Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: reunion

  • Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

    Today is my birthday.

    As my birthday ritual I did an audio Mudita meditation with John Orr from an online retreat day April 11, 2021. Mudita is a Sanskrit and Pali word that means “sympathetic joy” or “appreciative pleasure”. It’s a Buddhist concept that involves feeling joy for the good fortune of others.

    The first person you choose is someone you can feel a genuine sense of happiness for their good fortune and happiness. Today I chose my older grandson, Bradley. Currently I am sharing substantial time with him as he his helping me get DebraBasham.com set up. It will be the new home to Yellow Brick Road and Sacred Stories and many of the resources that have been located on SCS-Matters.com.

    The second person is often called The Benefactor — someone who has been loving and supportive for you at some time or times in your life. I chose Reverend Betty Lue Lieber, who founded Reunion with her husband, Robert Waldon. This is the the program I was ordained through in 1997.

    The third person is a neutral person. It may not even be someone you know personally, but it is someone who is feeling happiness and good fortune with a recent accomplishment, something that likely brings that person joy. I chose Donald Trump. You are instructed in the meditation to notice any old mind states like jealousy or envy. Right there with those feelings say, “May joy infuse your life. May it continue all of your days. May you truly be happy. May you truly be free. May all of this grow. May it infuse your heart.”

    The fourth person is sometimes called The Enemy but it is just a challenging person (a person you are having a challenge with). You are encouraged to notice all of the happiness in that person’s life — loving family and friends and relationships, meaningful work. “May you be truly happy and well.” You are invited to be genuinely grateful for all that you have learned from this person.

    After the guided meditation ended I played a recording of the chant “Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu” from a residential retreat day October 10, 2019. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu is a Sanskrit phrase that translates to “May all beings everywhere be happy and free”. It is a prayer for global well-being and peace, and a perfect chant to support the Mudita Meditation.

    When I finished I looked at a list of others I know share a January 22 birthday:
    1. Wayne Kaiser
    2. Emily Warner
    3. Phillip Largay
    4. Joyce Zerbe
    5. Aaron (Linda Gunter’s son)
    6. Allen Mumper
    7. Emily’s husband’s cousin
    8. PT at Borgess
    9. George Ross
    10. Izzie (granddaughter Courtney’s friend)
    11. Carrie Startcher (daughter Stacey’s friend in Clarksville)
    12. Sivia’s mother

    I like to also contemplate the day’s messages that come on this day from sources I value and follow.

    Daily Reflection from Deep Spring

    In a moment of darkness, you are wont to ask, “Why this darkness?” You have a sense that if you could but understand the darkness, you could protect yourself from it. Such thinking only further strengthens the illusion of the self. Can you sit there in that darkness and simply know, “Here I sit in darkness and I will wait. I need not fight with the darkness. I need not try to push it away. I need not grasp, even at faith.”

    Just faith: faith expressed as the willingness to sit in darkness, if darkness is what is there, without a need to grasp at the light but with the willingness to open the doors and allow in the light. ~ Aaron

    On this day of your life Debra, I believe God wants you to know that not everything has to turn out exactly the way you planned in order for you to call it a success. Sometimes all God wants you to do is to “get the ball rolling.” Then, She’ll take it from there.

    So when things turn out other than the way you wanted them to, don’t be so quick to say, “Bummer!”

    Many a Bummer is a Blessing in disguise. Consider the possibility that life is magic…and that there’s a rabbit in that hat.

    Love, your Friend, Neale Donald Walsch

    From Gratefulness.org

    You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence. ~ Zadie Smith

    From The Daily Tejaniya

    When you are truly aware you aren’t focusing, yet you are
    aware of objects. You are aware of thoughts of the mind, sensations
    of the body, and perceptions (sights,sounds, etc.) of the world.

    By practicing in this way, the mind stays fresh.

    It may not be usual to be happier for someone else’s birth than your own on your birthday, but today I truly feel greater joy that Stacey was born than that I was born. I get that she could not have been born unless I had been, but emotions don’t always make sense. In fact, they are often very distorted. That is just how it is. So at three quarters of a century I am grateful for the wonderful woman who came in as a teenage pregnancy and those that came in from her.

    RIP Wayne Kaiser and Allen Mumper.

    May all beings everywhere be happy and free. Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu….

  • One Piece at a Time

      one breath at a time
      letting it all go again
      heart breaking open

      how many times now?
      an eternity of time
      one more breath dear one

      one more breath again
      what more can one do than this?
      eternity now…

      ~ A Haiku by Debra Basham February 4, 2021

    Just prior to this haiku coming through, I had written in my journal: Find the space within that grasps at resolution. You can see it so clearly in others. Release judgement around that. Breathe space into your body.

    Listening to Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche speak about Healing with Form, Energy, and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen , I was again fascinated by the connection of breath, mind and body. In part one of the recorded talks, he gave a short guided breathing exercise that begins on the exhale. (See all of the talk at Healing with Form, Energy and Light.)

    …. Just breathe out. Exhale any tensions or discomfort that you are feeling in your body, that you are feeling in your breath, or that you are feeling in your mind. (He directs you from the outer (body), to the inner (breath), and then to the sacred (mind).)

    Be aware of your body; the stillness of your body, as you continue to breathe deeply. Be aware of your silence; not speaking, feel the silence; much better to feel the silence than just being quiet. Connect with that silence. Awareness is much better than just being silent. Be aware of the spaciousness of your mind; rest in the space of your open mind.

    Every day I learn of someone who is experiencing depression or anxiety. Many equate those emotions to the many months of the pandemic and the loss of familiar activities. When I feel my mind spinning, putting together jigsaw puzzles helps me to be present with my body, breath and thought.

    I put together this 1,000 piece puzzle in one day!

    You might appreciate part or all of Robert Waldon’s take on using affirmations to clear the mind and release tension in the body.

    Affirmation Basics

    The mind is the driving force in determining our experience in this world.

    Affirmations are meant to “show up” any limiting beliefs so they can be erased or deleted, leaving us with a “clean slate”, in a state of health and wholeness—physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. They clear unconscious programming that tends to guide our thoughts, feelings and behavior.

    The purpose of affirmations is to erase from the mind all negative thought forms or beliefs which we have falsely learned. Thoughts of limitation, lack and littleness are released and replaced with thoughts of freedom, abundance and magnificence.

    SEEING THE BEST IS SEEING THE TRUTH.

    Do not focus on what is not working. Just recognize where you are “off purpose” by lack of joy experienced, then focus on more joy.

    Every thought creates a result. Negative or fearful thinking creates a negative life experience. Positive or happy thinking creates a good life and happy outlook. Some of both may create a neutral or conflicted effect on our life experiences. Negative experiences can be changed as a result of consistent positive thinking.

    My favorite way to do affirmations is to divide the lined page down the middle.

    The affirmation is written on the left side and your mind chatter or contradictory thought is written on the right side. Then cross off the negative.

    Continue writing the affirmation 20 times and listen for the resistant thought after each one. 20 times daily for 14 days or until there is no resistance.

    They will always feel like a lie in the beginning and you may find great resistance to doing them! Things may change dramatically, so be prepared to notice big difference.

    Writing, speaking and hearing us say the affirmation aloud clears the false beliefs through our sense of sight, sound and touch.

    It is essential that we keep writing and saying the affirmations until there is no longer resistance to the empowering beliefs.

    Remember: Affirmations are not to be used to develop a new belief, but only useful to clear false limiting programs.

    Once there is quiet, clarity and no resistance, we are complete.

    LIFE WORKS WHEN WE ARE WILLING TO DO THE WORK.

    Visit Robert Waldon at Reunion Center for Counseling, Healing and Growth.

    How do you live life? One breath at a time.

    How do you put together a 1,000 piece puzzle? One piece at a time….

  • Choices

      “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
      ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

    Every day humans are making choices. Choices about where we live, what we do for work, where we go for play. We choose how we think, feel, and what we do and say. We make choices about our beliefs. This weekend, like many, was full of choices.

    It has been fifty years since the class I would have graduated with completed high school, and last night was the class of BHHS Class of 1068 Reunion. One of the choices I made was not to attend. We did go to Babe’s (that bar holds a lot of history for a lot of us) on Friday night for the pre-reunion party. I enjoyed very much connecting with one woman I did not remember from school. She is a clinical therapist. I am anything but….

    She shared her foreboding of her father’s death in an auto accident. She even knew where it would happen, and asked her dad not to go there. He said, “I am a good driver,” and he went anyway.

    I told her, “Now, that is the sort of thing my life is full of.” I started keeping a journal 50 years ago to prove to myself I was not making up knowing things. We are participating in an experience called life that is more connected and less limited by time and space than we can comprehend.

    We exchanged contact information and I hope we do follow up. It is my sense we have a lot to offer one another…

    Rather than attending the reunion, Saturday evening I was enjoying a fabulous low-carb dinner with an intimate group who know me well and love me.

    After dessert we played “Catch Phrase” which has been a favorite family game for years. I told the group about my mother-in-law having played the game with us one time in Tennessee. ‘Goldfish’ was the word she was trying to get her team to say. Her first clue was, “It’s orange, and it’s in a bowl.” That is a really good clue.

    Unfortunately, that was her only clue. She would say it over and over, more and more slowly. “It’s o-r-a-n-g-e and it’s in a b-o-w-l.” She would say it over and over, more and more loudly. “IT’S ORANGE AND IT’S IN A BOWL.” We were all relieved when the buzzer went off and put us out of our misery.

    One lesson worth learning about our choices is the importance of living free from regret. I have enjoyed looking at the photos posted from last night’s reunion this morning. It looks like those who went had a good time. I did recognize some faces and some names but it was a class of close to 500 and I did not know most of the people. I sincerely appreciate the choice I made to not attend.

    Moments after I shared the story about my mother-in-law’s goldfish clue-giving fiasco, it was time for our host to give the clue.

    He looked at the word briefly, smiled broadly, and said simply: “It’s orange, and it’s in a bowl.”

    The entire table yelled out in unison, “Goldfish!”

  • Reunion

    It was 1:53 AM when he got up to pee. Faint shadows from the streetlight danced lazily on the wall. It had been almost midnight when she got to sleep, but she forced her eyes to open sufficiently and adjust to the darkness. He expected it, and she predictably said, “It is 2 o’clock. We might as well get up and get on the road.”

    They never think of themselves as leaving their winter paradise. Nor do they think of themselves as going home. They think of themselves as going to see the kids.

    Two days ago a good friend died. He probably didn’t think about himself as leaving or as going home either. I can imagine him thinking of himself as going to see the dogs.

    Traffic was pleasantly light, obviously one of the benefits of their 3 AM departure. More than a few vehicles passed, bicycles obediently following behind. Ontario license plates. Wisconsin license plates. Michigan license plates. A few Florida license plates, but mostly snowbirds driving north.

    A snowbird is a person who moves from the higher latitudes and colder climates of the northern United States and Canada and migrates southward in winter to warmer locales. Snowbirds think they have the best of both worlds…

    While nonsnowbird friends, family members, and colleagues scrape ice from the windshield, shovel snow from the drive, and brace against the cold wind, snowbirds ride bikes, play shuffleboard, watch Eagle chicks grow and fledge, play music, and go out to eat dinner at five o’clock in the afternoon.

    Some snowbirds write poetry.

    From a source of poets and writers poetry prompts “Creative Guidance for Writing Poems and Experimenting with Forms” comes a great exercise:

    If you’re having trouble starting a poem, begin at the end. Take a single collection of poems and make a list of the last two words from each poem. Then write your own poem using only these words. Be vigilant at first utilizing just the vocabulary from the list. After a couple of drafts, stray from the limited words to help bring the poem to its full realization.

    Here are two words from a collection of 9 poems by Mary Oliver:

    could save
    something better
    of things
    a star
    to pray
    your life
    morning light
    the universe
    of dust

    This poem, written on 3/3/2016, is dedicated to Joseph, now reunited with his beloved dog,Tramp.

    Of Dust—Version One

    Your life, of dust; of things?

    Something better?

    To pray…

    Could save the universe; morning light, a star.

    A Star—Version Two

    Longing for something better

    Pray to the universe—celebrate a star—dance in the morning light

    These are some of the things worthy of longing for

    Turning longing into loving could save your life

    From dust we come, and to dust we return. Farewell, Joseph, we celebrate a star! Enjoy your reunion.