnesses. I’m shooting the breeze alongside you, watching you live your life, watching you raise your kids, watching your private moments of sorrow.
Here, in this new realm, I am in the perfect position to help you learn things. Which is what I vow to spend the rest of your earthly life doing, teaching you little lessons, lending you a hand when you least expect it, and desperately trying to make you smile. Actually, I’ve already been doing this stuff, you just don’t realize it.
What, you don’t believe me?
Well, wake up, pal. You know that tingle you get in your spine whenever you think of me? That’s me.
You know how, just yesterday, you had a beautiful memory when you were driving and it made you cry so hard that it actually felt good and you began to laugh through tears? Also me.
You know how sometimes when you’re all alone, preoccupied with something else, suddenly you get this faint feeling that someone is standing in the room with you? Hello? Me.
You’re not alone on this earth. You never were. You never will be. So during this holiday season, when cheerful families are getting together and making merry, and taking shots of eggnog, I’m going to be clinging to your shoulder, helping you muddle through somehow.
I’ll be making your spinal column tingle a lot, and I’ll be sending plenty of signs. Each of these signs—every single one—is code for “I love you.” So start paying attention to these hints.
We are feeling sad with the passing of John’s eldest brother, Jerry, shortly before midnight on Friday evening, September, 24, 2021.
The date was already special – grandson Brad and Christina got married exactly five years ago!
This photo of the five Basham brothers was taken at the wedding. Jerry is on the far right. Next to him is Jim. Jim passed from cancer in 2017. Far left is Greg, the youngest. Jack, and John next to Christina. I married into this bunch 55 years ago and I have grown up with the Basham brothers.
After John’s dad passed, Labor Day became a Basham event. It was a way to keep everyone together and for many years the “Labor Day Reunion” was held at the home of Jerry and his wife, Jeanne. Complete with copious amounts of beer, a talent show (I use the term talent loosely) on Sunday night, where the audience could number 50 to 100. Memories of Labor Days gone by are now pressed into our minds like a first kiss.
And this year, Jeanne found Jerry lying on the floor when she got home from the store on Labor Day.
Jerry had an abdominal aortic aneurysm.
Thankful Jerry survived over six hours of surgery.
Thankful he survived a second surgery the following day.
Thankful he was able to be taken off the ventilator, was alert, and asking for family a few mornings later.
Jerry had been experiencing low back pain, and it was getting worse. This summer, he said the pain would be so bad, he “would have to sit down or fall down.” It seems incomprehensible now that no one thought of the possibility of an aneurysm.
Thankful Jerry was making baby steps toward recovery when John and I mustered our post-Covid bodies and traveled to Tennessee for Courtney’s wedding.
Thankful many words of love and encouragement came by text and video wishing Jerry a happy 79th birthday on Tuesday, September 21, 2021.
Tuesday night, Jerry was back in ICU after his condition took a turn for the worse.
Thankful Jeanne and their kids and grandkids were all together with Jerry in the ICU on Wednesday. (This had not been allowed because of Covid risk.)
Thankful Jerry was lucid and expressed his wishes, choosing to receive comfort care only.
Thankful the hospital staff was able to keep Jerry comfortable.
Thankful Jerry was able to receive hospice care in the hospital.
Thankful to know Jerry’s last hours were very peaceful.
Thankful Jerry was a care giver. As his daughter, Lisa, said to me yesterday, “There was nothing you could ask of Jerry that he would say no if it was within his human ability to do it.”
The Daily Word for September 24, 2021 is so Jerry.
Over the years I have given generously of my treasure and shared my time and talents. Giving has blessed me beyond measure and remains an important part of my spiritual life.
But sometimes I resist gifts, deflecting another person’s generosity or rushing to reciprocate. Today I practice receiving with willingness and ease. I realize all gifts derive from God, yet come to me through many channels.
I remember how I feel when my gifts are received gratefully and with happiness, and how it fills my heart to know someone feels cared for and valued. I give that gift to another by letting myself receive with grace and gratitude, completing the circle of sharing and love.
Thankful Jerry has taken such loving care of all of us through this.
As Jerry prepared for the six-hour emergency surgery, he assured his wife and daughter he was not afraid, “If I don’t make it, I will wake up and see Scott. If I make it, I will wake up and see you. Either way, I will be happy.”
Wow….
Fourteen years ago, Jerry and Jeanne lost their son, Scott, at 42 years of age. One of the toughest things a parent can go through, losing a child.
Regular readers of this blog are familiar with the Sacred Stories, and you totally get the “continuity of consciousness.”
I have mentioned Pamela and Alan Johnson, and Supernatural Love and Life After Death (FaceBook).
Yesterday, John went into the laundry room to get some batteries for his earphones. I heard some grumbling sounds and asked what was going on.
“Oh, this shelf fell down,” he said.
I went in to see if I could help. He had gotten the shelf put back up.
As I looked, however, a dowel pin that was holding up the second from the top shelf was laying on the shelf above the one that had fallen. Now, get this picture. These pins go in so tightly, you need a pair of pliers to pull them out. What are the odds that two pins, on two different shelves, would suddenly fall out?
Right….
When we had the second (and more extensive) mold remediation work done here in the tiny house, the cabinets in the laundry room were torn out with the wall. Only the uppers had survived. I had made a detailed drawing and asked Jerry to build a new cabinet. But Covid hit and we all went into lock down.
I knew this was Jerry’s way of communicating to us. It was perfect. What better to get our attention than what he likely considered to be an unfinished project!
A much younger Jim (left) and Jerry (center) and John (right) with a head full of black hair!
Thankful John has had years of practice hearing from family and friends who have passed: Joseph Willmeng; my dad; Jim Sink, to mention just a few.
Thankful we know we are not just these bodies.
Thankful we know love is eternal.
Thankful we are here to remind one another, especially at those times when we feel sad.
This world deserves a kiss on both cheeks
on the way out of the door
and you have to let people see you do it.
Failure to do so becomes —
you are just another advocate
but not much of a practitioner.
~ Stephen Jenkinson
Since arriving home in Michigan one month ago, the yet-unanswered questions include: am I going to reopen my practice and if (or when) I will see a friend who went from a daily contact to essentially a lack of contact over this past winter.
Of course, there is a much deeper structure than the surface of these (and all) questions.
It has taken me days to be able to listen to the entire conversation with Terry Patten and Stephen Jenkinson — an episode titled: “Overwhelming Beauty — and Being OK, Dying.”
On his 70th birthday, Terry was informed that there is a probably metastatic cancer in his lungs.
Shortly after listening, a dear friend who is losing her hair in the current process of cancer treatment included this in her recent post about her hair loss: I made a common error…..I didn’t let my painful feelings have any air time. I shifted so quickly that there was no recognition that this particular development has impact. I’m aware where it ranks in the big picture ….. but it’s not meaningless.
I notice where the questions about my practice or the change in my relationship ranks in the big picture…. but they are not meaningless.
I appreciate my willingness to stay with the listening and to feel the painful feelings that were evoked by this podcast. To stay with the listening was not easy. The subject matter is not light. It was not pleasurable.
But it is meaningful and as I stay with the listening, I notice a bit more about what I found intolerable with my friend over this past year.
As I stay with the listening, Stephen’s words suddenly stimulate a whiff of clarity that sweeps into my being:
She is still selling comfort as the place to get to….
If you’re lucky, there are a few people who tend to your silence without asking you to break it….
I suspect it’s like war, in the following way. You come back from war, and there’s nothing to say for one of two reasons. Either the language has not yet caught up with the realities of war and so explicitly there is nothing to say that doesn’t digress. Or, there is nothing to say to anyone because they weren’t there and there’s no way to bring them closer to it, and if they were there, you’re not talking about it anyway….
The mother of gratitude is grief. It doesn’t come from being spared….
If you don’t die of this now, you will die of that then….
Terry’s stark honesty and his transparency of his not knowing pulls me back so I can stay with the listening:
We all have the terminal diagnosis. We don’t know the time or the contours….
The beauty of this life — the thing I don’t want to kiss goodbye — has made itself especially vivid and the fact that I am totally not in control makes everything poignant, tender, full of vibrancy….
You can’t kiss that goodbye except with tears and they’re not “unhappy.” They’re deeply felt, they are hardly knowable….
Jenkinson is the author of Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life – (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002).
I am in a poetry writing group. We are working our way through The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop by Diane Lockward. Craft Tip #12 is about the uses of myth. “Milarepa’s Muses” is based on The Non-Duality of Coming to Know the Light Within the Darkness; Age of Kali , a talk given by Aaron on Saturday Morning, December 3, 2016, at a retreat in Seattle. Aaron is channeled by Barbara Brodsky. You can read Aaron’s entire talk at the Deep Spring Center Archives. I have included a clip of just the story of Milarepa at the end of this post.
Milarepa’s Muses
Demons on the doorstep
Demons outside, Milarepa inside
Duality
Delighted demons destroying
Property and Milarepa’s
Peace
Always there, those demons
Doing their demon things
Determined
Dogging his footsteps
Dodging his arrows
Dastardly
“Eat me,” mouthed as
Milarepa puts his head inside the demon’s mouth
Victory
The demon disappears
Light merging with darkness
Oneness
Debra Basham 7-17-2018 (WC 53) based on The Non-Duality of Coming to Know the Light Within the Darkness; Age of Kali by Aaron
It seems one of the most common demons visiting humans is the demon of the fear of death. I just finished reading Frank J. Cunningham’s, Vesper Time: The Spiritual Practice of Aging. On page 131-132, Cunningham writes that when the Dali Lama was asked if he feared death, he replied, “It’s just a change of clothes.”
Ending the duality and recognizing the truth that death is just a change of clothes is putting your head inside the demon’s mouth and watching the demon disappear.
December 3, 2016 Saturday Morning, Seattle Retreat;
Combined retreat opening talk and morning instruction with Aaron
Some years ago, I offered the group at this retreat the second Milarepa practice. Not the serving tea practice, that’s Part 1. First we serve him tea. We get used to the demon. We stop running from or denying the demon. We open our hearts to ourselves and the demon. We serve him tea and say, “Shh, no dialogue. We’re not going to talk, but you may be here. I’ll let you be present.” To let him be present there must be a deep sense of, not your power, the power, when you rest in connection with the light. It is that connection that allows you to permit the demon to sit before you. But there’s still separation: me here, the demon there.
The second Milarepa practice. He comes back to the area of his cave carrying firewood on his back. As he approaches his home he finds it’s overrun by demons. His first impulse is to grab a stick of firewood. He starts chasing them with one big club. Of course, they’re delighted; they laugh. They were really getting to him! “Look how much anger! Ooo! More! More!” So the more he chases them, the more they take delight in his fear and anger.
Finally he realizes this isn’t working. He sits, he meditates, he thinks, “What can I do? I’ll send loving wishes to them.” They laugh. They don’t care about his loving wishes. They’re busy destroying his home. “What else can we do? How can we get him more riled up?” and proceed with their destruction. Finally he looks around. He thinks, “maybe they’ve always been here and I just never noticed them before. I’ll just be here and present with them”. Most of them get bored when he’s no longer agitated, and they leave. But there’s one fierce demon with bulging eyes, big teeth, a huge, gaping mouth, and he follows Milarepa everywhere, 6 inches behind him, always right there, sometimes coming around face to face.
The days pass, the weeks pass. Finally, Milarepa understands there’s only one choice here. He approaches the demon, looks him in the eyes, says, “Eat me,” and puts his head in the demon’s mouth. What happens then? The demon disappears. Why?
Q: The demon has no power over Milarepa.
Aaron: Even more than that. Thank you, but one more step.
Q: Non-duality.
Aaron: He ends the duality. This is what we’re doing here, not just at the retreat, but this is what your world has invited you to. This is the whole image of Kali, the destroyer, destroying the duality. Fully embracing not only the light, but the darkness. Instead of clinging to the light and in any way trying to push the negative away, as we embrace the darkness and merge the light with the darkness, they dissolve into one. I use the image here of a huge dark cave; if you light one match the whole cave is lit even if dimly. You can’t see into the darkest corners, no. But as soon as there’s light, there’s light. It’s no longer dark.
Would anyone recognize the importance of these treasures? Without my providing a guided tour, might they just look like useless items delinquent on the trip to the trash?
Might my sweet spirit whisper to anyone who was willing to listen how significant each really is?
The round tuit—such a valuable reminder!
A simple wooden acorn that allowed me to recognize my spiritual calling to healing work.
NONME stamped right into the material by the manufacturer of a piece of PVC pipe, found in the garden at a Sangha silent meditation retreat on no-self.
The shaman’s medicine bundle from the back-yard blessing provided by a beloved Carmelite Sister.
Yet, even right now I realize these items themselves are of no significant value.
I welcome awareness and learning slipping into an ease of being much like pulling on your favorite pair of slippers…
Life is wonderFULL. Some days and some times of our lives are definitely more full than others.
Today is the one year anniversary of my mother-in-law’s transition. I’ve written about her passing in Musings from an Estate Sale, and spoken about it in Celebrations of Life, a talk given at Unity by the Lakeshore the morning after the final day of the estate sale.
One week ago today, I had the honor of giving the eulogy for John’s Aunt Nor.
Yesterday, I sat with my beloved sister as she supported their sweet cat, Sally, in crossing the Rainbow Bridge.
As much as I try to not write so much about life and death, it is life after death keeps calling my fingers to the keyboard.
You may appreciate a reminder of our seeing the boat named Miss Ellie on the highway as we drove home from the first Basham Family Reunion without John’s mom with us in body. Miss Ellie is the nickname given to my mother-in-law by another of her daughters-in-law, Cindy.
This morning, I opened my email to a Quotation for the day from David Bloyd. “Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.” According to David, the author of this quotation found on marcandangel.com, is unknown. Known or unknown, the writer has spoken a powerful reality.
A bit before noon yesterday I drove my sister and her precious kitty companion to the vet. Janis’ husband, Larry, was working. The regular vet was on vacation, but they had someone filling in. The vet who saw us was a young woman. As she was in that room with us, her own story came out. One month ago, she had to put her dog down. She had loved that dog for ten years. She, too, had waited so long the injection had to go into the heart. She fought her tears, gave us hugs, and shared her own tender experiences, Janis and I agreed Sally’s needing support to complete her transition may have been as much about that tender-hearted vet as it was about Sally and the two of us.
The threads of our lives are connected…. We can appreciate that truth.
Sally had come to my brother-in-law’s art studio over 16 years earlier. Sally’s ears and tail were bare of hair—having been sheered by frostbite. We can endure painful experiences in life. A month of Larry’s consistent and compassionate feeding resulted in this former feral’s finally coming inside where it was warm. Sally became a studio cat, and she has been a studio cat since that day…. Not one time during the next decade and a half did an open door or window tempt her away from her place of warmth and love. She had been there and done that!
Today, I will ride my bike to yoga class in the autumn sun.
You can appreciate the truth. As J.K. Rowling wrote in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, “The ones who love us never really leave us, you can always find them in here.”
She was walking their dog on the usual path. There were always grasshoppers jumping out of the way on the sidewalk.
Her husband had died. This particular day was the second anniversary of her husband’s transition, and she was walking and crying and wishing for the simple pleasure of holding his hand.
At that very moment, a grasshopper jumped into her hand! The grasshopper stayed there a while before hopping off.
She felt a calm and peace come over her, along with a big smile on her face. For that brief moment she felt the connection of holding his hand. It was a moment of sheer joy!
