Debra Basham

Living and Loving

Tag: Tami Simon

  • Princess

    Princess came as her companion while her husband was working away from home.

    And Princess was her faithful fur friend for fourteen and one half years!

    Princess started having seizures in October and was on seizure medications every eight hours. The alarm was set for 3 am and, after giving Princess the medication, she would watch TV until she fell back to sleep.

    After Princess died, her husband’s work sent her flowers with a message, “Thinking of you. Sending sunshine your way.”

    The Dharma of Dogs: Our Best Friends as Spiritual Teachers
    by Tami Simon

    “The pain of her death was exquisite. I cried for weeks, but felt an incredible joy and comfort that was an equal part of the grief. I was so grateful that I had spent time with her — only with her, fully present and joyful.” (p.163)

    Thích Nhất Hạnh shared in No Death, No Fear:

      The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. It was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

      I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet… wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

      From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.

    After Princess died she would still wake up at 3 am, even without an alarm. On February 11, one week to the day of Princess’ death , when she fell back to sleep she had a vivid dream that her husband handed Princess to her and she cuddled with her in bed. Sharing with a friend about the visit Princess made to her in that dream she wrote: “Very grateful.”

  • Cody: Forever Loving

    Cody: Forever Loving

    Checking in with the teachers and his small group while at a meditation retreat, he shared he would be leaving group early to go home for a few hours. A veterinarian was coming to assist their beloved dog, Cody, to freedom from suffering.

    He recorded the group chanting as support for him and his wife and their fur friend and, “All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you….”

    He was told how others in this group had been supported by this chant as a loved one died. Several times the person’s passing occurred while a retreat or workshop was happening.

    He found the chant very helpful each time he heard it and once during the chanting he expressed to Cody that he was free and did not have to stay around to support him. He had a clear sense of Cody responding, “I am chanting it to you!”


    From The Dharma of Dogs: Our Best Friends as Spiritual Teachers, by Tami Simon: “The pain of her death was exquisite. I cried for weeks, but felt an incredible joy and comfort that was an equal part of the grief. I was so grateful that I had spent time with her — only with her, fully present and joyful.” (p.163)

    RIP Cody…. Forever loving.

  • Pondering Fathers

    I cannot swear that Tami Simon, the founder of Sounds True, which produces Insights at the Edge had pondering fathers on her mind when she shared “Fierce Intimacy” with Terry Real. Now, I have to confess, I devoured two of Terry’s books — I Don’t Want to Talk about It : Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression and How Can I Get Through to You? Reconnecting Men and Women — long enough ago that he was going by Terrence Real.

    Perhaps being a teenage wife (to an equally teenage husband) was part of the motivation of my avid interest, but I am honestly assuming the relationship of my own mother and father as I was growing up played an even more significant role.

    In the interview with Tami Simon, Terry answers her question about how he developed the core skills he teaches with brutal transparency:

    Bloodily. [and he laughs] People have asked me how I became a family therapist and I jokingly always say, “I started about four years old in my dysfunctional family.” I come from a violent, dysfunctional, depressed family and I was pretty messed up for most of my life. I write about it in I Don’t Want to Talk About It. That’s autobiographical in part. There’s this old joke that therapists are people that have to be in therapy 40 hours a week.

    I had never heard that line about therapists being people who need to be in therapy 40 hours a week, but it resonates. I had also never heard of using the parallel of becoming relationally fit to becoming physically fit.

      Tami Simon: In your book, The New Rules of Marriage, you actually make this comparison in the beginning of the book that becoming relationally fit has parallels to becoming physically fit. If you work out, if you do it, you’ll become physically fit. I thought, for most people, they think… I think most people think, that happiness in relationship is a lot more mysterious than becoming physically fit.

      To become physically fit, this is something I’m going to do on my own. And I know that if I’m not physically fit, it’s because I haven’t been to the gym. I’ve been eating ice cream. Whatever. I take responsibility. I know inside, I’m not physically fit. I haven’t been doing it. But relational happiness, this is going to take a miracle outside of my own energy and effort because there’s this other person involved. And this other person’s really difficult.

    Terry responded with, “Yes, isn’t that amazing the way the other person is always so difficult and we’re all so nice?”

    Last week during the Dharma Path Intensive, we heard an amazing teaching from Aaron, channeled by Barbara Brodsky, about bringing beautiful flowers up from the deep crevasse of darkness. That certainly seems to fit with becoming relationally fit. Here is an excerpt from the transcript of a talk given by Aaron on June 1, 2021.

    Now let us brave the long ladders that we find. Going down, and down, and down into the darkness.

    Your feet finally touch the bottom. Firm ground. But what is there around you? Is it safe? But there is a sweet scent in the air.

    Just as you get your footing, the sun crests over the edge high above you and shines straight down and illuminates a land filled with flowers and beauty. Just a few seconds, because the crack above you seems so narrow, so high above, and then it passes and you’re in darkness again.

    Can you imagine this? You came down the ladder with courage and fear. You land on your feet, not knowing if you’d be attacked by something that wanted to destroy you, to eat you. And there in the darkness were radiant flowers with a beautiful scent.

    You have large baskets on your backs. You ask the flowers, “Who will come with me?” And so many of them shout out, “Me! Me! Take me!” So you begin to fill the baskets with flowers. You carry them up. Some of them you cut; some of them you actually dig out by the roots and put in small pots. You climb back up.

    Now instead of just your heart carrying the light of the Dharmakaya onto the bridge and out into the nirmanakaya, instead of just reaching for those who are able to come on the bridge and directing them toward the Dharmakaya, you have something of substance.

    You carry it across the bridge. You do not set it on the nirmanakaya end of the bridge. You do not set it off of the bridge, but you set it on the edge of the bridge, so that people must take one step into the sambhogakaya to reach this wonderfully-scented offering.

    Picture the beings who come and take these flowers, beings living in a nirmanakaya realm who have never seen anything except the most mundane flowers, and those still being beautiful, the dandelions and such. But this is something with such an exquisite scent and beauty…

    Feel yourself there on the end of the bridge, holding out these flowers and asking people to simply take one step up to reach the flower and to receive their flower. Inhale the heavenly scent. See the radiant colors, colors so much more vivid than anything in the nirmanakaya realm.

    But to reach this you had to have the courage to move off the safety of the bridge and into the darkness. There are flowers there. There are also tigers with enormous fangs, and huge snakes. This is not a realm only of light.

    But as you brave the darkness and bring up the flowers, who say, “Take me! Take me!” and offer them out to the world of suffering, that world also can become transformed.

    Janice Keller has transcribed Aaron’s teaching for decades. When she sent this one, she included an image and the precious line: bringing beautiful flowers up out of the crevasse.

    You will know it is significant that you are reading this. I only know it is significant I am writing it as I am pondering fathers….

  • Our Window of Tolerance

    “Resilience is not something
    we have or we don’t have.
    It is something that
    we can train
    in our minds and bodies.”
    ~ Liz Stanley

    I’ve made a promise to myself to post a blog each day until after the Presidential election. Putting my fingers on the keyboard grounds me. I am choosing to widen my window of tolerance.

    Trauma can narrow our window of tolerance, and human life inherently exposes us to trauma (admittedly, some more than others).

    I recently was listening to a Sounds True podcast with Liz Stanley and Tami Simon about stress arousal and the way past trauma relates to our ability to think creatively, solve problems, and access choice in any given situation. The podcast is where I heard the phrase “window of tolerance.”

    Whether or not we consciously know it, humans have both a “survival brain” (bottom-up processing) and a “thinking brain” (top-down processing). Even without knowing the terms, you do how good it feels when these two processing systems are collaborating.

    We have been expertly trained at powering through situations — often ignoring our body’s emotions, sensations, and physical pain. Stanley refers to this common phenomenon as “thinking-brain override.”

    “Survival-brain hijacking” is when the heavy emotions trigger stress arousal and impulsively drive our behavior, sometimes with horrific results.

    Meditation (training in mindfulness) can help “widen” our window of tolerance and assist us to react more skillfully and to avoid destructive extremes.

    Here is a simple tool for any time you notice yourself feeling stress: Move your attention to the information coming from your senses. “Feel your feet on the ground, notice where your butt is touching the chair; pay attention to the breath coming in and out through your nose; notice the air is cool on inhale and warmer on the exhale; listen to the waves or the wind or the motor of the refrigerator.”

    Notice… notice… notice.

    Smell some essential oils.

    Slowly dissolve a lozenge or small piece of hard candy in your mouth. Perhaps that is why the ones with holes in the center are called Life Savers!

    Just looking out your window helps….

    Here are the east and west views from my window this morning during yoga.

    Over these next two weeks, let’s each intentionally widen our window of tolerance….

  • Angie’s Mom

    Sacred Stories

    “How is your yoga practice working or not working for you?” the yoga instructor asked as they began the second yoga retreat using the Zoom platform since the beginning of the pandemic.

    One woman confessed she had been having difficulty finding a location in her home to practice yoga. She said she was currently in her bedroom, which offers the best space, but she would be lying on a dirty rug that smelled like dog.

    They had only recently lost Angie…

    The Zoom host read a powerful paragraph from The Dharma of Dogs: Our Best Friends as Spiritual Teachers, by Tami Simon.

    “The pain of her death was exquisite. I cried for weeks, but felt an incredible joy and comfort that was an equal part of the grief. I was so grateful that I had spent time with her — only with her, fully present and joyful.” (p.163)

    The host mentioned that an online grief journey group attended by a mutual friend of Angie’s mom would be meeting virtually the following day from 4-6 pm. The mutual friend was currently in Atlanta — awaiting the welcoming of a new grandchild — and would not be in attendance. The yoga instructor said she also attends the group (her husband had passed seven months earlier) and would be there.

    Just as the invitation to attend the grief journey group for support was being offered Angie’s mom, a text message popped in from the friend in Atlanta!

    There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

  • Every Memory a Blessing

    Sacred Stories

    She was at the post office feeling so depressed having sold her late husband’s small sailboat.

    She looked across the room at a rack of greeting cards.

    A familiar image….

    A familiar message…. every memory a blessing.

    “The pain of her death was exquisite.
    I cried for weeks, but felt an incredible joy and comfort
    that was an equal part of the grief.
    I was so grateful that I had spent time with her
    — only with her, fully present and joyful.” (p.163)

    The Dharma of Dogs: Our Best Friends as Spiritual Teachers, by Tami Simon