Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: IANDS

  • Outside of the Lines

    “If a wild animal like a cheetah
    can be tamed into forgetting her power,
    forgetting her majesty,
    forgetting her wild —
    then so can a woman.”

    ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

    I watched an interview in which Glennon Doyle Melton reported an experience of going to the zoo and watching the “cheetah run” with her children. She describes a zookeeper coming out with a dog on a leash and saying this dog has been a companion of the cheetah and allowed them to train the cheetah. The dog ran the race, chasing a “dirty pink bunny” behind a vehicle. The the cheetah did the same thing.

    Inside her very body, mind, and spirit, she recognized the way we (women AND men) have been trained.

    It is difficult for me to separate my hearing Glennon’s words from other current conditions.

    I write to a friend:

    His kids are moving him to a memory care facility in Tennessee. I finally see what about that pisses me off. Moving him to a facility so they can watch him like an animal in a zoo. Not moving him into their home and making the commitment to care for his needs as one would care for a newborn baby.

    He is not doing any of the things that make this option out of the question. He doesn’t run. He doesn’t fight. He simply forgets whether he has eaten or is hungry; whether or not he has showered or shaved or gone to the bathroom.

    Mind you, I do not pretend to know what is best for him. My reaction is not about what is happening to him. It is about what is happening within me.

    I can feel some life-calling brewing. Like my dreams upon waking, I have insufficient recall of the details.

    Everything is related to everything. Reading Glennon’s book, “Love Warrior: A Memoir” and taking notes:

      Love Warrior: A Memoir
      By Glennon Doyle Melton

      (p. 144)
      I’m trying to fix my pain with certainty, as if I’m one right choice away from relief. I’m stuck in anxiety quicksand: The harder I try to climb my way out, the lower I sink. The only way to survive is to make no sudden movements, to get comfortable with discomfort, and to find peace without answers… There is only one strategy I can count on during this time: Just do the next right thing. One thing at a time.

      I can never glimpse the end of the path, but if I squint hard, I can see the next step.

      I say: Give me today my daily bread. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, but today, give me enough energy and wisdom and strength and peace to handle what comes…. Help me ignore the big decisions, which will make themselves, and just help me focus on the small ones.
      ~~~~~~~

      (p. 195)
      My spiral staircase of progress means that my pain will be both behind me and in front of me, every damn day. I’ll never be “over it,” but I vow to be stronger each time I face it. Maybe the pain won’t change, but I will. I keep climbing.
      ~~~~~

      (p. 203)
      Our pain is not the poison; the lies about the pain are….

      Along the way, we’ve internalized the lies: You are supposed to be happy all the time. Everybody else is! Avoid the pain! You don’t need it, it’s not meant for you. Just push this button. Finally, I was being quiet and still enough to hear the truth: You are not supposed to be happy all the time. Life hurts and it’s hard. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because it hurts for everybody. Don’t avoid the pain. You need it. It’s meant for you. Be still with it, let it calm, let it go, let it leave you with the fuel you’ll burn to get your work done on this earth.

    The threads are witnessed from a safe distance. The right religion. The right treatment. The right partner. As though there is such a thing. We try to find the truth about the tooth fairy by putting our teeth under our pillow. The lies must been brought into the light. Yes, the tooth is gone and there is a quarter (OK, too cheap for today…. there is a dollar) under my pillow, but that has nothing to do with the truth.

    On Easter Sunday morning I watched the replay of an April 5 IANDS interview “Overcoming The Challenges and Discovering the Gifts of Spiritual Experiences” with Dr. Nicole Gruel. I so relate to her saying that the top risk of NOTES (Non-Ordinary Transcendent Experiences) is the relationship loss as others (and we ourselves) cannot accept awarenesses of the larger reality accessed by our experience.

    I did not go out of my way to notice that dead people talk to us.

    I would never have gone.

    Nor did I willingly leave the safety of the cocoon of Christianity to recognize the SOURCE of all life is “present within” each religion, but not “contained within” it.

    I would never have gone.

    If I had known learning Healing Touch would drive me into decades of despair dancing with the egotism of allopathic medicine, I NEVER WOULD HAVE GONE.

    Something changes when you are opened to the reality of the ever-perfect within the ever-imperfect. Everything changes when you stop searching for the RIGHT choice about anything and let your inner radiance see the light that shines brightly upon a path to everything.

    Later in the day I also tuned in to the Deep Spring Center for Meditation Easter Sunday gathering where Barbara Brodsky and Colette Simone took turns channeling Jeshua and Mary. I made few notes but the notes I did make are significant: The point is not to get through the incarnation, but to consecrate the incarnation. Aware of where we would not have been open to the heart, now we are able to. WOW. We are doing it.

    Glennon said it this way: My spiral staircase of progress means that my pain will be both behind me and in front of me, every damn day. I’ll never be “over it,” but I vow to be stronger each time I face it. Maybe the pain won’t change, but I will. I keep climbing.

    It pisses me off that his family does not know him well enough to draw out of his decaying brain things that he still knows. That he will be in a sea of strangers ignorant of the truth of him as a brilliant university professor who assisted so many on the path of learning. That someone will give him chocolate chip cookies instead of his preferred oatmeal raisin.

    But even as I am willing to feel the heat of anger, I am also willing to feel the spaciousness of peace and trust.

    Perhaps I can stop saying I never would have gone and see that I am going again even now.

    Sharing with a friend via text this morning I wrote: Maybe the trick is learning that the REAL art is what we create outside of the lines.

    Perhaps creating outside of the lines is itself a non-ordinary transcendent experience….

  • Channeling the Miraculous

    The wisdom of all ages and cultures emphasizes
    the tremendous power our thoughts have
    over our character and circumstances.
    ~Liane Cordes

    On Christmas Eve I joined a Zoom Interfaith gathering. Jeshua’s message,”You Are the Light That Comes to Transform the Earth,” channeled by Barbara Brodsky, was powerful. Here are a few excerpts:

    People have sometimes misunderstood my work, said that I came to save the world from sin, with confusion about that word. I take the letters S-I-N to mean sinking into negativity. Through so many lifetimes many beings have been sinking into negativity. And what will save us from that? It is not me that will save us; it is all of us together holding the potential of Love on an Earth that is awakened, the Eden we have been promised. You are important—vital, really—to recreate that brilliance, that love….

    You know those lines about the darkest time of the night before dawn. Dawn is coming. You each carry that dawn in your own hearts, especially when you compassionately observe the ways that you do sink into negativity. The watcher is not caught in that negativity. Of course, you fall into negativity at times; you are human. Every human does this at times….

    In the darkest hours, look around and say, “Yeshua, where are you?” And I am here, I promise. I will never break that promise or your trust because you are my beloved sisters and brothers. Together we undertook this work. And yes, we are doing it. Despite how the darkness seems to envelop us, we are bringing light, and that is all that’s needed.

    This morning I was writing in my journal about writing prompts when a prompt popped into my mind: What if we could….

      What if we could use all of the power of the universe for the good of all? Might humans cease fighting as though there was not enough for all? Would men and women cease blaming one another and love and revere our differences instead? What might occur if we can recognize fear and negativity when it shoves us off the path of awakening and we can lay a finger across our lips and whisper, “Shhhhh…..”

      What if we do away with ‘what if’ and simply focus on the truth of WE COULD.

      We could remember who we really are. We could rise above grasping and clinging and aversion. We could feel the wind and know our body is breathing. We could watch the sun rise and set as sacred witness to the ever-present ever-changing nature of All That Is. We could soften around our experiences and let the space of possibility weave laughter and hope and trust back into our days and our nights.

      We could….

    A bit later, I listened to an interview with Leesa Anderson: Channeling the Miraculous. She and her family witnessed a motorcycle accident. A deer stepped right into the path of a man at cruising speed. The man went end-over-end and landed in a heap, with his head and arms underneath his chest. You really do deserve to hear Leesa tell in her own words how she heard a message from God; a message given to her to whisper into his ear. And then, to be lost and stop for directions only to connect with the motorcyclist’s wife. Please listen….

    Leesa’s spiritually transformative experiences have often happened when she was on the highway. I hope you will take time to listen to the entire interview and to check out IANDS.

    NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) has a nifty process of setting up a chain of anchors, moving an individual’s mind states along the path from “I can’t” to “I might” to “I could” to “I can” to “I will.”

    Join me in moving our own mind states from “I can’t” to “I will” say yes and join Leesa in Channeling the Miraculous!

  • This Time Tomorrow

    For, although it is true that fear and despair can overwhelm us,
    hope cannot be purchased with the refusal to feel.

    ~Susan Griffin

    “This time tomorrow” drifts through my head like lyrics to a song I am singing but have never heard. An internet search brought a song by that name by The Kinks.

    This time tomorrow, where will we be?
    On a spaceship somewhere sailing across an empty sea?
    This time tomorrow, where will we be?
    This time tomorrow, what will we see?
    This time tomorrow

    This time tomorrow

    This time tomorrow we should be on 31 South….

    It is not easy to organize, pack, load, drive, drive, drive, unload, unpack.

    It is a lot…

    It is a lot like life.

    John has been down with sciatica pain. He has not been able to get the leaves up. He has not been able to bike or walk. He has been quite uncomfortable…. I know readers understand. The greatest discomfort has been standing still. So grateful he has been able to sit comfortably and he can drive.

    My OCD (obsessive compulsive Debra) leanings have served me well. Other than our toiletries and clothes for the week in Tennessee with Stacey and the kids, and freezer and fridge stuff, and John’s guitar, I have most everything loaded into the van already. Bikes will get loaded on the rack this afternoon. Larry Gunter will help me load the coolers tonight or tomorrow if I need him to.

    Two months ago yesterday, was John’s brother’s birthday.

    Interestingly, the previous sciatica flare John experienced was related to the passing of his brother, Jim….

    I continue to be affected profoundly by meeting folks from IANDS. This is the group for those who have had near death or other spiritually transformative experiences. The International Association for Near-Death Studies associated with the academic field founded in 1981.

    Someone said if you are afraid of death, hang around people who can literally say, “Been there, done that.”

    The opening quote from “Today’s Gift” is: Trust one who has gone through it.

    We have all gone through it. We have lived through the “year of firsts.”

    My next post might be after Thanksgiving so I will close with this link to an article about how often feathers, butterflies, rainbows, and electronics are just a few of the 11 Signs a Deceased Loved One is Visiting.

  • What Do You Have to Lose?

    Ultimately,
    direct experience is key
    to fully realizing how
    we are all connected
    through the binding force
    of unconditional love
    and its unlimited ability to heal.

    ~ Dr. Eben Alexander
    author of Proof of Heaven and
    Living in a Mindful Universe:
    A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Heart of Consciousness    .

    It has been an AMAZING week.

    Sunday, July 18, 2021, I joined an evening Zoom meeting of International Association of Near-Death Studies (Greater Boston IANDS). At a few minutes before 8:00 pm, the woman hosting the room said she needed to log off to join another group in Hawaii. Spontaneously, she invited any of us to join who might choose to.

    What do you have to lose? I went.

    I met Pamela Johnson, who says about her husband, “After he passed, Alan returned from Heaven to tell me that we are meant to continue to live and work together. He has helped me navigate this otherworldly journey from the day he left. I now see him clairvoyantly, hear him all the time (he’s very talkative LOL), and much to my delight, I FEEL Alan’s energy and his love viscerally. I have never known a love like this, it’s better than when he was in a body! Truly! ❤ This experience has healed my grief to the degree that it’s practically gone.” Pamela says their book, Supernatural Love and Life After Death, should be out in the spring. Meanwhile, you can find her on Facebook.

    Meeting Pamela led to my attending a three-day online summit with some other remarkable individuals who shared their near death experiences, and told how that experience forever altered their view of life, and death, and life after death, including their work in the world. The first speaker at the summit was Dr. Eben Alexander and Karen Newell! From Dr. Alexander’s website:

    About My Experience:
    “My coma taught me many things. First and foremost, near-death experiences, and related mystical states of awareness, reveal crucial truths about the nature of existence. Simply dismissing them as hallucinations is convenient for many in the conventional scientific community, but only continues to lead them away from the deeper truth these experiences are revealing to us. The conventional reductive materialist (physicalist) model embraced by many in the scientific community, including its assumption that the physical brain creates consciousness and that our human existence is birth-to-death and nothing more, is fundamentally flawed. At its core, that physicalist model intentionally ignores what I believe is the fundament of all existence — consciousness itself.”

    Many of the members of our Grief Journey group meeting here in St. Joseph for over 20 years have had similar experiences of this continuity of consciousness….

    Our group changed our normal meeting time to join Pamela Johnson on Facebook last evening. Afterwards I admitted that I am finally able to honor the NDE I experienced in an auto accident with my dad when I was 12 years old, and I now recognize the miraculous way that experience shaped my perspective of and work in the world.

    A neighbor whose husband passed last August told me early Saturday morning that she is “doing worse now” than when he first passed. I told her about anniversary energy and invited her to join our group on Sunday. She left voice mail saying honestly that she wasn’t ready. After our time with Pamela, in spite of numerous experiences herself, one member of our group expressed not being there yet, saying, “I still have too much anger.”

    This morning as my fingers move over the keyboard, I am remembering many of the summit speakers. Robin Landsong experienced two near death experiences when she was abducted at age 8, taken to Zimbabwae. raped and killed.

    Rev. Peter Panagore, author of Heaven Is Beautiful: How Dying Taught Me That Death Is Just the Beginning, came back the second time for his granddaughter and says, “I am now here until this body isn’t inhabitable.”

    Jeffrey Olsen’s NDE occurred in an accident which took the lives of his wife and younger son. His story includes the doctor who saw Jeffrey’s wife there with them in the emergency room! Linda B/G had this to say about their story:

      Wow! What an amazing story! I listened to an interview with Peter Panagore and got on his website and signed up to receive his emails. Here are the links:

      https://youtu.be/X0px-lJoH8Q

      https://www.peterpanagore.love/

      I’ve got a lot of listening to do! How exciting!

    Listening to Rinpoche teach “Ten Percent Happiness” and quote a sufi master speaking of our true tender-heartedness toward all humanity: What’s heaven? Love in your heart. What’s hell? Lacking that.

    What if ALL of these people who have had near-death experiences have shared the glorious truth of unconditional love as our true nature? Safety and peace and love and trust is available to us all NOW. What if this truth is more real than all of the distortions we have believed that kept us sad or scared or angry or depressed or hopeless or helpless?

    I do not know if you are ready for REALITY. I do not know what it will take for my neighbor or my friend to be READY.

    The most interesting question for me is simply to ask of myself and of YOU, “What do you have to lose?”

  • Dr. Bernie Siegel

    “When you are on the right path,
    invisible hands will come to your aid.”
    ~ Joseph Campbell

    Imagine my delight to log onto a Zoom meeting of Greater Boston IANDS and see Dr. Bernie Siegel It is no exaggeration to say Bernie is/was my first conscious step onto the path of awareness as self-healing tool, and thus a long-time idol.

    Geoffrey Hayes, our pastor at the time, loaned me his copy of Bernie’s book, Love, Medicine and Miracles, which I read at our small travel trailer on Pitcher Lake Campground, in Dowagiac, Michigan. This was a period of my life during which I was experiencing daily chronic pain. It was revolutionary for Bernie to suggest I ask myself what that pain allowed me to do or be or have that would otherwise elude me.

    The answer?

    REST!

    The synopsis of Bernie’s life-changing words of wisdom: Find another way to give that gift to yourself and the symptom/s may subside.

    I became aware I had been in the habit of pushing myself through tasks.

    The chronic pain gave me “permission” to rest.

    This week, I gave our kitchen cabinets a much-needed fresh coat of paint. That meant taking off all of the doors, doing a light sanding, removing and cleaning all of the pulls and hinges, painting the doors, reinstalling the pulls and hinges, and rehanging the doors. Whew….

    Not having a basement or garage,
    I set up my work station in the great room!

    The morning after the doors to the upper cabinets had dried overnight, I was awake early. They had to all be rehung for me to have room to paint the lowers.

    I figured out a way to stand on a step stool, put one leg up on the counter top, aim the hinge on the door perfectly over the corresponding hole on the cabinet frame. I could use that leg like a third hand, and pick up the screw and screwdriver with my other two hands.

    I now call it my prehensile leg (a term referring to an animal’s limb or tail capable of grasping).

    Hanging the cabinet doors (and aligning them properly) certainly had a learning curve, but by the time John got up, the uppers were all hung and I had started painting the lowers.

    Noteworthy: I have never previously hung a cabinet door.

    That brings me back to Joseph Campbell’s opening quotation, Bernie Seigel’s message, and my current awareness: I cannot say I hung the doors alone, nor all by myself, or even without another human being helping. Each step of the way I was consciously inviting and, more importantly, receiving help.

    And the kitchen looks so fresh and clean!

    Bernie’s wife passed about 3 years ago. On the 4th of July, his family was visiting. Bernie could not find his cell phone. They tried calling the phone; they looked and looked. No luck finding the phone.

    Shortly after his son had left for home, the son came back, saying, “Mom told me where your phone is.” Way out in the back yard, Bernie’s phone was on the chair, exactly where she said it was.

    The kicker of this story is that they had not been out there!

    I have written about a sense of beyond-personal capacity many times before. Many others share this recognition. We can benefit by being intentional in encouraging others to ask for and receive these types of non-physical support.

    I will save how Bernie made me quit my job for another post and close with his words:

    “Learn from the wisdom of others and enjoy your life experience. Remember the Bible ends in Revelations, not Conclusions, and graduations are commencements not terminations.” ~ Bernie Siegel

  • Overcoming….

    In wonderful ways, life is always providing us opportunities of overcoming amidst chaos. I met a man, Captain Ed, who had a brain aneurysm in 2014, and describes himself as a walking miracle. After hearing some of what he has been overcoming, I asked him, “What were you saved FOR?”

    He went on to share about his business! Imagine a pirate-themed candy store, connected to a furniture store, run by a guy who loves dressing in character, a mindful man who has great passion to help kids love and learn to read. Welcome to Captain Ed’s Furniture in Michigan City, Indiana. From the website:

    Captain Ed’s began as a TV and Radio shop in 1960. It still carries TVs, but has added several products to its inventory including living room furniture, appliances, dining room, bedroom and kids room at affordable prices. We offer several financing options on all of these items including layaway and rent-to-own. Captain Ed’s also features a Candy Store with the world’s largest ship shaped candy counter, vintage record shop and entertainment exchange.

    Captain Ed’s gives back to its community whenever it is possible. It sponsors community events such as the Michigan City Cardboard Boat Dash, The Michigan City Police Department’s Easter Egg Hunt and Boo at the Zoo. It also sponsors local charities such as The Worthy Women Recovery Home and The Sandcastle Homeless Shelter. Captain Ed’s also operates a children’s’ reading program through its candy store. The program awards “Golden Tickets” to elementary students good for 1/4lb of the world’s greatest gummies from Albanese Candy Factory.

    During the school year, the local schools award these “Golden Tickets” to students based on how many points they earn when they take their Accelerated Reader tests. During the summer Captain Ed’s passes out “Captain Ed’s Ship’s Reading Logs” which are initialed by the child’s parent or guardian for reading 15 minutes a day, 7 days in a row. When a child brings in a “Golden Ticket” or reading log they also get to pick out a book from Captain Ed’s Library. In 2014 Captain Ed’s awarded 2 tons of candy through this program.

    I do not know who Ed was before his near death experience, but it is well-recognized that we do change. 31 years ago, Lesley Lupo died for 14 minutes after being trampled by horses, but it’s what happened in those 14 minutes that many people have a hard time believing, because not everyone has had a near death experience.

    “I popped out of my body and I stood about 15 feet away, and this was mind-blowing for me because I didn’t have any spiritual inclinations,” said Lupo, who wrote the book, “Remember, Every Breath is Precious: Dying Taught Me How to Live”.

    Tara Brach knows this truth.

    If you would like to strengthen this truth, enjoy True Refuge, a podcast with Tara Brach, and learn a process of self-compassion she gives the acronym RAIN:

    Recognize what you are feeling
    Allow (give your consent to) the experience of unease and discomfort
    Investigate your underlying beliefs and inquire into what you need
    Non-identification with the story of the “small self” that is failing at this or that, and a return to open, loving presence

    Captain Ed knows this truth….