Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: habit energies

  • A World of Our Own Making

    Grateful, Friday was an extraordinary day of shifts in perspective….

    I had been being drawn down a dim alley when our grand-daughter-in-love-to-be had not responded to text or email about their upcoming wedding ceremony. Thursday evening she and I had opportunity for a call that answered a lot of questions. As I rode my bike early the next morning, I was feeling a tremendous amount of love along with relief and gratitude for clearer understanding.

    Returning home from my ride, Barbara Brodsky’s email response to my request to share her recent journal post touched me in that soft spot as I read, “Thank you for loving the journal, Debra. Of course you may share it… anywhere…. I’m honored.”

    April Journal #7

    I sat in my hot tub at dawn looking with wonder at the tiny new maple leaves just emerging, that precious, vibrant pale green of spring; seeing the red buds on the crab apple tree; the lawn sprinkled with dandelions; garden filled with daffodils and tulips; tiny pale green cones emerging on the giant spruce tops, awed by the deep blue sky. Here is the wonder of life emerging into a new spring, a new season.

    I’m aware that I’ve been in internal winter, dormant and frozen. It’s time to emerge.

    Asking what has led to closure is a necessary step: it’s painful to become aware of body discomfort, anger and sadness, old habitual ways of dealing with physical and emotional pain. This is partially just the mammalian “fight, flight, freeze” reflex. For me one important step is just awareness that I’ve turned to “automatic,” and to remember my intention to be present and awake. I choose not to become a Tesla! I am driving this vehicle! That connects me to intentions: do no harm and I DO harm others by withdrawing. And harm myself. The flowers need the nourishment of rich soil, water and warm sunshine to flourish. Armoring myself, the sun cannot reach me.

    Aaron asks me gently, what do I fear? Aging, increasing personal feelings of diminishment and lack of any control in a world gone crazy! Sadness, really grief, that we are destroying ourselves, each other and the earth and I cannot do anything about it. I’m feeling the full weight of my years, running out of time to do anything positive. I see grief is predominant. The anger is an expression of the grief, and grief of the anger.

    Aaron: And what helps to resolve the causes for grief?
    Barbara: Joy, but how do I get to joy?
    A: Joy is inherent in you and will be experienced when the blockage releases.
    B: Are you saying I’m holding on to the blockage?
    A: Not consciously, with intention, but if you touch each of those places of pain within with gentle love and light, as a parent holds a frightened child, you will feel gradual opening. Then you will see the base for blockage. There must be intention for release to happen, and consciousness of the pain of continued closure.

    We leave off conversation here as I begin to meditate. “Breathing in, I touch my heart with love; breathing out, I choose to let go of old pain.”

    I see it like October leaves releasing from a tree.… no force, just releasing whatever chooses to go, and again… after a few minutes, mind settles into presence, with body, mind, breath, nothing sticking, opening into more spacious presence.

    Barbara closed her post with this precious photo of her youngest granddaughter swinging from the flowering crab apple tree planted from a seedling in 1974.


    My emotional load was certainly lighter as I headed to my sister’s to assist with some spring cleaning. We ended up doing her kitchen.

    As I began, she was sharing frustration with the messes made by her husband. I had already shared Barbara’s Journal #7 with her, and I had been sharing my insight and relief after the previous night’s call about the wedding. I stopped in the middle of cleaning and said, “It is frustrating to have the same messes over and over, but if you got a call saying he had died your heart would be broken and you would pray to be able to clean up after him again…. We are learning to hold all sides of our emotions.”

    We shared some tears and a hug as I whispered, “We live in a world of our own making giving our experiences their meaning.”

    As we worked our way around her entire kitchen she shared, “It feels so good in here now.”

    We both knew mammalian messes of our own made were also being deep cleaned as she and I worked side by side….

  • Looking for the True Self

    Wow… I had a very unskillful time of things at the Jam last evening. When John and I arrived there were only two others there and one of the guys asked me to drum on the first and third beat only. He played a bit of a song he was going to do, and he coached me, and then my emotions went on a demented detour. A wounded state got triggered (honestly, that wounded state had come into the jam with me after it was previously triggered by another situation). It was all I could do to stay in that room for two hours. I did not put my hands on my drum for one beat.

    He apologized to me after the jam.

    I apologized to him by text this morning.

    So much unnecessary suffering….

    Yesterday’s Daily Arron Quote: Decisions made from a space of contraction will always carry karma. They will always come from the self, from the ego. Decisions made while resting in that spaciousness that is aware of the contraction and is not hooked into a self-identity with it are free of karma and can hold the spaciousness of the loving heart as ground for the decision or words.

    I was self-identified as the person who could not drum correctly; the person who was not allowed to drum the way I wanted to drum; the person who was not good enough.

    Those are familiar thoughts and feelings, but they are not who I am. As I am writing this post a text message from Empty Circle Zen group arrived:

    We ARE IN the habit of identifying ourselves with our bodies. The idea that we are this body is deeply entrenched in us. But we are not just this body; we are much more than that.

    The idea that “This body is me and I am this body” is an idea we must get rid of. If we do not, we will suffer a great deal. We are life, and life is far vaster than this body, this concept, this mind. We are connected with everything and everything with us.

    My emotions did not originate in the interaction about the drumming. My emotions came from old habit energies of feeling judged or rejected or controlled, resulting in not feeling good enough and believing that someone or everyone was doing something or everything wrong.

    The true self has deep compassion for all humans navigating these bodies, these concepts, these minds. The true self has wisdom to recognize the suffering that comes from self-identification with all of that.

    While the true self was working on this post, I received an email from a friend saying a digital copy of his book, Looking for the True Self, is now available. (The title of this post comes from the title of his boo k.) The downloadable, virus-free, printable, and shareable file is freely available on his website (www.georgesanfacon.com).

    Note: George says you may get a pop-up message box that reads “This file is too large to preview” or “This file is too large to scan for viruses” but fear not — the file is safe and you can click the “download” or “download anyway” button.

    Excerpted from “Looking for the True Self:”

      a spark is born and dies in a split second, while the sun seems to last forever

      but if your time shifted to a longer perspective,
      you could watch the sun flicker in and out of existence, too,
      same as a spark from a fire

      and so your body is flickering, too

      the Universe scooped you up into manifest existence,
      and will soon pour you back …. …. ….

    May all beings enjoy looking for the true self!

  • 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.