Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: magic eye calendar

  • Being of Genuine Service

    Tuesday evening while still in the post-overnight-drive malaise, I tried to log on as Zoom host for our Dharma Path class. It said “username / password incorrect” so I tried again. Same thing. Then the foggy thinking took over and I questioned if the link was set up on one of the other accounts. I tried both, but neither of those worked either, so I tried the main account once more.

    Up popped, “YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN LOCKED FOR 30 MINUTES DUE TO FIVE INCORRECT LOGIN ATTEMPTS.”

    About 15 minutes late opening the room, and about 15 minutes before the class is to begin, I used the student link to log in as a participant. That worked, but I was unable to support the class as host by making the teacher/s co-hosts, muting, spotlighting the teacher, recording the class, etc.

    I asked one of the other students who is also a volunteer host to give it a try. He got the same message. I sent a text message to the Zoom team leader who was not attending the class. Perhaps she could help.

    Barbara said we would begin and we would just rely upon audio recording with her iPad.

    About 15-20 minutes later, the Zoom team leader was successful logging in as host! She was able to make me host, and I was able to perform my hosting duties.

    You so want to be of genuine service….

    I was very aware of the significance of Aaron’s opening illustration about a young child’s coming to dinner and lamenting, “I don’t want that black stuff on my potatoes.”

    Note* I am allergic to black pepper. It gives me a sour stomach and “juicy” burps.

    Aaron had Barbara share her experience at age 17 of being on a freedom ride with a group of students from the north who went into the deep south working toward the end of segregation. When Barbara voiced her fear in anticipation of the following day’s event, an elder church member said to her, “WE would not want you to do this if you were not afraid — you need to recognize the harm that could be done so you can already forgive them for any possible harm.”

    It is like Jesus saying, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”

    The following day their bus was run off the road. It was tipped on its side. The angry mob was breaking the windows. Glass and rocks were raining down on them. Amidst this shock and risk a single voice began to sing, “We shall overcome…” before they all joined in.

    Barbara remembers that as a pivotal moment.

    Great harm or even death may have come to them if not for the arrival of the National Guard.

    Many of us are old enough to remember segregated movie theaters, drinking fountains, schools. Forward movement is not always a straight line.

    A substantial theme of the class was this path of genuine service while navigating an ongoing pandemic and divisiveness. We were asked how we would (or could) respond if a neighbor’s child fell on the sidewalk and was obviously seriously injured. The parents of this child had been very hostile toward social distancing, wearing a mask, or getting a vaccine. Perhaps one of the parents currently had Covid. Several student were able to describe ways to tend to the needs of the child while still protecting themselves from potential exposure to the virus.

    During the Q&A, sincere anger and frustration was expressed about a grown son who refused to get a Covid test for his mother to be comfortable coming to and assist the family with a toddler and an expectant mom. Aaron used the example of saying a firm “no” from a place of compassion as one would do if a teenage son had been drinking and wanted to drive the car.

    Aaron responded to the anger and frustration with such wisdom and loving kindness.

    “Compassion does not make you weak.”

    Another person expressed fear around the deepening of positions of humans around alternate views.

    “They are not here as destroyers of each other, they are teachers for one another.”

    As this last month of 2021 unfolds, my sister (Janis) and I continue to use the 2020 Magic Eye calendar as a spiritual template for the upcoming month.

    December’s is a lovely holiday scene.


    As you let your focus relax, three deer appear in the foreground. The one on the left is looking toward the right. The one on the right is looking toward the left. The one in the middle is looking forward.

    Varying slightly from culture to culture, symbolism of deer is gentleness, awareness of surroundings, unconditional love, and mindfulness. A deer represents innocence, kindness, grace, and good luck.

    May all beings act from these qualities that are within each of us.

    That is being of genuine service….

  • 2021 – A True Spiritual Path

    Deep Spring Center
    Thought for Today
    December 31, 2020

    So often beings have a
    limited view of spiritual life
    that creates a duality in themselves,
    so that they only see themselves
    as ‘being spiritual’
    when they’re being kind and loving.

    When painful emotions arise,
    then they think,
    ‘I am no longer being spiritual.
    I should fix or get rid of these emotions
    and come back to kindness and
    then I will be spiritual.’

    But this dualistic thinking only
    enhances the fragmentation of the self and
    enhances negativity and suffering.

    To open the heart to the self,
    just as it is in this moment,
    is the true spiritual path.

    ~ Aaron

    As we turn the page on our calendar to 2021 at midnight tonight where ever you are, hindsight will be 2020. New Years has held a nostalgic space in my heart and mind for as long as I can remember, but just as 2021 offers unlimited possibilities, tomorrow is also just another day.

    What will you remember most from the past year? High on my list is the consistent kindness and generosity of our friends, Linda and Larry, consistently doing our grocery shopping for us. First, using InstaCart, and then going to the grocery store, just so we could limit our exposure to the coronavirus.

    I will remember the blessing of Zoom bringing the meditation hall into my home.

    I will also feel the sting of not going to Tennessee to visit Stacey’s family on our way home in April. Or having to tell Melody I could not do an in-person ceremony for her mom, my friend and colleague, who contracted COVID-19 while in the hospital with acute pancreatitis. Bonnie passed without Melody or Dan, Bonnie’s husband, having opportunity to be with her.

    No service of celebration of life for Fred Gibby yet either. They say it will be an ultimate hug-fest when the time is right. and Fred loves that idea!

    It is otherworldly to not have gotten to Kalamazoo to see Joel and the kitties; and very hollow that I did not unpack the office when contents were moved to the beautiful new space at Lakeshore Acupuncture.

    Immense gratitude for Barbara Brodsky and John Orr and Aaron and Jeshua (and all who help me remember who I really am) seeps deeply into every day.

    The take-out dinners and dominoes by Zoom.

    And now, Jackson Taylor Yarber, born December 28, 2020, has joined our family, and I am loving my first great-grandchild fully from Southwest Florida as he is in Tennessee. Fingers crossed it will be safe to hold him and smell him on our way back home in the spring.


    In the spring — the spring of 2021!

    It feels otherworldly to say that…

    2020 is ending.

    2021 is beginning.

    Suddenly, I am hearing a song from the musical Godspell in my head: Where are you going? Where are you going? Can you take me with you?

    Last December I was fixated on accessing a Magic Eye Wall Calendar! When I found one, I decided to gift a bunch of folks! Janis and I have ritualized the turning of the page on the first day of each month, letting the image come into view, noticing how some are very easy and others quite challenging.

    Interestingly, there will not be a Magic Eye Wall Calendar for 2021, as announced on the website: Our calendar publisher has asked us to wait until next year to publish a Magic Eye 2022 wall calendar, as printing, shipping and distribution channels have all been disrupted by Covid-19. We will not be releasing a Magic Eye 2021 wall calendar. Wishing everyone a happy & safe year!

    Janis and I have agreed to go back through each month of the 2020 Magic Eye Wall Calendar, enjoying again in 2021 what we learned in 2020.

    The missing and longing, and seeing and being. It has all been here all along.

    Here’s to 2021, a true spiritual path. It, too, has been there all along….

    “If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” ~ Joseph Campbell

  • Ambiguous Gain

    My sister and I are having a wonderful experience with the Magic Eye calendar for 2020.



    We meet via a video call on the first day of each month and we turn the page together. We love the sharing: looking; not seeing; relaxing; looking again; seeing. That is how the process works!

    September was a very challenging image to see. We both had to make at least a half-dozen attempts.

    Relaxing is key.

    Our collective exhilaration when we finally see is palpable.

    My writing time with Southern Circle Poets began with someone’s post about “Ambiguous Loss” that I had re-posted on Facebook:

    Someone once said when you love someone with dementia you lose them more and more everyday: when they are diagnosed, when they go through different stages, when they go into care and when they die.

    This is called “Ambiguous Loss.”

    ‘Rapidly shrinking brain’ is how doctors described it.

    I wouldn’t wish Dementia on anyone. As the persons brain slowly dies, they change physically and eventually forget who their loved ones are. They can eventually become bedridden, unable to move and unable to eat or drink.

    There will be people who will scroll by this message because dementia has not touched them. They may not know what it’s like to have a loved one who has fought or is fighting a battle against Dementia.

    My friend, Claudia, knows this experience well, as does Katey, one of the Southern Circle Poets.

    I wrote:

      I cannot expect you to understand what it feels like to see someone struggle with tasks that once were as easy as breathing. To hear a loved-one say or ask the same comment or question over and over again.

      And to know the truth, “I cannot fix this.”

      Being present with my own inner struggles with wanting it to be fixed is the best I can do.

      I begin a poem:

      You Once Were

      You once were so skillful; and willful.
      You once were so strong.

      The writing doesn’t go anywhere from there, so I begin again…

      Ambiguous Loss

      I wonder when I first recognized you were losing precious skills we had both taken for granted. Like scales falling off the catch-of-the-day, your identity seems to be hell-bent on shedding strengths.

      Crossing the street as the afternoon sunlight was casting shadows, I saw autumn trees on the face of the glistening parking lot still damp from a brief shower. This the first time I had accepted it was me cautioning you to watch your step. Red, yellow, orange and gold…. green now sleeping soundly somewhere.

      I cannot see your world from here.

      Permission granted to enjoy the hint of fall as the breeze blows in from the window behind me, almost cool enough to cause a chill.

      Permission granted to witness the tightness moving mechanically across my chest as I wonder what your future will unfold to.

      Permission granted to be content with both the not knowing and the wanting to know and the soft, sensuous dance between seeming opposites.

      Memory drifts back to delivering my mom to the adult foster care home. Grief at leaving her there as she looks into my face calling me Debbie, and pleads, “Don’t leave me with these strangers….” and the guilt at being my relief to be leaving her there. The years of her decline, the day of her passing—edges blur as they burn a hole in my emotional body, a single heart breaking open enough to hold the whole human happening.

      Profound gratitude now for the dear ones who have walked this path previously, providing a trail of recognition along this treacherous terrain. Remembering Hansel and Gretel and their crumbs of bread being consumed by the birds….

      I make the choice to trust I am still moving toward the center of our being.

    This morning I had a near-identical conversation with two people I love. One was about the news that a job would be ending. The other was about having been at an eye doctor’s office with frighteningly lax procedures for prevention of the spread of Covid-19. Although the content of these two experiences looks dissimilar, the words that came crossed the chasm of delusion: Every experience will be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. We learn from it all.

    I said, “When you have already already felt the pain of the experience, be sure you reap the benefits.”

    Having worked at jobs which demanded so much that life balance was sacrificed isn’t failure. Noticing is gaining insight.

    When a child is burned by touching a hot stove, the child learns from the pain how to be safer.


    Now, this is “Ambiguous Gain…”

  • Our True Nature

    The past two days I have been attending an online intensive with a group of dedicated individuals. Most individuals are dedicated to something. This group is dedicated to opening to awareness, also called “Pure Mind.” This particular series has been meeting weekly for the past year-and-a-half. Many of this group have been studying together for well over ten years.

    Our teacher lovingly reminds us we are not trying to get somewhere or become something we are not. We are simply setting our intention to allow ourselves to experience the awareness that is already our true nature. This was the randomly selected though for the day that came yesterday:


    Deep Spring Center

    Thought for Today

    “These are the people to whom you must talk:

    your neighbors, your coworkers, your parents and children,

    beings with good intentions who want to offer positive polarity

    but also may still be so grounded in their fear

    that when something comes along and shakes them, they react.

    These are the ones who must begin to learn they have a choice,

    and if they react from fear and it causes harm,

    they are responsible.

    And you you who are edging beyond that neutrality,

    more grounded in your positive polarity,

    must be their teachers.”

    For the past 6 weeks I had been unsuccessful trying to purchase a Magic Eye 2020 Calendar. The Magic Eye website announced Walmart as the exclusive merchandiser, but the stores all listed the item as “out-of-stock.”

    A few days ago, I searched ONE more time. The Walmart my brother-in-law shops at while he winters here in Southwest Florida listed the calendar “in-stock.” I sent him a photo, asked if he would check the next time he was there, and now I am thrilled to have one in my possession.


    In the Gospel of Thomas, Patterson/Meyer translation, Jesus said, “The (Father’s) kingdom is like a person who had a treasure hidden in his field but did not know it. And [when] he died he left it to his [son]. The son [did] not know about it either. He took over the field and sold it. The buyer went plowing, [discovered] the treasure, and began to lend money at interest to whomever he wished.”

    One of our practices is simply to look at a tree. We are to notice the branches, and then notice the space between. We are to allow our attention to shift between these, knowing that both ARE: simultaneous existence moving in and out of our awareness.

    The Subtle Communication Systems (SCS) training that Joel P. Bowman and I developed and taught for twenty years included higher sense perception. SCS was a synergy of energy medicine (Healing Touch and Reiki) and NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming). Joel and I studied for many years with Richard Bandler, co-developer of NLP.

    A renowned Buddhist nun and meditation teacher from Thailand Joel and I met at a Bandler training in Orlando read our training manual and said, “Debra, this is a shortcut to enlightenment!”

    Students learned to observe the true nature of their subjective experience: every experience went in as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic stimuli simultaneously! Even if all you noticed was a loud sound, or a flash of bright light, your actual experience (and your internal representation of that experience) includes all of your senses. We played games to help us notice the sensory system we were least aware of.

    One day in class, Joel reached out and touched a locket worn by one of the students. He said, “I see an image of a blonde-haired girl, about 8 years old.”

    “That is who gave me this locket,” exclaimed the student.

    When Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right,” he was giving us a great gift. If you think you are not enlightened, you are right. If you think you are enlightened, you can be in the world with greater wisdom and kindness and awareness.

    Joel and I watched sooooo many individuals wake up to what was within them all along.

    I love the Magic Eye calendar! The easiest way to see the hidden images is to begin looking closely at what you can see. Hold the page close to your nose. Relax your vision: trying too hard makes it too hard. With your eyes relaxed, slowly pull the page away from your face. As you see the 3-D image, hold the page and let yourself enjoy how easy it is.

    Where was it when you could not see it? Right there. It already is. The branches and the space ARE.

    If you are working too hard trying, relax, let yourself see what is already there. You are a soul. Every individual is a precious child of god.

    You already are that which you seek.

    That is your true nature….