Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: scs-matters.com

  • The Collective

    When I picked up the spoon off the napkin to stir my morning tea, a huge ant fell out onto the kitchen counter. I carefully picked it up with the napkin, and carried it out onto the porch.

    Looking up “ant as animal totem” I was surprised to see a reference to MOLD:

    The plant spirit medicine of mold is in partnership with Ant medicine and it teaches of the psychedelic dimensions of Earth.

    The insect nation is in direct communication with such dimensions which is why it is often very disconcerting to encounter Dragonfly, Ant, Spider, and all the other tiny crawlers of Earth.

    (Regular readers of Yellow Brick Road know we had quite the dance with mold.)

    Coming back to get my tea, I saw a long-legged spider in the sink. I grabbed a tissue and carefully delivered the spider to the porch as well. Very unusual happenings both of these….

    The following morning, another (near-identical) spider was in the sink!

    Over the past week I have been gifting contents from my professional office. While it was not an easy decision to give up a formal practice space, I have already had many confirmations that opportunities abound to love, serve, and remember, as Betty Lue and Robert (Reunion) taught us to sing.

    My massage table went to Tina at Creative Therapy School of Massage.

    The elephant statue was dropped off to Kimberly.

    It has been my hope that the love and healing related to each item and all of our history will continue to bless the world with remembered wholeness.

    I had an odd interaction when I dropped off the door name plate to one colleague. Knowing she had last expressed not having been vaccinated, I put on my mask and offered a hug. “No hugs,” she replied. “I have to protect you.” The words did not match the energy.

    “I am masked to protect you,” I responded.

    “No hugs,” she repeated, shaking her head.

    I got back into my car feeling some sadness. I was very grateful our next delivery was to drop off the afghan with Jesus surrounded all the forest creatures. It was a wonderful visit…. complete with hugs.

    One of the members of the Zen Empty Circle shared the stressful situation with his in-laws, who neither mask nor choose to be vaccinated against the coronavirus — understandably wanting his young daughter to come spend time with them. They miss her. He does not feel comfortable allowing her to go. The meditation teacher said, “Remember you are not keeping her from them, you are protecting her from the virus.”

    In our own family we have this dynamic.

    In many families, this polarized world view expresses itself.

    What will our post-pandemic world be? The wondering comes if we will we be like the Sneetches (Dr. Seuss) and get over ourselves, but at a cost like when McBean drives away with the Sneetches‘ cash, exclaiming, “They never will learn. No. You can’t teach a Sneetch.”

    It did not feel as though she refused a hug “to protect me” but I do know she is not a Sneetch, and neither am I….

    If you want to go fast,
    go alone.
    If you want to go far,
    go together.

    ~ African Proverb
    (The tag line on the ant totem reading.)

  • Elephant Totem

    Sacred Stories

    She had experienced elephant as totem when she was first starting work as a clinical therapist.

    Many years later, elephant energy popped into her mind one evening.

    The next day a teacher/colleague (who was giving up formal office space) posted this on her Facebook wall: “Thought of you when I unpacked this. And if elephants are still significant for you — and it would bless you — would like to gift this to you.”



    She wrote back, “So interesting! I was appreciating the elephant symbol in my life just yesterday, and thinking back to my first baby steps into the work we/I do. I am humbled and grateful to accept this gift.”

    The elephant totem or elephant medicine will bring strength, power, courage, memory, good luck, happiness, bliss, and positivity in your new undertakings. … The elephant medicine will bring you good luck, health, and positivity.

    ~ WorldBirds.org

    Sacred stories are evidence of our connections!

  • Poppies Three

    Sacred Stories

    She was walking to a neighbor’s home to drop off a couple of things, and pick up a couple of other things, when she met a friend whose sister now lives on her street.

    She was wearing her garden shoes. “Poppies,” she said.

    Looking down at the shoes, her friend said, “I can see that.”



    “I thought they were lips when I first saw them,” she admitted. They both laughed.

    They easily completed her tasks together and she invited her friend in for a visit.

    Poppies were obvious again in the glass painting hanging in her window. (See “Poppies”) She shared having met the artist when the artist’s husband was going through cancer:

    “I had never met either of them, but a colleague hired me to go to the hospital to work with him. His wife (the artist) was there, seated in a recliner next to the bed. I introduced myself and began to work with him. He quickly went deeply in. I motioned to his wife to lean the recliner back and close her eyes.

    I was still working with the wife when the husband opened his eyes and blurted out,” I swear to God you someone was holding my feet.”

    Matching his cadence perfectly, I replied, “I swear to God, I never work alone.”

    Her friend recently discovered metastasis of breast cancer. Suddenly she had the urge to gift her friend an extra set of Medicine Cards. When the friend opened the book she saw a bookmark by Marjolein Bastin.

    On the front of the book mark were POPPIES and this message:
    I love the way the poppy blooms only for a day so colorfully and so expressively.

    The back of the bookmark was signed: from Sue Miller — made — her mom died October 6, 1995.

    This is the “spiritual meaning” of poppies: Poppies are seen as a symbol of imagination, messages delivered in dreams, beauty, success, luxury, extravagance, and even peace in death.

  • Motherless Child

    Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
    Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
    Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,
    A long way from home, a long way from home.

    Odetta knew what LIFE can feel like.

    Just yesterday — one day of LIFE holding sooooo much feeling.

    A dear friend, navigating tenuous steps speaking her feelings toward her husband (related to the complications of decisions that could birth a new beginning):”This father does not want the child,” she says, speaking metaphorically, of course.

    Another dear friend welcoming a companion as she was filled with trepidation reading online the results of a recent PET scan (positron emission tomography).

    Sad news from our daughter that our grand-kitty, Thor, crossed the rainbow bridge. Thor, one of THOSE beings. Love oozed from Thor’s pores. Thor massaged love into your most tender spots, and his purr moved mountains of misunderstandings.


    Utterances from the lips of a wife, candidly wondering aloud if they would both be better off if her husband stayed in long-term care.

    “We are called beyond and empowered by the silver thread of hope that hangs by a thread below,” this expression of LIFE written by my friend in the midst of it all drapes over the feelings of the day like low-hanging clouds.

    Don’t do things for personal benefit. And don’t do things to avoid personal damage. Do things to feel personal authenticity. Then your life will make sense, no matter what is going on around you. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

    Today is the anniversary of my mom’s “rebirth” day on May 20, 2003.

    May 20 is also the rebirth day of the woman who owned and lived in this tiny home for 33 years before we purchased it in 2017. Ursel had actually purchased the home on May 20 – 33 years prior.

    According to the teachings of the Buddha, emotions are a fundamental part of who you are — an expression of our basic intelligence and creative energy. “When you can connect with the essence of your emotions, you can respond without preconceptions and judgments.”

    Experiences are pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

    We tend to grasp after the pleasant feelings, try to avoid unpleasant feelings, and miss the neutral feelings much of the time.

    Thought for Today

    Breathing in, I am aware of you, of your suffering. Breathing out, I hold space for your suffering. Breathing in, I am aware of my suffering. Breathing out, I hold space for my suffering. Your suffering and my suffering, the same.

    ~ Aaron

  • The Path to Peace

    If it happens, it needs to occur.
    ~ Neale Donald Walsch

    Jerry Ashmore, senior dharma teacher at Empty Circle Zen center in Hobart, Indiana, said simply, “If we don’t clear our stuff how can we help others?”

    But how do we know what our stuff is? We can pay attention to the tendency we have to “perseverate” — meaning when we repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased.

    We have an interaction that triggers something. Thoughts pop into mind over and over and over again. For example, guilt or resentment might arise because we are looking at past actions not recognizing the experience as a moment of unconsciousness. (We don’t need to personalize it.)

    Forgiveness is when we bring presence (consciousness) to the thought as it pops into our mind yet again. We can notice that something has not yet been undone.

    This is not a new idea. Epictetus, a Greek Philosopher who was born in 50 AD and died in 135 AD, said: “Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events whichever way they happen: This is the path to peace.”

    Suffering is simply arguing with the way things are. Sokukoji Buddhist Monastery broadcast a dharma talk with a very interesting phrase: Path of Zen starts at the mountain top and goes up.

    Grandson, Adam, while he was in Europe.

    Jerry Ashmore went on to say that all practice starts by releasing tension in the body. He said, “We can be OK. Don’t discount OKness… the more you experience things as they are rather than how you want them to be, you are on your path.”

    Yesterday, The Mother (channeled by Barbara Brodsky) spoke this Darshan (blessing) to me:

    Dear Friend, you are making a difference. Let go of the ten thousand (this is a reference to the person tossing stranded starfish back into the ocean) and stay focused on whatever is present in front of you and let your heart sing with joy for the difference you have been able to make in that presence.

    Will you try to do that? And if the mind goes to the ten thousand, just, “Shhhh…. Stop.”

    Contracting.

    Fear.

    Ahhh…

    Right there with fear is the heart of love. And the heart of love must be allowed to be free to continue making the difference.

    Today, I took a friend for cataract surgery and received such a lovely confirmation in her thank you card:


    The opening quotation by Neale Donald Walsch concludes with this comment about path: “Whatever experiences the universe brings your feet are a part of your path, inviting you to consciously engage in a process of becoming the highest version of you.”

  • What Else Is

    The definition of complaining is the expression of dissatisfaction or annoyance about something.

    A popular phrase is to speak of an undesired state (for example, complaining) as your eating rat poison expecting the rat to die. It is not always obvious, but our emotional state has myriad influences on US.

    Often, John and I remind one another of the valuable awareness to not waste our creative energy complaining about what is. Any moron can do that.

    Real wisdom arises as you devote your creative energy to what else is.

    This morning, a short poem came through which articulates this so well:

      What Else Is

      Stewing or fuming
      about what is
      such a waste
      of energy

      Open heart
      open mind
      open up to
      what else is

      Debra Basham 05-13-2021

    Sometimes it is helpful to be willing to see in what ways what is might be protecting you from what else is. Feeling anger might protect you from feeling powerlessness. Feeling impatience might protect you from feeling worry. Feeling boredom might protect you from feeling discouragement. A handy way to explore all of this is to be aware of an emotional guidance scale, such as the one described by Abraham-Hicks:

    1. Joy/Appreciation/Empowerment/Freedom/Love
    2. Passion
    3. Enthusiasm/Eagerness/Happiness
    4. Positive Expectation/Belief
    5. Optimism
    6. Hopefulness
    7. Contentment
    8. Boredom
    9. Pessimism
    10. Frustration/Irritation/Impatience
    11. Overwhelment (feeling overwhelmed)
    12. Disappointment
    13. Doubt
    14. Worry
    15. Blame
    16. Discouragement
    17. Anger
    18. Revenge
    19. Hatred/Rage
    20. Jealousy
    21. Insecurity/Guilt/Unworthiness
    22. Fear/Grief/Desperation/Despair/Powerlessness

    Thought for Today

    Sometimes you repeatedly find yourself faced with an unpleasant situation, until the mind begins to obsess with it. You may begin to ask the question, why am I so attracted to this obsession? It’s not a conceptual question. One begins then to investigate the nature of obsession itself.

    Different of you have different patterns of obsession. For example, some go into old stories, casting blame on others or on yourself. Others may look for a way to solve it, planning. Others of you may just feel anger and helplessness and move into a state of depression.

    You each have your own patterns. This is part of understanding the nature of obsession, to understand the habitual patterning with obsession. When mind becomes obsessive, what do you gain?

    ~ Aaron

    Aaron, as channeled by Barbara Brodsky, refers to emotions as “aggregates.” Aggregates are non-self. Aggregates are impermanent. Aggregates arise because of the senses, triggered by smell, touch, taste, sight and hearing.

    Aggregates rise up out from the sense experience and subside when the sense experience of our life changes. We feel worry when a person we care about is experiencing a health challenge. But worry (each emotion) is an aggregate, so YOU are not that worry.

    In fact, the one who is aware of worry is not worried. That one is aware.

    This is not about trying to not worry. In fact, as our friend, Yoda, says, “Do or Do Not. There is No Try.”


    Hmmmmm, if there is just do or do not that makes me really appreciate what else is….

  • Conditions

    Forgiveness is the fragrance
    that the violet sheds
    on the heel that has crushed it.

    ~ Mark Twain

    Barbara Brodsky and Aaron say you learn a lot by noticing what you are still getting caught by:

    Remember that you are not separate, that whatever you see is simply yourself reflecting back to you. When you see the beauty in another, you are seeing the beauty and radiance in the self. When you see the shadow side of another, you are seeing the shadow in yourself. If you relate to it as separate, it’s easy to move into a contracted place that wants to fix or blame. Cease to see it as separate and simply remember, ‘The negativity I am experiencing here is simply the mirror of that negativity in myself that I have not fully attended to. In this moment, can I smile and hold this fear and negativity within the self with love?’

    “Conditions” give rise to negativity. Negativity does not just jump on you out of the shrubs….

    Over the winter “conditions” of negativity had been painfully present with a Michigan friend.

    As John and I were out walking Friday morning, I said I would really like to understand what that was all about for me.

    The “conditions” would be that my friend and I would have an agreed upon time to do something (during covid, this was admittedly virtually either on Zoom or Facetime or the phone) and she would cancel last minute.

    This pattern quickly became a relational habit. My friend had started dating a man.

    I would get up and be ready for our 9:00 a.m. agreed upon time and then open a text at 8:45 saying, “He was over until after midnight. I am going to crawl back into bed to get some more sleep.”

    I told her it was not working for me. I needed to not make plans she could not keep. She admitted anything we planned would be canceled if something came up with him.

    So a very l-o-n-g silence between us ensued. Occasionally over the next few months one or the other of us would initiate a brief text message exchange, but that was it.

    John and I had been home from Florida for a month when I sent a text message offering to return a book she had loaned me. “I will drop the book off tomorrow on our way to dinner with my sister and brother-in-law,” I offered.

    She replied, “Sounds good! I’ll be home.”

    We are both fully vaccinated.

    I curled my hair. It is quite long now.

    I used mouthwash and freshened my lipstick.

    I felt nervous.

    I sent a text message letting her know we were leaving our house. I did not receive a reply, and as we turned into her neighborhood, I was pretty sure I saw her in a vehicle with a man!

    “I just saw her in that vehicle,” I told John. “Go ahead, go by her house. I can leave the book in the door.”

    I slipped the book into a Ziplock bag, left it behind the storm at her front door, and got back into the van. That familiar heavy-hearted feeling… Those darn “conditions” were present again.

    I sent a text message saying I had seen them heading out as we were coming in and I had left the book in the door.

    “We were at his son’s house for dinner. I found the book! Thank you!”

    The following morning I could see clearly how I had treated John this way for years while I was involved with SCS. The adventure and the fun of that life was obvious to anyone who looked. I was always going off somewhere doing something that excited me and excluded him. I saw how I had been taking our relationship for granted.

    Interestingly, this is the exact story line of the book I was returning!


    “As comforting as a mug of chamomile tea on a rainy Sunday.”
    (New York Times Book Review)

    When John woke up Sunday morning I shared all of this with him and asked his forgiveness and told him how grateful I am that he remained faithful and kept his heart open… I never intended to hurt him. He was not even in my radar.

    Aha! That is exactly what I had been feeling: I was not even in her radar.

    I don’t think she has any idea how this felt.

    I certainly did not.

    I do now.

    And I am so grateful for the way life (karma) remains sticky until it brings us full circle.

  • Stay with the Listening


    This world deserves a kiss on both cheeks
    on the way out of the door
    and you have to let people see you do it.

    Failure to do so becomes —
    you are just another advocate
    but not much of a practitioner.

    ~ Stephen Jenkinson


    Since arriving home in Michigan one month ago, the yet-unanswered questions include: am I going to reopen my practice and if (or when) I will see a friend who went from a daily contact to essentially a lack of contact over this past winter.

    Of course, there is a much deeper structure than the surface of these (and all) questions.

    It has taken me days to be able to listen to the entire conversation with Terry Patten and Stephen Jenkinson — an episode titled: “Overwhelming Beauty — and Being OK, Dying.”

    On his 70th birthday, Terry was informed that there is a probably metastatic cancer in his lungs.

    The talk is available on the State of Emergence podcast now.

    Shortly after listening, a dear friend who is losing her hair in the current process of cancer treatment included this in her recent post about her hair loss: I made a common error…..I didn’t let my painful feelings have any air time. I shifted so quickly that there was no recognition that this particular development has impact. I’m aware where it ranks in the big picture ….. but it’s not meaningless.

    I notice where the questions about my practice or the change in my relationship ranks in the big picture…. but they are not meaningless.

    I appreciate my willingness to stay with the listening and to feel the painful feelings that were evoked by this podcast. To stay with the listening was not easy. The subject matter is not light. It was not pleasurable.

    But it is meaningful and as I stay with the listening, I notice a bit more about what I found intolerable with my friend over this past year.

    As I stay with the listening, Stephen’s words suddenly stimulate a whiff of clarity that sweeps into my being:

      She is still selling comfort as the place to get to….

      If you’re lucky, there are a few people who tend to your silence without asking you to break it….

      I suspect it’s like war, in the following way. You come back from war, and there’s nothing to say for one of two reasons. Either the language has not yet caught up with the realities of war and so explicitly there is nothing to say that doesn’t digress. Or, there is nothing to say to anyone because they weren’t there and there’s no way to bring them closer to it, and if they were there, you’re not talking about it anyway….

      The mother of gratitude is grief. It doesn’t come from being spared….

      If you don’t die of this now, you will die of that then….

    Terry’s stark honesty and his transparency of his not knowing pulls me back so I can stay with the listening:

      We all have the terminal diagnosis. We don’t know the time or the contours….

      The beauty of this life — the thing I don’t want to kiss goodbye — has made itself especially vivid and the fact that I am totally not in control makes everything poignant, tender, full of vibrancy….

      You can’t kiss that goodbye except with tears and they’re not “unhappy.” They’re deeply felt, they are hardly knowable….

    Jenkinson is the author of Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), the award-winning Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Homecoming: The Haiku Sessions (a live teaching from 2013), How it All Could Be: A workbook for dying people and those who love them (2009), Angel and Executioner: Grief and the Love of Life – (a live teaching from 2009), and Money and The Soul’s Desires: A Meditation (2002).

  • Gunner

    Sacred Stories

    It was his birthday.

    He had wanted to get a dog for so long but the landlord would not allow dogs where he lived.

    So his mom went online and ordered him a little Ty puppy dog for his birthday.


    When she received it, she opened the tag to see the name (each Ty animal is named).

    The name of this dog was “Lil’ Gunner.”


    Such an unusual name and then for a toy to be named that.

    His name is Gunner!!!!

    Gunner’s aunt instantly recognized the gift had come from her brother — Gunner’s grandpa — who is in spirit….

    “Oh, well…. I don’t need to go further,” she said. “I just love when Spirit gives such clear and marvelous gifts.”

  • Wheelchair

    Sacred Stories

    Late one evening, returning from a visit to her son’s, she lost her balance getting out of the car and into the house and fell. Thankfully, her daughter was with her, visiting from out of state.

    She had a pretty severe skin tear on the underside of her forearm and they determined it needed medical attention.

    A long covered walkway led to the entrance of the emergency room, and she was relieved to see a wheelchair had been left there. She got into a room quickly, and she received excellent care. She knew she had been guided to come. The wound needed 11 stitches and medical glue!

    A couple of hours later, leaving the hospital, she sat in the wheelchair waiting for her daughter to go get the car, and chatted with the nurse, “We were so impressed that you leave a wheelchair here for folks to use when they come in.”

    The nurse looked baffled. “What wheelchair?” she inquired.

    “This one that I am in was sitting right here when we pulled up. We assumed it had been left here for the next patient to arrive.”

    “No. We do not ever leave a wheelchair out here,” clarified the nurse.

    Well, if that is the case, then this particular wheelchair had obviously been left especially for her!