Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: freedom

  • True Freedom

    “When the water is muddy
    and you can’t see the bottom,
    no amount of stirring
    can clear the water.”
    ~ Debra Basham

    In the U.S. the 4th of July represents freedom. People often think of freedom as freedom FROM something outside of us, but true freedom is an inside job, and nothing outside of you needs to change for you to enjoy it.

    Wednesday night I was unable to fall asleep after John came to bed, so I got up and came in on the bed in the office. At 2:00 am, I was still awake, but I fell asleep some time after that.

    At my normal waking time (about 6:00 am) I was enjoying a very stable (lucid) dream state, and I knew I had a choice (or not) to feel (or not) tired. It really isn’t sleep that restores one—we are restored by alignment. What is alignment? Activation of your parasympathetic nervous system….

    I have previously posted several tips on activation, but maybe it is worth another quick reminder: (See PNS is BIG; A Chilling Way to Calm Down; Covid-19.

    For decades I have enjoyed the benefits of doing a Self-Full Body Connection or meditation or prayer at bedtime so I fall asleep in alignment. I use this metaphor: If your TV is on channel 19 when you fall asleep, it will still be on that channel when you wake up.

    With all the stress around the globe, most people are running the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) much of the time. Now, like never before, it is vital to bring ourselves back into alignment again and again.

    Ram Dass said that compassion is the ability to see how it all is. When you are worried about “X” or “Y” or “Z” your body is processing EVERYTHING via the sympathetic nervous system. Even if you worry yourself to a solution about SOMETHING, your TV is still set on channel 19.

    I saw a beautiful quotation by Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer: “When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.”

    How amazing that without being fabricated,
    This mind, which is unborn and primordially pure,
    Is spontaneously present from the very beginning!
    This self awareness is naturally free from the very first,
    How amazing that it is liberated by just resting — —
    At ease in whatever happens!

    Flight of the Garuda
    Lama Shabkar, Tsogdruk Rangdrol

    Think about activation of your sympathetic nervous system as being the storm. Not something outside of you, but what is happening inside. Think also about activation of your parasympathetic nervous system as being coming out of the storm. Also not something outside of you, but what is happening inside.

    True freedom is an inside job.

  • 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.”

  • Filter Bubbles

    The one you seek, is the one who seeks.
    Therefore, It’s not “I” who reads spiritual books;
    it is not “I” who sits ZAZEN,
    paying attention to body, BREATH, and mind.
    IT is not “I” who let’s go of everything, but THIS, only THIS!
    ~ Jerry Ashmore, posted in Empty Circle Zen Group

    Most of us are aware of algorithmic editing at some level. All information we access is filtered according to a predetermined “sorting.” The news is full of Russia’s manipulation of social media (Facebook) and the hidden criteria of search engines (Google). Even if you are not new to the truth and implications, check out Eli Pariser’s TED talk about filter bubbles.

    Pariser says the key threat is this: “If I search for something, and you search for something, even right now at the very same time, we may get very different search results… And you know, the funny thing about this is that it’s hard to see. You can’t see how different your search results are from anyone else’s.”

    The biggest algorithmic editing risk might just be to our relationships. What if we have family and friend “filter bubbles” operating and we don’t even notice? Sky Nelson-Isaacs has looked at a model for synchronicity based on a process called “meaningful history selection.” His book, Living in Flow: The Science of Synchronicity and How Your Choices Shape Your World, is due out in the spring of 2019.

    This is so alive, so organic, so vital. Our brains operate just like these search engines: our thoughts and emotions are generated by our memories, and then our experiences are generated by our expectations. I don’t see you as you. I see you as my history of you. I don’t experience you as you, I experience you as I expect you. I am co-creating you in my image of you.

    Of course, as Jerry Ashmore wrote, “YOU” and “I” don’t exist on the ultimate level of reality. Even at the relative level we can see this is truth. We can look at our hand and see all of the fingers and we know the fingers are a part of the hand. We know the hand is also part of the body. Everything and everyone is part of everything and everyone.

    A precious friend has a life-long history of difficult interactions with a sister that has resulted now in a choice to “put her out of my life.” Conversations with my friend are around my hope/wish/insistence we can access genuine freedom inside buy changing how we look at things.

    Experience the bliss of Self-Respect and give respect to others at all times. When I am prejudiced against another, my narrow vision and small heart lower my self-dignity and self-worth.

    If you are insulted by another person, and you become angry in response, the sin is the anger which you create not the insult. You are asleep to the truth that you just hurt yourself, and that you are the creator of your anger not the other person. And now you have a recording in your consciousness that contains an image of the other surrounded by the energy of anger. You put it there, not them. Next time you see them, up comes the anger again, and in that moment you are at your least effective, paralyzed by self created anger, you are effectively out of the game until you cool down.

    “Thought for Today” ~ Brahma Kumaris