Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Joel P. Bowman

  • 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….


  • The Giving Hat

    P.S. When Jane Foster received the hat (see previous post) 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.”

  • Do You Know Who Your Master Is?

    Our daughter was sharing a precious “aha moment” she had recently. She works in an industry which has it’s peak adjacent to retail sales— during the months of November and December. As many who are responsible for hiring entry level workers, she has struggled to get reliable help. That has been a HUGE frustration to her, robbing her of the joy of the rest of her job. She experienced an emotional overload, had a crying time, and then an insight. Related to her responsibilities, she became aware of feeling pulled between her plant manager who was screaming for help, a co-owner who wanted to keep payroll down, and the publishers who wanted timely deliveries…. just to name a few.

    Awareness is key. Her awareness included a sentence spoken within herself that became her ticket to freedom a few days later, “I don’t know who my master is.”

    Deep Spring Center Thought for Today

    ‘You’re on a boat,’ he said. ‘The boat is riding too low on the water and there are waves. You’ve got to toss one person out. In the boat are a loved one, a person about whom you feel neutral, a person who is a difficult person, and yourself. You’re the one to decide: which one are you going to cast into the water?’

    She thought about it awhile and said, ‘There are no grounds for decision.’

    He just smiled and bowed and indicated that the interview was over.

    ‘Did I get it right?’ she wondered.

    But of course, when you get to that place where you understand your interrelationship with all beings, there are no grounds for decision. You cannot cast yourself into the shark-infested sea to save others nor can you throw others in to save yourself.

    ~ Aaron

    There are no grounds for decision.

    Like the people on the boat, every one of those needs my daughter was feeling torn between had value, but not ONE of them was more or less important than the others.

    A few days after her breakdown, she had a breakthrough. This is the insight that set her free:

    “I do know who my master is. I serve God. The plant manager is not my master. The co-owner is not my master. The publisher is not my master. My master wants me to experience peace, and joy, and to do what I can do to serve/help.”

    An aside: if you do not automatically receive the Beyond Mastery Newsletter, or if you currently receive only one email message with links to the newsletter included (rather than the email message with the links plus the individual post/s), then you will want to sign up now to receive all posts automatically. The January edition will come out at the end of this month, and it may just rock your boat. Here is the link: Sign Up Now for Beyond Mastery.

    The outer circumstances at work have not changed. She did not magically have adequate, dedicated, reliable hires. She was able to have a heart-to-heart with her plant manager, and with the company president about having recognized her real master. Theirs is a Christian organization. The name they use is God. The miracle in her life happened because she listened to God, she heard that voice within. When we listen, we have to take action. The action she took was to let herself be transformed from within.

    Included in my January article will be an invitation for others to join an online group based on the book Writing Down Your Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within, by Janet Conner.

    You will know if you are ready.