Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: synchronicity

  • Red-Shouldered Hawk – A Close Encounter

    On Sunday, she received this wonderful blessing from a spiritual teacher who goes by the name Mother.

    I am with you and I will climb on the back of your bike and enjoy the outings with you. If you go past something that catches your eye, just tap me on the shoulder and say to me, “Mother, did you see that?”

    Or I’ll tap you on the shoulder and say, “Did you see this???”

    Monday morning she was out riding her bike when she saw a Red-shouldered Hawk on a power line. Hawks are often skittish, appearing to be almost “camera” shy. Speaking to the hawk, she stopped her bike and began slowly walking closer. The hawk watched her as she took some photos and then flew up, landing in the yard across the street. Still speaking softly to the bird, she was able to stand within about three feet! She was even able to get a video of some ground behavior she had never seen before. An online search said this seems to be a hawk hunting technique: rooting around the dry grass like a chicken.

    When the hawk flew to the edge of the garage, she stood directly below as the hawk looked down, making direct eye contact.

    She felt the Mother’s energy and imagined her saying, “Did you see this!!!”

    It is thought that hawks represent focus, clarity, determination, and intelligence.

    “Thank you, Hawk, and thank you, Mother,” she breathed.

    Hawks symbolize spiritual awareness because these are all traits you need to be more spiritually aware.

  • Help Buying a New Van

    She and her husband had the sense they were to explore trading in their car for a new one. Their sense about this grew stronger the more they laughed about how silly it was to think about a new car since theirs was only a year old. And, further, they had just had a hitch installed on their car before traveling to Florida for the winter so they could bring their bicycles. How would they possibly get a hitch installed on a new car in just a couple days? None of it seemed feasible! Yet for several days they felt as though several close family members, no longer in body, were sending them messages in dreams that it was important to explore doing this.

    The final message came from her mother who had died several years earlier. When she was in body she often exclaimed, “This will be fun, fun, fun, or great, great, great!” Her presence in the dream was one of this enthusiasm. In the dream, her mother told her, “Just wait until you hear the name of the person who waits on you at the car dealership!” So, off they went to the car dealership in Florida, 3 days before they were to leave to travel back to their home in the north. They had learned to trust the messages that find a way to get through to them from their loved ones on the other side, yet they felt a bit skeptical and even a bit ridiculous, trading in a car that only had 17,000 miles on it!

    When they walked into the dealership and asked to talk to a salesperson, they were introduced to Liam. One of her mother’s great grandson’s was named Liam. When he was born, her mother thought it was a unique and fun name and told all of her friends at the retirement community where she lived how excited she was with having a new grandson with the name Liam! She thought it was a “great, great, great name!”

    She and her husband enjoyed getting to know their sales person, Liam, and found him to be very friendly and helpful. He was able to get them exactly what they wanted and most importantly, was able to make the numbers work out so it was feasible, and, the car came with a hitch!

    Liam is a boy’s given name of Irish origin. It is a diminutive of the British name William, meaning “helmet of will” or “protection.” She and her husband looked at each other with amazement and knew they had an army of angels helping them!

  • The Guest House

    Today is March 21 and I have absolutely no “excuse” for not having posted on Yellow Brick Road since February 26. Yes, we have had house guests off and on for the past six weeks. Yes, I have been riding up to 20 miles per day on my bike this year rather than the normal 5-8 miles of recent years, including time for stopping to share affection with this kitty on Harbor Drive.


    Yes, I have completed 19 one-thousand-piece puzzles, and, yes, I have also read five books since we arrived here in Punta Gorda early December, but, the real reason my posts have been few and far between is far deeper.

    The real reason is I am profoundly present with the play of light and darkness within my mind and that can be awkward to speak about. At Tuesday evening’s North Fort Myers Bluegrass Jam after the sun had gone down light was pouring in from from the nearby baseball field behind the line of trees. I was transfixed by this juxtaposition of the light and darkness so I snapped a photo.


    I am likely continuing to mine gifts of intentionally working with shadow. These past years of classes with Barbara Brodsky and John Orr and Aaron during which we navigated the Sacred Darkness. Sacred Darkness is very much with me. As is the Light. Each experience brings myriad thoughts, feelings, sensations, emotions…. all can be welcomed, even while not all are comfortable, and some are outright uncomfortable.

    As a guide, Rumi’s poem “The Guest House” comes to mind frequently.

      This being human is a guest house.
      Every morning a new arrival.

      A joy, a depression, a meanness,
      some momentary awareness comes
      as an unexpected visitor.

      Welcome and entertain them all!
      Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
      who violently sweep your house
      empty of its furniture,
      still, treat each guest honorably.
      He may be clearing you out
      for some new delight.

      The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
      meet them at the door laughing,
      and invite them in.

      Be grateful for whoever comes,
      because each has been sent
      as a guide from beyond.

      Copyright 1997 by Coleman Barks. Posted with permission. All rights reserved. From The Illuminated Rumi.

    Every line of this poem played itself out on Sunday when I watched a china pasta bowl I bought at the flea market for one dollar break in half against the asphalt. A hundred things cannot fully express the thoughts, feelings, sensations, and emotions melded into an experience.

    “It was only one dollar,” were the words I spoke at the time of the crash.

    Totally true words, but not the totality of my experience.

    I could not get that bowl out of my thoughts.

    I wished I had taken it to the van.

    The best way to describe it is like a too-brief encounter that leaves you yearning for a deeper knowing of one another. Who made this? How did it come to be at this flea market today? Who gave it such a low price? What is/was it’s real value? What would it feel like and look like filled with delicious food sitting in the middle of the table?

    I wished I had taken a photo of that bowl it to remember it by. I think I recall there having been a couple of butterflies and some flowers. I know there was green along the rim. The bowl was made in Italy, but I do not know if it was hand painted. I wished I had carefully brought the two halves home and glued them back together rather than having John toss them into the trash can. It could not hold pasta but perhaps it could have held fruit on the counter…. I grieved the loss.

    Complicating factors were the unanswered questions around the mishap. Details I did not have access to as I longed to put my mind at rest. I wanted to know the who, what, when, where, why, and how. I longed to free my mind of the ruminating. This being human is a guest house.

    The experience is not just about that bowl. It is about the nature of mind. A loved one dies. A loved one survives. All of the unanswered questions. A welcomed baby. An abused child. Kindness. Unkindness. Pleasant and painful. Light and darkness playing itself out on that inner landscape of mind.

    This being human is a guest house. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. ~ Rumi

  • Hallelujah!

    Her friend, still hospitalized with complications following back surgery two weeks ago, was very much on her mind as she was getting out of her car to run into Dollar Tree. The song Hallelujah was being played in the parking lot. She had just texted the K.D. Lang version to her friend a couple of days earlier. Exiting Dollar Tree she realized that the beautiful music was not being piped into the parking lot — at the far side of the parking lot she could see a man playing a saxophone!

    She walked to Winn-Dixie at the opposite end of the strip mall, appreciating the music so much. As she was about to enter the store she stopped to speak to two women who were also hearing the music and trying to figure out where it was coming from. The younger woman was in a wheel chair. I gushed, “It is live music! You can see the guy way over there playing the horn. When I first got out of my car he was playing Hallelujah. I had just sent that song to my friend, Linda, who is in the hospital with complications following back surgery.”

    The older woman pushing the wheel chair said, “My name is Linda!”

    The younger woman in the wheel chair added, “My mother’s name in Linda!”

    We all felt something so holy…. They said in unison, “We will be praying for your friend, Linda.”

    When I got back in my car I drove to the far side of the parking lot where the man was playing. Rolling down my window and thanking him for the surprise of the beautiful music playing, I told him about having heard him playing Hallelujah, and about Linda. He said he would pray for Linda.

    He had a tip jar so I pulled a ten-dollar-bill out and handed it to him. As an after thought, I asked if I could take his photo. He grabbed his saxophone and posed!


    Earlier that morning when I had sent a text to my daughter updating her about Linda, my daughter texted back this beautiful prayer:

    Lord, there are times in our lives we do t even know what to pray for, but we know that you know our hearts. So for our sweet friend, Linda, we ask for healing and the absence of fear. For Fred and her friends we ask for peace, comfort, and for all we ask for hope. We beg for understanding as we struggle to surrender to your will. Comfort us dear Lord. We ask these things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

    Looking at the photo later I read the minstrel’s sign: PLEASE HELP ME. I HAVE 3 KIDS. I DON’T HAVE MONEY FOR FOOD AND RENT. GOD BLESS YOU.

    And, I noticed his hat: FBI JESUS. Expanding the photo more, beneath the FBI in small print I read FIRM BELIEVER IN.

    Hallelujah!

  • Marquette

    Her sister and brother-in-love had been planning a move from their hometown to the upper peninsula of Michigan, where their youngest grandchildren were. She wanted her sister to be where she needed to be, but to be honest, in her heart a move to Marquette for them felt like loss. Significant relief came when they had decided to stay in the area, but sell their current home and move into something else.

    “We just found a duplex to rent. It has a basement!” her sister’s text read. “What a story to tell. Call me when you can.”

    They were in the car driving to a jam session so she she called her sister right then.

    The duplex was on Marquette Woods Road, very near her! And close to everything…. She heard her brother-in-law say in the background, “We thought we were going to be moving to Marquette, and I guess in a way we are!”

    Directly across from her at the jam session was a musician wearing a hat with one word on it: Marquette.

    “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” ~ Jeremiah 29:11

  • Missing Ear Bud

    Finishing her meditation, she popped her wireless ear buds into the charger case, snapped the lid closed, and set it on the bedside table until she got up and plugged it into her computer. Late that evening as she was readying for bed, she put the charger case back on the bedside table so it would be ready for her meditation.

    The following morning the one for the right ear was missing!

    She searched on the bed, under the bed, under the bedside table…. but did not find it. Later that morning, she recruited the assistance of one of the friends she was visiting. They took the bed linens off, even removing the pillows from their cases. Her friend intoned: “Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come around. Something is lost that needs to be found.”

    “What might the lesson or gift be?” her friend asked.

    “That I should only use the left ear bud?” she mused. The left ear is connected to the right brain, so that made some sense.

    The ear bud for the right ear remained missing. In their fastidious searching they did find a domino behind the bed side table. It was an eight and a six: 14. They looked up the spiritual meaning of 14 only to discover the same message they had been speaking about a few minutes earlier.

    The number 14 is associated with new starts, fresh opportunities, but also balance and harmony. Your angels could be using this number to encourage you to be more adaptable and not to let self-doubt hold you back. Divine forces are on your side and want you to thrive – so any risks will surely be rewarded in time.

    A bit later their other friend also searched for the missing ear bud without finding it. When her friend who had helped with the earlier search asked her exactly where was she and what was the exact sequence of her actions she hopped up on her bed and provided a play-by-play reenactment, including testing what might have happened if the case lid had not been closed tightly. She could not even shake the ear bud out of the case! Could the missing ear bud have not made it into the case?

    Her friend stretched out on the floor between the two beds. From that eye-level view, she saw what she thought was another shred of dryer sheet. She had picked one up in her previous search but as she ran her hand under the bed she came out with the missing ear bud!

    This information about processing our listening with only one ear comes from the internet: Depending on which ear you receive the input from, the information will be processed a bit differently, but the general structure will be the same, and obviously, the end result will be the same. Information from your right ear is initially processed by your left hemisphere, and information from your left ear is initially processed by your right hemisphere. The right side controls attention, memory, reasoning, and problem solving.

    She thanks the divine forces and says she will do her meditation without the missing ear bud for a while!

  • Trust Your Own Story

    Early Saturday morning I woke up dreaming. I knew the symbols were significant so by the light of the digital watch I keep on the nightstand I wrote in my journal:

      Dream

      Am sliding head-first down a piece of card stock to show a friend she can “trust your own story/writing….”

    My scribbled note was at the bottom of a page, so I flipped to the next sheet and crawled back into bed. At 8:38 am my cell phone rang in the great room. The call, from a Michigan State police trooper, had gone to voice mail before I got there, so I returned the call. The news was quite upsetting, and I apologize for needing to mention having gotten the call without sharing the details of the information in the call. My upset state of mind is what is most relevant, and that I forgot about having had the dream….

    I am grateful Stacey was available to talk with me about the call, and thankful we genuinely affirmed for one another the importance of taking things as they come. I calmed down enough to go out for a bike ride.

    Making a right turn off one road and onto another, there was a very attractive young woman (well-dressed) with a little white pug-faced dog on a leash in the yard. I didn’t think anything about it until I came around the corner and the dog ran to the end of the leash and W-H-O-O-S-H was off the leash and chasing me down the street!

    A car was driving toward us at a pretty fast clip and showed no sign of slowing down. The dog’s owner was running hard, desperately trying to catch the dog. I knew she was terrified the dog was going to run out in front of the car. I kept moving to stay between the dog and the car.

    I’ve been bitten by a dog, so I don’t have a lot of confidence when I am being chased. As the dog caught up to me I stopped peddling, began coasting, and raised my feet up so that the dog wouldn’t have access to my feet or legs. After the car passed and the owner yelled, “PLEASE STOP!” I stopped and she caught the dog.

    I was sooooooo aware of all of the aspects: I didn’t want to get bitten by the dog, I didn’t want the dog to cause me to fall of my bike onto the pavement, I didn’t want the dog to get hit by the car, I didn’t want the driver of the car to hit the dog…. Each of these aspects of things I didn’t want pointed to the vital truth: I truly wanted the best possible outcome for all.

    The owner and I apologized to one another. She did not realize I had kept riding to keep the bike between her dog and the car. We shared a few tears mingled with the stress and the relief. She kept saying she could not understand how the dog got off the lease; that had never happened. With shaking legs but a grateful heart, I rode on.

    All I wrote in my journal that morning was that I had gotten the call from the trooper with the upsetting news and “Dog got off leash and chased me.”

    Sunday morning I went for another easy ride. It was one of the most pleasant early morning rides in weeks because the temperature was mild and the wind was calm. After I got home I touched base with a dear Michigan friend, Linda Higbee, (another snow-bird) who just had back surgery here in Cape Coral. A headache had her still in the hospital, lying flat.

    She wrote: “The nursing assistant, Kristin, came up with getting me high protein ice cream. It’s sticks to the spoon and l can eat it lying down 😋 . I’ve been able to rest well and ask for some spirit help. Stepping back to see both the positive and negative happening is very introspective and kind of calming too.”

    The dream flashed into my mind! I could totally see how this had played out with my experience of having been chased by the dog. I wrote back to her, “All good news…. and I’m sharing that awe and calming of seeing both the positive and the negative (maybe it’s more accurate to say both the pleasant and the unpleasant) at the same time. I’ll write up and share my experience of having been chased by a dog on my bike today!”

    I hope you are able to see with me how my dream was a gift from Holy Spirit. The symbol was speaking to me about the phone call from the trooper AND speaking to my friend about her recuperation.

    An unpleasant experience does not have to be labeled as negative. As Morgan Harper Nichols is quoted by Gratefulness.org, “Peace is an invitation in daily life to breathe deep, right here, in the uncertainty.”

    You are able to “Trust Your Own Story,” right here, in the uncertainty.

  • I Am Made of You

      It is this disinterested but completely allowing contemplation of the body in the world that the body loses its ‘me-ness’ and the world loses its ‘not-me-ness.’ In this way bodily sensations no longer cry out ‘I am separate, I am exclusively you” and perceptions of the world no longer cry out, ‘I am separate, I am not you.’ Everything sings out, ‘I am made of you.’ ~ Rupert Spiria


    Is this a drawing of a duck or a rabbit?

    A catchy little trick from NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) was to ask a client if he or she was sure enough to be unsure when that person could see conflicting points of view. This week it has come into clarity how vital it may be for each of us to move toward willingness to live in a state of asking that of ourselves: “Am I sure enough to be unsure?”

    The point is freedom from identification with any point of view; a full freedom from attachment to ALL points of view. This does not mean I won’t have a point of view. Of course we will. The shift comes as awareness reveals whatever the point of view, it is simply a point of view.

    Points of view can be very similar, somewhat similar, somewhat different, radically different, or even diabolically opposed. I think you will agree that way too often solidified points of view which are widely differing or diabolically opposed can become deadly. Literally….

    At the very least solidified points of view have an impact on rapport and can damage relationships, cause stress, and rob us of our natural state of harmony and happiness.

    Decades ago it was pretty easy for me to hold a firm intention to have freedom from a “negative” point of view, and to observe the changes within myself when I was free from that point of view. I could quite easily and notice when my Debbie Downer was in charge, and I could choose a better feeling thought. This was quite skillful at that time.

    The past several years I have been studying Sacred Darkness with a group of others who are also intentional about awareness with a capital “A.” What is sometimes called “pure” awareness is not a limited awareness of this or that, and it is not attached to a particular point of view. Even preferences of positive or negative are simply part of the continuum of The All That Is.

    For sure, I prefer feeling positively, but can you see that this preference is also aversion to feeling negatively? I remember so well letting something negative “go,” but continuing to hold the point of view that it was or is negative.

    Aaron’s Daily Reflection:

    Many of you were raised with this idea, “Hold it in the light and it will dissolve.” What do I do if it doesn’t dissolve? And of course, sometimes it doesn’t dissolve. If the conditions are present and have not yet been purified, then that condition will arise and will maintain itself until the conditions dissolve. If the conditions for body pain are still there, the pain will remain, no matter how much you try to love it. You do not love it to make it go away. You hold it in love — the body pain, the anger — because that spaciousness is what allows the conditions to dissolve. If you hold it in a kind of idea of love, saying, “I will love it. I will love it. Why is it still here? I’m loving it so hard! Why doesn’t it go?”, well, you’re just more and more contracting, more and more caught up in whatever has arisen, because you’re trying to smash it away.

    Rupert Spira is a teacher of non-dual awareness. He is the author of the opening quotation. His words are still a bit foreign to most humans when we try to use the finite mind to know or speak about the world. However, Spira’s work assures us, “It’s not possible to view the world directly from awareness’ perspective,” because, “There’s no room in the infinite for the finite.”

    Awareness needs the finite mind to know the world. The finite mind holds points of view.

    Every point of view is finite but love is infinite.

    Perhaps one way human beings are able to open to and enjoy the sweet fragrance of infinite love is by being sure enough to be unsure…. I am made of you.

  • Two Male Cardinals

    She and her husband did a ridge hike close to Tucson, Arizona while they were wintering in the Western United States from their home in Western Canada. Her husband doesn’t do heights very well, and he leaned over to one side for many hours as they tackled their big hike.

    Eventually, they got to their designation at 3 in the afternoon and found a picnic table to enjoy a very late lunch. Out of nowhere two red male Cardinals showed up and hung around very close by to them. They were thrilled and thought of it as a sacred gift.

    (photo credit Tammi Mild)

    Some time later, they had the good fortune to join a birding festival at Salton Sea in California. The person who kindly took them around to the various places was an avid birder and very knowledgeable.

    They somehow relayed their experience with their hike and the two male Cardinals. He looked at them a bit oddly before saying, “Cardinals are never seen in that area! That so I unusual….”

    Later she told her husband she thought it was so wonderful his angels, or God or whoever, chose to show such compassion to him and gift him with these bird sightings right beside them.

    They weren’t sure who might have shown up for her husband, but their own has joined so many other amazing stories about birds related to visits from departed loved ones.

  • Flowers from Friends

    After several years of leaving her own home and traveling to a nearby state to provide support — and then care — for her centenarian father, he had recently passed and now now she was executor of his estate.

    She writes: “I had just opened the day’s mail which brought a flood of medical bills and estate paperwork when the doorbell rang. What a delight to have this beautiful bouquet arrive in that moment from friends in Massachusetts! Life has its pleasant surprises, often perfectly timed.”

    Some friends play at friendship but a true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin. (Proverbs 18:24)