Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Dharma Path

  • And Now A Warning!

    From the 1992 film, “Death Becomes Her”:

    [Lisle (Isabella Rossellini) hands Madeleine (Meryl Streep) the vial of potion.]

    Madeleine: “Bottoms up.”

    [She drinks the potion.]

    Lisle Von Rhuman: “Now a warning.”

    Madeleine: “NOW a warning?”

    This information may feel a lot like that. It has been an intense yet slow-moving past few months, with many of us feeling very out of sorts, even to the point of having difficult and painful experiences. But there’s a reason, according to the stars. The five outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) have ALL been retrograde. When a planet goes retrograde, everything related to that planet goes wonky.

    If everything related to all of these wasn’t enough, Mercury also went retrograde September 27 until October 18, with a “shadow period” that lasts a few weeks before and after the actual retrograde.

    Now a warning…. This will be a very intense time, as we are reflecting upon all the partnerships, relationships, and friendships in our lives to understand where we fit in. Is there balance and peace between us? Do we feel at home with these people?

    See: Why You Might Be Feeling Off Lately.

    I have certainly been experiencing this, as have the people in my life.


    In the Tuesday, October 26, Dharma Path class we were guided to reflect on the following, with the guidance of realizing, “If we can’t hold ourselves in our hearts we can’t hold each other.”

  • Of what am I dismissive in myself?
  • What part/s of myself do I not hold in my heart?
  • What needs my loving attention?

    • I wrote in my journal:
    wounded sexuality
    left hip/knee/foot
    inner worrywart

    To begin this difficult process we were to reflect on a part of ourselves that we do embrace. That was easier. I love that I am a hearth-keeper, baking cookies, making meals, helping and supporting. I love being a nurturer.

    We were gently reminded, “These parts are real. When we are dismissive we can’t bring them into our heart. We have all lost something dear to us. We all have a community within us. It is time to invite ourselves back into our hearts.”

    We were instructed to look into the camera and really allow ourselves to see ourselves and to be seen through the eyes of unconditional love.

    It was powerful.

    At one point, the eyes literally became the eyes of my dad! I could see clearly how I had stepped in to the wounded sexuality when my dad’s indiscretion resulted in him passing syphilis to my mom while she was pregnant for me. Then my having been sexualized at a young age; my getting pregnant at 15, married at 16, at a time when females were not allowed to stay in school. Loss of libido and intimacy with the hysterectomy in 2012. Such loss…. Dismissive? Lord, yes.

    But suddenly I could see this all having come from conditions – this line of wounded sexuality did not begin with me!

    A flood of appreciation washed over my soul.

    I wrote in my journal:
    I have healed the line of wounded sexuality. I did not start it. I stepped into it.

    As I was working on this post, a friend sent the perfect “Inspiration” from a Network For Grateful Living Gratefulness.org:

    Place your hand on your heart. Feel what surfaces in the fullness of that space. Joy, sorrow, anger, contentment, sadness, delight, vulnerability. Perhaps an unnameable tone. Whatever you notice, allow it to simply be. Let it be okay. Let yourself soften.

    When we hold ourselves and others tenderly, we nurture the relationships that make life possible. Tending is the embodiment of tenderness and so a direct path to shared belonging. We stretch toward and from the heart, extending to others and ourselves expressions of humility, compassion, and care. As Trui Snyman says in the short film Tenderness: “People are hard on each other, people are hard on themselves.…We could all do with more tenderness.”

    In moments of difficulty, tenderness can serve as a starting place, offering fertile ground for the cultivation of gratefulness. Soften, and open up to the unending gifts of the great mystery in which you belong. Soften, and feel yourself fortified. Soften. Stretch toward and from your heart.

    Like the weather, moods change.

    Soften….

    And now another warning: Venus goes retrograde on December 19 until January 29, 2021.

  • World 24

    My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue,
    An everlasting vision of the everchanging view,
    A wondrous woven magic in bits of blue and gold,
    A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold.

    ~ Carole King

    Today is day five of a five-day workshop that in music might be called the crescendo of the past three years of an intensive spiritual program with Barbara Brodsky called “Dharma Path.”

    The closing ceremony is one in which we are to express our deepest intention for our highest purpose of this human life. I wrote in my journal:

    What is my highest intention for this incarnation?

    1. It is my highest intention in this incarnation to participate fully in what Aaron calls raising earth’s vibration and assisting in it’s becoming positively polarized.
    2. It is my highest intention to know the realms of support for this coming to be.
    3. In the personal realm, that translates to balancing old karma, freedom from habit energy related to that old karma, stabilizing new patterns that activate the highest possible frequency and: Living, encouraging [and enjoying] a conscious spiritual journey.
    4. To respond to reactivity with clarity from this highest intention, I remember the great prayer: May all beings be free from suffering. May all beings feel joy. May all beings realize their intrinsic perfection and find perfect peace.

    ~~~~~~
    This morning I awoke at 5:00 am and unable to fall back asleep, went into the front bedroom which is simultaneously serving as my meditation hall, office, and guest room. I opened my email to a promotional piece for a book by Cynthia Bourgeault, Eye of the Heart: A Spiritual Journey into the Imaginal Realm, and listened to an interview with her as she speaks about the book. Here is a link to the podcast: A Different Way to Live Virtuously, in which she says:

    The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The opposites tend to play out on our planet.

    These things [fruits of the spirit] aren’t just virtues, they are not just nice little moral qualities, they are not just nouns. They’re actually energy packets, they are food. And they’re nutrients that our planet needs directly because the lack of them causes things to get so harsh and so desiccated and so dry and barren and parched that you can’t stand to live here. Craziness enters….

    We do have something that we have to give back and pay back, and it is not only food for our own realm but for realms above.

    She speaks about George Gurdjieff, Russian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer of Armenian and Greek descent, who died in 1949. She says her book is mostly about “World 24” – from his metaphorical number system about human consciousness.

    World 24:
    The world of Presence, deep equanimity, of deep mindfulness and of the conscious circle of humanity, the place where we actively receive on this planet assistance from above (from what Christians would call the Saints and the rest of the traditions would call the enlightened ones). Where we hand up our transformed gifts of goodness and love and forbearance and patience and devotion and where we bring down onto our planet the benefits of faith, coherence, temperance, forgiveness, courage. It’s a realm of very active interface between the visible and the invisible, what the senses and reason says is logical and sensible and what the heart knows is good and true.

    World 12, accordingly, for the Christians it is Heart of Christ and for the Buddhist it is the Boddhisatva Consciousness – identical states of consciousness where human beings know we are bound to each other.

    For over ten years now, my signature line on my email is this quotation by Mother Teresa: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

    I ask you to offer support for my intention, and to craft your own.

    May all beings come to the end of suffering.

  • It is Never About the Hat

    I am so blessed to have beautiful, soulful, women friends. I had lunch with one, Jane Foster, on Friday. Especially after all these years, hearing Jane share her story still touches me. (See Jane Foster’s Story)

    Jane was telling me about a custom hat she is having made by a woman out west. The woman’s husband has been very ill, so she is homeschooling their children, caring for her husband, and the custom hat business helps them make ends meet.

    “Look at me. I am 72, and I am still here, and here you are making me a hat!” Jane told the hat-maker, who thanked Jane for restoring hope.

    It is never about the hat.

    This week, I finally got over to Kalamazoo and Joel and I watched the finale of Dancing with the Stars. The results were shocking, but the dancing and the special music, was, well—very special! I loved Lauren Daigle’s singing “You Say”. Here are some comments about the story behind her writing that song:

    It was the day after my very first Dove awards, and I remember being completely overwhelmed. I walked into the studio, and Paul and Jason, my producers, were in there and they’re like “All right what’s going on in your world, how’s it been?”

    It was the first time we had written since How Can It Be…I just remember feeling like so much had happened the night before, wondering How do I come back down to normal, how do I come back down to reality? And I started realizing these patterns of really high highs and then, okay now there’s a low. Really high high, now there’s a low…And Involving expectation in that space can just leave you kind of questioning your identity- Where do I fit in, where is my security, where is my footing?

    So when writing “You Say,” I just remember feeling for the first time pretty conflicted. It was definitely the first moment in just being an artist that I was like Okay, where is all this going excactly? And I know that we’ve all faced moments in life where we can feel a crossroads happen— where we can see the past and also see the future, and realize how we are supposed to exist in the present. And it was one of those moments where I could see where things were going and I knew exactly where I came from, and I needed those worlds to still be married. (CCM Magazine)

    Here is the first stanza of Daigle’s “You Say” lyrics:

    I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I’m not enough
    Every single lie that tells me I will never measure up
    Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low?
    Remind me once again just who I am, because I need to know (ooh oh)
    You say I am loved when I can’t feel a thing
    You say I am strong when I think I am weak
    You say I am held when I am falling short
    When I don’t belong, oh You say that I am Yours
    And I believe (I), oh I believe (I)
    What You say of me (I)
    I believe

    Songwriters: Paul Mabury / Lauren Ashley Daigle / Jason Ingram
    You Say lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

    When she was 15 years old, Daigle had an autoimmune illness that kept her down for about two years. She says that is when God taught her about her character.

    Today I had Christmas Tea with another precious friend, Kathy Zerler. As we sipped on tea made from the peppermint Kathy grew in her garden, dried in her basement, and blessed by her meditative working of the mint with her hands, we treated ourselves to a few “cards.”

    We exchanged gifts. I gave her a hand-crocheted kitchen scrubby, home-made jalapeno jelly, and yummy socks. She gave me fabulous glass containers to hold crackers and nuts on my kitchen counter, more peppermint, and an eye pillow and soap made from lavender she grew.

    We shared how each of our spiritual lives are deepening—my two year commitment to the Dharma Path, and Kathy’s renewed commitment to bible study and contemplation. I read to her from Rupert Spira’s The Transparency of Things: “Non-Duality is not an immunisation against feeling. In fact, it is the opposite. It is complete openness, sensitivity, vulnerability and availability. Actually, suffering is our resistance to feeling, rather than a feeling itself.”

    I confessed to feeling like our lives are being pulled away from one another, and read a bit more from Spira: “Consciousness is absolute Freedom. We allow this Freedom to express itself as it will, how it will, where it will and when it will. In one body/mind this might take the shape of a character that is quiet and sensitive, whilst in another it may express itself in a wild and exuberant way. We should not be misled by appearances.”

    It is never about the hat or the tea.

    P.S. When Jane received the hat, she sent this photo, and a message saying she thought the hat needed to be named. She decided to name it the “Giving Hat” because her husband gifted her the hat, it is giving her so much pleasure, and the proceeds that will go to cancer research is giving others a chance at a longer and better quality of life. Here she is in the “Giving Hat.”

  • Does the tree still live in your heart?

    An alternate title for this post could be: Fleas Have Not Yet Flown.

    Checking in with our small group on the Dharma Path (a two-year course with Barbara Brodsky, Aaron, and John Orr) on Tuesday evening, I shared feeling very sad about the removal of a beautiful, big, old (about 60 years), tree that was cut down that day. It might have been easier if the tree had been obviously weak. It might have been easier if I had made the decision instead of having it be made by the owner/manager of the property where we live in our tiny house now. And it might have been easier if it had not been our ONLY tree in our yard, leaving us at the mercy of the blazing summer sun.

    I told Barbara how unskillful I felt, not being able to feel the everlasting peace as well as the sadness. She said kindly, “Who dies? What dies? Does the tree still live in your heart?”

    I choked back tears, no longer just for the beautiful old tree, but now for the human who was having difficulty keeping my heart open.

    Yesterday morning when I arrived at Joel’s, it was obvious the fleas had not yet flown. (See Fleas!)

    When I pulled the chair out to have lunch, I saw a live flea on it, and twice during lunch a flea crawled on to my ankle and bit me as I ate my salad. Instead of my normal nap on the massage table, I placed a light-colored bed sheet on my lap, sat on the futon downstairs, and inspected McGee. She is the one with very light-colored fur, so easiest to see fleas. She innocently welcomed my search, experiencing it simply as loving attention. I found several live fleas still on her sweet body, and lots of dried blood and flea-body parts. When I went downstairs for bed, McGee came to bed with me (her usual delight at having an overnight companion on the lower level). While reading, I chased down one live flea on her forehead. She obviously was not loving me any less because of the fleas. I was doing my best to stay open to her precious presence.

    This morning as I entered the kitchen, I saw two fleas jumping on the tile floor. I found half dozen or so on the slippers I was wearing. Joel sprayed the herbal product he has been using on the kitchen floor, and I stood at the counter to eat my fruit bowl.

    Let me be perfectly clear—this is not about fleas. This is about my heart. More importantly, it is about the truth that as the day progressed, it became more and more difficult for me to keep my heart open.

    I can see clearly how the difficulties with the fleas is helping me see, accept, and love my human self.

    Barbara continued, “On the mundane level (relative reality), the open heart is where we remember that on the supramundane level (ultimate reality), there has never been anything to heal. Able to just say, ‘Fleas, fear, sadness…. ahhhhh…. I no longer have need to manifest this. I do not choose to embrace this as a reality.’”

    It might have been helpful to have read today’s Daily Word early this morning rather than when I got home.

    The key word is “Centered.” I am being pulled off-center by my belief Joel should be doing something else (taking the cats out of the house and having the house treated), and by my aversion to the flea experience. Fear of bringing fleas home to my house enters in also. Feeling hopeless, helpless (it is hard enough to get myself to do what I want, much less Joel), and totally not centered.

    I do prefer feeling centered, and in those times when it is difficult to do so, I can choose to remember my highest purpose is to love.

    Debra, in Egyptian, means she who brings the sublime light of the creator.

    And when the light is bright, you can see the fleas!

  • Commitment to Joy in Trying Times

    Tell me, what is it you plan to do
    with your one wild and precious life?

    “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver
    from New and Selected Poems, 1992
    Beacon Press, Boston, MA
    Copyright 1992

    It has been quite some time since I made a two-year commitment to a formal program of study. Deep Spring Meditation Center is offering the course and there are a lot of facets of the commitment: daily meditation practice, daily journal entries, alternating weekly Dharma talks and small group meetings with Barbara Brodsky, Aaron, and John Orr. I went reluctantly to this commitment. My conscious mind struggled with the group meetings happening on Tuesday evenings, the night our Sangha meets here in Saint Joseph Sangha. Because Sangha meets the first and third Tuesday evening, at times the meetings will directly conflict. Sangha is important to me. I am already absent part of the year.

    Another aspect of the hesitation is you know something like this is going to change you.

    The focus of the Dharma Path program, from Aaron:

    If you wished to improve your health, you might start to eat more wisely, to exercise, to meditate, and to bring joy to your life. After some time with such intentions, you would probably start to ask, “What is healthy eating? What exercises shall I do? What forms of meditation are there, and what practice would be most suitable? How do I invite joy?”

    You might then study nutrition, plant a garden and learn to talk with your vegetables; practice yoga, weight lifting, running or swimming and finally begin to look deeper at the body and what best supports wholesome interactivity of the body parts. You might regard your spirit body as an integral part of the whole of body, mind and spirit, and investigate what spiritual practices most help bring ease and support the physical, emotional and mental bodies.

    Finally, you might begin an in-depth investigation of joy and find the ways that living with mindfulness, with gratitude, with generosity, all support joy. And this is just the start.

    I am sharing with all who follow the Yellow Brick Road so you can make the choice to “go for the ride.” This phrase is common in our SCS/NLP trainings—you can set your intention to receive the benefits of this transformational change work. Mahatma Gandhi said it like this, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Consider this your invitation….

    A friend who has recently moved from St. Joseph to Holland is currently reading Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness, by Loch Kelly. This friend attended Sangha in St. Joseph, and also on Pine Island, when in Florida. Shift into Freedom ties in perfectly with the Dharma Path. While you won’t be meeting all of the requirements of my two-year study, we can all get a jump start. Check out a free preview of Kelly’s book, including some amazing exercises available also on Youtube, like “What is here now when there is no problem to solve?”

    I love Mary Oliver’s poetry, and the words of the opening quote from “The Summer Day” are timely. So much is happening. Personally, politically; physically, emotionally; mentally, spiritually. It may be that nothing we will do over the next 24 months is more significant than this commitment to joy in trying times.