Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Healing with Language

  • Spider Message

    Early one morning I received a text message asking what manual the method for removing phobias such as fear of spiders was in. “Healing with Language, starting on page 236,” I wrote and then continued, “I also like to share the totem meaning afterwards. I was HORRIFICALLY afraid of spider. Look at the totem meaning!”

    If you have Spider Totem Animal, you can be inventive, creative, tenacious and have a strong wit. You may know how to influence others and may have a good sense of the larger patterns all around you. Finally, Spider is a communicator – writers very often have a Spider totem. (From: WhatIsMySpiritualAnimal.com)

    “How cool is that!!! A couple of weeks ago she shared with me that she wants to work on her writing skills.”

    “My overall number is 2 in numerology – Number II is The High Priestess in The Animal Wise Tarot by Ted Andrews — represented by spider! EVERYTHING comes as gift/teacher. We often have to move into and through the fear to see/receive the gift,” I added.

    “Wonder if she subconsciously has brought the spiders’ energy in.”

    “Interestingly, I don’t think of it so much as that she unconsciously brought spider in which is a view of duality – me and not me – but that THE ALL THAT IS manifested as spider to bring the perfect, needed, desired message at the ideal time.”

    God moves in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. ~ Luke 24:16

  • Drama Triangle Revisited Again and Again

    Lately, almost EVERYTHING I read or see or hear or feel reminds me of The Drama Triangle Revisited, one of the more infamous SCS/NLP offerings.

    A key awareness of Healing with Language is built on the Drama Triangle, developed by Steve Karpman. The main roles of the Drama Triangle—Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer—are well-known, but not everyone is familiar with either the Cognitive Triangle or the Transrational Pyramid.

    For more information, see “The Drama Triangle Revisited” (a free download in PDF format).

    It will help you identify the various roles and allow you and your friends, family, and clients to move away from the drama of life and gain a sense of awareness, clarity, and harmony available from the Transrational Pyramid (Healing with Language, 2008, Bowman and Basham).

    For example, on Sunday, the blessing of Darshan with The Mother was clearly related to John’s medical process: You can hold your own aspirations and choices with love and offer them out for him to receive, but the highest aspiration always needs to be for that which is for the highest good for him and for yourself. Because you are straining yourself trying to carry him. And you cannot carry him. I will not help you carry him, but I will help you hold a field of love around him, around each other.

    At Tuesday’s Evening with Aaron, we were encouraged to move beyond any old fix-it habit energies. While Aaron did not use the term Drama Triangle, the message was clear: Fix-it energy helps to hold in place those two roles of victim and victimizer. What if you step out of that idea, holding space for both of them, seeing how they’re constantly pushing at each other. You can instead say, “I will not play with this whole cycle anymore. I step back out of it. You are responsible for finding the power in yourself to cease being the victim or victimizing others. And I will support your doing that in wholesome ways.”

    That is precisely what The Mother had told me about John! “I will not help you carry him….”

    Aaron went on to explain that the role of the fixer assumes there is something broken, and if something is broken, then something needs to be fixed. It is a never-ending cycle — until you stop being victimized by it. And you can. ONLY you can. Only YOU can. Only again and again.

    I have been invited as guest pastor at St. John United Church of Christ on June 19, which is Father’s Day. The theme of our time together will be observing your masculine teacher (for most of us our father). I am excited about the music for the day: Father’s Eyes by Amy Grant, and Father I Adore You, and Our Father (The Lord’s Prayer). I was looking for a wonderful piece of work from The Celestine Prophecy: An Experiential Guidebook on a flash drive holding the remnants of my previous PC that crossed the rainbow bridge.

    While searching for that, I came upon some old notes from a self-retreat at Still Waters. The notes were from a book by SARK. Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, check out her amazing work. I am sorry that I do not know what book this saying is from, but I know the page number is 217.

    I am willing to live by this saying, “I don’t know why this has happened, but since it has, I must have helped cause it.” ~ SARK

    SARK made an important distinction: this is different from belief that an experience is happening to me because I need to develop such and such a characteristic. This is awareness we are co-creators.

    John and I are certainly experiencing awareness through all of this. A dear friend wrote today, “I continue to admire your wisdom, insights, courage and perseverance as I read your blog posts. It sounds like a long difficult passage, but with many blessings along the way.”

    I responded,”Like birth! And incarnation!!!!”

    While Joel P. Bowman and I were developing the body of materials we called SCS/NLP, he was triggered by a reference I made to a shared office space as”my office.” My comment, or perhaps more clearly his response to my comment, set of a chain-reaction and weeks of stress. Working together for over twenty years, we came to say we had fights so fierce we named them. This one was named: my office.

    During the “my office” drama, John and I were in the car on our way to Grand Rapids to have dinner with a friend. I was again and again hashing over the event when John asked simply, “What are you and Joel working on right now?”

    “The Drama Triangle,” I responded before continuing, “Why do you ask?”

    “Because you are always living the material,” was John’s wise reply.

    Joel and I recognized the third “triangle” in the human psyche is actually not a triangle at all. It is a pyramid. The Transrational Pyramid is centered in the heart chakra, and it is transrational in the sense we are able to be with our experiences beyond our personality. We live in a meta state throughout which Awareness is aware of the conditions or context; aware of our personal issues, and aware of the thoughts and feelings of the others affected.

    Aaron is fond of saying there is nothing needing to be fixed. From transrational awareness, we simply bring loving attention to what ever needs it. Transrational Awareness combines with Clarity and Peace to produce a sense of Harmony within self, with the other, and with the universe as a whole.

    Ah…. Transrational awareness. One of the many blessings along the way of this long difficult passage called life….


  • Creative Mending

    I had some text exchange with my firstborn grandchild, Brad, sharing emotional reactions and perceptions of the current conditions. Some we love dearly entertain the notion that COVID-19 is a conspiracy. I shared with him a recent writing:

    Daily Doula Duty

    My book, I Learned Everything I Needed to Know About Life Working as a Doula, is not yet written, but the awareness is etched into my days nonetheless. The last trimester of pregnancy is no picnic. Sleep is illusive as pressure on the bladder likely means many trips to the bathroom. The rapidly growing fetus works hard to finds comfortable place to stretch out in the tight quarters—often right on the mom’s sciatic nerve. Back pain, leg cramps…. Perhaps all of this is preparation.

    Most women go into labor exhausted, and after that there will be long days and short nights of having an infant to care for.

    The job of the doula is to coach the woman into conserving what precious little energy she has. She is going to need it.

    No matter how long or how difficult the labor, the hardest work comes after the cervix is dilated¬—in the second stage of labor.

    The second stage of labor is when the woman really needs stamina. And stamina takes energy.

    One of my clients had to be put on oxygen to be able to push. Not only was she exhausted, she also had bronchitis.

    My sister delivered her youngest just as intestinal flu was ramping through her family of five, the normal work of laboring was clearly distorted by the accompanying vomiting and diarrhea.

    The human mind is very prone to vomiting and diarrhea….

    When all is said and done, we may be among the fortunate ones to have survived the pandemic of 2020. Suffice it to say, humanity as a whole is likely going into the second stage of labor exhausted.

    High-powered executives confessed to hoping for a scheduled cesarean delivery….

    It is important to conserve our energy. We don’t know what more is going to be demanded of us.

    Bonnie’s daughter is celebrating Mother’s Day this year having just lost her mom to COVID-19. There was no access to the hospital. No visitation or funeral. She writes: “I am going to go pack up some of her things on Sunday. I have some other ideas to share some special moments with her, too. I feel her a lot. It almost feels like she’s not gone because she is around so much. Meaning I don’t miss her physical presence (as much) because her spirit is so strong.”

    The second stage of labor can last a few moments or a few hours.

    Take heart: the second stage of labor means the cervix has already dilated.

    Your body, your mind, and your spirit can do what is being asked of it.

    Key awareness at this point: Don’t be a prisoner to what you cannot change.
    • Remember this is not your birth
    • Remember to rest when you can
    • Remember to breathe through contractions
    • Remember you are not the first or the only to go through this
    • Remember everything you have done to be ready
    • Remember getting through this is the most important thing
    • Remember you will forget the pain
    Debra Basham 05-08-2020 (WC 500)

    Brad responded, “Is this some ninja level NLPing?”

    Zan Lombardo, my friend and artist extraordinaire, was doing some creative mending during our Southern Circle Poets virtual gathering. On the shirt in the photo below, what seems to be a pendant, is actually where a moth hole was. The turquoise is a random doodled line that Zan stitched.

    Transrational Pyramid from Healing with Language (Bowman and Basham p.187):

    The observer’s perspective is both caring and disinterested, free of attachment, neither fearing nor desiring a specific outcome, but wanting only what is usually called the Highest Good for all. That doesn’t mean they have given up playing an active role in causes and activities they think are beneficial. It just means that they do so from a more peaceful and less judgmental perspective.

    Now, that is some creative mending….