Perhaps it is busy mind preparing for our seasonal move south, or maybe the Beaver Moon (named for the November moon because of how the beavers prepare for winter), but I am wide awake and have fingers on the keyboard. While darkness drapes the sky, I am listening to an amazing Lion’s Roar interview with Kaira Jewel Lingo, a former nun living at Plum Village with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
Living every moment of mindfulness as a moment that changes our past.
“Begin Anew” practice of reflecting at the start of each week what you appreciated in the previous week about your partner/friend/coworker. One memory bring up another memory….
Sharing about inmates in Africa in 2007 becoming concerned for their fellow inmates who were hospitalized with HIV. The inmates requested and received permission to grow a garden — food to provide additional nourishment for those who were ill. That generated awareness also of orphans whose parents had died from AIDS. An “adopt-an-orphan” program led to their acquiring a sewing machine and using their own clothing to repurpose into garments for the orphaned children.
Preparing for our seasonal move might give greater significance to this idea of preparing for the ways we are going to have to adapt. Or maybe that comes with advancing age. This week John is learning a new version of the song “Jesus Loves Me.” The first line is: Jesus loves me, this I know, though my hair is white as snow.”
People have asked me if I like my new short hair.
It touches my heart that my Covid-Created long hair has been donated to a child through Wigs for Kids.
How do we prepare? How do we be ready?
Kaira spoke of the English WWI soldier who had an idea for the entire nation to spend one minute in silence. At nine pm each day, Big Ben would ring, reminding the people to do this. Twenty-one years later, following WWII, the Nazi’s said they could not take over England because, “You had this secret weapon.”
I am making a list of user-name and passwords for all of our online stuff. At some point, someone is going to need that. Preparing for the ways we are going to have to adapt.
I have been organizing meals based on what we have in the freezer and pantry. Preparing for the ways we are going to have to adapt.
When I think of something that I want to remember to take, I get it out now. Preparing for the ways we are going to have to adapt.
While not everyone is making a seasonal move, the whole world might benefit by preparing for the ways we are going to have to adapt. That truly is how to change our past!
What is this one heart we all share? It is our true nature, the essence of our being, which is love and light. Meditation is one effective way of coming to know this inner light of our divinity that is infused with love and pervades everything. Once we come to know our true nature, we develop, through practice, the ability to rest in it more stably. Then we can live more continuously from this heart of wisdom, love and compassion and truly come to know it as the One Heart we all share.
I have previously mentioned the saying, “For those who understand no explanation is necessary. For those who do not understand no explanation is possible.”
Some research indicates the saying came from Thomas Aquinas. Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that the existence of God could be proven in five ways, mainly by:
1) observing movement in the world as proof of God, the “Immovable Mover”;
2) observing cause and effect and identifying God as the cause of everything;
3) concluding that the impermanent nature of beings proves the existence of God.
The original quote was not about ‘understanding’ but about religious belief, specifically “faith.” The original quote is, “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”
It is amazing to me how perspective differs, but what is does not. For example, this cartoon that Linda B/G shared recently.
At the retreat, the teachers spoke about the nature of karma.
I remember the nature of karma;
I am born of karma, I am heir to karma, I abide in karma, and I am supported by karma.
When I act with intention, I am the owner of my actions and inherit their results.
My future is born from such actions, and their results will be my home.
All actions with intention, be they skillful or harmful, of such acts will I be the heir.
While karma is not a term used in Christianity, it is certainly there in Galatians, Chapter 6, Verse 7: “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
One of the mystical experiences common to retreat for me, regardless of the theme, is that I will have a foreshadowing of a teaching point to come. I will write in my journal an insight, then hear the teacher/s speak that to the group.
Sharing (with permission) the words of one student:
In all the years I had been practicing, it was suddenly like, “Oh, oh….” because I was in that place.
I realized grief isn’t just an intense feeling, it is actually a REALM. I was in this place, and it wasn’t here and it wasn’t the other side. I was somewhere in between and this portal kept opening up, and when it did my heart would just explode out.
I knew, too, that the process of grief for me was a rite of passage, it was something that was changing me.
In our culture, we are encouraged to sort of get over grief and get back to our lives. That this is a measure of our mental health – how fast you can get back as if nothing has happened. I knew intuitively that this was just nonsense. That I did not want to be the same person I was before my father died. I wanted to be different in the world going forward after that.
This student and you and I, like Mary Reed, are likely becoming unwitting mystics…
In a recent interview Mary Reed was asked to name three things she wished everyone could experience before we die. The interviewer did a short animation video of her response, which added a fun, unexpected dimension to Mary’s answer. See: Three Things to Be Experienced Before We Die
The first day of the retreat was the 49th day since Jerry Basham passed. In Buddhism, we chant that person’s name along with gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, Bodhi Svaha! Gone, Gone, to the other shore, the shore of liberation.
When I came out of silence and caught up on messages and social media, my sister-in-law had posted this:
Your Loved One in Heaven
by Sean Dietrich
Hi. This is your late loved one speaking. I don’t have long, so listen up because I have a lot I want to tell you.
First off, I get it.
Ever since I left this world you have missed me, and I know you’re bracing for the holidays without me. No matter what anyone says, this year’s festivities are going to be really tough.
In fact, let’s be honest, this festive season will probably suck pondwater. But then, Thanksgiving and Christmas are tough holidays for a lot of people. You’re not alone.
See, the misconception about the holidays is that they are one big party. That’s what every song on the radio claims. Each television commercial you see shows happy families clad in gaudy Old Navy sweaters, carving up poultry, smiling their perfect Hollywood teeth at the camera. But that’s not exactly reality.
In reality, fifty-eight percent of Americans admit to feeling severely depressed and anxious during November and December. In reality many folks will cry throughout the “most wonderful time of the year.”
Well, guess what? Nobody is crying up here in heaven. This place is unreal. There is, literally, too much beauty to take in. Way too much.
For starters—get this—time doesn’t even exist anymore. Which I’m still getting used to.
Right now, for all I know, the calendar year down on Earth could be 1728, 4045, 1991, or 12 BC. It really wouldn’t matter up here. This is a realm where there is no ticking clock, no schedule. Up here there is only this present moment. This. Here. Now. That’s all there has ever been. And there is real comfort in this.
I know this all seems hard to grasp, but if you were here you’d get it.
Also, for the first time I’m pain free. I feel like a teenager again in my body. You probably don’t realize how long I’ve lived with pain because I never talked about it, I kept my problems to myself because I was your loved one, and you needed me to be brave.
But pain is a devious thing. It creeps up on even the strongest person, little by little, bit by bit. Until pretty soon, pain becomes a central feature of life.
Sometimes my pain would get so bad it was all I thought about. No, I’m not saying that my life was miserable—far from it. I loved being on earth. It’s just that simply waking up each morning was getting exhausting.
But, you know what? Not anymore. In this new place, I am wholly and thoroughly happy.
But enough about me. I don’t have room to describe all the terrific things I’m experiencing, and you don’t need to hear them. Right now, you’re grieving, and what you need is a hug.
Which is why I’m writing to you. This is my hug to you. Because you’ve lost sight of me. And in fact, you’ve lost sight of several important things lately.
Death has a way of blinding us. It reorganizes the way you think, it changes you. You will never be the same after you lose someone. It messes with your inner physiology. It reorganizes you’re neurons.
But then, there’s one teensy little thing you’re forgetting:
I’m still around.
Yes, you read that correctly, I’m right here with you. No, you can’t see me. No, you can’t reach out and hold me. But did you know that one of the things I’m allowed to do as a heavenly being is hang out with you?
It’s true. I’m never far away. I’m in the room with you now, along with a big cloud of ancestors, saints, and witnesses. I’m shooting the breeze alongside you, watching you live your life, watching you raise your kids, watching your private moments of sorrow.
Here, in this new realm, I am in the perfect position to help you learn things. Which is what I vow to spend the rest of your earthly life doing, teaching you little lessons, lending you a hand when you least expect it, and desperately trying to make you smile. Actually, I’ve already been doing this stuff, you just don’t realize it.
What, you don’t believe me?
Well, wake up, pal. You know that tingle you get in your spine whenever you think of me? That’s me.
You know how, just yesterday, you had a beautiful memory when you were driving and it made you cry so hard that it actually felt good and you began to laugh through tears? Also me.
You know how sometimes when you’re all alone, preoccupied with something else, suddenly you get this faint feeling that someone is standing in the room with you? Hello? Me.
You’re not alone on this earth. You never were. You never will be. So during this holiday season, when cheerful families are getting together and making merry, and taking shots of eggnog, I’m going to be clinging to your shoulder, helping you muddle through somehow.
I’ll be making your spinal column tingle a lot, and I’ll be sending plenty of signs. Each of these signs—every single one—is code for “I love you.” So start paying attention to these hints.
“Alexa, how much time is left on the timer?” his wife asked from the kitchen.
“Seventeen minutes,” Alexa answered, as he (just a few step away) was reading those exact words!
“We are today beginning to see work by very reputable scientists that says the universe is created by our observations. It is not a coincidence; we are actively involved in physically shaping the world that we experience.” ~ Bruce H. Lipton
It is 6:21 am and I am sitting with an ice pack on my left hip writing this post.
My relationship with this left hip has been long standing, pun intended.
My left hip was dislocated at the pelvis August 12, 1962, in an auto accident.
An auto accident which resulted in my having an out-of-body experience.
There, I have said it.
I distinctly recall floating above my physical body watching the scrambled flesh on my forehead being sutured.
I was watching from a “space” of no pain, no fear, no sense of myself as a separate being.
The summer of 2021 has been a time of revisiting this experience. I have connected with dozens of others who had similar altered states of being. Many shared much more extreme experiences, including those who were clinically dead for some time, but everyone identified ways that experience shaped the rest of their lives.
Possibly EVERYONE knows someone who has had some type of experience.
Profound gratitude for each person who has spoken out loud. (The International Association for Near-Death Studies is a non-profit organization based in Durham, North Carolina in the United States, associated with the academic field of near-death studies.)
It is likely not an accident that I was immersed with this community, nor a co-incidence my hip would flare up as I process that experience I had when I was twelve years old.
I will give a talk at St. Johns UCC in New Buffalo, Michigan titled, “Time Change.” Notes from that draft:
Now is not a moment moving through time. Now has no duration. There is no time through which we move.
Time is imagined to be real only when we have forgotten our true nature of ever-present awareness.
We imagined ourselves instead to be limited, located entities. Time and space are born with that thought, but there is no present moment.
This ever-present now is eternity.
Time is thought superimposed upon eternity, and eternity is just another name for our true nature of awareness.
Louise Hay, in You Can Heal Your Life, shares a probable mental cause related to hip problems: Carries the body in perfect balance. Major thrust in moving forward. Fear of going forward in major decisions. Nothing to move forward to.
Oh, my….
While the night is still dark, before I have welcomed relief from discomfort, even as you seem to be there and I seem to be here and we seem to not yet know what we moving forward to, truth embraces and erases each of these distortions.
In 1988 I was told I needed to have a hip replacement. I was only 38 years old, considered to be too young. They only got about ten years from an artificial hip at that time. The same hip could only be replaced twice due to the formation of scar tissue. The doctor said, “Replacing this hip now would leave you with no options. You just have to face it, you will never have quality of life.”
[Lisle (Isabella Rossellini) hands Madeleine (Meryl Streep) the vial of potion.]
Madeleine: “Bottoms up.”
[She drinks the potion.]
Lisle Von Rhuman: “Now a warning.”
Madeleine: “NOW a warning?”
This information may feel a lot like that. It has been an intense yet slow-moving past few months, with many of us feeling very out of sorts, even to the point of having difficult and painful experiences. But there’s a reason, according to the stars. The five outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) have ALL been retrograde. When a planet goes retrograde, everything related to that planet goes wonky.
If everything related to all of these wasn’t enough, Mercury also went retrograde September 27 until October 18, with a “shadow period” that lasts a few weeks before and after the actual retrograde.
Now a warning…. This will be a very intense time, as we are reflecting upon all the partnerships, relationships, and friendships in our lives to understand where we fit in. Is there balance and peace between us? Do we feel at home with these people?
I have certainly been experiencing this, as have the people in my life.
In the Tuesday, October 26, Dharma Path class we were guided to reflect on the following, with the guidance of realizing, “If we can’t hold ourselves in our hearts we can’t hold each other.”
Of what am I dismissive in myself?
What part/s of myself do I not hold in my heart?
What needs my loving attention?
I wrote in my journal:
wounded sexuality
left hip/knee/foot
inner worrywart
To begin this difficult process we were to reflect on a part of ourselves that we do embrace. That was easier. I love that I am a hearth-keeper, baking cookies, making meals, helping and supporting. I love being a nurturer.
We were gently reminded, “These parts are real. When we are dismissive we can’t bring them into our heart. We have all lost something dear to us. We all have a community within us. It is time to invite ourselves back into our hearts.”
We were instructed to look into the camera and really allow ourselves to see ourselves and to be seen through the eyes of unconditional love.
It was powerful.
At one point, the eyes literally became the eyes of my dad! I could see clearly how I had stepped in to the wounded sexuality when my dad’s indiscretion resulted in him passing syphilis to my mom while she was pregnant for me. Then my having been sexualized at a young age; my getting pregnant at 15, married at 16, at a time when females were not allowed to stay in school. Loss of libido and intimacy with the hysterectomy in 2012. Such loss…. Dismissive? Lord, yes.
But suddenly I could see this all having come from conditions – this line of wounded sexuality did not begin with me!
A flood of appreciation washed over my soul.
I wrote in my journal:
I have healed the line of wounded sexuality. I did not start it. I stepped into it.
As I was working on this post, a friend sent the perfect “Inspiration” from a Network For Grateful Living Gratefulness.org:
Place your hand on your heart. Feel what surfaces in the fullness of that space. Joy, sorrow, anger, contentment, sadness, delight, vulnerability. Perhaps an unnameable tone. Whatever you notice, allow it to simply be. Let it be okay. Let yourself soften.
When we hold ourselves and others tenderly, we nurture the relationships that make life possible. Tending is the embodiment of tenderness and so a direct path to shared belonging. We stretch toward and from the heart, extending to others and ourselves expressions of humility, compassion, and care. As Trui Snyman says in the short film Tenderness: “People are hard on each other, people are hard on themselves.…We could all do with more tenderness.”
In moments of difficulty, tenderness can serve as a starting place, offering fertile ground for the cultivation of gratefulness. Soften, and open up to the unending gifts of the great mystery in which you belong. Soften, and feel yourself fortified. Soften. Stretch toward and from your heart.
Like the weather, moods change.
Soften….
And now another warning: Venus goes retrograde on December 19 until January 29, 2021.
From my journal entry of an exercise during class on mediumship with Barbara Brodsky:
You need not teach anything, Dear One, just live as your own consciousness evolves. You have been here before — but not exactly!
Think for a moment about the park you live in now. “Separate” homes are owned and lived in yet you share the streets. Beyond that, you share the sky, the sun, the wind. Even those express with uniqueness in each case. One may be shaded because you face the east or west. EVERYTHING fits into this dynamic.
You have been dreaming of human existence on Earth without fear of death. You have whiffs of the ripple effects. Yet, not you, nor I, nor THE ALL THAT IS knows exactly what will unfold. Like a storm. Much is known, but nothing is known exactly as it will be.
Even the cookies that you bake time-after-time using the same ingredients in the precise measurements is subject to distinction.
Child, what song lifts your heart?
He’s got the whole world in his hands.
((The song began to play in my mind, including an ad lib verse of he’s got Deep Springs Sangha in his hands.))
Notice how your thinking mind wants to argue a bit with the word “he.” Your heart does not demand a change in the word. Your heart agrees with the purity of the intention in that word. Notice how some demand a special application of the gender-sensitive pronouns, preferring “they” to “he or she.” Once the heart has opened to its true capacity, none of that will generate reactions.
You will be present in the presence.
You will have peace that passes understanding.
Dear One, another song?
((Peace is flowing like a river, flowing out from you and me. Flowing out into the desert setting all the captives free.))
I had shared a quotation from a film about not asking a person who had lost a loved one how he or she is but to ask instead, “What was your loved one like?” I included a link to the film with a disclaimer, “It was a bit too preachy for my taste.” My daughter commented that probably means she would like it! When my sister commented (asking me to define preachy), I took down the post.
I looked up the definition of preachy: having or revealing a tendency to give moral advice in a tedious or self-righteous way.
Then I looked up proselytizing: the action of attempting to convert someone from one religion, belief, or opinion to another.
Somewhere in my bodies I can feel the space of Loving What Is (Byron Katie) and Whatever Arises, Love That (Matt Kahn).
Notice when you hurt that you are mentally out of your business.
If you’re not sure, stop and ask, “Mentally, whose business am I in?”
There are only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s.
Whose business is it if an earthquake happens? God’s business.
Whose business is it if your neighbor down the street has an ugly lawn? Your neighbor’s business.
Whose business is it if you are angry at your neighbor down the street because he has an ugly lawn? Your business.
Life is simple — it is internal.
Count, in five minute intervals, how many times you are in someone else’s business mentally. Notice when you give uninvited advice or offer your opinion about something (aloud or silently).
Ask yourself: “Am I in their business? Did they ask me for my advice?”
And more importantly, “Can I take the advice I am offering and apply it to my life?”
One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star.
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Recently I had a very tender sharing with a dear friend. It was tender because each of us is doing the best we can to love one another and that process isn’t always neat and tidy.
Let the record show, the person I was sharing with would be considered one of the highest conscious beings you could meet. I hold that view of this friend as well.
I also see places where I project onto her. In fact, I even said that to her: “I miss having opportunity to project onto you because I know when I do that I am afforded the honor of seeing my own self.”
What we see is not a PERSONAL self.
What we see is the universal SELF.
Jerry Ashmore, dharma teacher at Empty Circle Zen Group in Hobart, Indiana, said, “Even before we practice it, enlightenment is there.”
Jung wrote, “To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle” (Jung, 1959, p. 872).
One website suggested a simple process for working with shadow.
1. Make a list of 5 positive qualities that you see yourself as having (e.g., compassionate, generous, witty, etc.).
2. Look at each positive quality that you wrote down – describe its opposite (e.g., unfeeling, stingy, dull, etc.).
3. Picture a person who embodies these negative qualities vividly in your mind. Roughly, this is your shadow.
Mooji (Jamacian spiritual teacher from the UK) says, “Our ego is a Siamese twin, and we cannot put it somewhere else. It is important to recognize you are not it… To stop being what you are not there is something you must understand. Whatever you can see or experience, you are not this. You cannot judge your real weight by carrying a donkey on your back. When you cannot bear your self anymore, you are a good candidate for freedom.”
The Basham family continues to experience the ripple effect of loss.
Wednesday, September 29, 2021, at the exact time family was graveside with John’s brother, Jerry, in Michigan, we received news that our former sister-in-law had just passed in Texas. Her passing was not a surprise, and was in many ways a relief to her son, Jeff.
One week to the day, October 6, 2021, news that Jeff’s sister passed in her sleep was a surprise, and anything but a relief.
As long as we can be made to believe that one thing is good and another evil, we shall remain outside the Garden of Eden, and one day have health and another day disease, experience youth and vitality one day and age and debility another day because those are the pairs of opposites and they follow one another in cycles. It is only when we do not desire wealth or harmony any more than lack or discord, but seek only that which was original and primary in the Garden of Eden, that we rise above these opposites into eternal life.
Joel Goldsmith, The Thunder of Silence
As these additional conditions weave themselves through our psyche like summer weaves its way into fall, I am led to an interview by Brian D. Smith (Grief 2 Growth). Brian is sharing have said to his wife that he had not had signs for the 5th anniversary of their daughter’s passing, his wife pointed excitedly at a sign on a vehicle by them: I AM RIGHT HERE!
Brian share that with Becky (Rebecca Austill-Clausen) during an interview about her 3 Secrets to Communicating with Your Deceased Loved Ones, in which she makes these points:
Believe that the afterlife is real.
Trust in your inner self.
Recognize that love surpasses all boundaries (even physical death).
Perhaps it is merely shadow (ego beliefs) that can separate us from fluent awareness of loved ones who have passed….
His grandmother had been very religious. She never missed an opportunity to share her faith with others. She had passed several years previously, but today she popped into his mind.
He was watering flowers in his father-in-law’s yard.
His father-in-law was dying.
As soon as the thought of his grandmother came to mind, he heard one of her favorite hymns:
Not a particularly religious person, as he prepared to go out for a much-needed bicycle ride, his father-in-law and 1 Corinthians 9:24-25 was on his mind.
24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.
25 Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.
Today was his father-in-law’s 79th birthday.
Today’s ride would be for him!
It had been two weeks and one day since his father-in-law suffered an abdominal aortic aneurysm, and his condition remained very tenuous…. The pandemic prevented visits.
So he rode hard.
And the pent up emotions and painful unknowing gave way as the last song streamed into his earphones: Knock-knock-knockin’ on heaven’s door.
His father-in-law passed peacefully a few days later. R.I.P.
Her husband went into the laundry room to get some batteries for his earphones. She heard some grumbling sounds and asked what was going on.
“Oh, this shelf fell down,” he said.
She went in to see if she could help. He had gotten the shelf put back up.
As she looked, however, a dowel pin that was holding up the second from the top shelf was laying on the shelf below the one that had fallen. Now, get this picture. These pins go in so tightly, you need a pair of pliers to pull them out. What are the odds that two pins, on two different shelves, would suddenly fall out?
Right….
When they had the second (and more extensive) mold remediation work done in their tiny house, the cabinets in the laundry room were torn out with the wall. Only the uppers had survived. She had made a detailed drawing and asked her brother-in-law to build a new cabinet. But Covid hit and they all went into lock down.
She knew this was her brother-in-law’s way of communicating to them in spirit!
It was perfect.
What better to get their attention than what he likely considered to be an unfinished project!
