Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Merle Haggard

  • A Kind of Deeper Wisdom

    It has been quite the week…. my blood pressure numbers had continued to be high…. lines of poems kept coming forth to carry me through, like a flower cannot be opened with a hammer….

    On Friday morning I saw a Titmouse at the bird bath — the first I have seen here at this house. The totem meaning is very significant: when this bird visits you, it asks you to step away from the past and to worry less about the future. And a friend gave me the image of a young child learning to walk and how the adult will reach down and take the child’s little hand, giving confidence. Her guidance was that we cannot do this deep of integration on our own as humans, it has to come with help from above. That image of reaching up to one who can help steady us was the perfect image for me because Stacey recently sent a video of her walking with Jackson, our now 17 month old great grandson.

    From my journal on Friday, May 27, 2022:

      Dear Holy Spirit,

      Listening to an audio with Nick Ortner on tapping to release the emotional charge from events that happened in the past.

      I tapped on “Leaving the Garden” – the past life when I was pregnant for Joel. I saw myself slip out of the gate. (This is another of those points that deserves its own post.) I spent some time confidently living off the land in the forest. I was in perfect harmony with the experience.

      When the man (Joel’s former wife in this lifetime) who found me in the forest took me to his home, I went willingly to teach him how to love his experience too.

      Memories of him molesting me merged with the distaste of a tongue in my mouth in this lifetime, merged with the panic at weight on my body, distaste of sex and distrust of my own body.

      Memories of escaping “out the gate” again, this time from his home, and returning to the forest.

      He found me because he knew where I had been before. This time he took me to his home against my will.

      (As I wrote this last sentence, I heard a ‘ceiling walker’ as confirmation from spirit.)

      Entering a New Garden

      Seeing the parallel of having cut my wrists and having bled to death, resulting in the death of the fetus as well, and my cleaning up a friend’s blood after he intentionally cut his wrist following his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. (Significant – but not sure how – my friend’s friend helped me with the clean-up.)

    A friend phoned just as the audio ended. I told her about the song “If I Could Only Fly” by Blaise Foley and the title of Merle Haggard’s album by that same name, in which Haggard is clearly channeling and expressing grief. Almost felt you touching me just now / I wish I knew which way to turn and go…. “Why Merle Haggard’s If I Could Only Fly is his masterpiece (by Noah Berlatsky, Wed 6 Apr 2016, in The Guardian): …remains the last great Merle Haggard album in part because it looks ahead with such clear eyes to this moment when we know there won’t be anymore.

    This journey is right at the core of impermanence.

      Saturday, May 28, 2022

      Dear Holy Spirit,

      Listening to a talk by Ram Dass (BEHERENOWNETWORK.COM). A caller said his brother had been given a mantra when their mother had died but the brother had forgotten the tune so Ram Dass sang it for the guy. Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ram-dass-here-and-now/id518366323?i=1000562049355

      Listen, listen, listen to my heart song
      Listen, listen, listen to my heart song
      I will never forget you, I will never forsake you
      I will never forget you, I will never forsake you
      Listen, listen, listen to my heart song

      The next caller was a young-sounding man who asked Dass what his view was on abortion. Dass kept asking the young man for clarity, what was he really asking. Finally, the young man confessed that a woman had carried his child for a while and then she could not do it any more, and she had an abortion, and they were both in a lot of pain.

      Dass said he had once been talking to a very spiritually awake being who had told him no being leaves a moment too soon or a moment too late. Dass went on to say there is a kind of deeper wisdom in the universe that if that child – if that being – was to come into life and come into form, you wouldn’t have been able to abort that child, no matter what you did. Its soul would demand manifestation. And I see it as the relationship among the three souls: you, and the woman who was carrying the fetus, and the fetus. And all of them have some kind of contract with one another – and sometimes beings just have to come in to fetal form to finish whatever they have to do and then they can go on beyond that.

      What I also feel is that the more conscious you become the less likely you are to call forth a being by procreating that you are not ready to carry through and embrace and support. So, because your life changes with a pregnancy, as you become more conscious, you say, “Alright, new moment. My life has changed. Now what will I do with this new moment. So, I think what I can say to you is that I can understand your pain and all of the feelings you are feeling, but I –think that there is a deeper wisdom in the whole situation and that you should just listen to hear that and let the pain of all of this deepen your compassion so that your actions in the future are ones that – so that you can have the legacy from this being who came briefly to be with you and let that legacy be one of increasing wisdom and compassion in the way you live your life.

      It would be terrible if the fetus sacrificed its life and all it left you with was guilt and incrimination. That would seem to be an unfortunate legacy so I invite you to have that and then get on with it. Okay.

      Young Man: “Yeah, that would be the best way to heal.”

      Dass: That’s the way I would do it.

      Young Man: “Yeah, she is having a lot of trouble with it, you know.”

      Dass: And all you can do is just love her and be present with her and just you keep your heart as open and be strong and keep your faith in the deeper wisdom of the universe. That’s one of the things you can do that can be very helpful to her. But just keep your heart open with hers as much as you can. But you can’t take away her suffering, she’s got to do her suffering until she’s done doing it.

      Young Man: “Yeah, suffering….”

      Dass: Okay?

      Young Man, “Yeah, okay.”

      Dass: Okay. (Dass laughs gently.)

      Young Man: “Happy New Year.”

      Dass. Oh, Happy New Year to you, my dear. Happy New Year. I hope it is a happy new year for her too. Will you send her my love?

      Young Man: “Yeah, I’ve told her quite a bit about you.”

      Dass: Good. Well, tell her that I’m thinking about her and I’m holding her deeply in my heart and I just hope she can come through all of this quickly and realize the joy and the beauty of her life and now take it and live it as richly and happily as possible. Thanks.

    The colleague who did EMDR with me reached out. I heard myself admit I’m afraid I’m going to have a stroke. The voice within says, “You are not going to have a stroke, Debra. You are going to have a stroke of insight.”

    She sent a release exercise, saying, “It’s a powerful process to get to the unconscious. Perhaps asking your blood pressure to tell you without words sometimes why it is so high. What is causing this pressure still ….”

    Sit quietly for a bit, maybe 10 minutes, with a blank pad of paper and markers, crayons, or oil pastels in front of you. Then pick up what moves you and draw whatever comes — not artistically but from your insides. Then look at it and write whatever comes. Name the drawing.

    Yesterday the damn broke and my blood pressure numbers are coming down.

    Today I had the first news from Joel, a text saying, “Not well.”

    Grateful, grateful, grateful.

  • Someday When

    There are seasons in a marriage.
    I’ve heard a therapist say,
    “Every marriage has cause for divorce.”
    Not every day.
    But there are those days.
    ~ Deborah Berecz,
    Conflict as Catalyst™ Newsletter October 2020

    In an email exchange last evening my dear friend who had asked me about any preference for a Presidential candidate wrote,

    Your response to my question was most intriguing. You changed your answer from the person to their traits. Yes, I agreed with everything you wrote about the essences of both men, how those essences connect to us, and your wish that whomever wins would live and lead from those traits and from that true essence. To quote the lyrics from a song, “What a wonderful world that would be.” If only….

    John sings a song titled “Some Day When Things Are Good” by Merle Haggard.

      Someday when things are good
      I’m gonna leave you
      I can’t seem to go
      When things are bad

    For the past 7 months, I have done yoga daily. Kathy Zerler and I started our daily practice the morning after Michigan was mandated to “stay safe at home.” Kathy has inched her way into technology, and since late April we have been recording daily practices using the Zoom platform and sharing those on YouTube. (Just search: Kathy Zerler Youtube.)

    Today, Kathy is starting back teaching in person restorative yoga classes at the YMCA. Eight foot squares have been taped on the gym floor, everyone is required to wear a mask, temperatures will be checked upon entry, and a list of all participants generated for contact tracing, if the need should arise for that. It would be dishonest to say I don’t have concern as the COVID-19 numbers are spiking.

    This morning Kathy opened our Zoom practice with a reading from The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane: A Novel, by Lisa See. It is a powerful story about a family, separated by circumstances, culture, and distance. Kathy started class by reading a section about the virtues of drinking tea.

    “Always remember
    If you don’t love tea,
    you can’t make good tea.”
    (pg. 191)

    I was telling John yesterday morning that it was about 50 years ago when I did a term paper on this shift away from valuing character traits (Honest Abe). I well remember the research — some related to the “God is Dead” movement that occurred when the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, 1945. From that horror, for the first time in history, we perceived that humans really could destroy life on earth.

    That jarring awareness of what humans did to humans in Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused a shift of our collective psyche from a longer-term view to preferring shorter-term relief, ushering in the devastating era of “the end justifies the means” living. We collectively became short-sighted and pleasure-seeking. Hence fast-food and drive-through banking, and a divorce rate in the US of 40 to 50 percent. The divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher.

    Kathy read, “Just the physical process we experience when we drink tea — our search for huigan — causes us to turn inward and reflect as the liquor coats our tongues, shimmers down our throats, and then rises again as fragrance.”

    Huigan is the pleasant aftertaste of tea, literally meaning “Returning Sweet.”

    Humanity is at a turning point. We can see the bigger picture. We can co-create the world we dream….

    Kathy continued reading, “Buddhists grant tea the highest spiritual qualities, ranking it among the four ways to concentrate the mind, along with walking, feeding fish, and sitting quietly….Together, these three disciplines have taught us to look upward to see the state of the heavens and downward to observe the natural arrangement of the earth. But whatever you believe or however you view life, the quality and goodness of a tea are for the mouth to decide.”

    Ah, those days: days leading up to the election, days as we navigate a global pandemic. Days that cause us to turn inward and reflect. Perfect days to drink tea!

    This short video is from Remembering Wholeness, October 25, 2020. Aaron, channeled by Barbara Brodsky:

    If you are unable to view the video, here is the transcript:

    To know that we’re co-creating this — all of us — not just us, but the people who might wish a different person to be elected. But, not holding who will win so much as the world we really want to envision: a world of love, of respect, of support for all beings.

    May the candidate that can best help that to happen win this election. That, rather than, “I want my candidate to win.”

    The one who can best support a healthy environment, an end to the pandemic, financial well-being, adequate food and home, respect, lovingkindness….

    May the candidate who can best support this win this election. And then may that support flow from all of us to create the world we envision. Thank you.

    ~ Aaron, channeled by Barbara Brodsky at Remembering Wholeness, October 25, 2020